The Wolf Of All Streets - Daniel Gouldman, CEO of Ternio – From Homeless to Crypto Superstar

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Daniel Gouldman, Founder and CEO of Ternio, started his early career living out of a car and climbing the Blockbuster corporate ladder. He eventually had millions under management, but chose to risk it all to start his own blockchain payments company. From sleeping in fields to becoming a massively successful crypto entrepreneur, his lessons learned will hit home with everyone. Scott Melker and Daniel Gouldman further discuss treating each dollar like it's your very last, growing up as a Blockbuster kid, being wary of Bitcoin’s false prophets, how to live out of a car, tokenomics of utility tokens, work life harmony, making friends around the world, the most convenient crypto card on the market and more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everybody? This is your host, Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Every week, I'm talking to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, politics, and basically anyone else with an interesting story to tell. So sit down, strap in, and get ready, because we're going deep. I'd like to thank my sponsors, Round the X and Voyager, for making today's episode possible. We'll hear much more about them later on in the episode. This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group, the only events and podcast production company I trust. For access to the premier digital asset conferences and in-depth podcast content, visit them at blockworksgroup.io. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Today's guest is the CEO of Turnio, a company that's working very hard to change the way that we use and spend cryptocurrency. Now, as impressive as being the CEO of this amazing company is, actually, I think you'll find that his backstory and how he got there is probably equally or more impressive, but I'm not going to tell the story because he'll be able to put it in his own words. So I'm really, really thrilled to welcome Daniel Goldman to the show, man. Thank you so much for being here. Scott, thank you. Great to talk to you. So I just touched on it. I guess we'll just start from the beginning. But you've been very public

online about the fact that when you were 17 years old, you were basically homeless, living in your car, working two jobs. And, you know, you've somehow transitioned from that life to this life. I would love to hear the story of how you arrived there in the first place and then how you overcame all those obstacles to become CEO of successful company. Yeah, no, I mean, it's part of my story. And I'll tell you, being homeless in Southern California

is very different than being homeless in Chicago in the winter. And so anybody who's ever experienced it or, and I'll occasionally get people message me and say, Hey, I had a similar situation. I really appreciate you being public about it. I mean, I really, I was raised in a pretty dysfunctional family. And it was a hard time. And anyone who's ever lived through tough times when you're young and you

kind of, you know, it's plus, you know, I always wanted to kind of be, I was always independent. I was going to be on my own since I was basically 12. But it was hard. And I basically got to a point where I said, okay, well, I would much rather try to do this thing on my own than to, you know, kind of be held down by the man. So, I had a car. I drove from Dallas all the way to California in 24 hours. I slept six hours in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And I basically started my life and I went to high school. I actually went to Irvine High School. So it was a weird dynamic because anyone who knows anything about Southern California,

Irvine is pretty well like, you know,, it's a fluent area. And so I was basically sleeping in like football fields and racquetball courts and swimming pool areas and you name it. And I was basically sleeping there. And yeah. How are you able to enroll in the school if you didn't have a legal address? That's actually true. I actually had to use a friend's address and I had friends that wanted to help me, but I didn't, I was too stubborn. I didn't want to have anybody else's like to, to, to help. I didn't want to be in a charity case, you know? And so I, and so I only had three more classes I had to take. I already had all the way to my senior year. I already had everything done and three more classes, but then I was working, I was working two jobs. I worked

at McDonald's in Irvine. I worked at a Market when that was a thing. I'm still around, I guess. And and I just really worked. I mean, I hustled. I worked all the time and I went to school and I graduated. And I remember one day during that time, I started Blockbuster. I got recruited by some HR manager for Blockbuster Video. And and so they said I remember the assistant manager said, like, it was like, two o'clock would be closing up. And he'd say, hey, like, you know, what do you live out of your car? Because I had everything neatly organized. You know, I took showers every day at the gym. I spent like $99 for six months at a gym.

You know, I had a whole thing, right? I had an electric alarm clock, all that. And I had my stuff neatly organized in my car as much as I could. And so, I had an electric alarm clock, all that. And, and I had my stuff neatly organized in my car as much as I could. And, and so I said, yeah, like, yeah, I live in my car, but it was tough. And in anyone who's lived in Southern California knows it's real expensive. But what I got to a point where, as I, you know, my, I worked for a guy, Robert Taylor, and he used to have this joke when he found out about it. He had this joke, he would always say like, you know, Hey, Daniel, do you have to pay like a car insurance or do you pay home runners? And he was always, he was always kind of like trying to like, and he was really

like, I, he was my mentor and he was trying to help me. So he actually helped me. One of the employees, her parents had a room to rent and I rented a room and that got me started. And that would got me toward like the right direction where I kind of, kind of do things on my own and without anybody else's charity and, and fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. 20 years later, I basically, I worked so hard at where I work that I always got promoted. I mean, I broadcast video, I got promoted like six, seven times, you know? You just climbed the ladder. I mean, you did it the old fashioned way.

Really? I did it the old fashioned way when there was a ladder. And it's what I started from, literally from the lowest level CSR. And I grew my way up to becoming like a top, you know, top tier district manager. I worked at the corporate office. I ran two stores when I was 19 years old. I mean, I did all of that and all of those things I learned. I mean, I came in an environment where they were like taught you and you were learning. And to this day, I still talk to people from Blockbuster. And I'll tell you that all of those skills around how to run a business and how to coach people and manage people and to make sure you're making more money than you're spending. Everything I learned came from my formative years starting with Blockbuster Video. That's incredible. You're definitely showing your age, which is the same as mine.

I know that you're in your 40s. I'm 43 and Blockbuster Video was, if you were working there as a late teenager, that was like the core of everyone that I knew worked at either Blockbuster basically or McDonald's or Boston Market actually, because we had one of those in my hometown. So fast forward to where you are now, obviously, can you give me the quick, the quick rundown on Turnio, what you guys are doing with BlockCard? I guess the this quick sales pitch? Well, you know, it's funny, it's because the BlockBuster experience is actually analogous to what I think is happening right now with BlockCard and Turnio in the same way that, you know, many things basically killed the bricks and mortar part of the business for Blockbuster, right? And is everything now streaming video, it's on your phone, it's on TV,

okay? So that business model is the same, it's just now it's translated onto digital. What we do with Ternio is digital, you know, money. People now are, because of blockchain, are actually able to deal and interact with money in a way that they never would before, before they required somebody, unless you carry cash everywhere, which is expensive. Because if you're a cash and carry person, you're paying a lot of fees to send money across borders.

So you got to go pay Western Union or somebody else. And I think the analogous kind of relationship is that what happened to Blockbuster with the bricks and mortar is going to happen to these money handlers that are bricks and mortar, because now what is presently has been a convenience and they've been able to charge a premium, whether it be Western or someone else, because they were the only game in town, right? The brand. Blockbuster was one of the top 10 brands in the entire world. No matter where you were in the world, you knew Blockbuster. You knew what it was. Absolutely. Okay. It doesn't matter where you were. So you compare that to like a Western

union today and you say, okay, well now you have digital money that can basically travel across borders in two seconds to somebody's phone. You don't have to go physically pick up at a bank and it's cheaper. So like what we do is basically enable that kind of technology in FinTech. That's, that's our whole solution. So what does the block card do? I mean, obviously I'm aware of it, but tell people what is the block card? How are you actually solving that problem? How does it work?

Well, what we do is we basically interact with, with cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency can mean Bitcoin. It can mean just digital cash. And a lot of people don't know that the number one most traded cryptocurrency in the world is the digital dollar. And so what we're really doing is using a blockchain rail, which is effectively a peer-to-peer rail. Okay. It doesn't need a third party intermediary. And we basically interact with blockchain technology. We make it interoperable with banks, with traditional fintech systems, with a Visa card. So you can effectively spend cryptocurrency on a Visa card and we white label that technology. We use it to our own brand, which is BlockCard. And I know that you offer a pretty substantial cash back, much more than

your standard cards that are like a 1% on a Visa or something like that in cash. How are you able to do that? And how does that work? Yeah. So the economics of it are a little different because we're basically using a cryptocurrency, right? And we're based on our token is built upon the stellar blockchain, which anybody who knows anything about that, there's different kinds of blockchains, but the stellar blockchain is very fast and it's inexpensive. So you can send money cross borders around the world in two seconds for one thousandth of a penny, right? So we basically use the stellar blockchain to facilitate that, enable that. And so we can offer our tokens, which provide 6% on all transactions.

Not the cash, but anything you spend. Now eventually, here's the answer, what will happen is the tokenomics and we're registered with the SEC, so we're very careful about how we talk about tokens and all that, but the tokenomics kind of change based upon supply and demand. No different than what you have with a Bitcoin, but it's a different kind of the tokenomics kind of changed based upon supply and demand, no different than what

you have with a Bitcoin, but it's a different kind of like scarcity tokenomics. So eventually, it'll just be much harder to get access to the token. So your ability to get access to the 6.38%, those economics change in time. But today, anybody who's like an early adopter, they're getting all the benefits and they get 6% of all of our, on all transactions. And you can effectively just use the card like any other debit card, charge it anywhere, um, and get cash back and spend your crypto directly. So it's really interesting because specifically with Bitcoin and Ethereum and some of the other ones, the digital money narrative has always been there, but most people don't actually want to spend it or use it. They want to hold it forever in the assumption that the value is going to go up,

but you're actually giving people a very easy way to do that. So have you come across a lot of people who think it's an amazing idea, but don't actually want to spend their crypto or because you have so many different options and so many different coins that you offer and it's to your native token, do you find that people are really open to using it in the real world? All the time we hear to your first part of your question, yes. I mean, like Bitcoin, if you, somebody, you know, is listening and they don't own some part of Bitcoin, like I'm just telling you, it's amazing technology. It is something that I firmly believe in. And I understand that, you know, I really understand the economics behind it in a way that probably some people back in the day would think, well, that's crazy. And some people today think it's

crazy. And if somebody wants to hold Bitcoin, good for them. But at some point, at some point, people want to exit out for whatever reason they have to, because I got to pay a bill or because I just took a huge gain and now I want to get out so the question mark is do i want to use something like a coin base as my exit my fiat off ramp or you'll want something that's going to be as convenient as easy as basically swiping a you know a card and what we what we're effectively done is we've seen because it is built off of the term token right but remember it remember, it's built intentionally for payments. Bitcoin is a phenomenal thing to hold. But if you tried, even if let's say Starbucks started accepting Bitcoin, you're paying high gas fees. So we basically were using a blockchain that was built for payments,

it's fast, and it's inexpensive. So we can allow for people to transfer money across the world and not charge them a transfer fee. If we had Bitcoin, we wouldn't be able to do that. So what are the tax implications of spending your crypto? I know that it changes basically on a yearly basis in this country. It's funny, when I got into crypto in late 2016, early 2017, the major appeal that I remember people talking about as traders was there's no taxes on any of this. They're not even paying attention, which is not technically the case. But at that point, there was really very little guidance as to what to expect. Now they've kind of made it annoying where if you do buy a cup of coffee, as you said, with Bitcoin, you're

effectively selling your Bitcoin legally. And so do you basically just give a person a record of their transactions and then it's their, you know, they go handle the taxes in the same way that any Bitcoin trader or any person would, or is there some kind of solution? How are those like with your token? How is it, how is it calculated? So today, because it is complicated and I've read the tax law around it and it kind of leaves us a little, I know where exactly now, and it leaves us little like a question mark around like how they tax things because it's like, if it's as an investment, which not everything is an investment block card, you know, is used as a payments tool.

So I'd say the answer to that is you have to consult your own legal professional, figure it out for yourself. We have a list of all the transactions, what, you know, what the rates were and people make up their own determination as to what their tax liability would be. As long as you're able to offer that, that makes it pretty easy. There's so much software for it. Also, I've seen that they're considering legislation, I can't remember the amount, but like a transaction under $200, or $180, or something like that would be considered non taxable and would be considered as if you were spending money. So that I think would be considered non-taxable and would be considered as if you were spending money. So

that's, I think it would be really encouraging for the space in general, because it would encourage people to spend their crypto, but also a layup for you guys. No, it's true. It's true. Yeah. So I have to ask, why did you choose the stellar blockchain? Well, I'm a big fan of it. So our, you know, it didn't come from me as an individual. We have a tech team and they looked at when we started we were actually focusing on a different solution we were focusing on digital advertising exclusively we had block card with one page in our entire white paper it ended up being the thing that took off that like really we're just doing a phenomenal with right we have white

label partnerships with like litecoin and some others. But stellar blockchain kind of came on board as an evolution from Ethereum around August of 2017. And so what we saw was a different kind of blockchain that didn't get stuck with the gas fees. And even to this day, you know, when we have people deposit cryptocurrency, we know that Ethereum and Bitcoin and some others are slower. They're just a slower. So we picked it based upon knowing that like, it wasn't what I think is going to be the evolution of not for everything, because different blockchains, if your answer is, if you believe Bitcoin is the only good blockchain, then you're crazy. And if you don't understand that Bitcoin is amazing, then you're crazy. And so it depends on, to me, your use case. If Bitcoin has its great use case on its own,

Stellar is great for certain things, specifically payments. Ethereum's got amazing smart contracts and a great ecosystem for developers. So it really just comes down to what are you trying to solve for? And in our case, it was really a payment solution. So it was really the speed. I mean, the speeding costs were extremely low. One thousandth of a penny to send money across the world. Yeah, I don't think people realize how clunky and slow Bitcoin and Ethereum truly are until

they try some of the other ones. I remember in peak time 2017 when the market was going nuts. I mean, I once waited almost 48 hours for a Bitcoin transaction to confirm. And that is not a good feeling, man, when you're sending a lot of money and it's all you see is unconfirmed and you're questioning, like, did I type the address in right? Is it gone? And if you don't understand it, it's gone. So I guess that leads to like, I guess the question of crypto mainstream adoption, which always comes up in every conversation that I have, things like that, I find are the biggest barriers to entry, securing your securing your Bitcoin, understanding how to send it, knowing that if you send it to the wrong address, it's gone. All these things that like your average boomer is not really going

to understand or be a part of. So how do you see the path to mainstream adoption and making crypto, I guess, more palatable and easier for people to use? Obviously your card does that, but maybe for like Bitcoin in the greater market and going, you know, really to making this a worldwide phenomenon. Well, it's a really important question because what people talk about is like this world where banks don't exist and all this stuff, which I think is crazy. It's not happening. It's not happening because now I think what will happen, what will happen is we've already seen it regardless of Bitcoin. It's happened anyway.

You've seen a death, slow death. It reminds me of Blockbuster. That's why I really think this is the future is that the retail banks are dying a slow death. There's fewer and fewer opening. There's more and more of them closing. And that is happening. If you look at the trend of retail banks, it's going like this. And the challenger banks, which all they really are, is they're the same thing, but they're digital. That's all it is. And by the way, you know, I'm from Texas, USAA. I lived in San Antonio. I've been, they have one branch. They've been around for decades, right? They service all American service members. Thank you for your service. And they have one branch and they have successfully

well before the need of Bitcoin and blockchain and, you know, challenger banks. USA has been very, very, very successful dealing in digital money for basically the equivalent of, you know, decades and decades. They've shown it works and they're huge. So I think that that is where the future ultimately is. But one of the problems, which I bring all that up, is you get into issues where a user, somebody who's brand new, and they make an awful, awful decision to send a little bit of Bitcoin to somebody because they were promised they were going to get a bunch more or because they think they're talking to Vitalik or, you know, and once it's gone, it's gone. This isn't, there's no visa protection in here. And, and, you know, so there, there really needs, if you want to control your own destiny and you are savvy enough to understand wallets, you know, and all of that good for you and you custody your own money and excellent. But there's got to be like a beginner level platform where it's like, you're safe. Grandma is safe with her money. And if something happens,

grandma's safe, just like a bank. And if you don't want to be, if you don't need a bank, well then you can, you have another option that is your choice to not use a bank if you wish. Right. There were so many things that happened in 2017 that I think fundamentally damaged the, the, the, the course of mainstream adoption, not saying it's not irreparable and that we're not seeing a bounce back from that. But so many people that lost so much money, either just because they bought the FOMO or they were scammed or all these things. And we see that every year the hacking actually increases, like as much as the security and all these things increases, the hacking also increases. So it's going to be a continuing issue.

And I think that people are just going to have to not be lazy and understand that they're their own bank when they, you know, enter this market and sort of take it on. That touches on, I mean, that's not necessarily the case for all digital currencies, right? That's the case for cryptocurrency. But we're seeing this emergence of national digital currencies, Chinese Yuan, you know, the digital euro, digital dollar, as you've touched on in its various forms, and things like Libra as well. So I think those obviously will have the backing of a government and may give people that sense of security. So what is their role and how do you think that affects crypto

as we know it as they emerge? I think the most important part of it is that blockchain, for any number of reasons, is forcing competition into the marketplace to solve real-world problems. We're using 50-year-old systems. And governments are not exactly at the at the forefront usually unless you're singapore they're not at the forefront of efficiency and you know cutting edge type stuff usually that's like the private market and so if you look at what brazil has done brazil created this thing

called pix it's it's launching this year it's um it's not blockchain oriented but it's basically like required by all merchants and all banks. So you can basically send money on your phone. It's like, it's, it's the law. Okay. So that's not blockchain. It's not what the, you know, the people's bank of China or people in Republic of China is doing, um, where they're working with like, you know, the Alibaba's in the world and, uh, um, with Alipay and 10 cent with WeChat. So, you know, whether it be the, the, um, Turkey, which is doing it,

or something like Libra, I it be the, the, um, Turkey, which is doing it or something like Libra, I think at the end of the day, because of the nature of blockchain being a better technology, which we've seen from even Jamie Dimon, who has been, you know, hammered for his opposition to blockchain and Bitcoin. And now what are they saying? He's saying, look, I don't care what it is, as long as it's better, cheaper, and faster. We're like, that's the whole point. That was the whole point that you missed day one, but now you, now you're on board. Glad you're on board. Right? So what's going to happen is you're going to have a frictionless experience because there will be a digital marketplace. So whether it's the digital one or the PIX, you know, thing in

Brazil, or whether it's the Libra token, there will be a secondary marketplace on Binance or Bittrex or name your exchange. And there will be a place for you to trade. And that means that people will be able to get in and out of money, however, whatever form they want. You want to be in Bitcoin? Great. If you want to be in USDT, good for you. And you'll have all the options you want and it'll be seamless and you can do it pretty quickly. And then the problem is making sure that we don't become slaves to you. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but like we gotta be smart about the economics behind the exchanges

because exchanges are making a killing. So just- Yeah, up or down, it doesn't really matter to them. I don't think people realize. The last thing they want is sideways, right? Well, that's right, that's right. They need volatility. They're making money.

But what is the threat, I guess, of centralization within digital currency to those who are the maximalists and really believe that the decentralization is the important use case, you know, protecting yourself from money printing and hyperinflation, but also protecting yourself from bad actors and governments and being able to cross the border and not be robbed. So how are those national digital currencies? I mean, I see the good case, obviously. It brings awareness, as you said, people will be able to go back and forth. But what are the dangers, I guess, of being centralized and having China control your digital currency as opposed to you being your own bank, I guess? Well, that's the funny thing about it.

So that's such an important question. There's so many different directions I want to go with that. But I'll start with China, and hopefully I don't forget my other points. But, you know, I've said this on record many times. This is weird dynamic where you people who are like, it's almost like, you know, they're talking about blockchain is going to solve all the world's problems. And hey, man, you know, cryptocurrency is going to solve all the problems, man. But the thing is, and I said this, I said, you know,

the first governments to probably adopt this are going to be the most authoritarian ones because you don't understand. Like, you know, you think decentralization by central means freedom. In some ways it does, because what it means is it's freedom in terms of now I own my own custody. Freedom from the ability to somebody to take away my own property. There is freedom there. That's true. But there's a double edge to that sword. And that double edge means, and this will be like a nuclear proliferation between, you know, privacy, privacy. And so if you are a, you know, central bank of China, you want to know the entire supply chain of all of the money. So now you have

like capital constraints happening in China and people are trying to get out of those capital constraints because of the nature of, you know, taxation and things. And if you have it all digital money, there's nowhere to hide. I mean, you know, you could say, well, there's, you know, technologies, there's tumblers and it's the equivalent of using Tor on the internet in order to, you know, stop the Chinese government from spying on you. You're going to have to create new weaponry to basically get around the tracking. And that's what they are doing. And I think in the same way that although it's not as authoritarian in the United States, for different reasons, we are equally top-down kind of control. Top-down control, whether we're the good guys or the bad

guys, top-down control because we got to stop the terrorists, we got to stop the bad guys, whatever. And I think what you'll find is that blockchain will be adopted and it will be utilized in many, many negative ways, many negative ways. But I'm sure that when it's all said and done, there will become a balance. It will be cheaper for people. It will save people a lot of money. It'll be more convenient and we'll be in the new digital age. And then it'll just be about what do we expect out of our governments? And oh, one last thing about Argentina. So Argentina is a great use case because they've got a problem. Like they basically have gone through, I don't know what it is about Argentinians, but they like to go bankrupt. Number eight, the United States and CIA helped in the past, but I don't know if we take credit

for this one, but you're right. You're right about that. And, um, and so, you know, in Argentina, we're actually talked to a lot of people around the world. They're like, we want to use this for different use cases. They have a real problem because literally they have a different structure. If you have Argentinian pesos and you try to go to use like an international card, they'll charge you 35% more because they have different standards for a local debit card versus an international card. Right. Everybody wants to get into dollars and they make it impossible to get into dollars because dollars is the freedom and pesos is the thing that they kind of force on you. So, so there are real world use cases, whether it's Venezuela with hyperinflation, whether it's being

Turkey with, you know, their, their problem with inflation or whether it's like an Argentina situation, there is a real demand in other parts of the world. I don't buy the idea that the United States is going to have hyperinflation at all. But I do believe I do. I do believe that Bitcoin, Bitcoin, no matter what, is going to basically appreciate in value as these other currencies, including the U.S. dollar, continue to see significant inflation that's basically hidden under our own eyes because of the nature of the nature of the way that central banks kind of operate together in unison. And you just don't see it as much.

Yeah, that's interesting because the core Bitcoin maximalist case is what we see in Venezuela, Argentina, Lebanon. Yes. But that doesn't happen to the world's reserve currency, as you said, right? I don't view that as a threat to the dollar either. But that said, there are real implications and dangers to this endless money printing and, you know, infinite quantitative easing. So you're going to pay that. We're going to pay the price later. So talk about that. Talk about that. That's exactly right. What I'm getting. If you're a Bitcoin maximalist, okay. And you just believe in it and you're like, and I've actually had some people, you know, kudos to them. I mean, I have nothing but love, but people live on Bitcoin. Like I have a trailer and all I do is on Bitcoin. Like I love them and I welcome them and I support them. But if you in fact are a huge Bitcoin maximalist and you see

the future in a way that one way or the other, whether it's hyperinflation or whether it's some form of inflation, at the end of the day, Bitcoin is only going to increase in value, period, because it is still inflating. It's like six Bitcoin every hour. It's still inflating, but it's inflating at less of a rate than other things. So over time, it basically looks like it's increasing in value. In actuality, it's actually just decreasing in value less than, than other things around it. Right. That's, that's a really interesting take on it that I'd never really considered. Yeah. But that's what's happening until we get to 2050 in which care, whatever time, and then we basically are out of it. And then who the hell knows what the price is. And now we're, I mean, realistically at some point it is, you only had

to have 21 million ever at some point when the last bitcoin ends up being mined there will be this weird i don't know what will happen but i think this weird kind of freak out on price and i mean i really believe that um but i'm a big fan of bitcoin i do think unlike a gold or if let's say like you know the beers with their diamonds and they've got a bunch of diamonds sitting in and they manipulate the price of their, you know, the marketplace. People need to remember at the end of the day, Bitcoin is a digital commodity. If you read the white paper, that's exactly what it says. And it's true. And if anybody's selling you this idea that, oh, it's like beware the, you know, the false profits. Okay. So, you know, if somebody's like Bitcoin is going to

be a hundred thousand dollars, be very aware,, be very scared of that person because people are trying to make money on you in different ways. And a lot of people make money on this volatility. And I'll say that I'm a firm believer that, yes, there will be a retail premium on Bitcoin because of the nature of, you know, number of things, not every mine. It's like, I don't mind Bitcoin. But at the end of the day, the economics will kind of, for the while, and it's what the white paper says, is that Bitcoin price will always be kind of steady with the price of mining, the real cost of mining. You build in a little retail premium, you add in a little FOMO that might exist that will go up or down like a little sweetener. And then that's where you start to see this kind of up and crash. And then you add in things like people manipulating the price because they're

holding on a lot. So, you know, at the end of the day, though, that when you all it's all said and done is that Bitcoin, in my mind, is going to continue to appreciate in value, whether or not it's on a high or a low. It's going to continue to go on that upwards of that upward price. And I think that, you know, it's a fantastic investment that anybody can get into. And I firmly believe that it's a really good thing for people. What you're saying is really interesting because the price will continue to rise, but it's actual price is less important than how much it rises relative to the inflation of the other assets. So like when we, when we talk about when our grandparents or my parents probably talk about, I bought a Coke for a nickel, you know, and then we talk about it and I bought it for a quarter when I was a kid, we put a quarter in the machine. And then by the time I was in college, it was like 50 cents or a dollar. And now it's like $2 for a Coke.

My kids are paying four bucks for a Coke. Right. But the Bitcoin price of a Coke may actually remain stable because it's inflated less. So it's a kind of an interesting way to think about it. We always talk about Bitcoin being a deflationary asset, but your point is that it's inflating just deflationary relative to everything else that's inflating so much faster. Correct. And I think that's true.

If you look at it just on its pure, the fact it's still giving six Bitcoin an hour. And until we get to the point, now what could create a deflationary element in the moment is its supply and demand. So if you're, if you're literally seeing a Russian, Russian, Russian, Russian people, what additional thing that adds to that value is like, now you have more people wanting access to it. And there's still, yeah, we're still inflating it by six, but we just increased by a million more people that wanted to get access to those six per hour. So, you know, you factor all that in together, you say, well, that's part of why it's such a genius economic plan. Yeah. So how and why, how did you find Bitcoin and why did you pursue a career in blockchain and cryptocurrency? I mean, you're coming from Blockbuster Video. It's not, you know, obviously you didn't learn about it maybe there, but

so where did you first hear about it? How did you really get hooked and arrive where you are now? Yeah. And for the record, I didn't just leave Blockbuster to go to blockchain. I mean, amazing. You went from managing two Blockbusters to running a BNC. There's something in between, I guess. Maybe you could talk about that. There was maybe 20, you know, 10 or 12 years in there somewhere. Um, no, but, um, but, you know, actually, I mean, I, you know, I knew about Bitcoin starting in like, uh, 2010, you know, I was in San Antonio early. Yeah. But I didn't do anything with that because I was like so many other people are like Bitcoin. Like, that's crazy. People are, you know, I thought it was cool. And then I remember saying to people, I remember it

was like thirty dollars. And I was like, that's insane. Like, who the hell's going to spend thirty dollars on this digital thing? Like, what the hell is it? But I didn't really spend time to really understand it, to get into it. I didn't read the white paper. I didn't, you know, I had no vision for it whatsoever. So fast forward, fast forward, you know, I was, you know, upper level executive at a, you know, fortune 500 company, right? I was a ran $60 billion in business. And I got to a point for different reasons where I was able to kind of go my own way. But where we really started to become an advocate or sort of what I would consider myself now a subject matter expert in the field is because we started focusing on using blockchain for real world solution within digital advertising. It's just one form of a technology to solve a problem.

And one of those things involves data transparency, but it also allows for an integrated payment solution down up and down an entire supply chain complicated supply chain that lacks transparency and that's where we really started to kind of gain steam and understand the different kinds of blockchains and you know what would work practically in a real world use case right not just based off some philosophy not just based on an ideology but like we're trying to solve a real problem and what would we what would we do for that problem some people don't like the idea of hyper ledger fabric. It's a private permission system. That's not blockchain. Well, like if you don't, everything has a different purpose. If you're Coca-Cola and you don't want your information to be public,

then yeah, hyper ledger fabric is a phenomenal solution for you. You might be clunky by the way, as a tech on the tech side, but at the end of the day, as a solution, it is a private sharing of data among your business partners that you don't want Pepsi and others to know about. And that makes sense. Now, anyone who's ever recommended the idea of Ethereum for a solution within digital advertising is insane. Like they don't know what they're talking about at all because it's a public blockchain. And now if you were talking about title records, Ethereum is a great solution for for title records you don't have that many transactions

it's public information i mean there's there's different use cases for different kinds of blockchains we went with stellar so we actually with digital appetizers we had so the data layer was focused on hyperledger fabric we built this blockchain it's a scalable blockchain but the marketplace isn't quite there yet and it's basically handled large volumes of transaction data. And then on top of that, you have a payment layer that you could put like a stellar type token, right? The turn token. And we were interoperable with different kinds of blockchains. And what we basically found was the thing that made people get really excited was we would constantly have people knock on our door and email us and say, hey, how do I get this block card? And today that's where the most

exciting thing I can't explain Scott, when people around the world say, when are you guys going to have the block card in Ghana? You know, that kind of thing. And it's exciting thing because what's the answer when you're going to have the block card in Ghana, we have a solution pending. We actually have, so, you know, that's the biggest challenge when you're doing a Visa or MasterCard or a UnionPay program, they kind of all operate differently. Visa and MasterCard, you have to go country by country or region by region. So we have a card coming in Europe. That's 31 countries in Europe, but the U.S. is just the U.S. And so UnionPay operates a little differently. And we're working on a, we actually have been approved by a bank that is

going to, we're going to offer a UnionP card. And we will be able to offer in different countries around the world. So we'll kind of have like this program in Europe, this program in the US, and then everything else we're going to try to fill in with a union pay type program. It's really cool. Roundthex.com is one of my favorite companies in the entire crypto space. What they do is take all your small purchases and round them up to the nearest dollar and invest that spare change into any of over 30 crypto assets of your choice. They integrate with your favorite exchanges so that you can view various exchange balances all in one dashboard and round up into different assets all at the same time. And they do all this without ever holding

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So you touched on this very early in our conversation that you actually registered with the SEC. You did this the right way, which I think makes you guys somewhat of a unicorn, especially when you go back to like the 2017 ICO craze, of course, and people just kind of threw their hands in the air, said YOLO and raised billions of dollars for companies that maybe needed like a million dollars to operate. And it's completely steady. Can you talk about the process of, I guess,

starting a token and starting this business in the United States, which has arguably the most stringent regulation and the challenges that came with doing that here? Yeah. And I'll tell you, the first thing is, if you're interested in this, for anybody who is interested in it, if you talk to 10 people, you get 10 different answers. There's a lot of confusion. And I think that, you know, Chairman Pierce from the SEC has got it right, you know, because she's basically advocated for a safe harbor for a couple of years, give a small company the ability to kind of grow, spread its wings, become something and then become accountable, right? But in the beginning, you kind of don't really know, you're just trying to like, you're trying to build something. I think the problem with that, in that ICO craze was there

was a lot of, there was a lot of deceitful behavior and there was stupid consumer behavior you know if somebody's promising you and this is what we found somebody's promising you like you're gonna 10x your return it's like it that what they're really doing is selling the idea that you know it's like the greater fool theory and my partner ian always talks about the greater fool theory and we did not buy into that and what we did was we filed a reg d which basically says says, what a Reg D is, it says, listen, we're exempt from traditional securities laws. We're still recognizing that it's a security under the law, but we don't have to go through and, we literally did verification on every single person who will, who wanted to buy the token. We made sure that we knew who they were. We had proof that they were accredited investor and they could participate. Great. If they were not, if they were not accredited investor, we couldn't, we couldn't help them. If they were outside the U S then we were, well, you know, it was, it was free, free

to engage with them. Right. And so what, and the other thing is you can't make, you know, it was free to engage with them. And so, the other thing is you can't make, you know, promises around, you know, and you've seen SEC lawsuits, you can't say like promised investor return. You can't say, okay, well, you're going to make a lot of money here. You know, you have to disclose to people, look, this is like highly risky and you could lose money. I mean, there's a reason that every bank email says, you know, past performance is not indicative of future returns. That's exactly right. They say literally the opposite.

They tell you, you might lose money. You could lose all your money. And so, we filed the Reg D. We made everybody in the U.S. do a SAFT. We made sure that our marketing materials were very, like, down the – we didn't focus on the investment side of it with the marketing materials. We focused on the project. We focused on, here's what we're trying to do because what we, and anytime, let me get another example. We didn't wink, wink, nudge, like kind of a hint at, or give people the ability to kind of, you

know, promote the idea of turn is going to be the, you know, the, the next Bitcoin. If somebody was promoting anything with like Pepe the frog or some going, going to the moon. Yeah. I hated that going to the moon. We would that going to the moon we would literally delete them we were people were not allowed to talk on our telegram which is very popular among the crypto you know enthusiasts you were not allowed to talk about going to the moon in the in the turnio chat to this day you can't talk about going to the moon it's like literally like banned because we don't want to give people this false sense of FOMO. And it seemed wrong. Now, that being said, I do think it's important for people to understand that the economics behind a real,

which there seem to be few and far between real projects that are not cryptocurrency exchanges. But the economics behind tokenomics for, let's say, a token like a T token versus let's say a Bitcoin token, they're different, but it always comes down to scarcity. So my point of view is if you're talking about a utility token, like a Brave, great example, Brave token. Brave, right. Brave is awesome. Yeah. Okay.

Awesome. Because you have a real product with amazing leadership, okay, who's done it before. They're delivering times a million, and they're great people, by the way. They're amazing people. So you say, okay, well, they're delivering times a million and they're great people, by the way, they're amazing people. So you say, okay, well, they're giving like a transforming something that's hard to transform. By the way, really hard to take on Google and Apple. And I mean, give me a break. They're taking on the biggest companies in the world. As bold as it gets for sure. They've got balls.

So they do, they got balls. That should be there. Like we got balls. So they're giving away these tokens. Right. And they basically at some point, they're going to reach scarcity.'ve got like a hundred billion tokens, maybe it's impossible to get the scarcity if it's like a ripple or even a stellar, or, you know, it's going to take quite some time, but at some point based upon usage, at some point, if it's utility token, there will be scarcity and there will be no more. And that is when the token, I think the tokenomics become very interesting. And we have yet to really see that in the marketplace just yet. but it really is incredible and i'm not placing blame or or anything it's just the the nature of the product but the use case has decreased because people like jamie that you know jp morgan creating their own coin instead of going but every time the price rises magically all this uh xrp starts being sent into exchange wallets and gets dumped on anyone who tries to raise it so that their lack of scarcity and that being

such a distant marathon is probably why the price of that never seems to rise. So I almost wanted to market by brave while you were talking though, like, you know, but that's, but that's what I think where you get into this idea around utility tokens. It's not complete bullshit. There are a lot of people who have good intentions that couldn't execute it properly, didn't have enough capital, which is the point of selling tokens,

utilizing that capital to build something, and then you have an ecosystem. But it is hard, I will tell you, as a founder who's trying to do the right thing, trying to do something right thing, trying to do something very real and legitimate. I will tell you that we do see a lot of growth and what we're doing. It's a very exciting time, but it's not easy work. It's really hard to build an ecosystem. And where I'd say is the alt coins that are doing like, we're kind of the effectively in 2010 of Bitcoin. In 2010, people were saying, well, that's fake. It's imaginary money.

It's bullshit and all this stuff. And remember, Bitcoin, the first transaction was 50 Bitcoin. They were basically giving them out like candy. Yeah, it was fractions of... For the first three years, it was basically being in Canada on candy and it became progressively more difficult to get.

With like a, what our kind of a utility token type economics are not the same. Because what you're doing is you're saying we're kind of giving them all at once. And then you've got to reach this point of scarcity simply through the utility and adoption of that asset. And when, as long as you're not doing it through airdrops, if you're doing it through airdrops, it's basically just free and nobody, it's helicopter money, right? Of course they don't value it. So even if it's worth 300 on the marketplace, but they sold it for 150, they just got $350. So you've got to create this ecosystem where people are like, I'm not selling that for less than $300 because I'm going to take

a loss on it. So you need to build that mentality of, you know, that a sort of a shared ownership. And when you get enough people in the ecosystem at scale to have that mentality, now you're talking about something really legitimate and real. So then how does an average person differentiate between these real projects and the actual scams or the dead projects that people are still trading like mad on exchanges that are actually going nowhere? I mean, what is your average person to do? You talk about it being like Bitcoin in 2010, but there was one Bitcoin in 2010. Now it's like choosing between hundreds of potential Bitcoins in 2010 to try to figure out what's real. Well, I mean, how many tokens has Justin Sun launched? Who knows? A lot, right? I

mean, there's many. And so I'd say the only way I'd say that is the the question i'd ask myself as as a person is what is the point if in fact something is really a utility token what is the purpose of that utility token at least you can make the argument it's a different kind of economics with like an ethereum in ethereum you have all of the they're building this huge developer ecosystem platform right it's a platform you got to get eth in order to get into this other thing. So you can kind of see the value of that. I think that's a super fantastic solution because it really built something very real. Different, but real.

I have a harder time with Ripple because I don't connect the dots to a real utility other than for a moment it's converted. I don't. Faster money, right? A faster transaction. I'm not tracking it. I'm not tracking it. I don't. Faster money, right? A faster transaction. I'm not tracking it. I'm not tracking it.

I don't see the ecosystem. It is really fast, but beyond that. Yeah, it's, well, you know, Ripple or Jed McCaleb, who founded Stellar, he forked off of Ripple. Of course. He's the co-founder of Ripple, you know? And so he didn't like where things were going. He kind of went his own way.

So it's amazing technology, no doubt about it. But the economics of the token, I have a hard time with. I would say, is the token firmly integrated into something that makes it have real world utility? And then if it does, what is that practical use case? And what's it take to get that real world adoption? How many people have to hold the token at scale in order for it to like reach that scarcity? But don't play the short game. Like if your whole thing is I'm going to make a killing in two weeks, I'm going to make my money. Like you're going to get robbed. But if your game is, look, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to sit on it. I believe in the long-term vision. This is going to take some time. I'm going to put my tokens away and I'm going to watch them at some point. I'm going to see them become

something. Well, that's a different kind of mentality. Right. It's the investor mentality versus the trader mentality versus the, I guess, down to degenerate gambler dressed as a trader mentality. But we've all been all of them, probably at some point. And so when we were discussing starting in the United States, you touched on the idea of accreditation. And I haven't really been able to have this conversation with anyone and you're the perfect person because the idea of accreditation in theory is obviously protection for someone, you know, is to protect people from throwing their money into scam projects. But I think the reality of it is that it eliminates monetary opportunity for people who don't have a certain amount of wealth. That's right. And you touched on that that doesn't exist in Europe. And we went

through this with the ICO craze because Americans basically, unless you VPN and pretended to be someone else, you actually couldn't invest in most of these ICOs because the government didn't let you. The big brother said you're prohibited from the opportunity. So can you talk about, I guess, in general, your take on accreditation or accredited investors? Well, I'm all about consumer protection. Okay. And I think that anybody, every government has a role and responsibility to make sure that grandma doesn't get the phone call from somebody pretending to do something. And then she gets scammed because scamming, whether it be in cryptocurrency or some other industry, it happens all over the

world. And I hope those people die, you know, in fiery hell. Okay. So I get all of it in my mind, but, but you're, what you said is really important because you're what really government has done is it's not taking any account into, you know, whether or not you earn $250,000 a year has nothing to do with your education of a specific investing capability. If you might be an expert in crypto, you might be a complete expert on markets. You might know everything about it. You've done your own research. There is no standard to say, yeah, this person has the necessary knowledge, at least some basic level certification if they want to. So it's really doing people people the service by saying,

no, you're prohibited from getting in on the next Uber or whatever, right? Not that Uber is the best example, but you get drop-offs. You're not allowed to participate in those legally unless it's like friends and family ramp. So that's a problem. That's why a Reg CF, Reg A plus, those are great. And I think what I believe is going to happen is where it's going to be good for the investors. It's going to be good for the founders because, and I literally just posted about this on LinkedIn, actually the nature of, of raising capital. Okay. Do you mind a couple of minutes to talk about this on a period? We have all the time in the world. I'm serious. When I say I've wanted to talk about this with someone and there's been nobody who's been in the position to speak with some authority or knowledge about it. I have my very own superficial views. So please go, go, go ham, go crazy. Okay. So, so basically like, okay,

I got this, I got a little, you know, like, uh, I think that the VC culture is broken because it's a herd mentality. People only want to invest in companies that somebody else that they trust and respect has been willing to invest in. And as a founder, you can't get a money, you know, you can't get money from bank unless you're going to do a personal guarantee and you're going to put your house on the line. But you're getting access to a capital from a bank is very difficult up until two years revenue. And even then with an SBA loan, you're still doing a personal guarantee. Okay. You're putting everything on the line. So getting access to capital from a bank is super hard. So capitalism is fundamentally broken from that, that nature of access to capital for, for an entrepreneurs,

that part of capitalism has been fundamentally broken. And only recently with the COVID thing has it basically kind of in a different way broken, but given access to funding to entrepreneurs without having to go through that kind of that kind of guarantee if you try to go through you can do fans of friends and family and uh even the founder of salesforce he couldn't get money from bc's but he got money from friends and family just so happened he lived in silicon valley and all his friends and family were really wealthy so he got 15 million dollars but nobody believed in his idea but if he didn't have wealthy friends and family he couldn't have started Salesforce, which is now killing it. Right. And if you, if you live in like

certain parts of the country, South Atlanta and all your friends, basically like a hundred bucks is a lot of money to them. Good luck trying to build the next, you know, a freaking PayPal. Okay. On that. So then you're like, you're left with fewer and fewer options. And then you get into like the, basically there's like sharks at the door and it's like, they're like, all right, we want 80% of your company, you know, and they're predatory and they got their Patagonian vests and they act like they're the smartest guys in the room because they're literally through the sheer market supply demand. They're the only people left you can talk to. They're the only people left you can talk to yep the only people left you can talk to so if you now open up a whole new thing which is these crowdfunding and a regular a plus is giving people the ability

normal people to put in a hundred dollars into that next major company like zoom what we're doing we're talking about the kickstarters of the world right for people who right we just raised thank god for that because we just, we got a lot of bad deals sent to us and we just raised over a million dollars. We, we subscribe, oversubscribe to our round because we were able to tap into people who believed in the product. They didn't need to validation from some, you know, other person. They didn't need Andreessen Horowitz to get in before they got in. I don't know how many times I had somebody say, we really love what you guys are doing. We can $500,000. We just need a lead

to get in on the round for us to feel confident that we can do it. So, what ends up happening is you have all these non-decision makers participating and didn't never engage. And when they finally, finally, finally get to that one lead investor, we had one that was already invested in the competitor. And we had one that wanted to basically, you know, me to name their, their next child after them or something, my next child. So basically I think that, you know, if you get into the reg CF where you give everybody like what we did on the Republic platform, we were able to raise over a million dollars maxed out our round just because we were able to go, you know, to normal people to invest in a round. So it's a big thing for me.

I mean, so is that the future of venture capital is the kickstarters of the world? And, you know, I guess that's the regulatory hurdle, the way you can actually do it and allow people to invest in something without being accredited. I mean, do you think that that's the future of VC and that we'll see the big money sort of, you know, exit stage left eventually? Or do you think that there'll be a place for both? I think there's always gonna be a place for both because you're always going to have the VCs effectively, they get their money from wealthy, either wealthy family, small family offices, or, you know, some of these corporate sponsorships. So those are always going

to exist and they always should exist. And they have a real purpose. And I mean, they play hard ball. And I don't know any founder, I don't know any VC who says it's a fun experience to try to hash out the, you know, the details with a VC. It's just not a fun experience, okay? Because what you're doing is you're giving away control, you're giving away power of your company. We have, you know, a lot of people don't know this. A lot of times, pretty much, it's actually in every single VC contract, okay? I mean, what I'm going to tell you is in every single VC contract, you start a company. You don't take a salary for two years like Ian and me, right? We co-founded the company.

You didn't take a salary for two years. And then they give you a contract and they say, hey, we want to invest a million dollars in your company. But here's the thing. We need you to withdraw your ownership of your own company. We need you to withdraw your ownership of your own company. We need you to earn it back. And oh, by the way, if we don't like what you're doing, we can fire you. So you lost all your own ownership of your own damn company and you can't do anything about it. That's literally in every single VC contract. Yeah. It's like negotiating which limb the torture gets to remove from your body. They want both your legs, but you just want them to take an arm, you know?

And, you know, and look, if you get, look, if you've got a, like a founder friendly VC, which many, there are many are, and it's certainly in Silicon Valley, they're, they're, they, they see the vision, they're former, they made a lot of money on tech and they're all about it. But Silicon Valley is a little bit of a bubble and you're not in Silicon Valley, you're not in Silicon Valley. So a lot of other places, they don't have the same mentality. I really believe that there's going to be room for both. It's going to create competition in the marketplace.

I'm all about marketplace, like fair competition. And what's going to happen is these reg CFs, the reg A pluses, these other Republic type places to start engines in the world, these portals that allow for millions of people to basically go and put a hundred dollars. Then you're going to have a founder say, well, why would I give, you know, why don't I try to get money from the VC who's going to basically try to make my life difficult and take, try to take advantage of me financially when I could just go raise money on this really popular crowdfunding portal. Like it's going to create an equilibrium because right now it's been a really unfair

imbalance. And that's why guys walk around their Patagonian sweaters, no disrespect, you know, and they all look the same because they think the same, they act the same because there isn't a mindset of originality and that needs to change. Yeah. I mean, we watched, I guess in 2015, 16, we watched Bernie Sanders raise millions and millions of dollars by $1 and $10 donations from people. And it's sort of the, I mean, I'm not even, no, no politics attached. I'm just saying you literally watched him, uh, you know, challenge the, the way that money was raised in politics. And it's the same thing I would assume with, with raising money for, for a company. So another thing, no, please, please.

One little thing on that for anybody who's watching is who wants to start something, I'd say if you're trying to create a B2B solution, then it might be harder because you're not necessarily like, I'm going to create this cloud-based platform

with artificial intelligence. And the average person is not necessarily going to say, oh, like I'd do that. I'd use that. But I will tell you that if you're creating something that's consumer, like something they can physically touch, something

they would, a service they would use. You're now connecting to people who are like, they understand it. They're like, oh yeah, like I would love that. So I'll invest in it. And what you're doing is not only are you finding investors, you're finding customers. You're finding people who want to tell their 100, 200 friends on Facebook to say, you know, you need to hear about this company, not only to invest in, but wow, this is an amazing product. So you become your brand evangelists who are now incentivized to basically evangelize for your brand for you. And it's a really positive effect for sure. What other lessons would you give to your younger self or to a young entrepreneur now?

I mean, you've obviously been literally through it all. I mean, from bottom to top. So I guess either some huge mistakes that you made that they could avoid making or just a lesson in how to overcome obstacles. And I mean, that was a great one that you just gave. But any other like huge life lessons, I guess, for the millennial listeners here? Yes. Okay. So the number one thing I'd say is be prepared for failure. So like when you're just asking Scott, you're saying like, you know, any mistakes, like we made a lot of mistakes and oh, by the way, that's par for the course because there's

a thing called product market fit. So when you're, you know, you're filling out your company, you have an idea, that idea, just company you have an idea that idea just because you have an idea it doesn't mean it's going to necessarily that the marketplace is going to accept it and say oh high five and here's a billion dollars it doesn't work that way like you're constantly iterating you're constantly iterating so it there's a there's this balance between not getting like you creating yourself like a safety path so to speak or plan b plan c plan d have different backup plans but do it in a way that where you're still focused because you can't be distracted you have to be focused on the mission at hand i remember ian and i would talk

about it and we would i would say like i had some very choice phrases but um basically like what if this is the last dollar that i would we would make ever what are we, what if this is the last dollar that I would, we would make ever, what are we going to, what is, this is the last dollar we ever going to make. What are we going to do if that, if this doesn't work, if that doesn't work, if this other thing doesn't work, we were planning for failure of our ideas. Okay. Well, what if we would literally have a call every day? Okay. This is what we're going to do. Okay. Well, what if that doesn't happen? Okay. We're going to do this. So you have to be really, really able to just like turn on a dime. You can't get down. There's too much going on. Your life's at stake. You cannot give up. You can't give up. You got to keep going and know, even when there's like, it's like that, you know, for the millennials,

there's a show called Seinfeld. So even if it's like that Kramer episode where he's driving the car and they're running to say how car running out of gas, running out of gas, you're going to run out of gas. There were, there were times where we had almost no money in the bank. We had to make hard decisions. We had to make the hardest decisions. I had my wife saying it's not worth it. I was making really good money working for, you know, in my, I made really good money. And I left all of that to basically not only take pain for myself to inject that pain on my family and not to bring in an income, you know, and then to get yelled at, like, why don't you get a job? And it's like that. I'd be like, you got to trust

me. Like this is, it's, it's, it's happening, but it took literally not giving up and not giving up and not even that's not enough because you have to have a great plan you have to be good at what you do you have to execute well you have to be able to iterate when things don't go right i mean you have to do a lot of things right you got to know how to raise capital which is impossible right you know and another there's another thing there's one more really important thing yeah it's not just you. It's not just only your team. Like you need to inspire somebody else around you for whatever reason, whether it be somebody who sees something in you because you're a minority female founder and they see in you something that they saw in themselves. And they say, I want to support you because you are like

a younger version of me. And I want to, I got to a point in my world where now I can help bring people up. You need some, some people who are going to help you in your world, not necessarily not like for money, but just because you inspire them for something, they respect you. There's something about your personality, your drive, your just willingness to do whatever it takes to win, to get it done. That's going to get like people who are potentially can help you in like on your side and want to open doors for you. I think that's a really important part of the equation too. And you just touched on something that I think every entrepreneur probably feels and struggles with. And that's the idea of balancing your work and your life. I remember, I don't remember the exact quote, but Jeff Bezos said something about, you know, work-life balance, right? It's not about work-life balance because it implies that you have to give

up one to have the other or something like that. But it's actually about work-life harmony where you're not. I talk about that all the time. I firmly believe that. Like my wife knew when she married me, like my work is my like mistress. Okay. with it well better your work i guess then well you know that's but that's what comes with territory but you know i think what jeff basil said is right and if your mindset is well i'm going to start a company and what's your goal my goal is to sell it well you're in the wrong but you're the wrong person for that company like you need to be thinking about it's because you're passionate about wanting to do something not just because you're trying to sell it yeah Yeah. You need a backup plan. Yes. You need an exit plan. You need to have a

plan, but that should not be the, like the end all be all. And it takes like working all the time. I talked to China at night. I talked to London in the morning. I talked to, you know, people all around the world and I'm working a lot of hours. But by the way, if it's something that you really like to do, then it does not feel like work because you're doing something that is a passion. And even if day one, if your goal is, how do I just make like 10 grand? What does it take to get to 10 grand? You get to that threshold. What does it take to get to 20 grand? Before you know it, you're like on all cylinders. You're loving what you're doing. You're kicking ass. You know, you just get wins on top of wins and you have a real business. It's really funny. I'm a trader, obviously. I mean, that's what I do. And so many things that

you've said during this podcast already resonate with me as things I would teach my younger trading self. You know, you talked about if this is the last dollar I make the idea, which I always kind of say, you need to plan your losses, not your wins, right? Just assume everything's going to go wrong because then when it goes right, it's a pleasant surprise and something that you're, you're ready for, but you know, it's just, and then, you know, never worrying about the people who are making more trading with more, if you've got $10, that $10 has to become $11 before you can turn a million into 1.1 million. You know what I mean? That's right.

Just interesting to hear how much that resonates. It also seems like you're very concerned with doing what's right and doing things the right way. And it really hit me when you just said, you know, you shouldn't be concerned about your exit strategy. You have to be concerned about it, but that can't be your plan.

I don't, I really don't believe that most people who start businesses, at least the ones I know coming from Ivy League school, it was always about, I'm going to start this and flip it in four years. That was always the mentality that I heard. So it really wasn't about doing what was right or building something they were passionate about.

It was about making money. So how- I don't get it. I don't get it. Look, you can make money and do something you love to do. And, and, and, and by the way, um, like people, I was not born like for, you know, I wanted to start a blockchain company. I, that wasn't my, and by the way, this is probably not the last thing I'm ever going to do. That would have been really cool if when you were born, you knew you were going to start a blockchain. You know what I'm going to do is I'm going to become a blockchain CEO. Profit, Profit. Do it. No, I think it needs to be something, because you're right. I think people talk about wanting to flip it. And you know what? Kudos to them. And it's not that you don't care about making money, but it can, for me, everybody has a different goal. At some point, you make

enough money. So then it's like, well, why am I here? I'm here because I want to do something that I care about. And I am lucky to be able to do something that is global. I get to travel. I get to connect with people of all parts of cultures around the world. It's a very diversified industry because it is so global. I love that. And it brings me, I feel like I'm a better person because I get to kind of learn from and, you know, learn about and participate in all of these

different kinds of cultures and people that I interact with. And beyond that, I think what we're doing is really special because we're building something that no one's really done. And so just doing something that hasn't been done before, that's unique. And then we're kind of, you know, we think we're at the forefront of, of where the space is. Like I've had now two very serious people in the last month or so that said, you know, these challenger banks that you hear about, like the revolutes of the world, they're already, they're already two technologies behind already. So, and I think that's a hundred percent true. I had one guy who I think has got like perfect vision for it from visa who who really understands crypto who said you know the blockchain the the um this these

challenger banks inevitably will be built on top of blockchain technology have to be they have to be and i and so there are if you go but if you go to how many banks other than jp morgan chase which is only doing it at the at the institutional level, they aren't doing it at the consumer level. It's a B2B thing, obviously. Yeah. 100%. It's a way for them and their customers to transact. So we're at the forefront.

To me, we're at the forefront of like what everybody else doesn't even understand or know how to do. So it's a cool thing. Not everybody has that chance. Maybe you want to just open a Mexican restaurant, right? Right. But the point is, it's got to be something that like you like to do, that you understand, that you're capable of doing and executing on. And you can do that.

It doesn't matter if you work 100 hours a week because you've got that harmony that exists that Jeff Bezos talks about. It's 100% true. Right. It really is. So there was one other thing that I know we discussed about the product that we haven't mentioned that I think is worth mentioning. It's not, it's not just the debit card, but it's actually a bank account. Correct. Can you talk about that? Cause that's really one of the coolest things that you guys are doing in my opinion. So.

Thank you. So we're excited about this because what we're trying to create is an, a seamless interoperability between digital money and traditional systems if you want to go with the old you know at some point it's going to be like why the hell did anybody ever just send you so it'd be like you're telling me that you would you would send money on a friday night and the and you're they didn't get the money until tuesday it's and then and then the bank charged you money for that with your own money? Like at some point,

somebody's going to go like, that's insane. So what we're offering is checking accounts that are FDIC insured. You can literally buy and sell cryptocurrencies legally. You can digitize. It's effectively digitizing the money. So when you're sending the money in on the slow rail,

on a wire or ACH, it gets into a digitized form. At that moment, you can send it across the world. If we have a card, let's say in India, then you can send money to somebody in India. They have their card. They get their money in two seconds. No more Western Union. Bye bye. Everything changes. to me that is going to be the future and i'll tell you the only company right now that scares the shit out of me uh this really got this is facebook because they started that libra project with a total disaster that i just like really like shredded because this libra as an idea was a way of defrauding people it was a horrible horrible thing because you're always in and out of a foreign currency and they were going to rob people all day long. But now they've changed their model because people for different reasons have kind of put a lot of scrutiny on it. That is an incredible amount of pushback. Thank God. Thank God. But now what they're doing is much smarter and much more, it's much fair to the consumer. So if let's say, for example, you know, you're, they're doing something in Brazil and you're sending money back and forth on WhatsApp in Brazil. Okay. We'll find like kudos to them. It's a, it's a, it's a really

smart way to basically compete in that space and they're going to do great. Um, but it's not going to be under, it'll be under the Brazilian real. It's not going to be under the Facebook Lieber token, you know? So I really think that Facebook is probably the one that scares me the most, especially because I just really don't respect the CEO. On so many levels, the Facebook scares. I'm not saying he's a horrible human being, but there's not been any person that I think he's never, ever done right by. So other than that.

It's one of those things with Libra where it's like, the idea is amazing. The concept of removing that, you know, the power of currency from a government, but like the last person, anyone doing it is the one who just like influenced an election with Russian hacking and, you know, all these crazy things. And we've all seen this. Can we get the tiger guy to do it or, you know, we need a much friendlier guy. All right, man. So after this, where can people keep up with you?

Where can people get a card, get their hands on it, try it out? Where can they follow you? So I'm pretty, I'm pretty passionate about, as you can probably see, it shows, but I, I, I'm on LinkedIn, of course, Daniel Golden. You can follow us on Telegram, beware of scammers, try and impersonate us. That happens all the time. Beware. But if you want to go to getblocker.com, you can sign up for a card. It's five minutes. You basically have access to a card, a virtual card that will tap into Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay. We were the first ones to do that. And I noticed a couple of our competitors claim to be the first, but we did it first. And yeah, I mean, you know, just what I think people

would love to get feedback from you in terms of your experience. I think it's, we're trying to push the boundaries of what, you know, the future can be with digital money. That's awesome. Yeah. People love claiming to be the first. It's like every slice of pizza in New York is the, you know, the world's best slice of pizza. Every exchange is the world's greatest cryptocurrency. It's literally in the tagline of like every exchange. I think the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange, such a, such a, such a thing. But yeah, I know you guys were first and you know, I've actually started trying it out. I'm waiting for my physical card to write on my hands, but I absolutely love it.

So I'm a, I'm a consumer myself and a user. And so thank you, man, so much for taking the time. It really just occurred to me. It's funny that a lot of the listeners here probably think about you living in a car and aspire to do that since like van culture and like millennials want to live that homeless life. It's like a thing now. I don't understand it, but I mean, I think there's people here probably like two jobs and live in my van. It's awesome. That guy was an innovator. So I think you might've actually been ahead of your time on that.

But once again, man, thank you. I really learned a lot. You have a really interesting insight and, and I hope that people really do listen and learn from, from, from the lessons that you shared.

So thanks. Well, it's fun. Thanks a lot, guys. I appreciate it. All right. Hey everyone.

Thanks for listening. New episodes go live every Tuesday at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Links to our Apple and Spotify channels are in the show notes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Scott Melker to continue the conversation. See you next week.