The Pomp Podcast - #920 Constantine Karides on Building The Leading Crypto Law Practice

Episode Date: April 17, 2022

Constantine Karides is a Lawyer and is currently a Partner at Reed Smith. In this conversation, we discuss intersections of law and Crypto and how Constantine's firm is leading the way in providing legal frameworks for this fast changing industry. ======================= This episode is sponsored by my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto, Okcoin. They're the fastest growing US based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever, and they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of.  From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning to contributing over $1M for Bitcoin core devs, they're doing incredible work to further the bitcoin ecosystem and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets from gaming to defi. With Okcoin, I feel confident that the future really will be ok. To get started, go to http://okcoin.com/pomp for some free bitcoin when you sign up. ======================= Fundrise is the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That’s right, Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use, automated platform. See for yourself how over 190,000 investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10.  Go to http://Fundrise.com/Pomp today and, for a limited time, get $10 when you place your first investment. That’s Fundrise.com/Pomp ======================= Crypto is all about giving the power back to the people and our sponsor, Pipe, is doing that in a big way. Pipe is the world’s first trading platform that allows you to trade recurring revenue streams for up-front capital. And with Pipe’s new API, companies with recurring revenue can build seamless, embedded financing options into their platforms. One of the most interesting uses for Pipe’s new API right now is Compass Mining’s “Mine Now, Pay Later” which powers payment plans on bitcoin mining hardware so more miners can start or scale with a smaller up-front investment. Whether you’re looking for mining hardware or scaling any business with recurring revenue, check out Pipe to access growth capital with: No loans. No dilution. No restrictive covenants or warrants. Just growth on your terms And right now, Pomp Podcast listeners can access tens of thousands of dollars even millions fee-free for 12 months. Whether you are a bitcoin mining company looking to enable financing for your customers or a SaaS, DTC, or any business that has recurring revenue, sign up at http://pipe.com/pomp to start trading today. =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Constantine Carides is a partner at Reed Smith. In this conversation, we talk about the intersection of law and crypto and all of the nuance that goes along with it. I really enjoyed this conversation with Constantine, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, I would love to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by OKCoin. They are my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto. They're the fastest growing US-based exchange serving over 190 countries globally with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't

tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever. And they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of. From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning, to contributing over $1 million for Bitcoin core developers. They're doing incredible work to further the Bitcoin ecosystem, and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets from gaming to DeFi. With OKCoin, I feel confident that the future really will be OK. To get started, go to OKCoin.com slash POMP for some free Bitcoin when you sign up. Again, if you want free Bitcoin, go to OKCoin.com slash POMP today.

Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry. Fundrise is here to help you do just that. It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That's right. Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use automated platform. Its 1 million users already know that the investment with Fundrise is capable of producing strong appreciation returns and income generation while helping to stabilize a diversified

portfolio. That's more important now than ever in our inflationary environment. See for yourself how over 190,000 other investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to fundrise.com slash pomp today. And for a limited time, you'll get $10 when you place your first investment. Again, that's fundrise.com slash pomp. Go check it out. And when you make your first investment, they'll give you $10 on top of it. Fundrise.com slash pump. Today's episode is brought to you by Pipe. Crypto is all about giving the power back to the people. And our sponsor Pipe is doing that in the big way. Pipe is the world's first trading platform that allows you to trade recurring

revenue streams for upfront capital. And with Pipe's new API, companies with recurring revenue can build seamless embedded financing options into their platforms. One of the most interesting uses for Pipe's new API right now is Compass Minings. Mine now, pay later, which powers payment plans on Bitcoin mining hardware so more miners can start or scale with a smaller upfront investment. Whether you're looking for mining hardware or scaling any business with recurring revenue, check out Pipe to access growth capital with no loans, no dilution, no restrictive covenants or warrants, just growth on your terms. And right now, Pomp podcast listeners can access tens of thousands of dollars, even millions fee-free

for 12 months. Whether you are a Bitcoin mining company looking to enable financing for your customers or a SaaS, DTC, or any business that has recurring revenue, sign up at pipe.com slash pomp. Again, pipe.com slash pomp to start trading today. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. We have Constantine here from

Reed Smith. How are you? I'm doing great, guys. How are you? All right. So you're a lawyer. I usually don't like lawyers, but I like you. First of all, what is on your shirt? That's a pretty good shirt lines not cheap already that's not exactly what a lawyer would normally wear they usually wear shirt suit tie you know the whole nine yards what what why uh why are you different uh well i'll tell you about the shirt first i mean there's a lot of reason i'm different but the shirt uh is kind of came into being during this pandemic when the whole world seemed to follow blindly government control and um group think facts and spent tremendous amount of money and getting people to conform to a single way of being

in a way that really kind of startled me. So I wanted my kids to know that they shouldn't follow along in that fashion. They should think for themselves. I think that's pretty good. And they should be lines on a sheet. Did you see that Philadelphia now has the mask mandate back?

It's incredible. By the way, I'm not a scientist. I don't know. But like, I feel like you can't renege on promises. You can't say like, hey, we're out. We're back in, we're out, we're back in. But it seems to be going on. all right so you guys have a massive law firm how many uh how many people work at reed smith

so our firm is uh 1800 lawyers globally we got 26 uh offices uh 30 offices around the world from singapore and hong kong through the middle east we even have an office in kazakhstan we can talk about why some other time well no what let's hear that we do a lot in the mining minerals and metal space and that's pretty hot spot basically a big mine yeah are you guys in afghanistan we are not we shut down that office a while ago no I'm just kidding do when lawyers have meetings with like internally do you guys bill each other

well I mean I mean the truth is depending on what you're talking about we may be billing clients but you know if it's not about work we shouldn't be billing anybody alright and the reason

you're here is not because we're going to make fun of lawyers no please do I make fun of lawyers all the time No, I know you do. That's why you're here. You are one of or the largest shareholder of this business. So you're not just a lawyer, but you also think about building a business and kind of what business lines you guys go into. Is that a fair categorization?

Yeah, absolutely. I think I have a pretty great spot within the firm. And as a result, I'm constantly thinking about how the law is evolving, where are the opportunity sets that are attractive for law firms, even law firms of our size, and then try to figure out how to go attack those opportunities and in terms of this space and the crypto digital assets space

for me that has presented one of the most transformational legal opportunities in my lifetime the ecosphere and the environment around it is energetic and contagious and there's so much opportunity for lawyers to get involved And so, you know, we decided that was an area that we wanted to be in.

We have everyone from true believers to folks who see an opportunity to provide legal services and everyone in between towards the pure believer side. And so we went on this venture. You know, for me personally, I, during the pandemic particularly, kind of saw what governments were doing in terms of printing money and how they were doing exactly what folks like you had suggested was why Bitcoin was an important form of currency and future payment model for everything.

So I said, well, I've got to start thinking about that more permanently for our firm. So we started looking around and thinking about what we're doing in the space. And over the course of the last two years, We have put together what I think is a market-leading digital assets and crypto group called OnChain with over 100 lawyers globally doing everything from representing founders, investors, exchanges, governments, even miners, covering the entire regulatory framework, data privacy, cybersecurity. We covered super nuts.

And for me personally, it's probably the most exciting, at the risk of alienating my clients, It's probably the most exciting area for me right now because getting to work with folks like you, Pomp, founders, the energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement of this space is so palpable. And it kind of energizes you because we're also at the frontier of making law. So nothing's set.

We have potential legislation coming out from Loomis and Gilles Debran pretty soon. I'm optimistic it'll at least provide a framework. Maybe it'll go too far for some folks, but at least it'll give some clarity to the industry that I think that's lacking. And with that, you have this really tremendous area that we're really proud of what we've built

and will continue to build on it. And one of the things we do that keeps us different, apart from wearing logos on our shirts, or at least me, is we fundamentally believe in order to service your clients in this space, you need to know what you're talking about, more so than any other space. you can bullshit in a lot of other areas

you can't bullshit in this space especially folks who are doing what you guys are doing and building these businesses and developing these payment systems so we have a rigorous training program internally we work with a firm called Inflection Points as part of that training program and we have others that we work

and so that's a mandatory part of our group and I think it helps us understand the marketplace What I've discovered in this process is that some of our strongest lawyers in the space are younger lawyers, which probably doesn't surprise you guys because they are reading it, living it, and digesting it. You know, the millennials are completely 100% conviction, like you guys. And they come to the table knowing a lot more than we do. So it's been great, that process of connecting the older and younger generations as well at our firm. So a couple of things.

First, you have 100 lawyers that are dedicated just to Bitcoin and crypto that you guys are going really, really deep at this and going to help in a bunch of different ways, which I think is important. A lot of people, I think, think of, oh, lawyers and crypto, like, they must be doing token sales, right? And sure, you guys do some of that, but it's also how do governments participate, how do politicians, how do exchanges go ahead and move globally, et cetera, which I think is a really important part. I have two data points on Reed Smith. First of all, I saw something in the chat say, like, I am not surprised whatsoever that a lawyer that Pomp works with has a shirt that says lines. So you and I both are on brand. We're winning. The second one is somebody said, ah, Reed Smith.

I'm a recovering criminal defense attorney. I always worked in small environments, but my ex worked at Reed Smith for a couple of years. The ruthless environment, high powered, but great firm. I feel like that's exactly as a law firm. like somebody says ruthless environment high powered but great firm is like ultimate yes i feel like that's a good compliment a great compliment that person could be sadomasochist though i mean if i would say we ruthlessly execute for our clients how about that um but i think the ethos is right where you know we're get shit done yeah we get shit done our

clients are happy and and you know we do well but i think we also have a pretty good culture so Yeah, I agree. All right, let's talk a little bit about some of the stuff going on right now. So Jack Mallers goes on the Bitcoin conference stage, and he announces that he's partnering with NCR, Blackhawk, Shopify, et cetera, and he's going to allow people to send dollars or Bitcoin across the lightning rails. What's your reaction to that, and how do you think about, from a legal perspective, any things that you get excited about or think that there's pioneering there?

Well, first, as an investor in the space, it's groundbreaking and transformation. to see what he's launching. And his client list is already quite massive. I suppose the credit card companies are probably getting a little worried when they see what this model is capable of. And they should be. And we'll see if they react and how they react.

They're pretty good at adopting to current trends. So I wouldn't necessarily count them out. but what he's doing is smart because I think the way he's structuring this he'll avoid the taxation at the point of sale which has always been a big inhibitor for Bitcoin transactions and how you do it and who collects it

and what kind of risk you have so I think that's number one enormously helpful and because this is still a commodity trade I think he avoids the regulatory overlay that it might be if this were security so it's a brilliant concept he is um i think bound for tremendous success and um if he's listening we'd love to help him out so jack i don't know if you're out there but so one of the key things you're talking about is the taxation so this whole idea that like if i have uh if i go to dinner

tonight right and i spend dollars on dinner i pay for the cost of dinner i pay for the sales tax i tip the waiter i walk out i'm fine uh i don't pay anything other than that right if i buy that same dinner with bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency as well i pay for dinner i pay for sales tax i tip the waiter but i also pay capital gains correct on that transaction and so like what do you think it'll take to actually get uh whether it's a de minimis exemption so you know something six hundred dollars or less uh or just completely remove it if you're actually buying a good or a service like is there a legal pathway or a precedent or anything you have there that to think of like how do we get to the point where uh the purchase of goods and services with crypto

doesn't trigger taxes i think that's a little tricky i think i think just because of the way our system is built um you know if you're buying bitcoin at 10 and you're using it at 20 and you don't have to pay the taxes even if it's for you know small percentage of that uplift there's a slippery slope to you know tax avoidance and loopholes so i think that would be hard to accomplish i think the flip side may be easier and that is the recipient of them of that bitcoin if they get it on tuesday and they don't you know and and they you know uh turn it into cash on on on wednesday you know if they've lost some money or if they gain some money they have a whole other accounting issue they got to deal with which i think can be um administratively product problematic

I think over time, because restaurants and hotels and retail businesses want to be able to transact in Bitcoin, they're going to come up with something that probably starts to think about how you handle this in a way that doesn't create instant gains that aren't taxed or losses that are incurred for no reason. And the way that he's doing it, right, in terms of Jack and Strike, is that you send dollars or you send or you receive dollars, euro, whatever currency you want to choose. But if you're using the rails, but you're not using Bitcoin coming from the sender, you use Bitcoin that's already on their balance sheet. And the way that that occurs is there's no for the user, there's no tax ramifications because they never sent Bitcoin, which is a very unique way to the intention was not, hey, how do we not have to pay taxes? It was let's use these rails. But a nice side effect is the avoidance of kind of egregious taxation. If you're using dollars for the transaction, you're just using a more superior payment rail. That's correct. And if that grows in a way that most people can transact on that basis, then you kind of can start dealing with this tax issue you're talking about. yeah uh when you think about um some of the the uh legal ramifications of bitcoin uh from a payment

standpoint uh is there a world where the payment like the legacy payment folks can come at uh the maybe interfaces around bitcoin uh or is there something that they could do like when you get into patents with like the bitcoin payment system like it's decentralized right so like there's no like you can't sue the lightning network no uh if you were playing offense like what do you think those people are going to do? Do they just say, hey, there's nothing we can do here, so let's not even try, we've got to compete? Or what happens?

Well, I mean, the typical order of attack there would be we need to stamp this out, right? We need to figure out a legal strategy. Well, actually, first we need to figure out a political strategy, right? And so I think you'll see a lot of effort around trying to block that through legislation, maybe. I don't know that it'll go anywhere because, as you know, And as we've seen at the conference and otherwise, there's a growing consensus and a growing group of politicians who understand the value, the efficiency, the potential wealth transformation of being able to adopt and use Bitcoin in ordinary currency transactions.

But that's where we'll start. And then if that doesn't work, they'll adopt. They'll have to adopt. I think one of the most exciting parts about Bitcoin is what it's causing everybody else to do, right? And you're seeing some of that in, I would say, older line businesses and technologies. If they don't, they're dead. Whether it's certain lending products are moving to a decentralized structure pretty quickly. We're representing and launching credit funds pretty regularly right now that are crypto credit funds.

We're seeing even some mortgage-related transactions happening on a decentralized basis. you know that movement and that um development of a lending infrastructure outside of the normal avenues that you typically see is something that everybody who's in the in the finance business needs to be wary of and and think about how they're going to approach and i think i think they are you know i mean some people have their heads in their sand but but not everybody does decentralization render laws like non-applicable or like how like how does this work and and part of it is uh i think that very elementary analysis like oh it's decentralized and like the laws don't apply uh there as you just said like there's a more nuanced version of this so like explain from

how you guys think about decentralization being compatible with the law yeah so whatever activity is happening in a decentralized um environment is still activity that falls to a bucket, and that bucket has a rule set around it. So that's probably where you start in understanding what rules apply to those activities, and I think you're seeing that in some of the legislation that's being considered. Gary Gensler came out and he started talking about

how he wants the SEC to regulate Bitcoin cryptocurrency from at least a user perspective, if not from a securities perspective. and you're seeing that in terms of the approach to the rules around it as a commodity so the rules are there the application and ultimate enforcement I think is what's more difficult

but ultimately there are entities or individuals who have set up these structures and have some ownership well potentially have some ownership over some of these activities And so they would be the folks who I think would be asked to comply with the law. The Uniswap one, I don't want to put you on the spot of a specific situation, but that one to me is fascinating because my understanding, again, super uneducated idiot on the internet,

but my understanding is that they created a decentralized smart contract that's built on Ethereum, which for this we'll make the assumption is fully decentralized and can't be shut down. um and in there uh it's allowing the uniswap uh kind of product to work now they also built an interface to it that uh the uniswap team oversees controls and and uh and manages uh but there's other interfaces as well around the uniswap product and so uh the regulators uh appear to either be asking questions or applying pressure however you want to kind of categorize it to the interface because there's a team that obviously oversees that there's that's where there's people

right correct and even if you shut down that interface my understanding is there's you know 50 other interfaces that people could still access the product through it just wouldn't be the uniswap team itself uh uh doing that and so when that becomes the uh the game it's not like you go to facebook and you're like hey facebook shut it down and then somebody else possibly oh we're using the facebook algorithm and like you know here we are so it just feels like there's like a whole new frontier that's very different. It absolutely is, and I think the regulators are way behind being able to even conceive about how to deal with the situation you're describing.

Right now it's whack-a-mole, in a way, to try to understand where those interfaces exist and who's running them. But in time, my guess is that there will be an effort to get into those decentralized and smart contract platforms in a way that allows them to have some influence, if not control over them. So that's far off, but that's where I would imagine it would go. Yeah.

Joe, John, what questions do you guys got? What are the biggest challenges that you guys are facing that you're seeing on a legal level when it comes to crypto? Okay. I mean, first and foremost is whether an asset is a security or not. And no one wants to hear that it's a security. So I've always spoken with my team to say, Let's think about when you were speaking to a founder

who has a great idea and they're ready to talk to us about their launch and say, hey, we're going to do this. We don't want the first thing to be saying, well, that's a security, you've got to do X, Y, and Z. That's a big turnoff. It may be, but that's number one. Whether something's a security and what that means

in terms of the regulatory burden, whether it's even then viable to do it in that form. That's number one. The other is, I think, data privacy and cybersecurity. You're seeing a lot of incidences. I had my Coinbase wallet swiped, which was a lesson for me to invest money with other people and not try to figure that I could trade coins.

Is data privacy and cybersecurity? I think that's a huge area that we need to be really mindful of. And then it's just the overall moving landscape of the legal and regulatory framework that's not defined and is very ambiguous in many fronts. And so people are either taking an approach like, well, until I know for a fact 100% I can't do it, I'm going to do behavior or engage in activity

very profitable, but which may ultimately get kind of pulled back, and that's kind of an interesting way to approach it. Or you have other folks who are very conservative in their approach and are like, okay, well, we're going to follow all the rules as they are now, and we're going to look for additional direction from the government.

So let's start with the first one, right, which is security versus non-security, because I think that's one that we obviously hear a lot about, and when you're investing, people talk about constantly of certain projects or companies etc is that something where there's just not enough guidance right now like you guys wish that it was clear or do you guys think you have enough information it's just a project by project basis i think more often than not you know you know if it's a security just by by the way it behaves um and then you figure out is

there another way to approach it to have the same economics or same outcomes um without tripping those wires. And it's not necessarily prohibitive if you trip those wires, you just have to approach it differently. And some folks who are doing tokens or other issuance in that vein, they just, from a U.S. perspective, just choose not to transact in the U.S. And so they can develop a pretty successful and significant business in that way. Of course, if it's a token company and those tokens launch and they start trading and they start trading in the U.S., then you have the same issue that you were hoping to avoid.

So I think I would say largely you know, but there is definitely a bucket where you have to kind of dig in and figure it out. And that's where I think good creative lawyers, and I like to think we have a bunch of them, can help you navigate that in the most profit-maximizing way. And how has, I don't know when you guys first started

at initially covering crypto or giving advice on crypto. But in general, how has the pace of kind of clients, I'm assuming it's picked up over time, but just talk a little bit about kind of what you guys are seeing there. It's a great question. And I guess I would say it mirrors a little bit the asset class valuation in crypto. So as you've seen that grow,

there's more business, there's more activity, there's more investors, there's more founders, there's more entrance into the marketplace, There's more regulations, there's more governments who are figuring out what to do. So it's been an exponential growth. Our group was working kind of in disparate ways. And when we started our process to say, we need to organize this. We think we're doing a lot of great things, but we need to kind of put it into a more cohesive and market-facing manner.

when we did that we discovered holy shit we have so many people doing so many interesting things great energy around it and so we launched and are launching in a way that we think is much more informative for

our end users which is clients. So our group is like we said started about 100 lawyers and over the past I would say over the past Let's say 1920, 21, 22, we've seen 20-fold, maybe more terms of opportunities. And I would say even between this year and last, as more people understand our place in the market, we're exponentially ahead of where we were last year in terms of clients.

Have you been surprised at the quality of people also? Like people coming from traditional kind of jobs, whether it's in big tech or something similar? I've been blown away by the entire industry. The talent that is moving from traditional Wall Street into great companies like BlockTower, for instance, and what they're doing is really awesome. When we see terrific lawyers move in to take entrepreneurial positions,

and a friend of mine at River Financial Services, this brilliant guy left a big law to do that. So the talent that is moving and has moved into this space is only growing. And here's another plug. And so when you see that and you're like, how do you fill all those jobs? And there's, and one, you know,

I know one firm that is doing great things in that space is Inflection Points. John, what questions you got? it comes to you what's obviously crypto is very new so everyone kind of goes into it not uh knowing clients coming to you saying hey can we get some advice on this what's something crazy that someone's asked you to like like an entity to set up or something like that that you're just like dude you're not allowed to do that no that's a that's really a funny question um we've definitely had a few characters come across who are you know um i mean you can

know what's the craziest one come on like what what's something somebody tried to do where you were just like, no, that's not allowed? I think there are people who come in and say, I'm creating a pet metaverse, and so I want to start trademarking pet names for the metaverse, which hasn't been built. And then I want the pet metaverse to have ownership interests in real estate.

I mean, it's just kind of like... Things that don't even make sense. They don't make sense. Yeah. So, you know, we've seen some of that. Can I ask another question? Sure. So this, again, don't want to put you on the spot, but I'm going to put you on the spot.

If I don't know the answer, I'll make it up. When you look at all of these things like Tornado Cash or these tumblers or things where you can do like a coin join, et cetera. so that the general idea each one's a little bit different but the general idea is uh for financial privacy purposes i would like to uh not have someone be able to follow my bitcoin on a blockchain so what i do is i put it into uh this product and if i put two bitcoin in i get two bitcoin out and you can't tell because we mix them all up together for then i can go use it is that legal like one one part of me says like the financial privacy argument is so strong when you have a public uh ledger like that the other side of me has always wondered you know maybe we

need to wait for courts to somehow figure this out is are they going to go after that as money laundering well if and i don't i i would i would make the argument that the privacy is the right argument but like what do you think you're taking out the same amount of money that you're putting in correct i mean what's the difference between that and like a bank a bank account correct that would be my argument yeah is you put your money in the bank and when you take it out the same cash you're taking out is in the cash you put in in fact you actually didn't put cash in you you had some wires say you put cash in so my first reaction is that should be fine as long as the source of the

Bitcoin is verifiable and obviously when you get the Bitcoin you know what to do. You didn't do anything illegal to get the Bitcoin. And so if you go and you use this then it's a privacy feature. Yeah, I guess is it kind of instantaneous?

Each one's a little bit different. Some of them happen quickly, some of them may take a little bit longer. I mean you have a valuation question, that's a different issue. But in terms of I don't see why it wouldn't be legal but I don't want to hold ourselves out as giving an opinion on anyone out there. Don't act on that.

By the way, none of this is legal advice. All you geniuses at home, don't say, I saw Constantine and Pops talking about it. But I think that that's my general reaction too. But I use that as an example of like, one, you would have to sit down with your team, right, and do a bunch more work to kind of come to a full conclusion. But like there's such nuance in so many different things.

No other asset in the world has a public ledger that is auditable by anyone in the world which potentially could violate basic financial privacy and therefore the need to have things that would enhance your financial privacy. That is a very nuanced situation. So of course entrepreneurs are going to go solve problems and so they went and they built this.

There's multiple versions. But you can see how there's going to be someone somewhere who's like, oh, that's a bad thing. They're already saying just Bitcoin in general is bad, right? And so, of course, they're going to go after stuff like that as well, it feels like. You're going to have a, you know, people under the rubric, we care about consumers, want to know what's going on here because, you know, they're terrified of people, you know, creating wealth.

And when you do that, you start asking questions like, well, who's holding, you know, what's the custodian of these, you know, the Bitcoin? Who are they? Are they regulated? That kind of thing. So that's more a question of, well, you want to make sure that when you do put your two Bitcoin in, you do get two Bitcoin out. And so if you don't, you've been screwed, and we want to make sure we limit the opportunities of that mechanism to screw you. So that's where I see where you'd see the regulatory burden. But the notion of intermingled Bitcoin being illegal, that strikes me as not likely, although I'd want to look at it. I have to say that as a part of a law firm.

uh last thing i want to ask is uh nfts right right after you we have a 12 year old kid coming on who's made millions of dollars in nfts uh i hope he has his cool t-shirt he's i don't know if he's got a cool t-shirt we tried to get him to take his first uh big uh windfall with a couple hundred thousand dollars we told him to go buy so he's issuing he's issuing nfts uh correct it called weird whales um and uh son's 12 he's trying to do the same thing maybe we got a bunch of bunch of 12 year olds out here gonna take over the world we told uh benjamin that he should uh buy the naming rights to a school and then name it after himself.

That's not a bad idea. Like if you're in elementary school, you show up and you tell the teacher, like, you work at my school. In the NFT world, like is there anything there that you guys find really fascinating or any kind of legal issues

that you tend to think are interesting? What's at the forefront of our NFT guys, and we have a tremendous talent in the NFT space, Gregor Pryor in London, Evan Zinneman in Ramsey, Hannah in Century City. You have 1,800 lawyers, you're not going to be able to drop all their names.

No, no, I dropped those guys' names because they're doing amazing things in the NFT space and I'm going to develop some capital with them. Fractionalized interests, how you manage that, how you deal with it, how you keep it from being stolen. Data privacy in NFTs is a big issue. The industry is booming. It's real.

One of the biggest issues I have with friends of my generation, believe it or not, in my early 50s, is they can't get their head around a new world emerging. And so they reject it out of hand because they don't understand it. And so just as an aside, that's something, that attitude doesn't exist in our group and we don't allow it. So NFTs have certain, you know,

fractionalized interest, buying and selling them, how you do that, you know, is really at the forefront in the NFT world. You know, I did want to mention before I leave Pomp, is it's my sister's birthday today. Her name is Marina. She comes at it from a very different perspective, far left, but she's totally into Bitcoin, which is interesting

because it marries, I think, political perspectives. We're in the politics is dumb political class. We opted out because we got confused. Yeah, I get confused all the time. And when I was listening, you're talking about El Salvador. I got that. And I wanted to mention my nephew, Ambrose, who got me into Bitcoin.

How old? He's probably 20 now. He asked me if I was investing in Bitcoin in 2014, and I was like, no. And he's like, well, you should be. And I'm like, what do you know in the back of my head? And then, obviously, it's stupid. And then a little bit later, we talked about it again.

And I'm like, you know what, you're absolutely right. So that kind of led me on my journey. He also has, and I'm shameless, I know that an internet knife company that's killing it called Nico's Knives you guys should go

internet knife company like he sells knives on Instagram off Instagram he's selling athletes love it pros, celebrities he's just built

this huge business I wish that one of you guys were smart enough to make a knife company and then sell them on the internet and then we could all retire

damn these knives are legit did you see Nico's Knives did you pull them up yeah it's like they're like Is this Versatile Handmade Revolutionary?

Yeah, yeah, we got it on the screen. We got it on the screen. It's the homepage of the site. Oh, you have it on the screen. What's the, scroll down a little bit, Matt. What's the, oh, he got the videos. Cutting up the peppers and chicken. Anytime that you can show a knife can cut the peppers

and the chicken at the same time, you know you got a good knife. He's got a great knife. Yeah, and then it's stuck in the wood. Like, these are versatile ass knives. Imagine going to your kitchen and being like, let me take my steak knife and I'm going to go cut down this tree.

That's Nico's knives. Imagine going into your kitchen, not having a Nico knives. This is great because, you know, Nico, he's definitely going to have to send you guys some. Hey, Nico, DM us and we'll send you our bank account details. You can send us the referral fee. People in the chatter are trying to debate us to if it's a Damascus steel or other types.

Happy birthday to your sister. Are you getting a real live reaction to Nico's knives? Yeah, of course. Yeah. How about anything I said? When are you going to get the lawyer off the show and bring the 12-year-old in? No, no.

They were saying, let's see. I told you what they said about me. They said, happy birthday to your sister. If you don't know the answer, if I don't know the answer, I make it up, spoken like a true attorney. And then somebody else said, I did social media marketing for many criminal defense attorneys here in san diego california the law of the land is fire facts which i don't really know

what that is now they know we're reading the comments though so they'll start sending reckless stuff yeah now they'll start i don't want you to go down that hole people saying we should get you a beer uh somebody said uh when you said believe it or not i'm 50 uh somebody said you don't look a day over 60 sir they said that you they you remind them of joe rogan really i listen i'm i'm trying to pivot you know somebody said i don't even need knives but i bought 25 of them the uh you know look all uh all kinds of stuff um that uh somebody said talking to you guys he said you took career advice from a 14 year old that now sells knives listen kids 20 kid listen he's selling lots of knives i acted on his investment

advice and this worked out very well for me and it sounds like if i hang around i'll get some great investment advice from a 12 year old too i may just do that all right uh what uh where should we send people to find you on the internet or find uh more about reed smith um you guys can you guys can reach out uh you can check out our crypto and digital assets uh web page uh Uh, hold on timeout. We got the photo of you on Reed Smith. That looks like straight out of 1947 mobster, uh, suit store. I, uh, I used to, if I saw you in the street, I'll go the other way. Yeah, you should. I get that a lot actually, but, but we're, we're, we're, we're, we're linked now. So we're good. You know, I got your back completely. All right. Reed, Reed Smith.

Just reach out to me, Constantine Caritas. There aren't that many out there. I've ventured there are none others out there. And you'll find my contact, see caritas at reedsmith.com. I don't want to give my number because – Yeah, don't give the number. Bad things will happen. After some of those comments.

Yeah, bad things. I'm going to get some texts. Bad things will happen. Lastly, you'll appreciate this, is every time that we have to do ad reads and stuff like that, I always have to say, you know, read the terms and conditions. Yeah. And, uh, uh, there's one advertiser, uh, that their lawyers are very opinionated. They, they,

they have a lot of, uh, this is good. This is not good, whatever. So I just started talking directly to them on the show. I just said, Hey lawyers, listen up. And, uh, uh, all of a sudden they got real quiet. I haven't heard from them in like two months. So, you know, I feel like that's like, uh, there's good lawyers and bad lawyers, but the, uh, the key is, uh, you always need a good lawyer. Like that is actually a very, very good piece of advice for most people. you also need a a a lawyer in a good position in the law firm to look after you that's true depending where you're at yeah last thing i'll leave you with just to to really highlight uh how amazing our audience is somebody said whenever i need a lawyer i just do it myself

i don't trust anyone else to talk for me right that's really we're taking on self-sovereignty it's like a whole nother level uh with uh with that so um all right well thank you so much for thank you guys uh anyone who is uh is looking for legal services in all seriousness you should go check out reed smith i use them constantine is uh has done a fantastic job this entire team uh that you guys are making a massive investment in in building out this practice yep the uh the name of it is reed smith on chain which if you're a dummy and you see that written somewhere on a website and you don't know that it's crypto then you probably need to go ahead and call them because you definitely need a lawyer because you're gonna make a lot of mistakes as cool as we got

on chain you know we had a bunch of other names and they're just terrible so what was the worst one um not that one what's that one there's like a greek god names and stuff i'm like no one's gonna fucking know what you're talking about uh can you imagine if he came and he goes we have a new uh unit at reed smith it's called reed smith it's called zeus it's called zeus everyone's like What exactly are you doing there? Yeah, no, it really just, but we had a great marketing team pull it together for us. All right, well, listen, thank you for coming on.

You're here in Miami, so we'll definitely bring you back at some point when we got legal questions. Or if you want to just talk generally, I'm really funny, so I can really, I can help the show. I think we should make you the official lawyer of the show, and whenever we have legal questions, we can just like call you up and be like,

hey, is this legal? And then, you know, you just make up the answers. That's right. That's what you do. Without fee, without a charge. All right. I appreciate it very much. This has been great.

I really appreciate it. I'm excited I got to be on with you guys. All right. Sounds good. See you later. Have a great day, guys. All right. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with a top team

across the industry it's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and i'll meet you guys for the next episode