The Wolf Of All Streets - Only Bitcoin | Mike Germano, Bitcoin Miami Founder

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

In this episode of The Wolf Of All Streets, Mike Germano, founder of Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin Miami, discusses the highly-anticipated Bitcoin Miami 2023 conference. As a key figure in the cryptocurrency industry, Mike shares his insights and thoughts on the current state of the market, and announces exciting speakers who will be joining the event. Viewers can also enjoy a special promo code to save on tickets. Learn more about the future of Bitcoin and what to expect at the world's largest Bitcoin-only conference in this engaging interview. Mike Germano: https://twitter.com/mikegermano ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►BITGET GET UP TO A $8,000 BONUS IN USDT AND GET MASSIVE DISCOUNTS ON TRADING FEES! 👉 https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bitget    ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Bitcoin 2022 was the largest Bitcoin conference in the world. And the second largest Bitcoin conference in the world will be Bitcoin 2023. I talked to Mike Germano, who is the man behind the entire thing, has been building Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin conference almost since the inception. He shared why they're Bitcoin only, why Bitcoin is so important, and what they're planning for the future. You guys do not want to miss this incredible conversation. You run, arguably, I think by any metric, the largest Bitcoin conference on planet Earth. Can you talk about how that happened in just a matter of three or four years?

Yeah. So once again, that's the Bitcoin conference. People even call it Bitcoin Miami, but we go by Bitcoin 2023. Look, I feel very fortunate if I get to be the president of the company, that runs the conference and also runs Bitcoin Magazine. And so a lot of the success from the conference stems from really being, I think, helping grow the Bitcoin community over many years and providing them with great content for what we've done on the on the on the magazine media side launching our conference in

2019 uh the bitcoin conference 2019 in san francisco you know you had less than 2 000 people but the energy was there was great 2020 you know you go and obviously covet hits and the world stops right so you can't have a conference there uh that's a problem and then 2021 and i think a lot of the the growth for our conference is 2021 everyone else while they were all still willing to have a virtual conference we were like you know fuck it you know let's let's do this and went to miami so obviously california which i think is still in lockdown and still doesn't let you do anything. You know, we were lucky enough to go to Florida where they were, you know, cared about freedom, which was obviously core to what we were trying to do. And it really became such a celebration.

I think we're the one of the largest conferences in 2021 because it was even one doing insane at Manowynwood. I mean, it was even, I know being in the core of COVID there, but that was insane. I know for a fact beyond your own expectations, because there are about twice as many people as that venue fit trying to get in. Absolutely. So, you know, we had fire marshals. We were bursting at the seams there.

And really, I think that put such a great energy within our company, knowing that we had done the right thing, you know, focusing on Bitcoin only and being able to, you know, put on this conference when once again, a million things could have gone wrong. You know, we could have lost our I don't know, another COVID wave could have went through and could have lost the license to host the event. I mean, so it was one of those classic high risk high rewards, obviously 2021, then 2022 moved it to Miami Beach Convention, so we had 27,000 attendees. And those are real attendees. Those aren't like Sean Spicer attendee announcements that the other conference makes. These are like real numbers.

And so, you know, look, it's a lot of pressure and stress. And we have an unbelievable team that obviously does the majority of the work to make this all possible. But people set high expectations and we set high expectations for ourselves. And it's not just a Bitcoin conference. I mean, I feel like it's a total freedom conference. So while we might not be talking about other altcoins or blockchain technology, we're talking about the freedom and I think making sure that you are a permissionless fun company culture. Yeah. Last year, I was recording podcasts on site and had no really concept for how big it was going to be, even though I had been at the Miami Beach Convention Center and I lived in Miami for years. We'd schedule things back to back and then it'll be like a 20- minute walk across three terminals of JFK to get from place to place.

That's how big it was for anyone who wasn't there. I mean, the scale was absurdly large and the energy was out of control. Well, thank you. I think that was one of the negatives that people gave us. It was too big. So, you know, we had the first time in a convention center of that size. So I think what we've done is we've actually more, we've closed it in a little bit. So it's not as, you don't have to go running around like the JFK airport, like you've stated, not like a scene from home alone. So it's going to be a little bit closer. The energy is all going

to be there. The expo hall is going to be kind of very exciting and, you know, with some big speakers and even bigger ones to announce. How much do you think the success of your conference and other conferences is determined strictly by the price of Bitcoin at the given time when people are buying tickets? I mean, I'm supposed to pretend like it isn't as big of an issue as it is. I'm supposed to say that people are going to come anyway, but the price does impact it. And I'm always curious that the attention, because the price is high, that people want to learn about it or that Bitcoiners feel a little bit more willing to spend because the Bitcoin price is high. But it does impact it. So, for example, we might not expect this conference to be as big as last year's. Right?

And that's okay. Once again, you can't double in size every year. So by this year, we'll start to be able to calculate actually how much the price does impact attendance. So you guys, obviously, as you said, are a voice for freedom way beyond just Bitcoin. And anyone who's read the magazine or been to the conferences clearly understands that. Can you give any sort of preview as to what we might see in 2023? I've seen, you know, David on Twitter challenging Greenpeace to energy debates and some pretty contentious comments surrounding that. I mean, are things like that going to happen this year? Because it does seem like you're

trending more towards the general freedom side. Yeah, I think especially even 2021 when we didn't require vax cards or face masks. And, you know, that was the biggest report from traditional media was like, oh, my gosh, they're not allowing masks, you know, and we're like... Super spreader event. Yeah, like you had the... Super spreader time. Yeah, no one died of nothing happened right so uh uh you know leaning into the the freedom side has always I think not just David our CEO is something

that he obviously cares a lot about but it's something that all the employees of the companies care about Bitcoiners come in all different are in it for all different reasons but I think freedom is fundamentally a big part of it so that kind of just bleeds through the conference itself. You know, I think last year, you know, we had some of the people from the Canadian truckers come and he got on stage and everyone was clapping. And he just said, he said recently, I think in a podcast, he was like, it was one of the coolest moments of his life because, you know, he was, he was sitting there around other people. He could tell actually cared about these things. So we think that that's something that resonates with our crowds, a good overlap. So I don't think you can go wrong on the freedom side. Obviously, you want to balance it out. You don't want just freedom for freedom's sake. And

where does that tie into Bitcoin? So we'll lean into that. But look, another big thing is let's think about all the companies that actually, I mean, right after our conference is when people started going under and everything from Celsius to Voyager, from FTX. So I think we need to have Sarah McLachlan playing like I Will Remember You and just have a black and white memoriam to all the companies that we lost. And people are angry and people want answers. So being able to, I think, also program some panels to discuss what went wrong and how to hold it accountable. So I think that there's bear market, building year, a little bit of anger. There'll be, I think, a little bit more interesting conversation and debate.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You guys are also the kings of massive announcements, and I know you're not going to hint at what's going to come, but I would like to assume that you are going to have some big things happening. Yeah. Look, it's, I think another, it's strange, right? Because we're, even though we can call ourselves the Bitcoin conference, obviously we're not Bitcoin, but the traditional press thinks we are. So, you know, look, there's a lot more press at our event than any other. And it's because they think, well, this is the Bitcoin conference, you know, and I'm like, I don't have time to explain

this to you. And so, you know, you have a lot of the traditional press coming. That's terrific. You know, and there's a lot of coverage there. That also then leads to people who are willing to make those announcements. Obviously, we're most famous for, you know, President Bukele in El Salvador. I think that we are definitely the platform for any country to make an announcement. We are also the platform for, if you think about it, more the mainstream companies that want to, which I'm excited about because it's mainstream companies that are looking at Bitcoin or saying, this is a consumer base that I not only want to attract, but a group of their values are values that we share as a company. So we want to start to interacting with them. And once again, part of

that is just number one, accepting Bitcoin before Bitcoiners can try to accept you. So that part of it, we're really primed to make those big announcements and have those stages. And I think you'll be happy with some of the announcements that we have coming. It's crazy that that El Salvador announcement was two years ago. I was obviously there. It was, wow. It was really powerful and incredible, even as we were sort of like,

price was wobbling at that point too. That was two years ago, yeah? Yeah. That was it, man. But are you surprised that we haven't seen more nation state adoption since then? Because I think on that day, everyone was like, it's happening. The entire world's going to accept Bitcoin next month.

And kind of a whimper. Well, look, I was down in El Salvador a week after that announcement. And that's when, you know, I'll never forget. We were down at one of the, I think the nicer hotel. There's the one main hotel that they have they have you and we were part of a delegation. And, you know, it was, it was like something out of a cartoon where there was like a guy reading a newspaper with like Oakley glasses looking like he was in some like, federal, you know, agency just kind of randomly sitting there vacationing by himself in El Salvador listening in and it was, it was kind of eerie

in terms of I think that uh and I remember like talking with everyone being like hey we shouldn't really talk around these people you know who the who the hell knows who these people are and when we were down there I think what was it the World Bank or one of the other groups pulled a billion dollars yeah I'm f yeah and you're just sitting there and you're and you're like hearing this like oh we're pulling our funding because of this scary Bitcoin and look they're trying the best that they can to make an example out of El Salvador. That would scare me. I mean, if I'm a country that I understand why that's scary.

Now, on the other side, and President Bukele wrote a nice op-ed for one of our print magazines talking about just the tourism that's brought, the people that want to go there. I mean, the economic benefit of just that versus, you know, maybe while and he hasn't sold any Bitcoin, but the price of Bitcoin changing hasn't impacted them. It's like this bankrupt the country. In fact, it's really put them on the map. Who've been who talked about El Salvador two years ago compared to now? Just look at the Google search term, you know, I mean, so other countries see that and they see, once again, tourism is actually a major driver here. And we have a Bitcoin kind of like our tour guide in our magazine where we go to these places. Bitcoiners want to go where they're accepted.

And it's a different type of experience. You enjoy it. Even the Bitcoin jungle down in Costa Rica. And now in terms of legal tender announcements, you know, I think everyone's still looking at what's happening with El Salvador. But, you know, you have Carr, you have a couple of others, and, you know, we're making that option. And the fact that Joe Biden's going to screw it up for the US dollar and everyone's kind of, you know, running away from it. I don't know, maybe more people will start picking up Bitcoin.

Maybe Joe Biden is really good for Bitcoin. Yeah. And legal tender is not the only kind of nation state adoption, right? So I mean, I think that was extremely exciting, but it's a continuum of things that countries can do to welcome this technology. And actually, I mean, you could argue that outside of the United States, we're actually seeing some moves towards more friendly regulation and innovation and allowing... I know you guys are like Bitcoin only, but certainly for people building other things as well in the crypto space, they're going elsewhere. I mean, you and I met in Dubai, right? Right, right. Couldn't be 180 degrees more in attitude from the United States, which is really kind of shocking and sad. Yeah. I mean, it's been sad and if anything, actually impacted the conference that think

about all the companies that are just leaving the US. Right? And that's not good. Meanwhile, like you said before, we were in Dubai, where was the Wild West and people didn't have any regulations, right? And in terms of that whole region, as we were also meeting and having those discussions, there's a lot of events. There's a lot of crypto events. Bitcoin only is not really as much of a thing out there. I think that obviously we're in Miami and we like that location as the friendliest in the US, but that's one of the reasons why we launched Bitcoin Amsterdam and know we'll continue to grow. Our footprint is because we're going to have to go to other countries and other areas because once again, if we're having innovation leave the US, that's not gonna be the best place to always kind of anchor.

Talk about the decision to be Bitcoin only, because obviously, it's a pretty big decision, especially in an industry that has so much tribalism, I guess, and contention between different communities. And as a whole, probably not that big of a community, right? So obviously, being segmented is a risk as well. You guys could open up and say, listen, we're doing literally everything and have 300,000 people in Miami. Right, right, totally. And look, I think it's one of the unique things about Miami is, and even in 2021, I mean, someone held like a shit coin conference nearby and we were, and everyone was like, are you mad about this? Mike, this is

great. You know, their Solano can have their hacker house and, and we want to encourage that, right? If we're truly freedom people, we want to encourage that. Now we have to pay all the money to, to, to get all the speakers, to make all the event that attracts all the other companies. They don't buy our tickets. We don't see a penny off of it, right? But we want more people to have that experience. We don't mind if we are kind of this kind of anchor that brings in other companies. Business-wise, it's not ideal.

But if we're not going to accept them as sponsors and we turn down millions of dollars in sponsorships from other companies because we're Bitcoin only, they should have a right and a place to go. So, you know, I think Miami even said there was like another 30,000 people that came down that weren't part of our conference, you know, numbers that this was additional. So it was, you know, that's great. We're the Super Bowl and not, you know, not everyone gets a ticket to go inside the stadium, but a lot of people go down to the party. So that's good in terms of the decision. So to be clear, obviously, the company with Bitcoin Magazine being the first in the space and a little dirty secret is obviously the original founders of Bitcoin Magazine, Vitalik and some others, went on to go make Ethereum. So everything they learned. Our company, BTC Inc., and our CEO,

David and Tyler, they purchased out Bitcoin Magazine. Everyone at a time was flirting with other altcoins and such, but Bitcoin Magazine stayed to just being about Bitcoin. Our company, I joined, I met the guys in 2016, but didn't join until 2020. So the decision to become Bitcoin only 2018, to just focus on that, not focus on anything else, it was a difficult one financially for the company. But it really is the biggest value our company has is being Bitcoin only. I agree. And while I'm someone who, going back to freedom, I don't care what coins you have or what you're advocating for. That's great. But there is a difference between Bitcoin and crypto.

Not a lot of people want to say, but there is a difference. And that's okay. We have, even within our own company, everyone is Bitcoin only, but we have the hardcore Bitcoin maxis to the like, well, I just find all this confusing and just want to focus on one crypto Bitcoin. We have a wide range within our company of how people feel about this. But what it really has done is because we don't have to be everything to everyone, if we were to do any other coins, we'd have to cover them all. So there's a proper firebreak between Bitcoin and the rest, right? I can't say, hey, we're going to cover Bitcoin and Ethereum. Okay, well, no, no, just the top five. Okay. So it's a proper

firebreak. Now, for me, you know, obviously, and I'm not obviously not a fan of the SEC, but who knows what some of these tokens might be securities. That changes actually how we advertise. That changes a lot of things that we do on our end. That could be problematic. Now, we're Bitcoin only, so we're not going to be caught up in that. We're allowed to be approved by some of the social platforms where they won't allow crypto advertising, but Bitcoin advertising is allowed. So we have access to certain other platforms that impact other companies. And most importantly, where like

Cointelegraph obviously gets more views than we do. That's not a question. So does Coindesk. But looking at why people are willing to either be contributors or go on our stage is that they know they're not going to be with any other altcoins and have to be next to that. They'll only be next to Bitcoin, right? That gives us a competitive advantage for the speakers that we have. That's the reason why we have better speakers than everybody else. And because it's called Bitcoin, I hate to say it, but for the newbies and the new coiners who are coming in, they don't know the difference.

They see Bitcoin magazine. So they're like, okay, this is a Bitcoin thing. Got it. And they're willing to come to us. And the good news is I'm not saying, hey, here's Bitcoin. Let me push it to Bitcoin cash. If you come to bitcoin.com, it's like, cool. We just want you to learn about Bitcoin. You want to go out and go do other things, do your rumspringer of altcoins, go ahead. But we're just going to have the Bitcoin side. So the name allows us, the advantage is that the name allows us, you know, the advantages that the name gives us,

but also disadvantage where you can't, you know, trademark some of these things or copyright some of these things. But in general, it's like, you know, there's a reason why when you go globally, you see when you see icons and they say, except crypto, they call it Bitcoin. Right. So, I mean, it's the default name for half the cryptos anyway, when people talk about it. So, you know, it hurts us. It impacts our sponsorship capabilities. So we can't get the sponsors that we'd like. But to be very blunt, our long-term vision is that we're just going to... Bitcoin is not just about the news and updates, it's going to be about culture. And people will remember that. I like to think people remember that

if they start reading about Bitcoin on our site or our conference, you know, I don't think I'm ever going to let them down with Bitcoin. Luckily, I don't have to be the ones who and I don't mean this in a rude way, but, you know, if they were on Cointelegraph and they're reading about Luna being the best thing and then all of a sudden, you know, they get completely rugged. How often are you going to continue to trust that that that media outlet? Right. And so, like, I can personally vouch for that. I had money on Voyager. I talked about it all the time, and here we are. And so it would have solved a lot of problems for me as well. I want to go back to... And listen, you live and learn. And I'm still interested in a lot of other projects and coins as everyone knows but i've always taken the approach of bitcoin and everything else which is what you said and i

very publicly i always sort of reference that fidelity report which had that exact same sort of title it said bitcoin first i think and then you know there's bitcoin and a bunch of speculative vc investments and speculative vc investments are cool but they're not Bitcoin. Right. But you talked about sort of the continuum of maxis at your company, which has to be massively challenging because we have all seen the tribalism of Bitcoin maximalism versus everyone else. But very few people have seen the granular level at which that tribalism works within the community. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be pissed off by what you just said

about it's totally fine and free for Solana Hacker House to be next to us. And there's plenty of people I've seen who are literally cheering regulators and legislators cracking down at a violation of freedom just because they don't like it. And it all blows my mind. Yeah, it's there's no doubt about it. Like you're right. When you just think of Bitcoin maxis, you would think of our whole company. Well, they're just in the Bitcoin maxi bucket. And I look at it going, you're you have no idea the the the spectrum that we have of Bitcoiners, you know, ones that are, you know, I think every other project and every other person's a spook to, you know, you know, to that to that extreme. Everything's a scam. Everything's a scam. Everything is a scam. Everyone's a scammer. Right.

Right. Now, look, I think the biggest cheat code our company has at BTC Inc. is that our company culture is Bitcoin. Right? I've worked at a bunch of companies, and I understand the company culture. We all believe in Bitcoin as our fundamental. So we're easy to have conversations with the different ranging of opinions. So for example, Ordinals, something like Ordinals coming in.

That is a rift within the company. And the difference is because I guess we all know we're Bitcoiners. There's a certain respect level there. So some people in the company are like, hardcore, this is so exciting. Let's spend time on it. Others are like, you know, or those are shit coin. You know, so it but at the end of the day, I think since we have a lot of respect for each other, I think it's easier for our maxi community group.

I don't know if we were all at a bar and didn't work together, if there would be bar fights between people. You know, I tend to I err on the freedom side. So like you said before, where I'm like, hey, if you would be bar fights between people. I tend to, I err on the freedom side. So like you said before, where I'm like, hey, if you want to have other coins, that's up to you. I personally don't. They don't want to hear that. They don't want me to even give it a breath. But like I said before, freedom of speech is my core principle. So anyone should have the right to do it. And look, there's some innovations that happen on these projects. That's a good thing.

Why would we not? That innovation is fine. I don't want to touch Bitcoin, right? You can prove things out. And let's look at what Lightning Labs and other things that have come from it. Bitcoin has to move slow in that regards. So good, test it out. See if it works or not. Maybe it could be a layer two down the road for Bitcoin.

Exactly what I was going to want to say i mean healthy competition is always a good thing and we've seen a lot of the innovation that's happened on other chains and has or has not been successful lead to people building similar things that are very successful on bitcoin right taking a great idea from somewhere else and then building it on a better base layer it's hard to argue that that that was you know even if you don't agree with those protocols it's nice to see them that was, you know, even if you don't agree with those protocols, it's nice to see them advance the ball or kick the can further, you know, ahead. And look, and I think you brought up another point, like,

I'm not sure how much Bitcoiners should be cheering for regulation. It feels a little weird to sit there and cheer for regulation. Now, I don't cheer for regulation. The only people I want to see, you know, do poorly would be Ripple because they are the biggest FUD funder funders and screw them in Greenpeace. But, you know, I would say that I'm not cheering for regulation on anyone. Obviously, I don't want to see people get scammed because on the other side, people get scammed and they just say it's Bitcoin the same way that like when someone gets robbed and they got their Rolex robbed, which it wasn't a Rolex, it was something else. It's the word that gets placed. And think about how much that actually hurts the movement is every time someone does something

stupid, buys something stupid that their friend said it was something stupid. It wasn't even a real coin, right? They were sending some PayPal and they're like, oh, I bought Bitcoin and I got scammed. And then all of a sudden, the next person goes, oh, crap, they got scammed into Bitcoin. They didn't. That was an altcoin on some other scam artist thing. So the scams obviously impact us and we want to minimize that. But obviously, we just need to battle with more transparency what Bitcoin actually is. Well, I think that there's cheering sensible regulation, which is not what's happening. And, but then cheering like heavy handed,

you know, I'm a hammer. Everything is a nail, which nobody wants to see. I think in, in any industry who's, who's rational, I think there's plenty of people in the United States and beyond who would

love a clear regulatory framework that allowed for innovation. Yes. Yeah. That seems rational. Can we get that? That would seem rational. Yeah. That seems rational. Can we get that? That would seem rational, but if you're, I mean, like, look, this is, the new crypto war

is the war on drugs, right? And it's not supposed to make sense. And that is by design on their part. So why do you think that is? Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. And that's the best analogy I've heard for anyone, certainly, who grew up in our generation

and knows about the war on drugs and how irrational it was and actually made for more drugs and more money for drug dealers, of course. But look, OK, the U.S. government is not incentivized to have this innovation happen because they aren't. It's not something they can control. It also impacts the U.S. dollar, even though we can make the arguments about what stable coins can do. But by being vague, by going off after random people, you create uncertainty, you create chaos,

and therefore companies aren't even willing to build in this space. Right? Because why would you? Once again, they could put down, here's the regulations, here's how to build, great. And within three months, everyone has found a way around those regulations anyway. So if you just keep it vague and you can, who knows, you could have the DEA be watching you for nine months, or you could have this happen, or we could decide, actually, this drug is a schedule one, so we'll break down your house, but this state will allow you to do this. And it's just because it's so vague, you make people not want to actually even test on it. You make people get nervous about using it. And really what you're doing is they're trying to put such a bad taste in the rest of the people's mouth who

haven't entered crypto yet. Like you and I grew up with thinking like, oh my God, if I smoke a joint, my brain is going to splatter like eggs, right? And it's a gateway drug. And then like, I'm going to die, right? And then you realize, you know, that's not the case. But you know, they're going to try to turn Bitcoin and crypto into such a negative feeling that this is what criminals do. And, you know, it really just reminds me 100%. I'm just waiting for Nancy Reagan to tell me that I shouldn't use crypto. And I feel like that's what, you know, Elizabeth Warren is doing now. That egg commercial.

This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. And this rambles the egg. Any questions? That one. And I learned it from watching you, dad. You know, when the dad walks in and catches the kid smoking. I learned from watching you, Dad.

So deeply ingrained. Right. And once again, I mean, so the sad thing is, well, the good news for everyone is like, great, well, the guys who put on the war on drugs are putting on the war on crypto, and they failed at that. But the bad news is that just means it's just going to take even longer for this to happen.

And we're going to not be truthful. We're seeing that at Elizabeth Warren, right? We're seeing that at the politicians who are lying. We're just flat out being untruthful. And I think the difference is that the war on drugs didn't have the internet, didn't have communities. And as much as I think people are nervous, I can understand why people get upset with Bitcoin maxis. The best thing is that this is an army horde that is going to take on everyone and is so resilient that they like feed off of, you know, of the pain.

So like they just want to go to war. And that was, to be very blunt, that's something that attracts me. And why I'm Bitcoin only is because it's the only fight that matters. All this innovation is great. The only fight that matters is Bitcoin. That's why I'm excited about it because I like that. I'm the street fighter type kid. I like a good battle.

I like going against whether it's Greenpeace, Elizabeth Warren, whatever group that has to go after it. They're going to put their laser on Bitcoin first. And so it's up to us to kind of be defensive. And because there's no company for Bitcoin, we don't have millions of dollars from some coin that we issued to be able to fund all this. So this is a community element that's most, and having to organize all those people, that thing completely differently and is a challenge all in itself. But that's why I think this, that's why we're uniquely positioned as a company to try to help whether it's to kind of communicate, organize these people and take on this fight. Are you implying that you are not scared of Elizabeth Warren's anti-crypto army?

I think it's proper to call it a tribe, an Indian tribe, their Indian tribe that she's putting together. But once again, I'm not afraid of Elizabeth Warren. What I'm afraid of is, and I'll be very honest, and I deal with it from our end, the major brands that want to begin to accept crypto who become fearful of doing it because there is, you know, they're being told that we, Bitcoin uses more electricity than South America.

And they're boiling the ocean. They're boiling the whole ocean, the whole ocean. And once again, you have a woke population that, you know, you can say things are, you know, environmental climate change is up. It must be wrong. Right. So we are getting improperly grouped into that. So I'm not scared of Elizabeth Warren. I'm just scared of the stupid tactics that they use because there's a group of, you know, there's a large population that's programmed to then say, oh, this has to be bad and we won't even have a conversation.

Are you guys looking at or reporting on the Restrict Act? I mean, speaking of violations of freedom and vague language and opening the doors to absolute Chinese tactics in the United States. I have to imagine as a publication, as a media company, that you're taking a pretty serious look at this act. Yeah. So from a personal side, you look at the Restrict Act, then it's... The government obviously obviously does it's almost like it's the same skit every time cool tick tock is bad great let's make you know here's the patriot act you know and let's put our digital patriot act in play and everything they can sweep into it i'm very scared of that so i'm i am scared of their strict act i do think that it is it is once again vague and

broad and uncertain and all this, you know, and that they can kind of put Bitcoin in it. The unique thing is, I think they underestimate how many people are on TikTok that, you know, like they shouldn't have grouped it onto TikTok, right? If they maybe did it to OnlyFans or something else, they might have had more success. MySpace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. TikTok, like those people are not happy about it.

So once again, I look at it as it's just another chance for us to kind of come into another army. Like, you know, we're, I guess this is the NATO side of things or whatnot. I know we don't use military on, Bitcoiners are not into military, but you know, like this is just another group that you can get connected with.

Like, okay, TikTokers, we want to fight this too because we're afraid of what this legislation will allow them to do. I mean, I was just literally talking to Balaji on Spaces before this, and he made the point. He's like, they're not even trying to hide it anymore. At least the last one was called the Patriot Act, and it was supposed to make you feel patriotic. And yay, America, this is literally called the Restrict Act. They named it exactly what it's going to do to you as an American. And the bill is only 50 pages long or something. It's not hidden language in a long document.

It's literally purposefully vague and opens a door for- If anything we want to get rid of, if we want to get rid of anything digitally that's bad for our country, once again, it's wokeism, right? It's just like, we want to all encompassing, get rid of bad things. We want to protect you from, we want to restrict the bad things from you. I mean, that's not a law. And look, it, it's, it is absolute, it's absolutely frightening. And I don't, I think that they will absolutely utilize it against, against crypto. And, and you're right. They're not trying to hide it, which is the strange part. Yeah, I wonder if there will be a tipping point where they push too hard and the world or the citizenry, the average American pushes back.

But so far, it feels like really nobody cares about their privacy at all. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm more nervous that, you know, are they using this to kind of give us a CBDC or whatnot? And look, you're asking about our coverage and one of the things we're trying to improve. And once again, we have a print magazine that we have quarterly. What we've kind of been evolving our space to do is, you know, that takes money to do investigative journalism, right? And, you know, there's commentary and then there's investigative journalism. Well, we went down to El Salvador. We didn't fly down there and just take a picture of a broken ATM and whatever.

You know, we had our reporter down there for three straight months, two months before it happened and one month, you know, after. That takes investment. That takes time. And luckily for us, the print magazine itself gives people, if they know they read something in print, they weren't expecting us to recap and write it up from yesterday. So some of these stories actually take time to unfold. And so something like the Restrict Act is something that we already have journalists looking into. Okay, we're following this. We don't. It's sure there's some thought pieces that we can put on dot com. But, you know, we're actually going to think about how we actually cover this. And it might be four or five months before there could be an in-depth article.

And by the way, investigation on our end into, OK, who's actually pushing this? Why are they push? Why are they pushing this? So some of those things that and we try to build that up more investigative journalism side of what we do. And I think that's really needed. And it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to duck. And once again, I came from other media companies. It's a tough thing to be able to monetize or make that investment.

But on our end, that's something that we find to be valuable. And once again, this Canadian trucker, you know, what they did, but that's five months later, but that's a time capsule for what this is. You know, that's actually properly taken a look at and not just being reactive. You and I both worked at Feist, me for much shorter than you, but you obviously have a background in building from the ground up investigative journalism. They were arguably the best in the game at that for quite a long time. The same type of stories. How do you balance evergreen content that you're putting out quarterly and making the magazine be hyper-relevant into the future, but also covering the day-to-day,

I'll call it nonsense because most of it's noise, but you still need to... If you're going to be a media organization in 2023, you have to have a 24-7 approach, I would imagine. Yeah. It's obviously a difficult balance that we keep going back and forth with. I think our Twitter handle is almost... Our platforms have a different editorial flow to them. So Twitter, that is news, that is commentary on things that are happening now. Right? So that's where we've, I think, provide the most values on the social value. We don't have obviously as much.com, you know, reporting on the story so much because there is a lot of competition for that, right? So that's, I think, you know, we don't monetize the Twitter

side of this. You don't, the.com, you're going to, it's very difficult to monetize and just always being the kind of clickbait or reactionary game. Luckily for us, we have the conference. So the.com and social investment we make to get readers, that's actually our major marketing for our own conference. So that's how you can monetize off that. The Bitcoin Magazine Pro, which is now a financial analysis, that's a paid subscription that Dylan LeClaire and his team run, so that can monetize the effort and the research reports

that we put into there. And then really, it's the print is going to be doing the long form journalism. Now, in terms of how we balance this, I think one of the unique things that we have that's different is since we've been around for over 10 years, we are the archive of Bitcoin. And one of the things we're doing is like I have, you know, 23 former print issues that we're now digitizing that we're going to be republishing. Like, you know, you can go through some of the old articles. It's like, here's Vitalik interviewing a guy named Brian Armstrong who's got this new website, Coinbase, and they're thinking about marketing someday. Right. And you're like, And it's a time capsule. And so if Bitcoin does what we think it's going to do, it's going to be an important part of humanity and not just global commerce,

but global connection. And well, we've been there from the beginning. So for us, I think we have a much longer term view that evergreen content, I think more is archive content. Right. So evergreen can be, hey, what's the how to use a hardware wallet? Great. Lots of guides is kind of evergreen. Some of this is I treat it as an archive where I look at this going, wow, this is we've captured a moment, whether that's El Salvador, really understanding what was happening before and after not just that one day um and then keep talking about bitcoin beach you know so looking at as an as an archive i think that that's the role we're going to have and once again a lot of the video we're recording now you're not going to see for five or six years like when we went and you know we made the investment of like of like let's go to the craig wright trial and start

recording that because this guy you know um and i'm in the u.s so i have freedom of speech but you know i i believe that you know craig wright is not satoshi and i believe i share your belief so i know i share your belief uh but you'd be surprised by how many media companies were just even nervous you know uh about doing this and once again you know uh, Hodlnaut is someone who our company really cares about. And I had a chance when I met him in person realizing, obviously, how silly this all was. But the best way to stop this was actually to get recordings of this and to show how silly this was in a courthouse. And the truth was, CoinGeek or whatever his blog is that is front says a media company,

they were the only ones that were going to be able to record in the courthouse. And so at Bitcoin Magazine, we had to fight. We had to go to legal fight to be able to be the ones who record in there. Right. And, you know, we captured hours and hours of content just to showcase and transparently, OK, this is how Craig Wright thinks he's Satoshi. And you watch and you're like, wow, this is absolutely insane. And, you know, then when the court case came out and he was, you know,

obviously Hodlnot won the trial, you know, Craig Wright still won't accept it or Calvin Ayers won't accept it. You know, we have to document it. That's a huge investment that we made absolutely no money on. Right. But like, this is an archive moment that we need to stop. You know, you need to stop this guy from suing absolutely everybody making everyone's life hell um you know and the best way to do that is to have proper reporting and and other media outlets would never do that they would just send

out press release and they would you know craig wright's lawyers say yes i won this case and they'd be like he won we don't know so i mean having to sit there and spend weeks out you know in norway and have our team that you know that weren't legal experts having to go through all this, that's some painstaking investment on our end that we're proud to do. But we have to find unique ways to monetize off that. So you guys are definitely hoping that Craig Wright doesn't sue anyone else because then you have to do it all again. I mean, it's funny because it's the point where I keep trying to think, okay, do we make just a Wikipedia for all the people been sued by him so all these lawyers can actually show everything that they have? Because at some point he's going to run out of like bowdog money, you know, to sit there

and keep suing people. But, you know, he's continuing now to get the things thrown out of court, which is what he is, because he is a joke and that's what needs to be made of it. So you hinted at a strategy of expansion, right? You said that's the reason we added Bitcoin Amsterdam. Do you have a vision where you basically take this on the road and start doing shows all over the world? You'll be extremely busy and you'll never be home again,

but it seems like that would be the natural path here if you're already expanding to Europe. Yeah. I think everyone in the company looks at our role within Bitcoin Magazine, the Bitcoin Conference, as we have a responsibility to the Bitcoin community. And as of right now, people take our content and translate it into multiple languages as it is. And that's a failure that we have not been able to do that ourselves. And so whether we've done licensing deals, franchise deals, trying to grow, because once again, we want not just taking our content and translating it, we wanted to have localized reporting. We opened an office in the Ukraine

to handle the CIS and Ukraine-Russian region before the war. So we could try to tell people, hey, because we knew what was going to happen. And if you can at least save some of your money in Bitcoin, now this is at least going to allow you. And once again, we have meetups in Ukraine that happen quarterly at Bitcoin Magazine. They published their first magazine print. I mean, they're absolutely motivating. And once again, part of it was because Ukraine was one of the highest percentage of people that were actually using crypto. That's why we opened that office two years ago. But obviously, a lot has changed, even having an operation during the war. Our company has to grow globally. Bitcoin is a global language. How lucky are we? It's a global language. So the community, there's so much value in how we interact. And when we went to Amsterdam,

and it was like a little less than 3000 people, we had a smaller venue, obviously. It was wonderful. It had a totally different vibe. It had a totally different energy. The community liked it. 75% of the people were from the Netherlands. And so we saw, okay, wow, a country can have something like this. And that was like one of the biggest Bitcoin only events in Europe. You know, I think that we want to continue to grow. We also want to continue to highlight the other great Bitcoin conferences. You know, it's like BTC Prague, you know, or Honey Badger. You know, there's some great conferences out in Europe. But, you know, for a lot of, we have a good base of community that we can interact with that

follows our content. And also for new coiners, we want our conferences to be a type of place that if you're a Bitcoiner and your friends don't really understand it, you won't be like, hey, come along with me to this. And they could actually see, they can understand the community, and especially during a bear market where it's not just the bull market, everyone to get excited, let's buy Bitcoin. It's like, hey, you had a full-on music festival in the backyard that any uh person on the planet would enjoy right that wasn't for bitcoiners correct correct right yeah we had steve aoki and deadmau and you know uh uh killer mike and you know run the jewels i think it was it was it was to bring people in it's not you know, these are Bitcoiners aren't these people in your mama's basement or buying Lambos,

you know, like that's not, that's not it. Um, and it also made the Bitcoiners feel good. Like you were surrounded by a bunch of people having a great time and you're like, these are my people, you know? So even though maybe half of them were the other half want to enjoy some good music. So we're going to come up with, you know, unique ways to, to bring all these cultures together. Are there any, I know you're not doing the full-on music festival again this year at Bitcoin Miami, but are there any sort of outreach strategies like that that you're using to bring in other communities? Or is it really refocusing hard on Bitcoin this year? I think we have something kind of still up in the air

to try to bring this a little bit more, the GenPop side of it. In terms of a bear market side where I think people are excited to hunker down a little bit and see what they're actually building, I think there needs to be the honest recap of what went bad and how to avoid that. We have something like our little Bitcoin Olympics going. So we have all, you know, we kind of sponsor and help over 100 Bitcoin meetups around the country, around the world. And we're doing kind of these fun games with them. You know, everything from like the pizza eating contest because it's going to be, you know, near Bitcoin Pizza Day to, you know, Cornhole, you know, using probably big bases of WEF members they could throw corn holes in uh uh but you know a lot of these you know chess and a seed seed stamper competition so you know part of that's just the community side of it the bitcoiners will always be there uh we're trying to create a little

bit more kind of community engagement on on that end so you're experimenting with something like that and then also you know the the whole thing going on, and as you alluded to earlier, our CEO, David, talking about with the trust and redeemed GPTC, we're going to have part of Industry Day. We're going to have this kind of very pirate shareholder meeting of people that are not happy with what has been going on with Grayscale. And this is going to be the biggest meetup of shareholders in an unofficial event. And there's going to be the biggest meetup of shareholders in an unofficial event. And there's going to be some fireworks there. So that maybe leads into the finance world. But in terms of the fun and culture world, Miami is a good time. So the nice thing is there's a lot of other Miami events that are going on that they're

trying to attract our audience and our people to. So you're going to have fun down there. The question is, how many Bitcoiners are going to be surrounded by? So how can people get tickets and come check it out? Does it sell out? Is it over? Can they still make it work? What's happening now? Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you for that plug. Look, people, yes, we're still going to be selling tickets. This will be, if not, this will be probably the second largest Bitcoin event ever. This is already, even before we started the pre-sale, was the third largest Bitcoin event ever. So it's going to be massive. But tickets are absolutely still available. I think we have our, there's the

difference between the GA tickets, which is kind of two days and industry pass, which gives you the first day of kind of the industry events. You can go to b.tc, which is a pretty great domain, but obviously the Bitcoin conference or whatever handle. And if you can use code BRRR. So money printable BRRR. Yes, three R's. I think that's the best code. But maybe look on our Bitcoin Magazine Twitter handle and you'll find probably better codes. I don't know. But obviously, discount codes

are always important. But people should get tickets. And once again, it's in Miami. So I apologize for the hotel prices. We don't own Miami yet. But I think we'll work on that. I try to get a cruise boat. I try to get a cruise boat this year

to have a full cruise boat and just have the rooms on there. But they wouldn't let me keep a cruise boat in port for three days. So I'm going to find a loophole for next year. And so how are you doing it this year? So we'll be at the Miami Beach Convention Center again. Thank you.

So we'll be doing that again this year. And then once again, there'll be events kind of all surrounding Miami. So that's also very exciting. And I think we'll have some also Bitcoin Pizza Day celebrations that will be coming up that we're excited to announce. Nice. And who are the speakers you're most excited for? Or panels? Don't mean to put you on the spot, but is there anyone that you're just super psyched to hear?

Are we going to see Kaiser ripping up dollars and making it rain? Or I mean, what do we got? Obviously. Well, so I think that's, you know, where Kaiser's been because you just fall literally the money trails of his ripped up money yeah yeah he'll be there look i'm excited about michael lewis michael lewis has never spoke at a crypto event he is the author of the big short right and moneyball he's the one who's following ftx around uh uh sam mcgain freed let's let's be clear here this is the man who is going to write the book on what happened in this crypto crash every every i bet the options have already sold they'll be turned into that movie so mainstream mainstream will be seeing what this guy thinks uh you know like this guy will be the biggest influence on how mainstream looks at the crypto crash and ftx and And so he's never spoken at a conference. He's speaking at ours. You know, that's exciting. But also, to me, we want to influence him and show

him how Bitcoin is different than crypto. You know, like, look at this community and see, you know, because I think, and we saw in the big short, he did a great job of showing, you know, a bunch of outsiders who thought the system was going to, you know, collapse. I mean, he kind of, you know, I think a lot of people look at that book and obviously the influence on what that movie had is, you know, this guy understands our people. But we also want him to to see really what we're made of. So I'm excited to see what he does. I think that's kind the one I'm looking forward to most. Now, obviously, since I run the part of it, I'm stressed out nonstop. I don't get to see anything. But once again, on Bitcoin Magazine YouTube, you can watch every one of the panels. That's right. You can actually watch the whole thing. Yeah. See, that part of it is huge.

So awesome. Yeah, man. Well, I can't wait to join you guys down there. I haven't made... See, I'm going to be the guy who pays three times too much for a hotel because I might be on my friend's couch. That's okay. That's the fun part about Miami. That's the spirit. The real spirit of Miami. I used to live there and now I'll probably be on a friend's couch trying to get tickets. I'll be begging you for tickets at the last minute. Well, that's okay. Well, thank you for having me on. I think we can work. Of course. And where can everybody follow you after this conversation? Yeah, sure. So it's very lame and non-Bitcoin-y, but Mike Germano is my name and that's where you can find me on things. I'm at Scott Melker. It's very, very, very,

very creative. You could see our age. You could see we grew up in the social media side. But yes, at Mike Germano on Twitter. And once again, I would love to hear from people that want to do great journalism on Bitcoin. Please reach out to me. Also, as we grow this company internationally, if that's something that you care about,

please reach out to me. That's the thing that I'm most passionate about and want to try to find people why I'm excited to not just go on this podcast, talk to you because you're awesome and great. And I love following it. But also for the people there that I'm trying to reach out to that want to help us grow internationally. We're always looking for those good people. So happy to connect and talk some more and i'm up on linkedin guys uh mike thanks so much uh see you in miami man thank you see you in miami

let's go