The Wolf Of All Streets - Why NBA Legend John Salley Believes In Bitcoin And Wants To Orange Pill You

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Can blockchain improve financial equity? Former professional basketball player, John Salley, says it already is. John was an early adopter of crypto following his NBA career. Now he’s helping orange pill the masses with his new show: the John Salley Crypto Show. He joined us at Bitcoin Miami to discuss why he started his show, the stigma around NFT’s, the various paths into crypto, and predictions for the dollar. 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 EPISODE LINKS John Salley: https://twitter.com/thejohnsalley 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

If you get on Discord, there's no picture. You don't have to use your real name. You can invest what you want to invest. It was an important thing that we couldn't be held back by color, or by race, or by ethnicity, or by religion. Let's go. This episode is sponsored by my good friends at Bullish. Stay tuned for more information on this amazing company later in the episode. This is one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done because it's with a legend

who is one of my heroes, and that is none other than NBA great John Sally. But he might even get mad at me if I just refer to him as an NBA great, because he, like me, believes that people can have a second, third, and fourth act and be more than one thing in their life. And what is John Sally now? He's a crypto podcaster who's orange-pilling the mainstream

and bringing them into our space. There's a conversation that you don't want to miss because John could very well be the bridge that brings in the people that don't quite understand what we're doing into the space. I was literally told this morning, don't say NFT. That's right. But you can't say it. I know it. That's the three letter word. NFT is, web three is the four letter word. John, man, I like your nails.

Don't think I didn't notice. Thank you, man. Shaq was doing that way before you motherfuckers thought it was cool. I love it. Our bad words used to be shit and fuck. Now it's Web3 and NFT. I know. And I was like...

I had the conversation with my boys. The name of the group was NFT Glee. I said, we might have to change the name. And they, I think they are going to change their name. Why? Because you just think the stigma of... Well, how I learned it is, how I learned Bitcoin is through a guy who has owned NFT Glee. And he is Bitcoin, like, he has brainwashed me.

I drank the Kool-Aid, I agree to a point, but that's why I decided to do a show just about crypto. So I wouldn't be narrow thought. Right. But isn't that the irony of the whole thing is that the whole goal is to make here, to make everybody crypto native, right? Orange, everybody.

Right. Shouldn't we be happy if they come through NFT, Doge, Shib, Dumb, whatever? Isn't it the goal just to get everybody to the same place? So why should we be mad at the route that they take? All paths lead to the castle. All paths lead to God. But the Christians feel you should go through Jesus Christ. The Muslims think you should go through Muhammad. So there's a way that people always feel their way is the better path. Bitcoin being first, Bitcoin never being

hacked, Bitcoin trading at $44,000, they got the right to say, come our way, we know better. But I think they feel crazy about the NFT world because they were undercut by Ethereum mentality saying, let's spread it this way. You guys got a good idea, but you didn't move further now. Right. I definitely think I stay on the Switzerland border. Oh, yeah. I live in Switzerland. I'm not even on the border.

I'm like right in the middle, in the bank, in the vault. Because this is the deal. So I watch everything on YouTube. I'm watching you. I'm watching, what is his name? Older guy, I think it's Don. name um older guy i think is uh don i watch and i and i try to get to the point of understanding to put it in the same mentality like when we were talking earlier and i joked you about uh crossing over i'm never saying that again i know but i only joke because i literally tell

people you know i'm trying to get you to cross over into, so when you said, but just the mentality, that idea that it's a new idea. No, it is. In 94, I had a chance to own a mall online. And I went to about four different NBA players, two football players, four NBA players, and all of them said no about putting $10,000 in. Now, we're spending $10,000 with Triptoy, but they wouldn't put $10,000 into this because they thought it was throwing it away. I said, I guess making it rain is not throwing it away. Literally. Literally. It's actually coming out your hand in a way. I said the same thing. This time, I'm not missing it, but as opposed to coming in and just taking my money and throwing it in something and wishing and telling what, I literally pay attention to everything.

That's why I like, I was here early to do your show. I like what you're talking about. I like how you do it. Big Frank Brown had no idea I knew who you was when I saw you. That's why I stopped. Not because of him looking like Marvin Gaye. He didn't hear you, but he will. I know. because of him looking like Marvin Gaye. You didn't hear you, buddy, Will. I know.

But you actually have a history of being early. Yeah. So, I mean, this isn't new for you. Like, you had weed investments. Yes. Alcohol, marijuana investments, because we're sophisticated now. Yeah, cannabis.

But there's cannabis, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't even, cannabis, right? But like, it's not new for you to be willing to jump on a trend when everybody's still calling it crazy. Right, and I don't really even think it's a trend. Like, I sat back since last May when I started watching everything and anything I can that dealt in this world. 2019, 2020, I was in Canada shooting. 2019, 2020,

I was in Canada shooting this movie and I was hearing about crypto. And then my boy was like, yo, I made $10,000 a day. And I stopped what I was doing. And I was like, how? Like, where'd you make, like, where'd you pull this lick? Like, what happened?

And he was like, I made it off of crypto. And then the people from coin. No, you can say it to me. Right. We're in a safe place. Okay. So people from ShibuCoin, this guy came and said, yo, we want to get you involved. We're going to give you this many coins. And I was like, how many? He was like 25,000. I said, man, you got to give me like 250,000. He said, how'd you know that? One company came and gave me 500,000. I said, man, you got to give me like 250,000. He said, how'd you know that? One company came and gave me 500 billion coins. I said, how many have you burned?

And he was like, how'd you know to ask me that? So there's still some charlestons and shysters in this business trying to get something for nothing. But this is why I decided to do a show, because I want to be the one to hear something as it comes by and go, all right, I'm doing that. Have you ever been trading crypto and during bouts of high volatility, had your exchange go completely offline or seen the order books go thin and have absolutely no liquidity for your trade? I know that you have. It's happened to every single crypto trader, but it's not an issue anymore thanks to Bullish. Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with confidence across variable market conditions while secure in a regulated environment

that's backed by multi-billion dollar liquidity contributions from the bullish treasury. Follow at bullish on Twitter or visit bullish.com slash Melker to learn more. Right. And it's a crypto show, right? It's a crypto show. And you have actually the ability, I said crossover earlier, you have the ability to actually talk to people who have no idea about this, who like you. Right. And right. So why did you start it?

Is that the reason? Is it because you want to spread the gospel? Is it because it's just what you're into and something you want to talk about? Well, I got tired of talking about sports. I no longer played it. It's 22 years since I played it, about 11 years since I talked about it. What I realized is my friend Larry King had passed on, and Larry King would have people on his show and ask a question and say, what say you?

And you had, and I thought it was the most seamless moving show, and I felt I learned and I understood so quick. Then I got to do the Larry King show and you have four minutes, you have three minutes. And if you finish watching the show, you realize the people he's talking to may have spoken for nine minutes. They had to get everything out in that nine minutes because it's jotted like that going to a question, Larry saying whatever, as we're getting in there.

And I just thought that that kind of show would be great for crypto. And I didn't see a lot of people are getting in. Like I said, I wanted a show that was about crypto, not cryptic. And once again, why I'm sitting here with you. And I haven't sat with anybody to do any of their shows yet, as opposed to doing a news desk. But I like the fact that you make sense and you're identifiable. But don't we have a messaging problem, though? Isn't that like the whole thing that's I'm saying?

It's like if you can't explain it to a five-year-old in two minutes, then nobody's going to pay attention. Yeah, because a 60-year-old and a five-year-old are the same person. We still have trouble doing that. We do. We can talk about Dow, and people are going to be like, oh, man, you know, I like that restaurant, man. It's pretty cool.

Yo, they got the club upstairs. Right? And then, like we were saying, we would use, because I sat there and said, man, they need to give a new dictionary. And then I realized language is changing every minute, and I just thought it'd be cool and because I knew I had a contact to my neighborhood my community I knew I had a contact and this is be the best thing for people uh who have been different franchises for so long

because if you get on discord there's no picture you don't have to use your real name. You can invest what you want to invest. It was an important thing that we couldn't be held back by color or by race or by ethnicity or by religion. Like this is something that literally abolishes all that you either in or not. And I don't have to know what you look like. That was the best thing about it. Right. And that's true for the communities, 100 percent. But a lot of people would say that's also just the argument for Bitcoin. Yeah. Literally everybody has access to it. Like we we live here. Right. We have dollars, whatever. We take for granted that there's places in the world where they're just dying to get dollars. They literally can't even get a dollar, but everybody can get

Bitcoin everywhere. I say that you can even get it, I wouldn't mention the company, but we haven't finished negotiating. You ain't giving it away for free. No, no. You can get iCloud. What is it? CloudCoin. Like I saw Spike doing a commercial for CloudCoin, and it was ATM. You can literally get crypto at ATM. I just, you know, being born in the 60s, and my daughter said in the 1900s,

being born in the 1900s. I'm 76. Oh my God, I'm 64. But just the fact that she called being born in the 1900s, I can't imagine, it's hard to imagine us not having a dollar, but that might be in our lifetime. That might be a real thing. So she's born in the 2000s? Yes. She might one day say the same thing about they're being born in a digital native world. Our kids are not even going to know when there wasn't Bitcoin. Which boggles my mind because I didn't find out about it until I was in my late 30s, early 40s.

But these kids are going to grow up and Bitcoin is just going to be as much a part of the conversation as everything else. That's the most encouraging thing to me, actually, is because we try to explain it to people. They're just going to get it. Yeah. And I guess we're trying to bring some old people through. We're trying to bring the old rumors. Hey, do it like this. Put your money here. It was already hard enough to get them to bring some old people through. Yeah, we're trying to bring the old rumors. Hey, do it like this. Put your money here.

It was already hard enough to get them to save money in a bank. Right. So to get them to think about a crypto wallet. I know. You better not. Well, isn't that like now the government, Fed, whatever, they're basically doing the marketing for us. Everybody knows that you can't put money in a bank unless you just want to get 0.0002%. When I was doing movies, they used to say to me,

a guy said, oh, you want to come to, I said, man, why would I come to the bank to borrow money? He goes, we got cheap money. And I didn't understand what he meant then. I so understand what he means now. Like I get, it's cheaper to borrow money onto your life insurance policy than it is for you to go ahead and put your money in the bank. You don't know what's going to happen.

And you know, inflation is kicking your butt. I tell you, I saw a house out here in Miami that I, a condo when I was going to buy it before I left, it was $235,000. It's for sale now. And that was 20 years ago. It's for sale now for $2.6 million. There's no upgrades. I was going to say, it actually got worse. Yeah. Those toilets did not get any younger. No. And it's still got to turn. If you want hot water, turn it on and come back in an hour. Still that habit for $2.5 million. That's unsustainable. I know. Hey, your people are telling you you've got to go on a stage. You know how it is, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. So tell us really quick

about the show. JohnSallyCryptoShow.com You should check it out. We're going to be dropping tons of things. You get my token. You get to see great interviews like this one. So good. And you get to hear some really cool things and you get to learn. I get on it. So good. And you get to hear some really cool things,

and you get to learn. I get to learn, and it's a comfortable place. I'm using all of my television, I'm not going to say expertise, but... Tricks of the trade. Tricks of the trade, knowledge, and I've been doing it for so long, I get to talk about something other than

other prima donnas running up and down the field hitting each other. I just like that. I mean, it's nice to actually get to do something else with your life and not be identified as one thing. Not as one thing. I was a DJ and a producer for 20 years, and that was the wolf of all streets was because people used to say, shut up, DJ. You don't know about this. Really? Of course.

You don't get that? Oh, well, yeah, I get a look. But the cool thing is I got like seven athletes who are doing this, and it's making my life so much easier. Love to see it. Thank you. Appreciate it, man.

I'm going to stand up so you can really get some context. Yeah! Thank you, man. I'm stealing the mic. 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.