The Wolf Of All Streets - Ethereum Has Already Flipped Bitcoin | Ran Neuner, Host Of Crypto Banter

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

As the host of the world’s first televised cryptocurrency show, featured on CNBC, Ran Neuner has become one of cryptocurrencies most recognized and influential voices. Providing educational content to millions of listeners around the world, Neuner advocates for safe investing and proper allocation in the crypto space to maximize returns in this fast moving industry. Neuner believes that the crypto market is reaching a massive tipping point, transitioning from the early adoption stage to the mainstream, and that this is a moment of tremendous opportunity. Ran Neuner - https://twitter.com/cryptomanran --- Build on Harmony, run on all chains. Harmony is your open platform for assets, collectibles, identity, governance. Be the ONE to bridge to all blockchains. Harmony is an open and fast blockchain. Their mainnet runs Ethereum applications with 2-second transaction finality and 100 times lower fees. Harmony’s secure bridges offer cross-chain asset transfers with Ethereum, Binance and other chains. https://thewolfofallstreets.link/harmony --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This episode is brought to you by Harmony. Please stay tuned for more information about them later in the episode. What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. Basically, anyone with a good story to tell. Today's guest is one of the most vocal advocates

for the crypto space. Rand is both the CEO of Onchain Capital, a blockchain investment fund and advisory service, and also the host of the first televised cryptocurrency show. It's my hope by having Rand Nooner on today that he can finally enjoy being on the other side of the camera, but also that we can dig deeper into his thoughts on the current state of the crypto market and mainstream adoption. Rand Nooner, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. It's so good to be on the other side. I can't explain to you how good it is to be on the current state of the crypto market and mainstream adoption. Rand Nooner, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. It's so good to be on the other side. I can't explain to you how good it is to be on the other side.

I'm usually the one asking all the questions and now I'm on the other side. And you not only are usually the one asking questions, I mean, it seems like you're on all of the time. Yeah, I'm on all, I'm 24-7, 365. It is what it is. It's unbelievable. Do you ever get fatigued talking about crypto so much? You know, I was kidnapped once and my kidnappers returned me after 24 hours

because they said I was talking about crypto too much. So they like came back to, you know, you can have him, we don't want him. No, I'm kidding. I was never kidnapped because you never know how this is going to go. You say in this space, that could be a true story. Yeah, but I mean, that's how it is. I never switch off. And in fact, I actually feel kind of guilty sometimes because I have young kids like you do, and I love spending time with my kids,

but inevitably while I'm with them, I think of crypto and I almost feel almost like I'm cheating. And I guess it's very similar to everybody else that is in crypto, where I think we're all so obsessed with this market. And once you come into crypto and once the bug bites, it's this magic combination of amazing technology, a great space to be, amazing returns, and this dopamine pump that comes with it that becomes almost addictive. And I don't know, I guess that anybody watching this podcast would be lying if they said that CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap weren't the most used applications on their phones. Yeah, I'm sure that's true. And throw in the fact that it's 24-7 on top of all of that, so even if you're, for some reason, that passionate about stocks or Forex, which by the way, nobody is that passionate about those things as they are about crypto and

Bitcoin, but you never shuts off unless you force it to shut off. So how do you, I'm curious, find any sort of balance when not only are you thinking about it 24-7, but you're actually basically live talking about it in some manner? So that's a very good question because what are we actually building? We're building a 24-7, 365 credible streaming station. And the reason why we're building that is because in traditional finance, when you want to know what's happening on the markets, you have your favorite channels, be it CNBC or Bloomberg or whatever it is. And you know that you can switch on the television and within half an hour or an hour, markets, you have your favorite channels, be it CNBC or Bloomberg or whatever it is, and you know that you can switch on the television and within half an hour or an hour, you know exactly what's happening on the markets any time of the day. Now, in crypto, that doesn't exist.

So what we're after is we're after that live streaming credible content. What does that mean? Well, right now, we're not there. We're doing three hours a day and we're upping it to four hours next week. But what it means is that you've always got to be switched on because you've always got to know what's happening in the news. Always. I mean, I wake up in the morning,

I wake up at 5.30 in the morning and by 7.30, I've listened to 12 podcasts. I've listened to them in double speed and I've made notes of exactly what I think's happening on the shows. Our first show is at 5 a.m. EST and that's done strategically. And I've made notes of exactly what I think is happening on the shows. Our first show is at 5 a.m. EST. And that's done strategically.

So when people wake up, they can in half an hour know exactly what's happening on the markets. Our next show is at 10. And by that time, we hope that the news is filled up. And then our next show is at like 6 in the afternoon or something like that. So I'm always on. And I failed. It's hard for me to switch off because I always need to know what's happening on the markets. On our show, we have a lot of guests and I can't be in a situation where a guest brings up something that I haven't researched or read or spoken about

and things happen in absolute real time. So never switch off, but love it because if I were to take something that's well suited to my personality, so I was always the kid that got bored in class because my mind was working too fast for everybody else, as I think we all were. And I mean, I can listen to podcasts in two speed. And actually, funny enough, I absorb better in two speed than I absorb on one speed, because on one speed, my mind runs away. On two speed, I'm forced to like, he's speaking so fast that I have to listen. And so there could be nothing better for my personality than a fast moving industry like

this. And yeah, so I find I never switch off, but I also find I'd rather be doing this than everything else in the world, except possibly spending time with the family. Yeah. So I touched on the fact, obviously you had the show, I believe on CNBC in South Africa, you were the first to really have an international show on network television about cryptocurrency. But I remember back then watching, and it was a time when there was no crypto news cycle, right? We might get one piece of news a month that would be in the mainstream media that everybody would grapple onto and price would go crazy. Now it's 10 a day, right? I mean, what have you seen in that evolution? Because

you've been at the center of crypto media this entire time. Let me take you back to the start of CNBC because I think it's a great story. So meet one of the directors at cnbc who's a very good friend of mine and we're talking and he says what are you up to and i'm telling you about crypto and i explain bitcoin to him and how cnbc can use crypto um to reward viewers and i you know we start talking about all this and he's like well why don't we talk about a crypto show on CNBC? And I was like, really? You know, after speaking about it many times where they had declined it and said, you know, crypto is a Ponzi and Bitcoin is tulips and you name it, I heard them all. But he eventually set up a meeting for me with the head of production. And I sat down with head of production. I explained Bitcoin and crypto to her. And you know, that moment when the penny drops, you know, that like there's that one moment

where everybody gets it and it's like a ping. And I remember the look in her face where she got it and her eyes just went. And I said to him, great. So you guys will do a crypto show. And they said, no, no, no, no. You'll do a crypto show. And I said, like, I've never done TV before. And I said, well, we'll teach you TV.

You teach us crypto. Anyway, I said to him, look, I don't have time for a crypto show. And I said, like, I've never done TV before. And they said, well, we'll teach you TV. You teach us crypto. Anyway, I said to them, look, I don't have time for a crypto show. Like, you know, doing a crypto show is time consuming. And they said, don't worry, you've got a full production team. So we make an appointment to meet the following week to start the show. And, you know, I get there and I'm waiting for the production team to brief me. And it's like, no, we can't report on these stories like no one in the whole of cnbc at that time understood anything about crypto so we cancelled the show and the following week i called a whole lot of my friends i called spencer bogart i called brock pierce i called a couple of the other guys and i said look i'm gonna phone you at 10 a.m est or whatever the time was uh

you need to answer the phone on zoom and we're going to talk about crypto. And that was the first show. And now in hindsight, when I watched the first show, it was so bad. It was so bad. I was such a bad host at the time. But I mean, after probably, you know, 100 episodes, I started to get quite good at it, I think. But the main thing is that there was no crypto media. You know, there was zero AV media. There was very little real crypto media at all. And we came out and we said, you know, this is the world's first televised crypto show in the entire world. And it's being aired on CNBC. And that was like a huge thing.

And I remember that it got a little bit scary because we used to talk about tokens and the prices used to go up. And, you know, the CNBC guys weren't that used to hosts talking about tokens and prices going up. And so they were very, very, very nervous. Now they're coming around, but I learned a lot at CNBC and that's what led me on the path on the journey that I'm on now. Like when I was at CNBC, I realized a lot of things about media and about crypto. So for example, crypto people don't respond well to studio shows. They just don't. They find it too much like traditional shows. Crypto media doesn't respond well to suits and ties.

So, here I am in a hoodie. This is how I broadcast now. Whereas at CNBC, it was always suits and ties. CryptoMedia doesn't do anything in set time slots. Like if this runs for an hour or 40 minutes or one hour and six minutes, that's what we need to talk about. But at CNBC, a 30 minute slot is a 30 minute slot.

And if you haven't filled that 20 minutes, find somewhere to fill the two minutes. And if you've gone over, well, no, they're just going to cut it. So all those things don't work. The last two parts that I found very frustrating at CNBC were at CNBC, you're trained not to have an opinion. So you're trained to ask all the right questions. It's real journalism.

And journalism is about asking all the right questions and not swaying the discussion in any real way and really just getting the information out of people. But crypto people don't want that. They want to know, like, hey, if this bill passes or this bill just passed, then what does that affect in my portfolio? And what are the risks? And that's one thing which you'll never see on CNBC. They'll never give you their opinion.

They'll never give you the what if. And crypto people need that guidance. And so that's the gap that we're aiming to fill is to say, we're not journalistic. We're journalistic to an extent, but this is our lives. We call it a credible crypto reality show. And that's what we're basically building. Right. So rather than reporting the news, you're commenting on it. Correct. You're taking in the news and then you're giving your own opinion and the opinion of other experts on what it's going to mean. Correct. And we're not bound as much by the CNBC rules of journalism. And again, if I look at that, I think that may be slightly old media. And I say this respectfully, like suits and ties in my mind don't exude credibility, not in this new world.

Studios, again, I much more respect Raoul Paul from his lounge than I respect the guy in a CNBC studio with a shirt and tie. And I think that specifically in an industry that's as complicated as crypto, people want a helping hand and they want to follow you. Now, the one thing you can say about CNBC is that they're very credible, but on the flip side of it, you can say that CNBC is not a community. You don't feel like you're part of the CNBC community, no matter how much you watch it. And if you look at the banter community, we have in six months built a community of 300 and something thousand on YouTube.

The Twitter accounts, probably another 500,000 in a couple of months. And those people are a community. They're a family. 87% of all our viewers are subscribers. We have the same people in our chats every single day. And I mean, we have 10,000 in the peak of the bull market, 20,000 people watching us live.

Today, in the earlier show that I did, I had 10,000 people watching us live. And they are part of the community. They feel like they're part of the banter family. And we treat them like family. And I'll tell you what I mean. We, having seen the credibility of crypto YouTubers in general, and I'm generalizing here, I'm not going to point out any specific people. There is a massive credibility issue

in crypto. And the problem is that when you tune into a YouTube channel to listen or to get the opinion of the host or the journalism, the problem is that most of those shows are paid for by tokens. And a lot of the tokens that are spoken about are paid for to shill. And I know this because I get emails every single day saying, look, will you do a video? Will you shill my token? Will you talk about my token? In fact, it got so bad that I was approached by a token last week. And they said, hey, one of the other YouTubers, and they mentioned the name, spoke about this on his show. Would you like to speak about our token? We will pay you $6,000 just for speaking about the token. So I replied i said i don't know i mean i was quite angry about it i said

i don't know why anybody would sell their credibility for six thousand dollars and the reply i got from the guy was sorry i meant to type sixteen thousand dollars but left out the one would you like to chat? So what is your price? So what is your price is the question then? That's what they're asking, right? That's the problem. The problem is that crypto YouTubers in general accept payments to review tokens. And for me, the minute that you accept payment to review a token, then you're not credible about it. And then your whole YouTube channel is gone. So to protect the banter family, what we've said is we don't accept any money for any paid reviews by any token whatsoever. We haven't, and we probably won't for a while, accept any payment

from any token for any reason. Okay. Now we are looking to make one or two exceptions, which we will disclose to the banter fam. And only because we think that those products can help our communities and we want to talk about them. But ultimately, we try to maintain our credibility by not accepting any payment from any token. At the same time, we've put in other things in place. Things like if we tweet or talk about a token, no member of our production team or our hosts can buy or sell that token for two days before and two days after.

So you want to talk about it, that's cool. Don't buy it or sell it for two days. And we know the addresses of people in our team, and we monitor it to try and protect our community. So what we're on a mission to do is to say, look, we do use YouTube as our medium, but we don't want to be classified as these YouTuber influencers because that's not what we do. We're actually building a 24-7, 365, credible, curated streaming media platform. Yep. That makes perfect sense. And it's been absolutely insane to watch your growth because I was on Crypto Banter right when you

started and there were like 200 people watching. And I came on a month later and it was 10,000 or something crazy like that. Or maybe two months later. I really don't understand because obviously I have a YouTube channel and it's a fifth of what your guys is. And we started about the same time. It's really, I mean, it really is a testament to what you're doing, that you have such an absolutely huge and massive audience. So really quick, I want to touch on something you mentioned before. You said, you know, we're not reporting the news. We're obviously, as we mentioned, you're reviewing the news and talking about what it means. Well, one of the biggest news pieces that you mentioned is the bill, right? Everybody's talking about this infrastructure bill in the Senate. As we're recording now, it's Monday. So they've stopped talking about the bill,

basically have assumedly, although we don't know for sure, have accepted the amendment that nobody in crypto wants. So I'm curious what your take is on this entire crazy cycle, because it dominated the news cycle for days. So interestingly enough, you're watching the Bitcoin price now. We're at the worst case scenario in terms of the legislation. In terms of legislation, the bill that may be passed is the one with no amendments,

which is the absolute worst case scenario for crypto. But funny enough, on the news of that, Bitcoin has gone through the 200-day moving average and hopefully it will close above the 200-day moving average. And hopefully it will close above the 200-day moving average. And you kind of got to read between the lines and say, why is this happening that Bitcoin is breaking through the 200-day moving average on the same day we're in the biggest country in the world? We are facing probably the most cumbersome legislation that kind of puts America out of the game. That's kind of where it is.

To me, the answer is twofold. The first thing is that if the law is implemented, there is absolutely no way that they can enforce it. Making a law that they will, you cannot expect every single person who touches crypto to fill in a 1099 form every time they buy and sell crypto. It's just ludicrous. Okay. So it'll be an unenforceable law at best. Okay. The second thing is, I think the world is watching the United States and saying, wow, look how these people are passing laws. Look at how much they are spending.

They're spending, they're passing an infrastructure bill, which is huge and unthought through they doing it because they need to rescue the economy because of what they've done to the economy and the only way to do it is to spend excessively and to get people back into jobs and to get the economy to really grow so it's not the stock market disconnected from the economy and i think that the smart money is going hold on a second if this is how the people are passing laws, if this is how far they're willing to go to tax possibly the most promising industry in the world right now, and the one which the US needs to win at so badly because China's winning,

they're going to tax this industry now and stifle innovation that probably would have given the USA rewards in many years. But they're looking at this and going now and stifle innovation that probably would have given the USA rewards in many years. But they're looking at this and going, no, no, no. We'd rather tax it now and stifle it and let our kids worry about it because we're not going to be here and we're not going to need to get reelected by them and then it becomes somebody else's problem. And I think the smart money is looking at this and saying, you know what, hold on a second. Bitcoin, even though there's going to be this new tax, is out of this negligent system. And so they're saying, even though this tax is coming in, we're buying Bitcoin because this is our exit ticket from the system. The numbers don't lie.

If you look at who's buying Bitcoin today, and I looked at it a few minutes ago. It is small accounts. So small accounts, new accounts between zero and one Bitcoin are starting to buy Bitcoin or buying a lot of Bitcoin. That is people panicking. That's people saying, I'm watching this on TV. I'm reading the press headlines. I am panicking about what's going on. I'm going to start buying Bitcoin as a result. And that's what's happening, I think. That's really interesting because the argument was that we hit 65,000, obviously, with Bitcoin. The market topped. Everybody was talking about it. We had this massive retail wave. And then those were the people who lost all their money and they weren't going to come back. But that's not the case now, right? Let's differentiate between retail

and degen retail. We have to do that because it's actually two different markets. So on the one side, you have retail, responsible retail, your mom, my mom, friends who want to protect their money and are buying Bitcoin as a store of value and to protect their money. That's retail one. Then there's degen retail And DGN retail wouldn't be coming in now because the prices aren't moving high enough, fast enough now. And they wouldn't be comfortable enough taking leverage now. And those were the guys that got wrecked. And they got wrecked because we kind of had a small blow off top where people came here to make money because you couldn't lose because market only go up. Market go one way up.

Price only go up. And they took way up. Price only go up. And they took leverage. And those were the guys that were wiped out. But look at the leverage numbers now. The leverage numbers are, I mean, we're close to, there's nothing there. There's no leverage there. Yeah, it's incredible. When we saw that, you know, the long squeeze on the way down, it was like $10 billion liquidated from 60 to 50.

Now we're talking about the massive short squeezes that are happening, which are like $200 million, a literal fraction of what got eliminated on the way down. Guys, I'm really excited to be sponsored by Harmony. I know all of us have traded their coin one in the past, but what they're fundamentally doing is a game changer. Harmony is your open platform for assets, collectibles, identity, and governance. Think of it as the one to bridge all blockchains. Harmony is open and insanely fast with two-second transaction finality and 100 times lower fees than Ethereum. Their secure bridges offer cross-chain asset transfers with Ethereum, Binance, and almost every single other chain. Maybe most exciting is that Harmony, in cooperation with Sushi, will be providing $4

million in incentives for liquidity mining. Find out more about this program and build something yourself at thewolfofallstreets.link slash Harmony. That's thewolfofallstreets.link slash Harmony. Build on Harmony, run on all chains. I'm much happier in this market because I know how to read if the market's getting overheated. I'm just looking at the leverage numbers and the leverage numbers are cool. So the market's not overheated. So I'm happy to keep buying at these levels because there's no blow off top. Also, I think it was Willy Woo or William Clemente or both who showed that usually in a blow off top, you have a lot of retail buying with a lot

of retail leverage for a long time. And here, we just had one mini spike and they got washed out, and that was the end of it. And that's why this is possibly much more a 2013-type scenario, or even a 2017-type scenario, where there's a top in April, there's a correction to end of July, and then August to January is full steam ahead. So I'm curious then, do you think that we are finally seeing real steps towards mainstream adoption? And do you think, because to me, the story of this bill, I mean, you really spoke well about it, but it's also just, I would have never imagined a year ago or even a month ago that we'd be on the world stage like this. That an infrastructure bill that's 2,700 pages long and a trillion dollars would be held up by a nascent industry like crypto that doesn't even have a lobby, right? It's not like they

sent lobbyists to Washington that froze this bill for days in 2017 i think we all doubted whether crypto would actually even even the real believers it was a gamble is crypto really going to be a thing isn't it and i could have never imagined and i mean i remember in 2017, when newspapers used to publish small articles on crypto, like in the New York Times, it was a big thing. The price of Bitcoin used to run because the New York Times on page three published a story about Bitcoin. Fast forward three years later, four years later, every single newspaper in the world had a front page or a second or a third page this weekend about how congress has stalled the biggest infrastructure bill of our generation i think that was the words that they used because of cryptocurrency and so yeah you want to talk about you want to talk about

mainstream adoption we're there we're there there's 140 million Bitcoin accounts, if I'm not mistaken, 145 million Bitcoin accounts. We're now at the point where the growth in accounts is exponential. I read an article the other day, which said, I think the same report that everybody's read, that the numbers doubled since January. But the better thing is that we're growing now at about between five and 700,000 new Bitcoin accounts per day. That was in the bear market. Okay. Now do the math. That's 15 million new accounts per month in the bear market. Imagine what it's going to be when they tell you the numbers for August. 20 million accounts. That is another 15% onto Bitcoin's total accounts.

So we're now in that exponential phase of adoption. And I think that now we're still early. We've been early if we got in up until now. But I kind of think that anything later than now, you weren't at the late stage of early, but you were at the early stage of mass adoption, if you know what I mean. So we're at the tipping point now. And I think we're also at a point now where you just can't deny that cryptocurrency is going to survive forever. Bitcoin is going to be around for many, many, many, many years. It's not going to be killed by any law. I mean, if Congress is stalling on how to tax this thing, they've seen the money

and they are for sure not going to cancel Bitcoin. You see the growth in NFTs, NFT gaming. You see the growth in DeFi, $200 billion total value locked on Ethereum. You look at that and you go, you know what? It's a different world. You can't deny it. And it's now a question of how quickly this is going to get adoption and not whether this is going to get adoption. So where do you think then,

mentioning Ethereum and all the total value locked, the interplay between Bitcoin and Ethereum moving forward, what has you excited or even doubtful about either? And how do you think they compare to one another? The problem I have here is if I talk about this on the podcast and you air it, then I'm going to get the Twitter swarms. I'm going to get the wasps, the Bitcoin maximalists. But I think that, look, they're both very exciting. Bitcoin has proven itself as a store of value and is capitalizing on the store of value in the world. And just something interesting for you to look at.

I know we're airing this three or four days later. The last four days or five days of gold candles have been negative. The last five days of Bitcoin candles have been negative. The last five days of Bitcoin candles have been positive. There is clearly, clearly, clearly a correlation there between people pulling out their money out of gold and putting it into Bitcoin. There's no other way in the world that you can look at it. There is, the correlation is too uncanny.

So I think Bitcoin has proven itself as a store of value. It has a $1 trillion market cap. And I think it will continue to the 10, 11, 12, and eventually $20 billion market cap, trillion dollar market cap. Why do I think it will be better than gold? Because I think by the time it does that, there will have been so much inflation

and so many new dollars printed that there'll be so much more money to put in there. And so kind of like right now, I say to our community and I say to anyone that I speak to, if you're taking profits on your Bitcoin, then you're a fool. You should be taking profits into Bitcoin. Right now, for me, the base currency is Bitcoin. And when I say I'm taking profits, actually what I mean is I'm taking profit into Bitcoin. And I never, ever take profits on my Bitcoin because to me, if I take profits on my Bitcoin into US dollar shitcoin, then I'm buying a token with broken tokenomics that is going to zero. And that's something that I really don't encourage anyone

to do. So we have two investment philosophies. The one is you take profits into Bitcoin, not onto Bitcoin. And the other investment philosophy, which takes me to Ethereum is investing protocols that will change the world and then just sit back and give them enough time to do their thing. And that's exactly what I did with Ethereum. I invested in Ethereum just after ICO at like $9 and $7 and whatever else. And I've been sitting there. I don't think, I've never sold an Ethereum in my long-term bag, but I have obviously traded in and out of Ethereum into shit coins, if you want to call it that. And I find Ethereum actually much more exciting. And the reason why I find Ethereum much more exciting than Bitcoin is

Ethereum is a platform which is going to host multiple economies. And these economies are based on experimentation, creating things that never actually existed a while back. And two of those experiments so far have been very successful. DeFi has been, it was an experiment which was incredibly successful. And the second one has been NFTs, which didn't even exist and now is incredibly successful. And I think that one day there are going to be a hundred of these experiments that have been successful. Now the gas or the oil

that's powering this economy is Ether, is the token Ether. And from December or from when proof of stake mining comes in, that's going to be deflationary. So you kind of think about a city that's being built with multiple towns and you say, the more these towns are built, the more we're going to take away the cement, the concrete and the bricks and everything else. And then you just imagine we're going to take away the cement, the concrete and the bricks and everything else. And then you just imagine what's going to happen to the towns, to all the prices of all the building material.

And that's why I think that Ether is a much better bet than Bitcoin right now. Bitcoin is one successful experiment which has succeeded and is now reaping the rewards of its success. Ethereum is actually a bet on 100 different economies that may or may not succeed. And when they do, it's also deflationary, which is like, it's not enough that you're building 100 economies. You also want to make the gas that powers them deflationary. Are you guys out of your minds, that's exactly what they did with EIP-1559. Yeah. I tend to agree with you. So you can know that you'll be safe from the maximalists because I've said similar things on this channel enough times that people have come to expect it. But listen, I think Bitcoin is the most important asset

ever created, but I think Ethereum is maybe the most exciting. And it's the better trade certainly, I think, has far more upside. So that said, your average person probably comes into crypto and they touch Bitcoin and they get a little interested and maybe they buy a little bit of Ethereum because they hear about that. At what point do you think your average person can or should become comfortable going further down the risk tail to the smaller tokens? I think that if you're going to learn about the space, then you should do it. I think that if you're not committed in the space, and I say committed, maybe not full-time, but certainly a number of hours every day, then you shouldn't be going down the rabbit hole. Then I suggest buy Bitcoin, buy Ethereum, buy an index of hours every day, then you shouldn't be going down the rabbit hole. Then I suggest buy Bitcoin, buy Ethereum,

buy an index of the top 10, buy a DeFi index. That's the best strategy if you want to make money. The reason why I say that is because if you're not in the space and you don't have your finger on the pulse, then the space is risky and it moves really, really fast. And really, really, like big moves really fast. And that makes a lot of people really uncomfortable.

So like my theory here is Bitcoin and Ethereum, or if you're in the space, then I break it down into three portfolios. First portfolio is a huddle portfolio. It's a one-way portfolio, which you never ever, you can deposit, but you can't withdraw. And my analogy is you should probably keep that at a custodian and not have the passwords to call the custodian and draw the money. That's actually what I've done. So I don't really manage my crypto. I just send it to a custodian and I don't have the

access to the custodian. It's a bunch of trustees who would have to deal with it if I ever wanted the money off. And that stops me from digging into the HODL portfolio. Now, my HODL portfolio is Bitcoin, Ethereum. 90% of my HODL portfolio is Bitcoin, Ethereum. And then I've started throwing things like LINK, Cardano, and I don't know, kind of maybe dot into that portfolio. But 90% of that HODL portfolio is actually Bitcoin and Ethereum. And those two

have achieved network effect. We know that they're almost unstoppable. And so I can keep just throwing money and locking it up and then it never, ever comes out. And that accounts for about 50% of my total crypto holdings. The other 35% or 35% of the other 50% is in what really, really strong gems. And I never trade in and out. So 85% of my portfolio, I never, ever, ever trade in and out. It's just a one-way. You buy and we stick to our investment thesis, again, which is invest in protocols that are going to change the world and then sit back and give them enough time to actually change the world. The reason why I do that is because if I look at the successful investors in any big company,

Robinhood, Uber, they didn't have liquidity. And so then they weren't able to sell their shares or their tokens. And therefore, they made millions of dollars doing it. Now, had I had access to those shares, I probably would have sold some of them to try and take profits, get money off the table. So my rule is on 85% of my portfolio, I never, ever take profits. Then I've got 15% of my portfolio, which is runs speculative, degen, blow yourself up. Don't ever spend more than 1% of that portfolio. So not even, even half a percent, blow yourself up, but you're looking for outsized returns. So invest half a percent of the portfolio of 15. So invest small chunks, but look for outsized returns. And that's the part of the portfolio that I do trade in and out of. So I'll invest

in early stage stuff. I'll trade in and out. When I trade in and out, I take profits into Bitcoin, not on my Bitcoin. And it just basically, I just keep building more and more and more and more and more Bitcoin. And that's the objective. I never look at USD. Like I'm severely, severely, severely allergic to USD. I developed a terrible allergy to USD. So how do you live your life on a daily basis if most of your activities are within the crypto ecosystem? so before, um, before I got into crypto, uh, before I even got into crypto before I did CNBC, we,

I had a very successful marketing business in Africa and I sold that business. Um, I mean, it's pretty public, so I can talk about it, but in the range of a hundred and I'm not going to mention the exact number, but say in the range of between a hundred and $150 million. Um, and that was my first decision. I can't say that because I signed a confidentiality when I sold the business that I wouldn't disclose the numbers.

And so I'm just scared to tiptoe around that. Of course. I sold the business for that range of numbers. And, you know, I took the money and I invested the money, like a small percentage of it into Bitcoin. And so my living expenses are pretty much covered by my past transaction. That said, I always tell people that there's like three or four reasons in life where you can take profits on the 85% of the

portfolio. The one is your market outlook has changed. You just think that, you know, they take dollars out of circulation or the market outlook changes. We make decisions based on the market outlook changing. The second reason is that you need living expenses. So you've got cash flow. And then you can say, look, I limit myself to taking out $10,000 a month or $5,000 a month or $3,000 a month. And that's the reason why you do it. Yeah, I mean, those are the two main reasons why I would take profit from the main portfolio. I mean, I think capital recovery is another one.

So if you invest in a small cap gem and you put in $150,000 or $20,000 and you can get your capital back so that you can have another entry ticket into the next one, then that's the third reason why you could take profits. Yeah, that completely makes sense. So it's interesting. You have a trading portfolio, which is 15%, but it's not so that you can be a professional trader and live off the income that you make from that trading. It's just really so you can compound more Bitcoin and take those moonshots. And maybe you'll buy 10 of them and one will do 100X and nine will go to zero and you get more Bitcoin. So even that, I don't actually trade it. I degen. Let's call that degen. 15% of my portfolio is absolute complete degen. Extremely risky investments. Yeah. Yield farming in brand new farms with 5,000% APYs.

Investing in pre-market allocations for gaming and stuff like that. And typically it's very, very, very small bets. So you take small bets with maximum upsized return. I'll talk to you through like what I mean. Typically I'd invest between 10 and $50,000 per chunk, but I'm expecting those ones to do 10, 15, 20, 30 X. I'm not going in there to make 20, 30% return. That's not the game. I don't trade with charts like you guys do where you're looking for in and out. I don't do that. I don't have time to draw the charts. I'm not a trader. I'm always a bad trader. Yeah, I'm an investor. I invest and

I try and invest in things early. We caught video gaming very early. We caught a whole lot of those very early. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So do you ever see a time when Ethereum could flip Bitcoin? It has. It just depends what you call a flip. If you call a flip in terms of a market cap, that's inevitable. And I think it could even be at the end of this bull cycle, whenever this bull cycle is. But on all other metrics, other than total users, Ethereum is eclipsing Bitcoin hands down. Total value transacted daily, even though Bitcoin transacts in big chunks and Ethereum transacts in micro chunks, Ethereum is bigger than Bitcoin. Number of transaction, Ethereum is multiple bigger than

Bitcoin. Developer community and VC money flowing into projects, Ethereum has eclipsed Bitcoin. More money is going into VC around Ethereum than is going into VC around Bitcoin, again, by a multiple. Growth of accounts, so not actual accounts, but growth rates of accounts, Ethereum has eclipsed Bitcoin and is eclipsing Bitcoin. So for all intents and purposes, on every single metric other than two, which is actual number of accounts where Bitcoin has an eight-year head start on Ethereum and actual total market cap where Bitcoin has a three to four-year gap on Ethereum because that's when the institutions started to accept Bitcoin.

You know, Bitcoin, an institution may have accepted Bitcoin in 2017. There's not a chance they'd be looking at Ethereum. Right. And so on every other metric, Ethereum has flipped Bitcoin, which means to me that it's inevitable that on a market cap, total market cap,

Ethereum eclipses Bitcoin unless the technology breaks. And I don't think the technology is going to break. Right. Even trading volume has eclipsed Bitcoin, which is pretty astounding when you think about it. So I'm curious, you talked about this massive exit you had from your marketing company. You clearly could have retired young, said, forget it. I'm going to live on a boat. I'm going to live on a beach. You could have done whatever you want. And instead, you've committed your life 24-7, 365 to crypto.

Don't get me wrong. I retired for about 45 seconds. Now, the truth is, the way I see it, I am retired. And this does not really work. I think in the marketing company, every day when I went to work, I felt like, you know, there were 1,550 people. There were clients that I had to service every single day. I was on the treadmill. I was chasing this, you know, we had, you know, can you imagine the payroll for 1,550 people?

And officers, 70 officers around the world, around the continent. Can you imagine the stress on a CEO that's managing that um it was insane and the size of the organization just made me have to work all day doing presentations to clients presentations to staff communication all the crap that i didn't want to do um and now to be honest like this is work we buy land in video games we call it work we we play video games to understand how x infinity works and then i have to go home and with a clear conscience tell my kids that i actually work i have no clients because i don't i don't really take sponsorship advertising i have no clients i report to no one. That's not work. We have a huge team now.

And the majority of the team are volunteers. There's no payroll. It's volunteers. You want to work for crypto banks? That's cool. You're a volunteer. I mean, there are obviously the paid staff, but I'd say 80% of our full-time staff are volunteers.

Like, that's not work. We have a, it's, it's, it's, you know what I feel? And you've got kids, so you'll really understand this. Most people who don't have kids won't understand this, but you know, when I get home, that's when I start to work. Cause then I get, I got a young kid, then I get a kid, then I got to do bath time. Then I got to do reading time and weekends. I mean, weekends are stressful because from Saturday to Sunday,

you've got to keep these kids entertained. And that's, that's hard work. Like what are we doing? Where are we eating? I don't like this switch on switch off pepper pig switch. That's work. When I come to the office on Monday morning and I open the laptop, it's, I get that smell of coconut. Like I'm lying on the beach.'m like oh i'm here i can relax now and then i'm in my happy place so my wife always says you know what you work too hard and my response is i don't remember the last time i actually worked this is not work it's fun right and if you weren't doing this it seems like you're the type of person who would find something else that wasn't work to spend most of your time on? You know, we should thank our lucky stars that we are in the industry that we are in the position

that we are in. It can be so financially lucrative because you should be grateful that you can be part of this movement at such an early stage. You can have so much fun doing what you're doing. You can change the world through what you and I are doing. I mean, we're the megaphone that tells people change the world and we make money doing this. Like we should, we should pay to do this. Like that's how good it is. I absolutely agree with that. Scott, if there was no Bitcoin, we'd be having board meetings and shit. We would be managing employees and I can't even imagine it. I simply just cannot imagine. Then I would probably be retired. I would just be one of the oldest DJs in the world trying to maintain some semblance of sanity, partying with 20-year-old kids, which was already problematic in my mid-30s when I was still

doing that. I think that you're absolutely right. I think any parent would understand, not that we don't enjoy the work, but there's definitely that sense of relief when you sit down and get to do what you love when you're done giving the bath to the kid that you love, of course. But it really resonates with me. It's a very similar sort of feeling. But do you ever feel like you'll just not want to do it and you'll just go sit on that beach? When it stops being fun, I'll stop doing it. And like, look, it's not always going to be fun.

But if you live your life through phases, long phases where it's not fun, that's where I draw the line. And I'll tell you, like I had an epiphany very, like a while back. And the epiphany was that we always try and fool ourselves as to how hard things actually were. So when we talk about the past, like when we look at the past, always like, oh, that was much better then. But if I would have talked to you in the past, you would have said to me,

no, I'm not that happy, et cetera. So when I lived in New York, and that was like a couple of years ago, and New York's a tough place to live and I really wasn't enjoying New York. And I used to complain a lot. And one day I said, you know what, write down your happiness score. And I created this like thing in my head of like, how happy am I? Am I a five out of 10 or a six out of 10 or a seven out of 10? And what I realized was I was a

five for too much of the time. Whereas like now I'm a 9.97 every single day of my life. Like maybe it's 9.92, but I'm like, I'm close to 10 every single day. And then what I realized was that if you're not doing something, if you're not happy doing something, get out now, because the problem is that you will eventually just be a five for the rest of your life and you should aim to be a 10 happy. And so if I go through periods in this industry where I'm five for long periods of time, because obviously it's going to be hard times and good times and bad times. But if I get like three months periods and four months periods where I'm under like a seven, I'm out. Like I've got to change the way I do things. I'm out. But for now I'm like a 9.97. Like I couldn't imagine anything better I'd be

doing, rather be doing. So let's do it. Let's stay here for now. Do you think that crypto can offer that sort of opportunity to the average person? The person who is living check to check and is on the treadmill and maybe doesn't see an escape from that. If you're investing, then your moods are governed by the move in the market. And in 2017, at the end of 2017, my moods were governed by the movement of the markets. I'd wake up in the morning, the market's up, happy day. Two days in a row, the market's up, we're all happy. And you can see on Twitter that the sentiment of people is driven by the price of Bitcoin. Today, we're all friends. A month ago, there was so much saltiness out there that we

used to kick people out of the YouTube channel, people blaming other people for their losses. When they were warned a hundred times not to enter things without doing research, when they were told to have a stop loss, when they were told to invest in protocols that would change the world, and then sit back. And instead of sitting back and letting them change the world, they sold when the price was at the rock bottom because their emotions got the better of them.

So I think if your mood is governed by the price of crypto, you're in trouble. But if your mood is governed by what we do, and that is believing in projects that are going to do stuff long-term and understand the market's going to oscillate above and below fair value for these things in massive movements. But ultimately watching the, like you look at NFT gaming now, and you look at entire nations that can be lifted out of poverty because their people have an internet computer

and they can play a video game. I don't care about the price of Axie Infinity. I don't care about the price of these games. I don't care about the price of Ethereum. I care about the fact that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people can change their lives because of a new industry with zero friction. Now, I think that that level of innovation is going to be here for a while. So if you base your mood on innovation and real metrics, you'll be here for a while. If you base it on market conditions, then you won't. And I'll tell you again what I think here. If you believe with conviction, like we believe with conviction, then I'm actually much happier

when the price goes down. So there are a lot of tokens I still need to buy. I need to fill my bags and now the market's running too fast for me. I want to buy a whole lot more Bitcoin. And I wanted to exit some positions and buy some Bitcoin, some non-crypto positions and buy some more Bitcoin. But I'd prefer them. I'd be happy if the market was under 40. I know it sounds bad, but I would be happy if the market was under 40. And so if you believe in something with so much conviction, then prices down is actually a blessing. And that's where I'm at now. Yeah, it's an opportunity for anyone. When you're thinking about Bitcoin as a retirement account, and not just for you, but for your children and your grandchildren, then every opportunity to buy cheaper is just something that you die for. I mean, they really look forward to it you know what i love i love protocol hacks i love it when my favorite protocols get hacked and people run away because

they think it's the end of the world and then i look at protocols like rune thought chain and i go wow three dollars 85 this is like christmas came early and then you go all in at three dollars 85 and then you just got more in your bag. So I don't know, protocol hacks, great thing. Yeah, protocol hack, great thing as long as the coins don't disappear and it's not a debilitating hack that ends it. So one thing that you touched on, I know before we get done, you said that everybody who works for you is effectively a volunteer, like 80% of the people at Banter are volunteers. Why do they volunteer to be a part of this? And is there some interest in the portfolio or in your investments and they see the upside or they literally just are that passionate they want to be there? They're that passionate that they want to be there.

They create all our logos, all our animations, all our social media is all done by volunteers who are not paid. We get newsletters written daily by volunteers we get translations into spanish and korean by volunteers um we get and we don't pay them and we don't manage them so we just sit back and let them do their thing why because banter is a family it's it's the ultimate in community uh where we recognize you if you add value. We recognize you on the show. People recognize you on Twitter and on Telegram. And it's not about the finances.

Like, Scott, we don't advertise on our channel. There's no revenue on the channel. You know, banter is banter. I think we did one deal with one company just because we thought it would add value to our community. It's called Coin Panel. We thought it would add value to our community. It's called CoinPanel. We thought it would add value to our community, so we did it. We might do one with TradingView now because we may get some real discounts for our community. But there's no money in, it's just a family.

And we've built this amazingly loyal community. And to be honest, I think the community is way bigger than me. And I'll tell you how I know this. We introduced a second host of a second show, Sheldon. His show is bigger than mine. The guy went from zero Twitter. He didn't even know how to tweet. I was like, Sheldon, let me show you how to tweet.

He went from zero Twitter followers to I think he's got 150,000 Twitter followers in three months. And that's the power of the banter community. If you're part of the family here, you get adopted by the whole family. And, you know, that's, they're all, everyone is logo animation, volunteer, social media, volunteer,

graphics, volunteers. It's all done by volunteers. That's really incredible. So where do you see the community going? Obviously, it's hard to guess after only six months, but that kind of growth in six months, where are you in three years, 10 years? Interesting that we had a good community,

but then we also got a whole lot of tourists who came just for a while because the markets were running. And we used to get like 250,000 views on every show or 200,000 views on a show when you add up all the mediums. And that was after like four months in existence. And then when the bear market came, you know, the tourists have left and the real people in the community are there and they're there every single day.

They make notes. They send it to the rest of the community. So where is the community going to go? Well, we're building three pillars to our business. One is the streaming 24-7, 365, credible streaming. We're launching a whole lot of new programs. The next program we're launching is called In The Game. And that is a program about buying in-game assets.

So not tokens, but in-game land and stuff like that. The next part of our business is we're launching our website next month. And that is a website to rival CNBC, but only in crypto. So journalism, research reports, pricing, stuff like that. And so we're building a whole editorial team and the third part of our business is we're launching crypto school and crypto school is free uh it is three verticals of school one is you've never owned crypto and you want to get into crypto so we take you straight through from not knowing anything to building your first portfolio hit the history of money what is decentralization what is bitcoin what is ethereum what is a centralized exchange, a decentralized exchange, what are the scams,

how to send Bitcoin, all of that. And then the second part of that is what we call sniper school, which is around making money out of crypto, staking, research, technical analysis. And the third part of it is school for institutions. And that is how to store Bitcoin on the balance sheet, how to reward customers with Bitcoin, how to accept payments in Bitcoin, how to account for all of that. And crypto school is free. And the objective is to put a million people through crypto school by the end of 2022. We're launching it now. The applications are open open i think the school starts next week the actual lectures start next week and the objective is to put a million people through school by 2022

school becomes a feeder for the show the show becomes a feeder for the website the website the journalism creates more stories for the website for the show the show creates more stories for the journalists which bring more people into the school the journalism creates more stories for the website, for the show. The show creates more stories for the journalists, which bring more people into the school. The school brings more people into the show. And that's the pattern, the network effect that we're trying to get. So it becomes the core community of the crypto world. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah. A million people. Yeah. Well, that's it.

We have a plan. I mean, we're not just saying a million people. well that's it we have a plan I mean we're not just saying a million people we actually have like yeah we're launching now with a hundred people we're testing it

it's going to take us 11 hours of lecturing to test it and then if that works then we're going to switch on the taps

and go for the one million plan and it's free so a million people are going to get schooled for free. There's no, at Banter, we don't charge anyone

for anything ever. Absolutely incredible to see what you're building. I know that we're kind of out of time here. So where can people check out Banter and follow you after this? So the website is CryptoBanter.com

and the YouTube is obviously YouTube Crypto Banter. Yeah, I think that's the best two places on Twitter. I'm at CryptoManRun and on Twitter, we are at Crypto underscore banter. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It's incredible to see somebody putting so much effort into the community for free, right? Yeah, i must say um i'm i as much as we've achieved i must say i've been watching your channel and um i'm a big fan i think i've been a vocal fan on twitter of this channel thank you um i think that your ability to get the biggest names in crypto onto your stream is unbelievable um and you get them regularly like know, I can see that there's a pattern developing

where these people are coming back to your channel. So I think the caliber of guests and what you managed to get out of those guests. I mean, we look at this and we go, how can we be more like Scott sometimes? So well done to you. The growth that you're achieving is amazing. I couldn't appreciate that more

because we look at you guys are like, how can we get that many people to show up for our live streams? So the feeling is absolutely mutual. Well, thanks once again. And now we can put you into that cycle where I will come back every couple of months and talk again. I'll be back and I'll see you on my show, I think this week too. Oh, that's right. Thank you.