The Wolf Of All Streets - Why Everybody Should Have Bitcoin | Eric Weiss & James Putra

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Today we are joined by James Putra, Vice President at TradeStation Crypto, and Eric Weiss, who was the original person to orange pill the Michael Saylor. We sit down to discuss why they both moved to Miami for crypto, the impact of the Russian and Ukraine war on the market, the education system and crypto, and more. JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER 📩 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS ►► Have you ever had your exchange go completely offline during days of high volatility? Of course you have. We've all been through it. Those days are no longer with Bullish. Bullish is a new breed of digital asset exchange that empowers users to trade with deep and predictable liquidity across highly variable market conditions. They also have incredible automated market-making and industry-leading security. I can't get enough of this platform and it's fully regulated. Sign up here: https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bullish/youtube Bullish is licensed by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. Virtual assets and related products are high risk. Consult your investment advisor and trade responsibly. Bullish is available in select locations only and not to U.S persons. Visit bullish.com/legal for important information and risk warnings. EPISODE LINKS James Putra: https://twitter.com/jamesrputra Eric Weiss: https://twitter.com/Eric_BIGfund Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/ FOLLOW SCOTT MELKER • Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets • Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io • Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3FASB2c

But core beliefs are so fragile that they're vulnerable to discussion You know, then they're probably not really good core beliefs. They should be they should be anti fragile But this is like this is what gets me fired up is Those are the folks that are teaching our next generation This episode is sponsored by my good friends at Bullish. Stay tuned for more information on this amazing company later in the episode. In the last few years, Miami has stolen the title of financial capital of the United States and likely the world from New York City.

The battle continues, but Miami also got their very own bull at Bitcoin 2022. Well, the man behind making that happen was one of my guests today, James Putra. And the other guy I had the fortune of speaking to is Eric Weiss, the man who orange-pilled Michael Saylor himself. We talked about why Miami is becoming the crypto capital of the world, and that's likely to continue,

and why everybody on this planet should own Bitcoin and secure their assets. Bull was kind of a long project in the making. It took us about eight months to really kind of formalize it. But we were, how many people know, we were founded 35 years ago down here in Miami. And we've been part of this community that's been growing like crazy over the last 35 years. And we noticed that Miami has got this incredible talent pool, an incredible vibe that's happened, especially in the last five years. It's just really, really exploded.

But we don't have that symbol that we can rally behind that would be like the center of crypto or FinTech And so we started figuring out what could we do to put something out there? We engaged the community the universities also Suarez office to figure out what would make sense What could we put there that would just serve as that kind of monument that thing we can all rally behind that just condenses all of our efforts and we landed on this bull project and there's a lot of ups and downs and we've several times we thought it was gonna be killed and it came to fruition and it's been just amazing to watch how much the community has adopted this thing it's it's

powerful it's like you really captured like the spirit of Bitcoin yeah it's perfect it really is perfect. Oh, yeah. Is this where it's going to live? So it's going to live. It's here for the conference. Then it's moving to Miami Dade College. Miami Dade College is the largest college in the United States.

They have a trading lab. They've got a marketing lab. They're building robotics, cybersecurity. And it's going to sit right outside of their trading lab with a stock ticker. That's the near-term home. We'll see where it goes after that. But it's going to be somewhere in the center of Miami that will serve as that kind of monument point for everyone to gather around. It was really interesting to see the reaction

from people here about the bowl. Like you could see that everybody kind of felt instantly like it was theirs and they were taking pride in it right like this represents us like yeah like this is our thing everybody's posting pictures of it so i think i mean you nailed it like you gave 35 000 bitcoiners or however many people here like you know something to brag about that everyone feels that they're entitled to that they own so well done and that was a key it's it's not about us as a It's like, how do we give back and rally everybody around us to do something crazy? You said TradeStation's been in Miami for 35 years. And you said sort of this groundswell in the last five years.

But I would say even two years. Yeah. It's really been a lot shorter. Obviously, a combination of COVID, a combination of Mayor Suarez's initiative to bring FinTech here, but this really you guys are both native. Everybody else here is visiting, right? But we both weren't originally here. Right?

Much like everybody else that's here for the most part, you had to choose to leave somewhere else to come here. And there's an awful lot of reasons to come to Miami. But it's nice you know now it's acceptable to be here especially if you're in financial businesses like we are miami used to be perceived as you know a sunny place for shady people and you couldn't run a business out of my

you couldn't run a financial business out of miami then you started to see like david tepper runs like the largest traditional hedge fund you, move here and move his business here. And, you know, bunch of other massive hedge fund guys, Carl Icahn and others, all moving to like Miami, in some cases Miami Beach. Used to be Palm Beach was acceptable, now Miami's acceptable. You had all the DC guys come from San Francisco screaming,

everybody's gotta come here, this is new tech development. The mayor jumped in, politicians, and that was just awesome. Yeah, it's no longer- You talk about San Francisco, didn't Mayor Suarez literally pull up a billboard in San Francisco that said like, Yeah, so during COVID-

Come on down. Yeah, I can't remember the exact- The tweet was, how can I help? How can I help? It started as, there was some people complaining about what was happening in California, and so he just replied, how can I help? And it spawned this crazy movement

of interest in getting over here. And to his credit, he did a lot of great stuff to lay the foundation and make it friendly to come here. And there's a variety of teams around him that have been able to bring companies down. For the longest time, we were the only fintech player here. Now it's like every one of our competitors is here, which is phenomenal. I welcome all the competition. But they need a new program, dude. Yeah. competitors is here which is phenomenal i welcome all the competition because a new program dude yeah they haven't they need a new program for everybody that moves here from california or new york when you move here you should get a postcard letter something in the mail that says remember

why you moved yes because like not to be political but i'm a little bit scared that you've got you know florida's right on the line 50-50 politically going one way or another. You get all these people from, you know, predominantly blue states coming here because their blue states are taxing them heavily, taking away their freedoms, other things. They like that Florida's not doing that. But they don't draw the separation a lot of these people in their brain that like, oh, when I go to the polls, I'm still going to vote for who I vote for. Like, no, remember why you moved here yeah we like DeSantis you know like keep voting for these things let's keep this the way it is well there are a lot of places that are seeing that I think in both directions in the United States right now it's really interesting like

this group is invading what used to be this group so I don't get political at all and then but and vice versa but maybe but maybe maybe then we get like actual mixing in a few you know productive conversations of people yeah let us do business that's for me I don't mind which direction you want to go but make it friendly you know we got to keep it friendly for people to come down here live work and play and it's been awesome to keep it friendly for people to come down here, live, work, and play. And it's been awesome to see. It still has that party flavor, but it's not the only thing you can do here now. And Miami is one of the only places on the planet that you can live in a tropical climate and make money and run a business. Correct. It's the only tropical climate in the continental U.S.

Plus great international airport, good tax situation. I left Miami five years ago, regrettably. Love Miami for family reasons. But our joke, my wife and I, we used to joke that everyone we would meet in Miami couldn't explain to us what their job was within the first five minutes. Yeah, they're all advisors. Everybody was on permanent. It was like, what do you do?

Well, you're using your dad's money to party. Okay, I got it. I got it. I got it. Just tell me, right? Family business. You know, but it's completely the opposite now. Now everybody's pitching you something or is exactly, taxes are a big reason, right? It's just a why.

Also, the other big catalyst for Miami was Art Basel. Art Basel brought tremendous amount of culture to Miami, you know, with the arts, comes to restaurants, performing arts, visual arts, etc. Plus you got every sports team. So now we really do have quite a lot to offer even people who are cultural snobs and social. Yeah, it's been interesting to watch. I go to a lot of the different events in the community and for a long time, there's a lot of people that needed stuff and not enough people that had the ability

to provide resources and things. And now, I mean, I think there's probably never enough people to provide resources, but we really have a strong population of folks that have meaningful value that they can contribute, nurture, and help some of the folks that are trying to come up in the community. Super credible people, too.

Barry Sternlich moved Starwood down here. Yeah. And these are big businesses, big corporations that are really coming to South Florida, Miami in particular. So I'm excited about the future here. It's been good for our real estate prices. Sure. Oh, yeah. So is inflation. But it's a very interesting world here because when you're here, you think crypto is the main thing.

It's everywhere. Everywhere you go, there's Bitcoin, there's crypto. It's really this kind of tech focused area. And when you leave, it's not as widespread. So we have this kind of very cool bubble that's happening in here. It's just everyone's feeding off that energy and trying to add more, bring it up bigger for everyone else. Once you get off crypto Twitter, what you find, I think in my experience,

I'm sure you guys experience the same, is just the people that are attracted to crypto are generally just such positive people. It's really amazing to me. It requires a little bit of an open mind to adopt something new. Everything about crypto is kind of freedom-based. And there can be internal debate within crypto folks about this offers more freedom. I like this more.

You're not going for enough freedom. But the very fact that it's attracting people who are like freedom-based, it just creates an awesome culture. Everybody knows that there are advantages to trading on both centralized and decentralized exchanges. But why not choose an exchange like Bullish that offers the best of both worlds?

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some research that you did. I don't talk generally politics and religion, but I used to joke that like almost nobody, probably not true anymore, is born an atheist. They're born into some religion and then they do their research and that's what they decide is right for them. And I've never thought about this with Bitcoin until right now. But you have to come to it through some intellectual decision or through going down some rabbit hole. It was not presented to you when you were born yet. Correct. And I think we all have really intelligent friends

who are not into Bitcoin or not into crypto yet you kind of think why is that the case and so recently I've been thinking that it's not a matter of affluence or exposure anything else that gets someone into crypto it's a matter of time like I have plenty of super successful friends with really busy businesses our friend Steve is a perfect example, right? Someone who's head down, cranking on their business, wherever their job is. It requires time to delve into Bitcoin, crypto and understand why this is important, why you need this. There's no first glance.

Oh, I get it. Yeah. And I think that as people get more and more free time to explore it, we're going to see adoption of something. And the people who do, do it right away, and I'm glad they do, but it's because they think they're going to get rich really fast. It's let us in. Yeah.

They haven't done the research. They don't have the conviction. Somebody said, buy this, it's going to go up. Get rich. And it goes down and they're like, what am I doing in this? And instead of buying more because they have conviction, because they've done the research, they have it and they're like, all right, I took a flyer amount of this. Yeah, we're like pontificating, like we're talking about this in theory.

You probably see the data. Yeah. Because obviously you had crypto at TradeStation, so you can actually see this in real time. Are we right? Oh, absolutely. 100%. Now you get a blend of people that want to get rich quick. We're seeing that still, but I think we're seeing much more meaningful participation recently in the last

two years that the conversations are much less about, I'm going to get rich off of this meme coin as they are, hey, I know why I want this asset. And even on our service, we still see it's better than half the volume is in Bitcoin. And that's accumulation. It's just people that are bringing it into their portfolio and holding on to it. It's not a lot of churning on those assets. I think that trend is going to continue. I think the geopolitical events, you know, there are a number of people, certainly in my conversations with prospective investors, if you lived in the U.S. or any first world country, you're like, I don't need this shit.

Like, you know, nobody's seizing my money. Like, this is not an issue. Even inflation aside, right? People just weren't concerned. But now you look at what's happening geopolitically, like Canadian trucker situation, right? That to me is the biggest catalyst there could be that was not yeah shutting down the donations like but also blocking their Bitcoin transactions right yeah right and so right which leads to self-custody but more generally speaking it's like okay there were a

lot of people who woke up and said maybe this isn't so far from home and then you look at you know Russia Ukraine and it's like everybody involved has a use case for it. Whether it's the Russians who've been cut off from banking systems, or people who've outsourced some of their tech resources to Russia and have no way to pay these people now other than sending them Bitcoin. Whether it's the Russians trying to evade sanctions using crypto, the Ukrainians trying to flee and like take their wealth with them with crypto, the oligarchs whose assets are being seized without any due process, you know, who are trying to find some safe haven. So, you know, people say, oh, nefarious, whatever.

But it's like roads. Like if something has utility, it's going to offer utility for everyone, good and bad actors. And I think all this does is show the utility in particular of Bitcoin. I had an interesting conversation with a professor at the college and he wanted me to come in and speak on the ethics of teaching students these alternative assets and should we not do it because they're risky assets and i'm like wait a minute this is i'd actually argue the other side that you're not teaching them the financial literacy that they need to participate in the in the today's market and absolutely where we're going.

As a college professor? Yeah. Yeah, I think like, I mean, obviously this is like a whole big thing where our society, everybody has this kind of virtue signaling like, we need to protect the people from themselves. These are college students. That's what you're there for, to be exposed to this stuff. That's not what college is anymore. Yeah, you're not 10 years old.

College is a for-profit business for the customers always right now, which was not the case when we were younger. It's really a big change. That's the reason that now everything has to be a safe space. Which isn't safe. Yeah, right. It's going to change. We're supposed to challenge people. Bitcoin challenges you. But you're supposed to challenge people's core beliefs because most of the things that you're taught when you're young are wrong. Just information evolves.

Information evolves. It's wrong or it's irrelevant, right? It's from an old world, especially now. But it's really, I mean, it's crazy to talk about it. In no way did I mean to take this in a college professor type direction. No, but if your core beliefs are so fragile that they're vulnerable to discussion, then they're probably not really good core beliefs. They should be anti-fragile, your core beliefs.

But this is what gets me fired up is those are the folks that are teaching our next generation. And it's so important to get to those people that can shape the next generation. I mean, I can only impact so many people, but if I can help five or ten teachers, they're going to see hundreds of students over their lifetime. If they can get a little piece of this financial literacy. This video will get seen by more people than a college professor will teach in an entire year. It's absolutely true. Yeah. That's really important. get seen by more people than a college professor will teach in an entire year it's true it's absolutely true yeah that's really sailor and i talk about this sometimes right because he does do a lot of video stuff and podcasts but the rationale behind it is exactly that if you were

a college professor and you taught a hundred students a semester and you taught you know for 10 years okay like what you're going to touch a thousand two thousand people in a career you do a video and it gets seen by a hundred thousand people a million people in a day your stuff too it's like you're impacting way more people than a college professor will impact an entire career. This is true and it's relevant now. It takes a long time for information to get into the curriculum of the university and this space moves so fast. I mean six months is fundamentally different all the time. Yeah you have to wonder which makes me wonder if our kids will even go to college. I think it's gonna be probably be very different. I mean, Saylor Academy has free education. I think you can get an accredited degree online completely for free.

So why pay a school money other than the pedigree and the social aspect? You just want the knowledge. You can get the knowledge. Yeah. I mean, that's all we're at a convention with 35,000 people right now, all thirsty for knowledge. And some of the smartest people in the space. It's incredible. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. So where can people find you guys after this? Probably on Twitter is best. Eric underscore B-I-G-F-U-N-D.

James Putra. You can find me on Twitter, James R. Putra. You can also check us out at TraceStationCrypto.com. A lot of good stuff happening. I should mention that we actually sponsored the Miami Dade College Student-Led Investment Fund. So when we went there, they had only a long equity fund. And so they could only allow the students to buy and hold stocks. I'm like, wait, this is terrible. That's an old model. So we said, let's come in and offer some of our help. We put our money where our mouth is and donated. It's $50,000 to seed the fund.

And we let them trade spot crypto, crypto stocks, crypto derivatives. So not only can they go long on spot, they can start experimenting with different strategies. And that's awesome. Absolutely awesome. Well, both of you guys are doing your part for sure. To orange pill the world. So thank you guys. Try and do it. It's awesome. Absolutely awesome. Well, both of you guys are doing your part for sure to orange pill the world.

So thank you guys. Try and do it. It's awesome. I'm glad to put this together. Thank you. This is one of those ones where I was just like, let's do it. And we all sit down and have a talk and it ends up being the best conversation. Why not?

So thank you guys. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you haven't already left a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please do that now. Spotify just added ratings, so please go ahead and click that five star. I'll see you guys next time.