The Pomp Podcast - Joe McGill, Founder & CEO of CyChain: How the Secret Service Fights Cybercrime and Tracks Stolen Crypto

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Joe McGill is the Founder of CyChain and a former investigator at the U.S. Secret Service. In this conversation, Joe and Anthony Pompliano discuss what the Secret Service does, how cybercrime investigations work, what Joe has seen criminals use crypto for, why law enforcement is quickly catching up to the nefarious activity, and what Joe is building at CyChain for these law enforcement professionals and regulators.  BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO.COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

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Again, that is etoro.com, where the entire team's ready to get you started in just a few clicks. And don't forget, go subscribe to the Off The Chain daily newsletter. You can go to offthechain.substack.com. I write a letter of news, analysis, and opinion every morning that goes out to more than 40,000 investors. See you there. What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto.

Let's kick this thing off. Joe McGill is the founder of Sidechain and a former investigator at the Secret Service. In this conversation, we discuss what the Secret Service does, how investigations work, what Joe has seen criminals use crypto for, why law enforcement is quickly catching up to the nefarious activity, and what Joe is building at Sidechain for these law enforcement professionals and regulators. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. Bang, bang.

I'm here with Joe. I'm super excited about this conversation because you've lived a life that most people only watching movies um but uh thanks so much for coming to do this yeah thanks for having me on for sure um all right let's go back uh pre-crypto you used to be in the secret service um maybe talk to us about how did you get to the secret service and then get into kind of what people do there yeah so it's crazy back in uh 2008 before we had all this instant internet stuff i used a paper application and filled out about 50 pages of an application uh mailed it to the nashville field office for the secret service and went through the interview process took about a year

after polygraphs and all that fun stuff and then training and that's how I got started on the uniform division side eventually transferred as an agent out to San Francisco and that's how I got into crypto was on their electronic crimes task force squad got it and so let's talk a little bit about the secret service in general because I think most people think it's you know dudes in suits and ties protecting the president which obviously is one part of the job or the organization But what else does the Secret Service do? Yeah, so they're initially founded to combat the nation's infrastructure of counterfeit currency. And that's still a very big mission for the Secret Service.

But they also, of course, do protection around the campaign year. I feel bad for all the current agents because I know what it's like. They're going to be away from home almost the entire year. But in addition to that, they do a lot of financial crime stuff based on cyber crimes, network intrusions, credit card theft. They're really good at credit card market type stuff on the dark web. But, yeah, most people think suits, earpiece, and sunglasses, and that's just part of it. That's the sexy Hollywood version. Right, right.

All right. So as you're doing that, you get out to San Francisco. You're on this electronic task force. Is that what it's called? Yeah, it's electronic comms task force. They're all over the United States. And the mission of that is basically to network with fintech partners, institutions, local and state law enforcement agencies. And so it's a very large network where they can expand their investigations capabilities in whatever region they're in.

Got it. And how does crypto play into that? Because this is what, 2010 or so that you're doing this? Like, at what point do you guys come across Bitcoin or crypto and kind of why did it catch your eye? Yeah, so I started on the crypto side in 2014. I had a brief lapse where I left the Secret Service and then decided I want to go back for more. More pain? More pain. So 2014, I went back and started on the counterfeit squad and then switched to electronic crimes.

And what's interesting, when I started researching dark web and cyber stuff, I started coming across this thing called Bitcoin. I had no idea what it was and then started researching it, listening to all the crypto OG podcasts and blogs and seeing what they had to say. And then started trying to figure out a way where I could use Bitcoin in my investigations to target cyber criminals. And I found it's a great way to track people on the cyber side. Yeah. And what's interesting to me is we've seen this now. So I had Patrick O'Kane from the DEA come in and talk to a bunch of other folks who are either current law enforcement or former. And what ends up happening, it sounds like, is two things. Either one, the criminals are using it, so then the law enforcement side has to get caught up, right?

What is this thing? How are they using it? It's not like they're using regular bank accounts, so I've got to figure out how to kind of do my work and investigate on this side. Or the second is that they're actually using it as a carrot, right? And they basically are putting it into the system, sending it to somebody, and then understand that that person is unsophisticated and that they're going to be super trackable as they send Bitcoin around the world. At the Secret Service, was it more you guys getting pulled in because you were seeing criminals use it, or was it more of, hey, let's actually start to use this in investigations, but we initiate kind of the use of Bitcoin in that investigation, or both? Yeah, it was a little bit of both. So a lot of people think that the U.S. government may target Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, and I can't speak for the U.S. government at all.

But, you know, when I was at the Secret Service, you know, we did not target crypto or Bitcoin or anything like that. But we we target individuals that use that currency to launder the proceeds of their crime and take advantage of their victims. There's also a necessary tool to be active on the dark web. Several years ago, Liberty Reserve was a big thing. And then you have e-money type things in Russia and other places. But Bitcoin is king. It's most liquid. Privacy coins are out there.

But at the end of the day, if you want to be a user on the dark web, Bitcoin is the way you need to transact. And so that's how we got into it was so we could be more effective in our crimes and and come into the 21st century. Just because that's what you got to do to be really good on the dark web is to be able to integrate that technology. Yeah. And so let's spend a little bit of time on the dark web. I'll get back to see your service. What is the dark web? Right. I think people hear that all the time and it's like this big, scary thing. But like what exactly is the dark web and like why are people using that versus the traditional Internet? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because there's the whole privacy aspect of using the Tor browser for dissidents, journalists, missionaries trying to evade authoritarian regimes.

And then you have the other aspect where you think of the dark web where you can get on there and look for stolen credit cards, data breach information, anything that you want basically that's illegal, you can get on the dark web. And that's through the same browser. And so we would target specific crimes that were within the Secret Service scope, and then we'd go after those people wherever they were at, as long as we had some type of connection to the United States. Got it. And the thought process on the dark web is simply it is a less trackable or traceable use of the Internet, and it becomes harder for law enforcement to find the IP addresses and locations and names of the people involved, etc. Is that generally right? Yeah, the Tor browser has IP relay type technology where the proxies are very easy for criminals to get behind. But it's also used by people that are very interested in privacy as well. But on the Dork website, you know, they're getting on the Tor browser, they're using VPNs. And so they're making it very hard to capture that digital footprint.

So when they use cryptocurrency, you know, it's typically a good way for us to get an insight on where they're going. because you can look at a lot of different things such as wallet consolidation, different clusters, where they're going in and out of. And with crypto, you really only need to make one mistake and then it makes it a lot easier for law enforcement to track it. Got it. Because really, and this is true, I think of most law enforcement agencies, they're using money trail as a key component to the investigation, right? It's just follow the money and that usually leads you to a lot of details that are important for the investigation. Yeah, that's exactly right. If you think of old school investigations like money laundering and stuff and it seems almost antiquated when you get

into the bitcoin world because it's so fast you know the money laundering scams you you go to a bank you look at where it went and then if it went to a certain country and you didn't catch it you may be able to get it but you'd have to go through a mutual legal sense of mutual legal assistant tree and mlat with that country if you had it and it could take years or or months to get that money back but with crypto you see it happen you coordinate with the exchange you send legal documents and if you catch it in time you can freeze the money and you can get it back to the victim so there's a lot of really good use cases for bitcoin out there and it's not it's not as bad as what people think is what i found and near my experience what um what percentage

of the bitcoin uses do you think is criminal activity like do you think it's a material you know 50 or do you think it's much lower than that and kind of single digit type stuff i think it's a single digit i've never done a study but if you looked at companies like elliptic and Chainalysis, they put out data in the last, I think, year that said, based on X amount of transactions, I think Elliptic found that 2% of, I can't remember what it was, but an obscene amount of transactions was actually dark web related. And in my experience, it's typically just criminals taking advantage of individuals or not as good in their cybersecurity. But yeah, it's a small percentage. It's not like the dollar or other currencies where you think about it's laundered

all over the world used by cartels uh organized crime and cash is king and it's it's the most laundered currency out there it's not a popular thing to say but bitcoin's only you know small percent for crime yeah i think that the numbers it was like the uk office of drug enforcement or something uh did a study and it was like two trillion dollars a year laundered through uh through dollars which is uh it's a pretty crazy number right could you imagine that going through bitcoin two trillion right now yeah because what uh really crypto in general let's call it 250 billion dollar market cap so you're talking about you know one tenth give or take of all of the laundered money in the fiat system is the entire market cap of crypto not even bitcoin just all

crypto yeah that's crazy it's pretty nuts um all right so you're at uh the secret service um you start to see uh hey bitcoin's gonna be important here what are those early conversations like where you're talking to either superiors or peers and you're like hey you know this bitcoin thing are people open-minded to it do they just think it's all bullshit like what was kind of the reception So I looked out in my situation. I had a nontraditional path to the Secret Service. Typically, you get hammered your entire career with protection. I looked out where we came in contact with an individual that agreed to work for us full time in San Francisco.

And so that person spoke some critical languages and showed us the importance of crypto on the dark web and being able to target these actors. And so I had a really good boss there that was very pro. What can we do to make the team better? He's very innovative. And so that helped us out as far as, you know, we wrote a proposal, told what we wanted to do, got approval. And then from there, just it went nuts. I mean, my entire, I guess, four years in San Francisco, it was just nonstop, especially once 2017 came, the ICO craze. I mean, we were tripping over scams.

We couldn't keep up. Really? I mean, it was just wild. And so when you say somebody wanted to work full time, is this somebody who, like, got hired as a Secret Service person? Or is this more of like what I'll consider somebody who is working as like an informant for the Secret Service? So they got into some legal trouble and we agreed to work some time off. And so but the individual was a very nice way of saying it. Yes. So individual was very smart, very talented and, you know, want to do the right thing and helped us on a lot of good cases.

And, you know, I feel like when I worked with this individual, I got a master's in crypto because he taught me everything he knew from his previous life. And, you know, that helped us do investigations and catch a lot of really bad people. And how much of the things that you were seeing, what can we put in the category of like scams, fraud, things that are happen in every market. Right. But it's really bad people doing bad things. but they're more manipulating others versus what I'll call like hardcore criminal activity like drug dealers and, you know, kind of hit men and things that are more like violent related. Like what would the breakdown of the things that you guys were looking at kind of across those two categories? So most of it was complex financial and cyber investigation.

So we had sometimes target, you know, the big buzzwords, transnational organized crime groups. and those were groups of individuals that operated almost like a business so their infrastructure would be you have a company they have one guy that does the maybe builds a website you have another guy that handles the cash outs you have another guy that's a western union mule they have another guy that recruits people on the dark web to do text messaging or whatever it might be and so they're usually very well-oiled companies on but are their criminal organizations and so that's that's what we target got it and and like can you give me an example of like what they would be doing like so like let's say uh i came in contact with this company or these

individuals like what's their pitch to me or how do they scam me i guess so it's very common on some of these really good criminal forums where they'll be looking for people what to do cash outs or drops and so okay one of those so cash out would be you have a phone and they say okay we're going to send you SMS text messages, information, and you need to be the person that cashes out the money. So you may have a guy overseas in certain countries that are known for a cyber activity, recruiting people in the U S to take over accounts, to cash out the activity or to open up an account in their own name and try to move money through it. And so you'll see these criminals just open up accounts like crazy. Really? Yeah. It's, it's pretty, it's pretty wild. And so the thought

process is if uh if these bad guys come to me and say hey go open up a bank of america account we're going to send you some money cash it out into physical cash and then at some point leave it somewhere or somehow get it to them so that they essentially are laundering it through my name my account uh and so it throws off uh investigators etc uh who are looking for maybe the bad guys but instead the money came out through me yeah that's exactly right and sometimes they would use uh you know western union to send it back overseas or they would actually buy a bitcoin go to bitcoin atm send the bitcoin back overseas but that's kind of starting to that i think that i would call that the old school financial network and those same crime groups

have shifted to those same tactics but in cryptocurrency so you're seeing verified accounts now being for sale people selling their kyc on craigslist and criminals are using it and And so it's been interesting seeing the exchanges shift their tactics on security and KYC over the last few years to where they're getting really good at catching a lot of this fraud. Yeah, that's crazy that somebody goes gets a KYC and AML account and then turns around and says on Craigslist, I'll sell you basically username and password, right? Yeah, yeah. So I say Craigslist, but it's more dark web forums. But, you know, I had a case was very interesting. It was one group of individuals, and they had created over 50 phishing websites that looked like exchanges. So you'd go to Coinbase.com, you thought, but maybe it was an E instead of an A.

You'd log in with your credentials. The 2FA would go right to the attackers, and so they were ready to log into your account and just drain your money. But when we started looking at some of the data and serving legal process, we started seeing the same individuals but Photoshopping their faces. so you see the same guy on his you know his button-down shirt or a hoodie and then you'd see a different face on it at seven different exchanges and this was before they were using very technical data methods to analyze your face and do you do the spinning stuff and so it was wild and that was in 2017 and so I think the attackers are generally one step ahead always so what they're doing now is probably something we'll figure out in six months yeah and it is

funny right because it used to be the static photo and now it's more of like a live type situation or they even want to get onto skype or something to talk to you and and all of that um is interesting because uh i'm sure you saw like in hong kong these uh protesters had essentially what's like a visor and that visor had a uh projection uh camera and it could project the look of a different face onto your face right now it looks you know like it's projected but it's really there to defeat the uh the facial recognition uh software that the cameras etc have obviously wouldn't work if you're on skype etc um but but it's funny how this technology is coming yeah it really is um and so uh as you're doing these investigations like one of the things that's really interesting

to me is like it's almost like a cyber war right because the criminals are doing their stuff you guys are sitting in san francisco you guys are doing your stuff and you're trying to play a cat mouse game online in this digital world whether it's on the dark web or not uh but how do you go from like that cyber uh kind of battle to okay now let's go get that person right like at what point do you uh end up having um kind of physical interaction or real world interaction with people is it on the point of arrest is it you know something before that where you're still kind of investigating and gathering information like how does that work so it's really interesting in the cyber world usually you don't have interaction or contact with your targets unless

you're doing some type of uc or op where you're trying to get to know the person but nowadays you really can do everything online so okay you can buy stolen credit cards from them you can buy stolen bitcoin from them so and if you think about your your guests you had a while back from the dea and those guys are doing a lot of really cool in-person type things that you know i would never do on the cyber side because it's a different type of different type of crime i can do it from my desk i can be a keyboard warrior so to speak and and track these guys down and so basically your goal is to build up enough probable cause where you can one have enough information to indict the individual and to be able to fully identify the suspect got it and then once you get um the full

identification then you guys are kicking it over to like another agency to actually go pick them up or like the local police department like how does that work so it depends if they're in the u.s the Secret Service will do the arrest and we'll partner maybe with other agencies. If it's international, it depends on if they're an ally, if they have an agreement, if they have an extradition treaty with us, then, you know, we may not even tell the government until we know somebody's traveling. So a lot of different factors go into play because on the cyber world, typically the investigations are sensitive and they could be connected to organized crime that are, you know, you just don't want to mess around with and notify you're looking at.

Yeah. To me, it feels like, you know, I'm personally fascinated with this idea that criminals continue to use new technology, right, to try to stay ahead of law enforcement. And then it gets matured and kind of the criminals move on to the next thing. And then everyone else adopts that technology. We saw this with, you know, beeper, cell phone, Internet, all that stuff. Bitcoin, crypto is no different. But the sophistication level of the criminal right in the beginning. one of the things that people forget is like during the Silk Road investigation, law enforcement literally was siphoning off some of the Bitcoin and then got caught, right?

And so it was this belief of like, oh, no one will ever catch me because they don't understand this stuff. And then law enforcement got up to speed and said, well, hold on a minute, you did something. But at the same time, the scams get better, right? It's no longer just like, hey, here's a phishing website. Now it's something that's kind of more sophisticated. uh do you see with the sophistication level of them going to what i'll call more sophisticated cryptocurrencies from a privacy standpoint so monero z cash etc uh or is they still stuck on

like where the liquidity is either stable coins or bitcoin or something like that yeah it's a good question so i mean there are some markets where you can still use monero to buy buy whatever you need but in the day bitcoin is keen because it's liquid people love bitcoin because you can there's a lot of good different off ramps you can you know catch the fiat there's otc desk you can you know bitcoin is basically the the primary go-to for cashing out and and for your proceeds got it um and then uh let's talk a little bit about so once you guys started the investigations was there a change of um pace inside of the secret service like when you're saying 2017 you felt like you guys were basically just tripping over scams etc like how do you determine where do we focus our

time and effort is it just what's the biggest scam or is there some other kind of methodology yeah so that was a challenge that we would get we'd have a tough time with because at the federal level you typically need some type of large loss to be able to take the case or it has to be a pretty significant crime for low state and local sometimes it's different but we we tried to take cases federal as much as we could but when 2017 hit and you saw a very large influx of new people to crypto. We started seeing a lot of the ICOs were being targeted. For instance, one case I saw ICO got hacked and I just picked up the phone and cold called the CEO. I figured out who it was and said, hey, we want to help you out this case. You know, send us what you got. We we contact the

exchange. We got the money back for him. But that was just one example. You know, hackers were taking over their accounts and then they're sending out an email and saying, hey, ICO is open. Here's the Ethereum address, send all your money here. And then, of course, you know, the FUD happened. Nobody wanted to double check the address. And so attackers were making out with millions of dollars by just inserting the wrong address because maybe they didn't take the right steps on securing their emails or their Slack channels or whatever it may be.

And so criminals were really exploiting that in 2017. That's crazy, right? The idea that basically they are impersonating the either CEO or the project and then sending out addresses and people are just sending money, right? bear asset yeah they have it good luck yeah it was great and you think um some of these companies were not doing basic things like i always say go to have i been pawned all the time see if you're a password stuck in data breach because if it has then you know you need to change your password you should regularly do that but a lot of people are just missing out a lot of the basic steps because

they're so excited about their white paper getting their project out they had their own fud probably because they wanted to make sure they got they beat the next project to market And so a lot of people were missing out on basic security steps. And I think if we fast forward to now, companies are doing a lot better in protecting their infrastructure and taking second steps to secure their companies. For sure. And so you've kind of continued down the rabbit hole, right? So you spent the time at Secret Service. You've now transitioned to some other investigative work.

But you're also building an application that essentially merges kind of your interest in crypto with your interest in kind of investigations and regulatory compliance, etc. Maybe talk to us a little bit about Sidechain and what the original idea was and kind of what you guys have built so far. Yeah, so Sidechain started in June of this year. And I was actually in conversation with an executive of a crypto exchange. And he said, you know, you got to find a way to get back in the crypto game. And I said, you know, I'm in Memphis. How am I going to do that? it's there's not too much going on here they have some really good blockchain projects and stuff but

compared to san francisco where i was at and you know he suggests i should just start a consulting company and so within two weeks had a website up was primarily just going to try to do crypto recovery risk type consulting and then i ran into my co-founder who's now jason fisher and we talked about down the road i like to build an app and some software and then you know we decided to build an app that anybody can use to track crypto and determine if it's bad or if it's associated with the scam. And so we've taken the enterprise grade tech approach to where we're using machine learning, criminal pattern behavior. We're looking at addresses that we know are bad and we're combining that and giving a score for any user that puts in an address. So you've shown me the

product, right? And basically the way that my understanding of it works is I am about to do a transaction with somebody. They send me their wallet address. I can copy and paste that wallet address, put it into the system, and it will come back with a score as to like the risk, right? So either low risk, high risk, or somewhere in between. But then also, it'll give me a bunch of information about past transactions. And I can kind of set alerts to get notifications when money's going in or out, etc. And it's really seems to me like taking the publicly available information and using technology to better one located to kind of massage that data and then present it so that it's more human readable in some degree, right? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly

right. So we're trying to create as much efficiency as we can inside the app because it is an app. Nobody wants to do all the research on an app, right? So we're taking the most common used websites where people use the scams, we're plugging it so an individual hits scan. We're real time searching those websites trying to see if they're a result. You know, one question I've got is what happens if the address has zero transactions? That's common. I mean, bad guys are going to recycle their wallets but i've also found that sometimes usually they don't always do that on the first try so we may not catch the first scam but if someone gets scammed and they report it we're going to catch the second third and the fourth and they're going to have to keep

reshuffling but as they move their money we're eventually going to find their consolidation wallet and you know it's just going to continually open leads yeah so the first part you said there about the scan is basically uh within the app uh there's this button that says like scan the dark web right right and uh what's happening on the back end is when i press that button you're taking that wallet address and you're scanning i'm assuming hundreds if not thousands of websites and various locations for uh has this wallet address been presented anywhere so it could be on twitter it could be on the dark web etc and really again it sounds like you're just trying to present as much information as possible so people can make an evaluation as to should i

send money here or should i do business with whoever owns this wallet or not yeah that's right We just want individuals to have as much information as they can to make an informed decision. When I was in the Secret Service, they teach firearms, check, check twice. I'm sure you heard the same thing in the military. So I think when you send crypto, you've got to check, check twice. You've got to make sure the address is going somewhere that you trust. And so we want to give users the most information they can have in their hand when they send crypto. And most people these days are using their phone with QR codes.

You can use a QR code scan with their phone. So there's a lot of really good things, I think, from a consolidation standpoint that app users can do. And then we added the receive notifications. And I thought from a business perspective, if you have an account where you're constantly getting donations or you run a store, you don't need to constantly check your account. You can set up a notification through the app. And if money goes in or out, you're going to get a notification. And is the thought process here that individuals eventually kind of get educated and trained on the fact that, you know, check before you send? Or does this eventually get kind of incorporated into the exchanges and kind of wallet providers, etc? Yeah, I think yes to both of those.

I mean, my hope is that we can have an API ready for this first of the year where companies that have wallets for individuals can opt in and say, hey, would you like to use this API to check a risk score? Now, obviously, there's a lot of liability that comes with that. We can't catch every address, but we can give you as much information as possible. So I think the opportunities on this side are pretty expansive when you look at the market. And then, you know, we plan on having an enterprise-grade product that will be coming out next year. But our focus right now is on the users because there's no one right there, no one right now that has anything out there that's consolidating data to help them make a good decision. Yeah. And it feels like to me, as you see the kind of digitization of whether it's national currencies or the kind of proliferation of like these stable coins, et cetera, this all this technology becomes much more important. right and um i always go back to this idea of uh bitcoin can be private if you know what you're

doing right so the use of mixers and kind of all that stuff but the staple coins and the digital dollars etc their promise is not privacy right their promise is actually the exact opposite but of course just like any monetary system people are going to have these scams people are going to do criminal stuff etc and so providing the tools to not necessarily prevent But educate people so that they can take the actions to not participate in these. I think it's really important. And frankly, people just don't think about that right now. Right.

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We want to digitize our currency. Does that play in at all? Or what do you think they're thinking there? Yeah, I think it's interesting because I think before Libra had to testify, David Marcus from Facebook, the conversation was there, but it was not on a more national level. So now you have congressional and Senate committees looking at it. And I think the whole Libra launch was great for the industry because it made the people that need to talk about it talk about it. I mean, we heard the president of the United States mention Bitcoin. Who would have thought?

Crazy, right? I mean, we heard the secretary of treasury mention Bitcoin. And so a lot of people saw that as bad because maybe it wasn't in a positive light. But I saw that as good because eventually they're going to start talking to people that handle this type of stuff. They're going to talk to their Secret Service guys. They're going to talk to the FBI. They're going to talk to the Treasury. And they're going to say, okay, what's the deal with this?

Is it bad? Do criminals use it? The answer to that is going to be, yeah, criminals use it, but it's a small percentage. It actually has great technology behind it, and the underlying protocols could really make things more efficient. So I think the digitized dollar is a really fascinating thing, and it could be a really timely thing. And I think if you take a step back from a geopolitical perspective, right after the Libra thing, you see China say, hey, we're pro-blockchain. We want to be innovative. We're going to create all these programs for you.

And then all of a sudden, well, that's not exactly happening. I think that was maybe a shot to the bow of the United States to say, while you're hamming up Libra, we're over here trying to be innovative. And so it's very interesting. I think that we could see a not initially an arms race, but a digitized dollar race across governments to try to be the first first to do it. It's like the space race. Yeah. It literally becomes the I call it the great currency race. Right. Which is like who's going to be the first to digitize? And it's about accessibility. Right. So certain people can't get access to dollars or the yen or whatever if somebody is able to get them access because not only need an Internet connection, pretty big deal. But then you don't just see it in the U.S. and China, right? You see the French central banks, they're going to start testing this in Q1, right, with kind of select partners.

The ECB is now talking about like, oh, the stablecoin thing, we're going to have to have a plan there, right? Right, right. Okay. A fun fact that I did not know until recently, Christine Lagarde, who's the president of the ECB, if you Google her name and look on her Wikipedia page, she's listed as a politician and lawyer. Really? So it says president of the ECB and politician, lawyer, whatever. And so it's just as funny to me that like politicians are determining monetary policy, right?

And so I think that there's this idea of technology intersecting with monetary policy or central bank activity. But the ramifications of that are quite serious I think for the everyday person. Also, law enforcement has to stay on top of this, right? Regulators have to stay on top of this, et cetera. So it's not just a do we do it or do we not? It's do we do it and then what's the impact of all this? Right. Right.

As you're thinking through kind of the regulatory technology that gets built and side chain, et cetera, where are the areas in that that you think people are not yet building but are going to become important over the next couple of years? Well, I think if you look at some of the, I guess, the movements in the crypto space since Bitcoin's come out, you know, 2017 was the big ICO craze where, you know, everybody's launching on Ethereum. Now, fast forward, the big, I think in 2018 was what, stable coins and all that. 2019, towards the end, has been the decentralized finance movement into 2020. And so I think that's going to be a really big push to where crypto starts becoming more mainstream because a lot of the governments are looking at this now.

You think of Crypto Valley in Switzerland. I mean, they're really big in this space. They have a lot of, I think, over 1,000 blockchain companies there. have a lot of good banking systems, obviously. So I think we're going to see this decentralized finance movement really move the industry another step forward. And so I think a lot of good things are to come. And we're still early, I think, in Bitcoin and the technology. For sure. And speaking of technology, I want to throw a couple things out at you and get clarification, having, you know, you sat in that kind of law enforcement seat. So the first thing I hear is the privacy coins are

trackable, right? So Zcash, Monero, et cetera. What was kind of the efficacy from the law enforcement side of those what are deemed privacy coins, but are they actually private or how did you guys think about those? So for Zcash, for instance, you know, you look at Gemini and Coinbase listed them pretty early and it's because they had the non-shielded version of Zcash. So they have your non-privacy layer and your privacy layer. And I think from, I'm just guessing they did that so they could be regulator friendly because you can turn it on and off monero is a whole different ball game i mean it's a very interesting project they were so they're so decentralized that even when they had a i think some malware insert in their website they said

well we can't fix it we're decentralized we're going to get to it and i was really shocked to hear that but they're very decentralized so on the same on the same side you know i wasn't so you know they're they're very true to their thought on that but the whole privacy coins are going to be very interesting because from a bitcoin perspective if we look at and say okay if we see some type of adoption down the road where it's probably going to be a while in the united states but other countries that have uh inflation issues where their currency continues to be devalued and they need some something that's more stable well if you're in a country like that and you're running a storefront that's a bodega or something the government should know how much

business you're doing on a daily basis so by default the privacy layer on bitcoin is not there but you have other coins that they are. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how the government looks at that in the future going forward, because privacy is important. It should be by default. You know, there's the reason we have the Fourth Amendment and these things that the government shouldn't just be able to look at everything. They should have to have a reason to do so. It's a really important point. And having been in the military, right, a lot of my friends have gone into law enforcement in various capacities, federal organizations, or even defense contractors, et cetera. And I think a lot of people believe, because we live in this world

of like the Patriot Act and kind of Congressman Warren Davidson's recent podcast, we basically empowered the banks to become spies on their customers, right? And kind of all this information that now is maybe encroaching on some of those liberal or individual liberties and freedoms. The people who are participating in this, right, who are working at the law enforcement agencies, who work in the military etc they actually believe in the individual freedoms and liberties more than most right because they've seen kind of the other side of it and so this idea that um having worked at the secret service and seen what happens when you're doing investigations etc the privacy of financial transactions is still important to you right like you still think it's like this core

tenet of like it should be the default and i think that uh for those people who've never talked to somebody who's had your experiences or kind of worked in those organizations they're like oh those guys don't care about privacy. It's like, no, actually it's the opposite, right? They usually care really, really deeply about privacy as a default because they've seen kind of the other side of the coin, if you will. Yeah, you're exactly right. And I think 10 years ago when we thought about this whole privacy thing, we, we never, there were probably some early people that said, Hey, this is going to be a problem. But certainly 10 years ago, I didn't think about all this stuff about how, how big privacy was going to come into play on electronics. Your

every day if you think about your app everybody's always tracking you in some in some form or fashion so you can't shut it off you can't shut it off you really can and so from the privacy perspective i think we're really in a critical point especially in the united states of what we're going to do you've got these backdoor encryption laws that are coming forward you've got all these other challenges where um you know we're looking at countries that have authoritarian type regimes that they need these type of technologies so they can evade some pretty ridiculous things. So I think we're in a very interesting challenge to see how we're going to respond. And privacy is definitely a paramount of what we were founded upon. You know, you think

back several hundred years ago and what we were founded upon and things that we're supposed to be living by. So I've got faith that we're going to do the right thing in the long run and that it's just going to take time to play out because governments are bureaucratic by nature. They've got to make sure that everything's right. And so I'm confident we're going to get to the right place it just makes may take some time for sure um what about mixers like how uh how did you guys think about the mixers uh either as for you guys to use or as other people that maybe you were investigating were using them yeah i think we have a conversation before we started my first experience with the mixer is i sent uh some undercover funds to the wrong mixer and got

scammed myself but um you know mixers are interesting because you know i've seen the the tactics on how they mix funds on the dark web change as law enforcement changes their technology and catch up so you know mixers you know i'm very pro a technology that's private you shouldn't have to do all these extra steps and so i i think for me having to use a mixer to try to hide my transactions is just too much effort and there's a lot of risk but it's important if you're wanting to hide your hide your transactions i get that for privacy but from a criminal perspective you know mixers are only going to continue to improve and it's going to be a challenge for law enforcement you know they're not looking for the pumps out there that

are trying to you know just live their own life and not tell everybody how much bitcoin they have or how much they don't have in my case and and when you look at these criminals law enforcement are going to continually have a challenge to catch up to that technology and i think that's the that's the biggest question mark because when you think about the the worst crimes like the child predators the terrorist attacks we have the pendulum swift after 9-11 it was super aggressive and then we came back a little bit then there's another attack pendulum went right back we had the boston bombings pendulum swift again and so i think we constantly have that in the u.s but right now the focus on privacy is just at a point where you know there's a lot of people

rightfully so in the crypto space they're very nervous yeah well and part of this i think is um i don't think a lot of people disagree on what the intended end result of all this is right so we want to provide uh prevent terrorist attacks we want to prevent criminal activity we want to basically provide safe fair marketplaces like like all of that as a intended end result we all generally think is a good thing right where the discrepancies happen or the disagreements is how do we get there right and um there's a balance between making it not impossible for law enforcement and also not violating the freedoms and rights and privacy of everyone and i recently read edward snowden's uh book um permanent record and it was fascinating to hear how some of the systems

work how he thought about building the systems and then flipping around on the other side and basically being so anti them that he ends up whistleblowing etc and the thing i took away from all of it is humans are interacting with technology that they don't understand and therefore they don't even understand the data right and the violations of the privacy because they don't realize the data is being created and you see this every once in a while and there's always like every year there's like a business insider article that goes viral all over again that's like google maps is tracking you right and people are like wait what do you mean right and it's like here's how to turn it off and it cracks me up because every year there's you know

like a two-week period where like the article goes viral right and it's like hey guys it's not just google maps it's also apple maps and facebook and every single app you have on your phone is usually persistently using location or other kind of data collection to better target ads but whatever the part to me that um feels like it won't change is at some point there's that trade off between privacy and convenience right and like and like that that is a uh a very blurred line yeah that i think most people will pick convenience over the privacy because they don't understand the privacy and and you know having sat in your seat it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on like how should people think about that right and maybe there's even things that you do um that kind of

enhance your privacy uh that either change the convenience or or don't yeah so i mean what for passwords for instance my passwords are obnoxious i just write them down i have them stored somewhere and i don't use common passwords and i think that's one thing you gotta start from your very basic uh cyber hygiene is use a very good password you know don't use i love basketball or bitcoin for life or bitcoin for life or one and then 90 days bitcoin for life or two or you know so i think i say that because we you know we see that so often in a lot of these data breaches the password bitcoin four is with the number four right now spelled out yeah yeah sure right yeah so if you change your passwords man yeah so um you know i think if we look at the password perspective that's

something you've always got to do when you connect to public wi-fi i say don't hotspot from your phone if you can or if you're gonna use public wi-fi always use a vpn always use a vpn so what goes on there when you connect to the public wi-fi like what are some of the the big concerns Yeah, so you never know if the Wi-Fi you're connecting to is maybe just a fake access point where an individual. So you could be at a Starbucks cafe and it could say Starbucks 1. And really it's your buddy Joe over there collecting all of your information and looking at traffic. So you have tools out there in public Wi-Fi where I can sit down there and I can view all the traffic going in and out. And then I can start organizing an attack.

And so looking at the traffic on a public Wi-Fi is a very easy way to identify people you want to target. And in that case, so let's say I think most people would say, all right, I'm not going to use my credit card on public Wi-Fi. Right. So I'm not going to buy something online. But that's only one piece of it. Right. It's basically if you logged into your email, they see your password or get your username or credentials to a service or that type of stuff that it's worried about. Or is there even more kind of nuanced pieces of information that these people are looking for other than just username, passwords and different service credentials? Yeah, I think username and passwords are probably the biggest ones out there, you know, because typically if you catch one password, you've caught all their accounts because it's just a common thing. Like you say, convenience is no one wants to have a different password for every service. I understand it. But if you're going to do that, which is not a good idea, what are you going to do as a second layer?

Do you have two factor authentication? If you do, don't make it text messaging. Let's use 2FA, right? There's also external keys. Google Titan has a great, great key that you can use for your email. And there's been times where I've been traveling, I didn't have my Titan, and I got logged out, and I was stuck. That's not good. So you've got to think about these challenges and build, I guess, a balanced risk approach. You'll love this. So I recently got a phone switched out, and I couldn't remember the password to my email.

Right. And it was logged in on one device. and that one device i was literally waking up everyone like god please don't get me long right because i can't get in and uh i eventually remembered what the password was um but uh as i went through it it i spent a whole uh basically what two weeks i think it was without email on my phone and during that two-week period multiple times i would go and like oh i think i remember the password right and i was scared that i was going to lock myself out yeah right because i'm trying to figure out what it is uh but when you have that or you have 2fa on your phone you don't

have your phone with you you can't get in etc you got to get comfortable understanding like it's working yeah yeah you're right right like that's not a an inconvenience is actually no the security works right um and i think that again people uh they want the convenience yeah they do the security and privacy ends up being really really important especially in crypto oh yeah definitely well uh Did you guys deal with SIM swapping at all? Did you guys see that a lot? Yeah, so, you know, a lot of the, I guess in Silicon Valley area, you have a lot of big-time CEOs that are very interested in crypto,

and so we would see these bad actors that would just target these individuals relentlessly, and they would SIM swap their phones. There's a very good task force in, I think it's Santa Clara. I can't remember their name. I'm sorry if they're listening. Maybe React, but, you know, best in the country in my opinion. They're doing a lot of really great work at targeting these SIM swappers. But it's one of those things.

You can set up a 15-character password. You can tell AT&T to ask a question, who's my favorite podcaster, and have the answer be Monero. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the insider threat. You know, is the employee, can they be bought? Who has access to the information? And I had a conversation last week with a carrier, and I said, hey, I want to make my phone as secure as possible.

What can I do? Well, you can build in a long password. You can have a question that has a different answer. I said, okay, now what happens if someone goes in the store with a fake ID? Well, they have to still get your questions answered right. And I said, well, what happens if the employee just gives them my answers? Well, I guess your system is defeated. So what am I supposed to do at that point?

Sounds super secure, yeah. So essentially, there's a new company out there called Don't Port, and I've been talking to their CEO some. Don't Port? Don't Port. and brand new uh you know he's just getting started out but he's he's trying to tackle this industry where there's like a 10 to 12 step authentication port out process to where you've got to do all these different steps to um swap your phone over and it also comes with

a two million dollar insurance policy and so i've been talking to him trying to think if i want to do that or not but you know even i'm i'm struggling with okay well now i gotta swap my phone over again you know i'm i hate going through all that all that stuff even if it's a different sim swap But the other thing that's interesting on the SimSwap side is over the last five to seven years, that's how attackers in these traditional financial crimes would take over accounts because banks still use text messaging for 2FA. So this is not new. It's just new because everyone in crypto talks about it. And it's new because in the sense of there's bearer assets now. Yeah.

Right. if somebody got my you know wells fargo account and transferred some money out uh yeah it sucked but i called the bank it was like hey idiots right yeah so he just stole some money from it they would usually fix it pretty quickly and so you know kind of defeated the purpose of uh the criminal activity or there was a deep uh these the incentives were lower when all of a sudden if as long as they get the money you can't get it back yeah huge problem right yeah and that's what's interesting is i'm wondering if there's going to be a time where right now exchanges are taking a step back and they're saying, you're your own bank. You're responsible. But Wells Fargo, you

get scammed. You go to the wrong website. Somebody steals your card. They give you the money back because they're FDIC insured. You know, when you look at the Libra testimony, David Marcus made a comment. I can't remember word for word, but he talked about how, you know, they're going to look at how they can make their customers whole. And I wrote a very small blog on this and I thought this is very substantial. This is great for the industry because it shows that there's a new player in town and they're willing to look at a way to fight um fraud and make their customers whole and that's that's my struggle with the crypto industry right now is they they say you got to be your own bank but what happens when there's you're human you know you go to the wrong

website well okay you're out five thousand dollars and so i think there's some things that we're going to see in the industry over the next few years where they may be forced to do some things or maybe there's going to be some that come out front and say okay we're not fdic insured but We've got our own insurance policy, and we're going to do our own investigation. It's going to cost us money. We're going to have to hire 100 more people to verify you actually were defrauded, but we're going to do the right thing, and we want to make sure people are taken care of. Yeah, and you saw this with Binance when they got hacked, $40 million or so,

and then they basically had a fund that was their own insurance policy, essentially, and they replaced it. But to me, it's really interesting, too, because the user interfaces and user experiences suck, right? So the whole idea of I'm going to send my Bitcoin to a random string of letters and numbers because it's pretty easy to screw that up, right? And I always – your point about like check and check twice, I think people know that they should do that. I really wonder how many people are actually doing it. Yeah, you're right. I don't think that it's as many people as people want you to believe are checking and checking twice that random string.

But it's easy to send it to the wrong address, right? And all of a sudden that's not fraud. That's just stupidity. Yeah. Right. And so should, you know, should the exchange be on the hook for your stupidity or should you, there's people who are going to argue both sides of that. But I think that that's a whole nother kind of, you know, a can of worms, if you will, than just, Hey, somebody scammed me. Oh yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Right. That's funny. I just remembered a story regarding SIM swaps.

So a guy that I arrested several years ago ended up tracking me down a couple months ago on my personal phone and you know i feel like i've taken some pretty good precautions but you know it's really funny the person calls me up and say hey joe mcgill yes special agent mcgill yes hey this is so and so how you doing like well hey i'm well how are you doing where you investigated and arrested a dude i'm assuming went to jail come back a couple years later and calls you on your personal cell phone? Yeah. What's going through your head at that point? It caught me really off guard. But you know, it's interesting. I had a good relationship with this guy. I wanted him to work full time for the Secret Service. My mentality was if you catch somebody

that's really talented, it's just business. They let them do the time. But if we can make them work their time off and get more people that don't care that they're hurting victims, let's do it. And so it was an interesting thing. It's more of a professional business relationship. And And crazy. It caught me off guard. My wife was in the kitchen and she looked at me and she could see my face. I probably was pale as a ghost. And if he hears this podcast, he's probably laughing, laughing right now. But, yeah, it caught me off guard. I thought, you know, I've done all these extra security precautions. But at the end of the day, if they want to find you, they're going to find you. Your digital footprint's been out there for 10 years. And, you know, when I asked him how he did it, he's like, well, you arrested me in California.

But have you heard yourself talk? You're definitely from the South. You know, you're not from California. So he used my southern accent against me to try to take out states that I may not have lived in. So it was wild. Unbelievable. Yeah. Unbelievable. I'm always amazed that there's some of these services, and I forget the name of them, but I won't say who they are because I don't know if they'd be comfortable with it,

but I know a company that their sales team, they've got these tools where they can pretty much get anyone's email or cell phone number. And now they're not doing anything nefarious with it. they're basically just going to harass the shit out of you for you to buy their service, whatever. Right. Um, but,

they showed it to me one day and I was like, you know, you start picking, you know, the Bill Gates, right. Right. And obviously there's some people who,

the information's not there, but you'd be shocked at, there's some pretty big names out there that literally you're staring at it. And I remember, uh, I said to them, uh, what about this company?

Google real quick, found the founder. Uh, and I said, I get the, give me their cell phone number and hand it to me. and uh and we called founder picked up wow and uh it wasn't a you know somebody that people would know right so it was just a thing but i remember sitting there thinking like holy shit yeah right

yeah the ability to use a freemium tool right so you actually can do a bunch of searches for free before you gotta pay and get that level of information and then once you have it that the pain that that person would have to go through to switch the number yeah right is pretty damn high oh yeah um it becomes this whole thing where like no wonder you get so many robo calls like jesus they're doing this for a living right so so it's pretty crazy to see um what's uh what's next for um for what you guys are building in terms of uh you guys kind of have um what i'll call that the address look up and all the information along with it but uh other than the api what else you guys want to build so we've got an enterprise platform that's going to come

out hopefully sometime quarter two next year and so um we're hoping to get into the race with all all the other big guys you know they're five years and about 100 million dollars ahead and you know they've been collecting data for a while but the industry industry is huge and so you know i'm confident we can get in there and so i'm hoping to take things i learned at the secret service and the wish list of things i wanted in these tools and talking to other people and then build into this platform and so we're going to use that to hopefully help financial institutions and law enforcement be compliant and identify criminals and and so that's that's the next step after the apps out and so i'm really excited about that awesome that um that sounds great uh before i

wrap up i always ask rapid fire questions what uh what's the most important company in crypto other than your own most important company in crypto wow that's that's an interesting one i would say you know a lot of people look to the big exchanges in the united states i don't want to publicly name one of them because i don't want to act like i'm endorsing one but you know there's exchanges uh in the united states that i think are going to really um usher the way that we deal with regulation because they're trying to operate within the lines instead of outside the lines and then get you know slapped and then recorrect so i think there's a couple companies in the u.s in san francisco and then here in new york they're going to really make this mainstream and do a lot

of good things there's one in new york who's got fucking ads running around saying crypto needs rules. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. So you may be onto one of those that, uh, you know, I'm not officially naming, but yeah, I think the, I think those types of companies are really gonna do a lot of good things for the space. Cool. Um, one of my favorite questions to ask people, and I'm really interested in your answer is, uh, what's the one regulation or law you would change or improve if you could? Oh, I would, yeah, I got one. So a few years ago, there was a bill introduced that, uh, cryptocurrency transactions under $600 would not be taxed. You know, I just bought a coffee downstairs a blue bottle it's been about a 12 month drought and if i would have used crypto i

would have to pay capital gains tax on that and so i would love to see a bill that comes out that says hey any any intent transaction under this amount there's no capital gains tax and i think that's going to help people the common sense bell go off like guys like mark cuban you talked about like why would anybody want to use crypto when they're going to get taxed on a cup of coffee you know why am i going to buy a house for a million dollars if i'm going to pay capital gains tax or, you know, why do I want to get paid in crypto if I'm going to get federal income tax and then capital gains tax for paying my rent. So let's get a bill out there and let's get some people that have, um, money to get lobbyists and let's, let's get a bill out there that helps

people, um, use crypto on a daily basis. For sure. That makes sense. Um, what is the most important book you've ever read? I would say the Bible. Um, that's the most important book for sure impacted my life early on. It's, it's a foundation on which I operate in my faith. So yeah, definitely the bible i've said this before on the podcast i'm shocked at how few times that book comes up like um and i don't know if it's i've always wondered is it because people are like embarrassed right they don't want to talk about religion and their beliefs etc um or is it just becoming less popular right and it might be a little bit of both but um that question specifically i would think the bible comes up more than it does and it just doesn't yeah i think it's interesting you

You know, you look at the last 15 years, the faith of which this country was founded on has been on a decline. It's not a popular thing right now. And so, you know, faith is a big part of my life, and I'm not afraid to talk about it at all. The people who believe are usually not. Yeah, that's right. What about aliens? Believer, non-believer, going from God to aliens? Yeah, yeah.

So when I saw this a few months ago, you were posting that podcast. Like, man, that guy, I mean, he's got everything out there. that is awesome. I don't know. They, it terrifies me because you see these, uh, you know, these videos from, I think the Navy released some videos and there's these objects and man, it, it terrifies me. I don't know. So, uh, you're already going down the path of, um, I don't know if we want the aliens to come here. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. Like, and, uh, um, if you listen to, uh, to some of these guys, um, I'm gonna forget their names now, but, uh, these guys who basically you know there's people who argue like aliens like you would think you

know independence day type stuff where it's like a little green slimy magi right okay maybe maybe not whatever but then there's people who basically say um no i have or i saw or uh i learned about this thing that has properties we can't explain so whether it's um you see the navy pilots talking about you know the way that something moved right and they're just like there's no way something can go from zero to a you know 150 miles an hour like that with no propulsion but whatever okay or you talk to one of these guys who now have come out who's uh supposedly worked at area 51 and they're like look we basically had flying saucers that you know could do things that we couldn't explain and the physics um or you've got a guy like tom delong who actually was the blink 182 guy

who's like hey man i got a rock the rock has things that people can't explain like it's aliens right right and it's funny right i'm literally laughing about it but also there's like wait a minute why can't we explain what that is yeah yeah and it's more science driven like uh experimentation that to me super interesting because it's like you know there was a point where we couldn't explain gravity or you know whatever and then we learned that stuff but we know we aren't here alone in the sense of like there's the earth and there's other stuff well if there's other stuff like at some point is there intelligent life it's scary yeah it's scary to think about right yeah and well and the part that gets me is uh we always forget how far this stuff is yeah right

like you know we we see uh elon launched these rockets or i mean that thing went pretty fast right and it's like by the way uh if you got in that rocket you wouldn't make it to mars before you died you're like wait a minute hold on it's like 50 years right yeah like it you start to think through some of the stuff and understand how big it is yeah it's like oh shit like how small we are right matter yeah right we're insignificant in the whole grand scheme of things well and given your book answer um there's a guy uh bruce fenton who um i love bruce but uh i'll give him a little shit that he's uh he's a little out there when it comes to some of his theories as to uh aliens and and uh he says ancient aliens was the whole thing um but what

he said to me is he goes look every human has two questions in life what happens after we die and are we here alone yeah and it's like yeah that i think that's probably pretty accurate as to what people want to know yeah you're right right what uh what one question you have for me to finish up so what got you into into crypto oh man um there's a there's a saying that uh i've heard a couple of people say and i forget who originally said it so i apologize but uh i came for the money and i stayed for the money right right i came for the money meaning there was some allure of there was profits right and i think that probably draws in 90 95 percent of people right and a lot of people don't want to admit that yeah but that's what brought them in right they they came

across there's very few people i think in your shoes who like discovered and become interested because it's part of their job right right um maybe that's becoming a little bit more popular today but definitely not earlier on um but the i stayed for the money is this whole idea of we don't educate people on money right i wrote recently that like money is too dangerous an idea for school right right we're like we can't educate everyone on how the monetary financial system works right it's the henry ford quote like if everyone knew how the banks worked there'd be a revolution before the morning right yeah exactly you're stealing wealth right you guys are basically have a whole system built to enrich yourselves and screw everybody else yeah um and so i think

that like that's one thing that bitcoin has really done um is uh educate an entire generation or some portion of that generation on what is money how does it work you know what is sound money what are the downsides of the fiat it kind of inflationary system what are the other options etc um and my hope is that uh price continues to go through these boom and bust cycles and when it booms lots of people rush in right and yes some people are going to leave right because they're only there for price but there is a good amount of people who are going to stick around because of um all the more structural issues around money um and i think we're seeing that play out you know kind of through these cycles uh but the nice thing is that the cycles get bigger now yeah right that

you know what used to be kind of 10 000 new people come in um and learn about this stuff now it's you know millions of people where you know uh coinbase in 2017 was signing up 100 000 people a day that's insane like what how is that even possible right yeah it's just well and to me it's it's crazy in the sense of like price drives that right price drives word of mouth word of mouth drives the virality the virality drives traffic the traffic signs up right which drives price which you know it's like this self-fulfilling thing but like that's how markets work yeah and so it's it's kind of like this time's not different it's just like every other time but people just gotta remember that's how the markets work oh so uh where can people find you uh other than your

personal cell phone number um and uh and more about the company sidechain.com that's c-y-c-h-a-i-n sidechain.com all right um twitter at joes j-o-e-s underscore mcgill m-c-g-i-l-l what's up with the Joe was taken so so you went with Joe's I went with Joe's that's actually pretty good yeah so

ended up buying a domain Joe's McGill as well because hey it matches my Twitter and evidently Twitter is what runs the world now because

is that going to be a thing now if people aren't going to be able to get their social media handle they're just going to change their name I think they're going to

have to right I mean I would love to be Joe McGill but someone out there took it somebody took it yeah

I will I'm going to give a shout out to uh my guy at pomp this dude i'm gonna keep calling him out until he uh he knocks off the nonsense he uh uh he's got at pomp on uh twitter on instagram etc come on and uh he's blocked me has he really because everyone keeps tagging him right uh and um so he finally dms me one day and he goes how much right now i was like what and i said i gave my email he emails me and uh why you want to sell it he goes i'm getting off social media i said great then just give it to me for free

You're not going to need it. Let's make a deal. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. How much? This is very valuable. I said, dude, look, you got about a market of one. I'm pretty much the only person in the world who wants this. You and me.

And if you're leaving, then it's going to be worthless. And so I started getting a hard time in kind of a playful way. And I went and I looked and he's like a DJ, like a jockey, like on the radio in Texas. And I think he's a pastor, too. Wow. And I was like, man, you're killing life. Yeah, right. but uh but i'm not changing my name i'm just gonna eventually get the handle so

joes underscore mcgill that's right awesome man all right well thank you so much for coming to do this i really appreciate it and i hope people go check out sidechain and uh and hopefully you guys can keep building it out yeah thanks for having me on i appreciate it for sure hey everyone pop here if you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple spotify and other podcast charts please do us a favor and rate review and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off The Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening

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