The Future of Cryptocurrencies: Exploring Blockchain and Digital Assets

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:50):
Before we begin today's episode, I want to acknowledge that we're re
we are recording on September 11, a day of remembrance.
Today also brings news of another tragedy. conservative activist
Charlie Kirk was killed yesterday, leaving behind a wife and two
children. In moments like these, we face a
choice. Let tragedy divide us further or

(01:13):
come together. Despite our differences at Inspired Money,
we've always believed that while we may disagree, we
share common ground in wanting security opportunity in a
better future for our families. I believe that we are better
together, not in spite of our differences, but often because of
them. Violence has no place in our discourse.

(01:35):
Our thoughts are with all families touched by loss.
Now let's turn to our topic today. Aloha Inspired Money
Maker. Thank you for tuning in. If this is your first time here, welcome.
If you're returning, welcome back to Inspired Money. Andy I'm
Andy Wang and today we're tackling something that has
everyone talking -- crypto. Since President Trump threw

(01:58):
his support behind digital currencies, Bitcoin has been
on a tear. New investors are flooding in.
Suddenly, everyone's asking, "Should I be in
this?" Investing in cryptocurrency is not for the
faint of heart. The volatility can make even seasoned
investors queasy. I've watched portfolios swing 20% in

(02:20):
a single day. That's not normal market behavior. That's
crypto. But after 26 years in finance,
what fascinates me is this Blockchain technology is
not just about making a quick buck on Bitcoin. It's a
disruptive force that, when deployed responsibly, can
empower users, reduce corruption, and fundamentally

(02:42):
change how we think about trust in financial transactions.
Digital currencies may not be for everyone. Maybe they're not
even for you. But even if you never buy a single
Bitcoin, understanding this technology matters
because blockchain applications are already reshaping
industries far beyond crypto. From supply chains to

(03:04):
health care records to how we verify identity online.
I promise you a thoughtful episode that aims to inform,
educate, and inspire you. Before I introduce our guests,
a quick thank you to our sponsor. This episode of Inspired Money is brought to
you by Seeking Alpha Premium, the ultimate platform for
serious investors who want an edge in every market. With Seeking

(03:27):
Alpha Premium, you'll unlock expert analysis, stock ratings,
and powerful tools that can help you make smarter, more
informed investing decisions. For a limited time, inspired
moneymakers can get $30 off
a 7 day free trial.
That's for new subscribers only. Just visit

(03:47):
InspiredMoney.fm/alpha
to claim your offer. That's an affiliate link,
which means if you sign up, I may earn a commission at no extra cost
to you. Don't miss out. Seeking Alpha Premium, your edge
in every market. And if you subscribe, it supports the Inspired Money
podcast. Let's bring in our guest. We've assembled an

(04:08):
incredible panel of experts who live and breathe this space.
They'll break down the fundamentals, explore the expanding
ecosystem, and help you understand both the risks and
rewards. First up, we have Dr. Merav Ozair,
a leading global expert on emerging technologies, blockchain and
responsible AI. With experience as a data scientist, quant

(04:30):
strategist and fintech educator at Cornell and Wake
Forest. She's dedicated to democratizing technology
and shaping ethical, inclusive digital innovation.
Welcome, Dr. Ozair.
Next joining us is Sir John Hargrave, CEO of Media Shower and
publisher of the widely read Bitcoin Market Journal, trusted by

(04:52):
over 100,000 crypto investors each month. He's also the
author of the upcoming book the the Intelligent Crypto:
A Practical Guide to Building Long Term Wealth Through Smart Crypto
Investing. I interviewed John back in
2021 about his book Blockchain for Everyone.
You can watch it at www.InspiredMoney.fm/206.
Sir John,

(05:15):
great to have you here. Andy, good to be back. Always inspiring
to be on Inspired Money. Thank you for that.
Our next guest is Chris Klein, co founder and COO of
BitcoinIRA, the first platform that allows investors to hold
cryptocurrencies directly in their retirement accounts. Since
2016, Chris has helped expand BitcoinIRA into a

(05:38):
secure, compliant and trusted leader in crypto retirement
investing. My one-on-one interview with Chris aired last
week. That's where we sat down at iheartradio
in Manhattan. If you missed it, you can find it. And it's
www.InspiredMoney.fm/279. Chris,
good to see you again. It's great to be here. Thanks so much.

(06:00):
I feel like I'm in a group where I'm actually the junior here, so I'm
excited to learn as much as I am here to share. The key is learning
together. And finally, we're joined by Nick Spanos, a true
pioneer in blockchain and cryptocurrency. He founded the world's
first physical cryptocurrency exchange, Bitcoin Center
NYC, right next to the New York Stock Exchange in

(06:21):
2013. He holds patents for innovation
like the multi branched blockchain and blockchain
voting. Nick, thanks for being here. Thanks for having
me. Thanks for having me. So whether you are
a crypto curious person or a skeptic
looking for answers, please stick around. In the next hour, we're going to cut

(06:43):
through the hype to give you clear, actionable insights to navigate
the future of digital assets. Let's jump right in and start
with segment one.
Blockchain technology extends beyond cryptocurrency,
offering decentralized, transparent and secure systems for

(07:03):
various industries. Unlike traditional databases,
blockchain records transactions on a distributed ledger,
reducing the risk of fraud and single points of failure.
Decentralization enhances security and transparency by
preventing any single entity from controlling the network.
Smart contracts automate processes by executing agreements without

(07:24):
intermediaries, reducing costs and errors. Real
world applications include supply chain tracking, digital
identity verification, secure healthcare data management and
transparent voting systems. Advantages include security
and efficiency and data integrity. While challenges involve
scalability, energy consumption and regulatory

(07:46):
uncertainty, understanding blockchain's broader
potential prepares investors and businesses to navigate the
evolving digital economy. Its role in automation,
security and data management signals its impact beyond
speculative markets, shaping industries that require trust and
efficiency in digital transactions.

(08:13):
Merav, you've said "AI fakes. Blockchain authenticates."
Can you share how you see blockchain providing trust
and transparency in an AI driven world?
Yeah, exactly. I mean everyone, I mean with the hype of AI at
the moment, everyone is fearful that everything is fake,
especially with the deep fake. But you know, there's a lot of other things

(08:35):
like the bias and hallucination and everything else.
But you know, just think about the deep fake issue of that.
I mean, when you see a photo today, you always ask
yourself, is it real? You see a video, is it real? I mean, we have
seen, you know, incidents with, whether it's
celebrities or politicians or anything, you know, that

(08:58):
they were fake. And we know, and there are also scams that have been,
and in fact it's been, you know, a
boon for, for criminals to use the deep fake, you know, to,
for expediting of their, the scams. So
yes, as I said, AI fakes, you
know, that's what it can do. And with technology

(09:20):
advancements, it can do it even better than ever and it's going
to do it even better and better. But so we need some
authentication. We need to understand whether this is true. I mean,
am I looking at the real thing or is it just some,
someone trying to hallucinate me? So,
and this is where blockchain comes into play because

(09:42):
blockchain, the whole idea of blockchain is authentication.
Whatever you, you record on the
blockchain cannot be erased. It is there forever.
That's what we call it is immutable. So whatever
is going to be recorded on the blockchain going to be
recorded. You know, this is a. And you can record, you know like a smart

(10:05):
contract with all the information, like an NFT with all the information.
So every, let's say photo, audio,
text, anything, basically any, any, anything
that you can imagine, even this video can be
authenticated on the blockchain. Now it just so you know, a

(10:25):
pointer, it's not like you know, you see the, the video something that the blockchain
is not a database. So, so I want people to understand that, that, that's
not the point of blockchain, it's a pointer to where the data is and this
is where you can find it. Now but you going to
point, you know, to this information. It is immutable meaning
you get all the records of who, who

(10:47):
put this information when it is put as a timestamp and
cannot be erased. So it is authenticated. So you
know whether it's true or not, you know who is the owner,
who has done it and whether you can trust it.
So true authentication. Exactly. So and we
need it today. And I advocate

(11:09):
that everything. I know that the, I know
that the companies, the tech companies, you know, they're not really,
you know, excited about doing that because you know, it's part of the
business. But I'm not going to get into. Maybe I'll get to that later.
But I advocate that each and every

(11:30):
applications will have this immediate. And it's possible. I know that
some startups are working on this and it's possible to
authenticate everything, everything that you can
imagine. Even the models themselves when you build them, you
can authenticate the data that has been uploaded to the
model, the training that has been done, the revision of the

(11:52):
model, the algorithm, you can authenticate everything. The entire what we
call the flywheel of the process of development.
So it's something that I really
feel and believe that this is where we heading
because there's a need for that. Everyone understand that we need

(12:12):
that to verify and trust the models.
We need that in order to trust. The
users need to also the developers need to have trust in the
data that has been entered into the model and the algorithm that
has, hasn't been hacked or all kinds, you know, we've
heard about that as well. So also you know,

(12:35):
oh, when we're talking about models, sorry for, for that is that
basically if you're giving authority
only to, let's say several people who are developing the model
and with blockchain, if you, you're going to
prevent that, people that are, you know, you know,

(12:55):
criminals or hackers or et cetera, cannot
enter, you know, the process and, and I don't
know, change anything within the model, which is very important because we
have heard about things like that. So, so that's. So, so
there's a lot of things I can talk about for hours that
every. I mean, it's really important that now that we entering into this

(13:18):
era to have blockchain as a key
component for all this trust issue. Thank you. I want to go
to John, because, John, you're known for making blockchain simple.
You explain blockchain to somebody who finds it intimidating
or overly technical. I'm going to give you the world's easiest
explanation of blockchain. You ready? Ready. Andy?

(13:40):
Yep. Imagine a Google sheet, or like an Excel
spreadsheet, a Google sheet, but instead of being stored on Google
servers, the spreadsheet is stored on many, many
computers all around the world. Imagine every time you make a change
to that spreadsheet, it's automatically copied to all the
copies everywhere, all over the world. And

(14:03):
then every time we make a change to it, we store that
data in a chunk called a block, and then we chain them together,
Hence blockchain. That's it. That's all you need to know.
So there are many uses for this technology, for blockchain technology, but
the big, hairy, audacious success story
unquestionably is crypto, meaning financial

(14:25):
assets using this technology, such as Bitcoin
and others. And so that is now a $4 trillion
asset class. And that is the opportunity for
your audience, who I know are interested in financial planning and lifestyle
planning. That's the opportunity to invest in for the future
is buying just a little bit of these crypto assets that are based on this

(14:47):
blockchain technology as kind of a vote in the future
of the global financial system.
Chris at BitcoinIRA, what were the biggest challenges
in convincing people and their advisors to use
blockchain for retirement investing? Well,
we don't. Well, you can't actually invest in the blockchain itself, right? You,

(15:10):
you're doing it via proxy, via crypto, because as
John just said very perfectly, the only thing he missed is the, the
authentication that Marev was talking about is done by a consensus in
users that are putting their nodes out there and they're authenticating transactions,
no matter what chain they're on. And that could be the block, the Bitcoin blockchain,
the Ethereum blockchain, etcetera and so for us, I mean, honestly,

(15:31):
I always joke about the first time we did it, we put a press release
out and said, hey, we've created the first Bitcoin retirement plan in
2016. June of 2016, about a decade ago now.
And your early adopters were probably folks like
on this panel. I call my "engine-nerds." They were hyper excited
about being on the cutting edge of things. But what's happened since

(15:53):
then is there's two factors that really drive people into
alternative assets. There's fear and greed, right? Fear
is, is that concept of worries about our fiat currency
and the things that are happening. And greed is the waves that we see, like
in '21 and even '17 '18, and we'll probably see another wave of
that here in the fourth quarter. One just quick thing I wanted to

(16:15):
share. I love what Merav said about authentication with AI. I do
think that Bitcoin cryptocurrency and
AI are in a perfect harmony for an amazing marriage ahead
here at BitcoinIRA, we actually call all of our clients on their
birthday of the actual birthday, and we also call them on the anniversary of their
account. Well, we're now up to about 250,000 users, so

(16:37):
that's about half a million phone calls, which would have taken a floor of people
in the past. And we use AI callers in order to have those
conversations and wish them happy birthday and remind them of things coming up.
And one of the things we just did in phase two is we started
rewarding the AI agents with
components of an actual token that was their compensation for what

(16:59):
they were doing and basically rewarding certain things. And we
put them in competition with each other as well. And so this is, we're
just, I think, honestly scratching the surface of this marriage. And
it's, it's going to be so exciting over the next year, year and a half,
because it will be accelerated. This is going to take a lot less time for
adoption than we say for the Internet was, or even for social media was,

(17:21):
because AI is a driving force of it. So just really cool
insights from both the other panelists so far. But, yeah, it's always a challenge
to get people to the table, but that's what we're excited about. That's our
advocacy. That's what we're here for. Great use of
AI. Nick, you founded the first physical Bitcoin
exchange you came to this early. That was back in

(17:43):
2013. What did you see back then? And from a
protocol standpoint, what excites you most about
blockchain's potential today.
Oh yeah. So, well, I opened the
Bitcoin center in 2013. I was involved before, of course,
I worked for Dr. Ron Paul who ran

(18:05):
for president a few times. And he spoke about competing
currencies all the time. And when the time came, you know, we all adopted.
And I think the
technology back then compared to today is
more robust, of course, and many more people are adopting it.
So let's say if you're gonna do an analogy with

(18:29):
the dot coms, you know, there was a time in the
beginning of the dot com that, you know, you had pets.com, you had this, you
had that and everyone was just excited with the word
dot com. So. But then everything collapsed and I
think we had that in from my perspective, we had that in 2017. Now
I'm not sure what's going to happen now with the stock exchange, of course, and

(18:51):
all the Treasuries, digital asset treasuries. But
I think that it's an incredible world.
It caught me by surprise. I thought it was going to take a lot longer.
I mean, that's why I opened the place next to the stock exchange. I try
to rent a booth in the stock exchange in 2012. They laughed me out of
there and it said, I'm gonna open my own exchange next

(19:12):
door. And you know, that's what I did as a
publicity, not a publicity stunt, but I wanted to give visibility to
the transparency of the blockchain to the financial
world. And you know, we hired all the,
hired, we trained and all the traders who were
losing their jobs due to high speed trading and stuff like that. And

(19:35):
we stood outside of the stock exchange and sold Bitcoin in the
street. Especially when they were all getting, you know, after the
closing bell and then we'd bring them next door and give them free
Bitcoin. It's a lot of them, and train them how
to trade. So I think we did our part
as actors. That's real guerrilla marketing.

(19:59):
Nick, you are an OG.. That's so impressive.
2013, you were doing this. Well,
yeah, I mean we've been fighting
the Federal Reserve for a long time. I think I started in
1991. So this is just the
continuation of the battle. I'm,

(20:20):
I'm shocked we haven't crossed paths, Nick. Every time I'm in New York four times
a year, I, I speak, I go and do interviews at the stock
exchange, which it's, it's kind of a cool experience. Especially as a history buff like
myself, you know, there's so much history There, as far as, you know,
I was going up the back steps, and I'm like, I wonder if this is
somewhere. Somebody was in 1929 and. And the smell of it and everything.

(20:42):
And also pre. My big point,
that was my dark. Yeah, that's where my dark humor went, too.
But. But I also. I was on the Coloradans
for McCain campaign back when we were running against Ron Paul
in for that. So I'm amazed we have never crossed
paths. Yeah, you're lucky.

(21:05):
You're lucky. You guys want to connect next time you're in New York.
I think that things have changed for the better since
that. I mean, your experience in 2013,
I mean, you said, you know, that you open it just next to
Nasdaq and probably Nasdaq, you know, back then, you know, probably threw you away

(21:26):
and said, hey, you scammer, you know, move away from here.
But today they just applied for,
you know, to move everything to tokenization. They're going to
tokenize all stocks, so they are moving
everything to the blockchain, NASDAQ itself. So things have
changed. I mean, life has changed. I mean, it's. It's

(21:48):
like a complete evolution. I mean, yeah, it takes time. That always
happens with technology. Nothing happens in a day. There's always, you know, at
first, it starts with the hype, like the Internet and, you
know, everyone wants to try something and think that everything has to be on
the blockchain. And then because of this hype and because of all the fiascos
and everything, so people just, you know, throw. What is it

(22:10):
called? Throw the baby with the bath water. So we don't want to hear about
that. Forget about that. Everything is false
and, and, and crap and everything which is not true. I mean,
technology, we know that it has substance. We know
that it has value. We know what it can do.
So the issue of tokenization, I think it's coming,

(22:33):
and it's coming really, really, really hard.
I believe. I mean, I've said that many, many times for many, many years. I
believe that everything will be tokenized. Everything that you can
imagine, even this video can be tokenized.
I mean, you can monetize that as well. But apart from that,
to your point, Nick, is that the

(22:56):
financial. I mean, the big financial institutions are already in.
I guess we starting to get some clarity from the
regulators. We have the Genius Act, you know, for the stable coins.
Clarity Act. By DeFinition, clarity.
It's. It's. It's on its way, and I think it's already been approved by
the House. So. So we'll see sitting now with the Senate.

(23:19):
I'm predicting
that at least for, at the very least at the
very. I mean it's gonna be approved in
2026 for the most part.
But now for, for your. For your point with
what you know, the financial institution, everything we know that, that

(23:42):
JPMorgan partnered with Coinbase. Coinbase
is crypto exchange. I'm sure that people,
at least people here are familiar with who is Coinbase,
which is an exchange probably similar to what you
have done in the past, Nick, but it's a little bit more

(24:03):
regulated. So they partnered
with them because now they going to launch.
They own what they call
jpmd, which is a
commercial deposit. It's like it's kind of like better than stablecoin because
it's also yield. Have some, some interest

(24:25):
yield interest and return on that. And, and it
has and it attached to a commercial deposit of the bank.
And hear that they do have their own private
blockchain which we all know they start with Quorum, then they call it
Onyx and now it's Connectors. That's. But
they're not launching it on the private blockchain. They want to be

(24:47):
exposed to the, you know, the entire
public. So they're launching it on a public
blockchain, which is layer two to Ethereum, which is the
blockchain Converse blockchain, which is called Base. So
they're in. I mean, it's a different time.
It's a shame. I know it's a shame because we. Out of the bank.

(25:11):
They threw me out of the bank in 2014, 12 banks threw me out
just because they heard Bitcoin or something. They threw me out of the
banks. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley
yesterday asked me to invest with them and I
said, yo, you guys threw me out of the bank and now you want me
to invest with you. It's pretty shameless

(25:32):
what they're doing. They should stay away from us.
But you know, they
created, they pushed. You know, Cuomo was governor at the time and
he was getting a lot of donations from the banks and he put
Ben Lawsky, he put Ben Lawsky in charge of

(25:54):
the DFS Department of Financial Services. And Ben Lawsky was a
litigator and he was his chief of staff. He had nothing to do with banking
so he went after the crypto companies and he chased the whole industry out. In
2015 he made the bit license. You know, we applied, spent so
much money just to keep the, the
thing, the. What was it called? Safe harbor alive.

(26:16):
And, you know, I mean, there's 30 licenses now, 10 years
later. What kind of license is that? That's like, that's an insider
license. And at first there was only one, and then those two, you
know, it was very bad what they did to us. Every
resident of New York should sign up for a
class action lawsuit against the guy because.

(26:38):
And if you weren't in New York, you could buy a bunch of crypto everywhere.
And it was pretty easy. But if you're in New York,
you had to hunt down one company. If that company blocked you, you couldn't really
buy any crypto. So I think there's a class action
lawsuit that I'm gonna go sniff out for a lawyer today. Come to
think, now that I thought of this,

(27:01):
I'd like the truth to be told that the bank
kept us out, chased crypto
overseas and made every resident in New
York not see the advertising of
Bitcoin, not learn about Bitcoin, not be able to buy it. So, you know,
and it wasn't just New York. We fought tooth and nail to get into

(27:23):
New York. Hawaii had problems too. And then there was the era of
2018 where I had to bring in multiple chief compliance officers and
general counsel because we couldn't even advertise our business anywhere in
America on Google, Facebook, Meta, LinkedIn. Today,
LinkedIn still doesn't allow advertising for cryptocurrency
companies. It's. It was. We wouldn't. The pendulum has swifted shifted.

(27:44):
Right? They went very hard one direction of anti. And
I think Nick nailed it. There was a lot of people with their, their pockets
being lined by big banks. And that's what. And that's what happened.
This isn't the first time. Governor Cuomo happened to be trying to run for mayor.
Yeah, exactly.
If you look back already,
I don't know what he's doing. If you look back at Silver

(28:08):
with JPMorgan too, they paid over like $3 billion in fines
for manipulating the price of silver. Why they were buying it. One of the things
that I really love, and I want to get this across to the audience for
Andy, because I know this is the last of the shows about
cryptocurrency is I've always been a strong proponent of the fact that Bitcoin
and cryptocurrency is the democratization of money. It is the people's

(28:28):
currency. And I think that is if we continue to hit
home with that message as we, as we continue to expand our products
and bring in more adoption. We're only at 1 or 3% of adoption right now.
JD Vance said there's gonna be 100 million American households that hold crypto
by the end of the decade. And I think that that's all our job is
to, is to stay that course and continue to carry that

(28:50):
message forward. That one of the things I love about this, I've been in financial
services for most of my career and the house normally wins
and with cryptocurrency, the average Joe and the average Jane are actually
making differences in their lives by being a part of this, this, I would
almost want to say revolution of monetary policy. It's very exciting. Would you guys
agree? I definitely agree with Chris, you know, about

(29:12):
the democratization because that's, you know, why I got into
this, because of the, you know,
it really has the power to democratize, you
know, society and also AI. In fact, you know, and the
combination of them together can do a lot of really great things if
we really understand what the ability of these

(29:34):
technologies. And as for, you know, your, I mean
I have a different statistics. I have a survey from
Fidelity that's saying that 26% of retail
investors hold digital assets
and about from globally about
56% of of institutional investors

(29:56):
hold digital assets. So the numbers are higher
and they're getting even higher. So thank you for that.
We have a lot to cover so we're going to go to segment 2.
Cryptocurrency investing the digital asset ecosystem
includes cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, central bank
digital currencies and non fungible tokens, each serving

(30:18):
distinct functions. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and
Ethereum operate on decentralized networks providing an
alternative store of value and enabling decentralized finance.
Stablecoins pegged to traditional assets offer price stability,
making them useful for transactions, remittances and liquidity
in DeFi markets. CBDCs are government backed

(30:41):
digital currencies designed to modernize payment systems and expand
financial inclusion while raising questions about privacy and control.
NFTs represent unique digital ownership with applications
in art, gaming and intellectual property verification.
These assets are reshaping finance by increasing accessibility,
enabling new economic models and challenging traditional financial

(31:04):
structures. As adoption grows, regulatory frameworks
and technological advancements will shape how digital assets integrate
into mainstream financial systems.
John, your upcoming book talks about investing across different digital
assets. How should new investors think about Bitcoin,

(31:26):
Ethereum, stablecoins and other assets as part of one
portfolio?
Let's simplify all this. So the crypto asset market today is about

(31:46):
$4 trillion. And Bitcoin makes up about
60% of that, Ethereum, about 15% of it.
So those two Bitcoin and Ethereum are about 75% of the
entire market. So for investors, for your listeners,
owning a little bit of Bitcoin is the first step. Just a small
amount, a small percentage of your portfolio, no more than

(32:08):
10% or even less. And you can buy Bitcoin, of course,
at Coinbase or Robinhood, you can buy any number of
ETFs and then if you're feeling adventurous, maybe a little
bit of Ethereum. And that's the basics, that's it.
Then if you really get into it, you can start to add these
other assets that you just referred to,

(32:29):
Andy. So in my book the Intelligent Crypto Investor, we
show how to think of these other crypto
assets like companies and then use traditional valuation
metrics like Warren Buffett style value investing metrics
to these crypto companies to evaluate them to see
which ones are worth your money long term. And then we

(32:52):
have shown that over the last seven years, since we've been tracking
this, if you have a highly diversified portfolio, 60%
stocks, 30% bonds, and again no
more than 10% quality crypto assets, you would have
vastly outperformed other
investors who are not involved in crypto at all by

(33:14):
55%. So again, 60%
stocks, 30% bonds, like all stock index fund, all
bond index fund, and then up to 10%
Bitcoin, Ethereum and maybe a few high quality crypto
assets. And if you do that month after month just kind of
having a dollar cost averaging, a steady drip contribution

(33:36):
every month into those three asset classes,
you will vastly outperform. You will have a
vastly outperformed traditional investors over the
last seven years. Merav, do you agree start
with Bitcoin. How do you explain the difference between
cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, CBDCs, NFTs

(33:58):
to students when you talk to them? Well,
I learned a lot about that and I mean
to Nick points, you know, I say, you know, it all started with a
really great vision and great got in the way and we kind of back to
square one with you know, the institutional investors and at the
CDBC. So just you know, to explain Stablecoin, we already

(34:21):
we have the Genius Act which is
basically legitimize stable coins. Stable coins,
it's basically a peg to any
asset. I mean it could be even gold, it could be diamond, could be
whatever. But by DeFinition it has to be stable. So you have to find
like a stable asset. And, and we

(34:44):
think about, you know, stable coins, you know, that are pegged to, to the
currency and the US dollar or the euro probably are more of
a stable currencies than let's say the
Venezuela,
Argentina. So probably that's not, it's not really stable,
but it has to be pegged to something. So the way,

(35:08):
so that's the peg, it's a token that
is pegged, you know, that one to one, one token equals,
you know, one dollar, one US dollar or one euro or whatever.
And now with this, with the regulation,
it has to be, you know, you
have to have the

(35:31):
in custody actual, you know, either, you know, you invested
in Treasuries or something similar to that. So you
actually holding the dollars in a safe place.
So it's one to one. And that's the
idea. Now CBDC, it's a different ball game. And this is why I'm
saying that that's currently kind of like coming to, you

(35:54):
know, ground zero is because, which,
I mean the idea with Bitcoin was, you know, to kind of escape,
you know, government and escape, you know, no
intermediaries and no relations
to central banks. And what is CBDC? It is
a digital currency issued by the central bank.

(36:16):
So we back to square one. And I know that
the, you know, the administration in the U.S. you know, are kind of like
they, they are kind of against it and they're not kind of
like for now, you know, even though, you know that the Fed, you know,
had done experiments with that. The EU is thinking very,
very seriously about launching the on CBDC, which

(36:39):
is basically a euro or a dollar just runs on the
blockchain and it's issued by the central bank.
So it just, you know, same, same story but
with different rails. So we're
not really getting anything better than that. So that's, you know, I wrote an
article about that, you know, Greek got us, you know, back to square one, which

(37:02):
as you can understand, I'm not really a fan of it, but we might get
there. Stablecoin is kind of like in between
and crypto is, you know, everything is more
decentralized. If I can interject for
a moment, I see Nick shaking his head.
Talk about that, what he thinks about, you know, what I said. What's your take

(37:25):
on CBDCs? Are they the future of money or are they a threat
to crypto's decentralized vision. It's
the future of a decent, of a dystopian future of course, because it's
more, more Dolphin coin than money.
Because you're gonna have to do a flip for the government to
be able to spend your own money. You know, you're not gonna be able. It's

(37:47):
not going to be inheritable. If they want, if they need to inflate,
if they want, if they need the economy to be accelerated, they're going to say,
hey, your money's gonna disappear or half your money or 10% of your money is
going to disappear in the next three months. Because I, you
know, I'm running for reelection and I got to show big numbers. I mean, if
you put in your hands I of where you're storing your work into

(38:08):
something that the government made, you're out of your mind. You know, I mean, you
have it's. I call it Panopticoin. I mean,
it's on like the Panopticon of a prison where the prison guard
looked around and you can look at all inside all the cells. It's not just
looking at you. It's controlling you and training you like a dog.
What's going to happen is, oh, you're five miles away

(38:31):
from your house, your carbon footprint is a little too big, you better go
back home or you can't eat because they're going to turn your money off. They
can do whatever they want. It sounds crazy right now, what you're saying, but I
always sound crazy in the beginning, and then it all comes to fruition. I
think there's many things that they can do. They can
increase, they can do anything they want. And they're

(38:51):
politicians. So the lobbyists are going to control
what you could do with your money because we don't really get a say in
what the politicians do. It's the lobbyist. And, you know, I've been in Washington.
I don't even want to say, because you're gonna find out how old I am
over 40 years. I'm 60 years old now, so I know.
It's just so crazy that people are even entertaining

(39:14):
and even talking about CBDC. You know, I want to
burn down the Bastille when I hear CBDC
because, you know, yeah, it's going to be easy. They're going to give away
500 or something for free. Everyone's going to load the wallet onto
their phone, and then they're going to be a puppet. They're going to be trained.
You know, it's more than just surveillance. It's gonna it's

(39:36):
gonna move the way people think
and their endorphin
response in their brain is going to be, it's going to be
a Pavlovian future where whatever they want,
they can make us think and believe a nd feel with our own
stored work. Because that's what money is, right? You're storing your

(40:00):
work across time so you can use it later.
But you know, if you got the government
or some politicians,
you know, ability to receive more lobby money sitting there at
the throttle, you know you're going to be doing flips like a dolphin to
get a little fish. Chris, I want to get your thoughts especially through

(40:22):
this lens of BitcoinIRA. You have
Bitcoin in the name, but then over time you've added other
digital currencies. Are there criteria that you have to
use to decide which assets are safe enough for retirement
investing? Yeah, great question. And first
I'll just close out Nick's statement. It's lipstick on a pig. That's all a

(40:44):
CBDC is and we should run
the opposite direction as hard as we can. It does make sense in
places like Europe, which is used to kind of pseudo
socialism, high taxes, a lot more government intervention in the daily
lives. But as a red blooded American since 1985, I'll give
you my actual age, I just turned 40 this year. My biggest

(41:06):
thing I remember hearing when I was a kid was Ronald Reagan said I'm the
government and I'm here to help is the scariest thing you can hear. So
I just avoid that altogether. Now how do we choose crypto? Right, so we're,
so we're OG. We're not as OG as Nick 2013, we're 2015.
Bitcoin was the only game in town at that moment in time. So
BitcoinIRA was a common obvious name for us. But since then we

(41:29):
added obviously first year 17 we added Ethereum, XRP,
Litecoin. We supported the Bitcoin cash fork, the
contingency Bitcoin cash fork back in that year in November 17th. And now we're up
to 80 plus different cryptocurrencies available. Our biggest
parameters from our compliance officers is that it has to sit inside
of our, what we call the "Pentagon of Custody." So it has to sit in

(41:50):
our cold stores and cold storage settlements. We partner exclusively with
Bitgo, which is arguably the brinks of the space to make sure
that we keep things behind SOC 2, type 2 and up to $250 million
of insurance per wallet. So it has to live in that world. Beyond that we
also watch for. We don't have to watch it as much now but the last
four years if the SEC CFTC or any other three leader agency had

(42:12):
an issue with the coin, we had to be cautious there. And then we also
look at just the metrics on a coin market cap. What's the 24
hour trading volume, what kinds of things are happening? We listen to our clients
is how we got here. So we have over 200,000 users now, $14 billion in
assets under custody and we listen to them first. So
they're the ones that drive us there. But they also come back with some things

(42:33):
that I'm just like, I can't like I'm trying to get the, the penguins, the
pudgy penguins rolling right now and I'm getting some pushback from the
compliance department. But over time as those things grow there, there is
use cases for meme coins, there's use cases for layer twos, there's use cases.
One of my most pop my favorite coins this year I think it's gonna, is
really gonna embed its way into the overall landscape. Here is Link. I think Link

(42:55):
has got a great pedigree ahead of it. So it's also about listening to
the market shifts, market trends and then just wanted to add a quick thing about
stablecoins. I was in a lot of rooms over the month
of July, a lot of boardrooms and big banks, regional banks, and that's their
hyper focus right now is how can I compete and
dominate the stablecoin space? Whether it's all the

(43:17):
big banks are going to issue their own stablecoin and then how are they interchangeable?
These are going to be big conversation pieces. And recently what
I thought was interesting, I wanted to get the feedback from the panel here was
Putin I think put out a notice earlier this week to the US of
basically you just took all your debt and you tokenized it. Stablecoins.
And I haven't made a final decision on my feelings about that. So I

(43:39):
was curious to see what the panel had to say.
You mean about Putin's remark that he's going to take
atheir debt and put on blockchain?
More or less. Basically it's kind of like a workaround, it's a loophole for the
government to, to, to manage the debt that we've created for ourselves. So just
curious about your thoughts. It's going to save the dollar, of course, yes,

(44:04):
as long as it could. And then people are going to actually understand
what the dollar is because the only reason why the dollar exists
and you know, I'm all over Africa too, and I call it voodoo money,
where you have lithograms of dead people
that you're passing around and you think it has value because
everyone else thinks it has value because some witch doctor signs it

(44:26):
and you sit there and you store your life's working there and they just print
up more lithograms diluting the
work that you've invested in to get these
lithograms of dead people. So yes, Bitcoin is
saving the dollar for as long as Bitcoin
can save the dollar. Because once people understand what the dollar

(44:48):
is and what fiat currency is, how could you ever store your work
in something someone can print as much as they want and give it to
anyone they want? It's a little silly. And one more
thing, one more thing that not only do
they print this out of thin air, but to give it value, they want you
to run around all year and collect a bunch of their own voodoo paper and

(45:10):
give it back to them or else in a cage. So that's
like instead of proof of
remittance or custody or redeemability, that's like proof of
cage I call it. Because if they didn't have that side,
maybe people wouldn't have collected it in the early days and the gold would
still been around. But you know, FDR made the gold illegal and

(45:33):
he pulled that flim flam on the people because people were
uneducated. But now we have the Internet and these great shows like this one
we're on right now. And people can store their money in
Bitcoin, but you got to have the private key.
And a cold wallet. That's, that's what I say.
Private key and then a cold wallet. And to make points,

(45:56):
you know, I mean, I'm, you know, engaging especially
with people who are layman that, you know, not this group who understand
what crypto is and blockchain. And they always said to me, oh, crypto
is an illusion. And I'm saying to them, like what? Your money
is not an illusion? It's all fake. I mean,
whatever, you know, the government

(46:18):
is printing is fake money. I mean, it's also an illusion. It doesn't
exist. If you have a million dollars and want to go to the bank and
you say, I want to withdraw all of my million dollars, I will tell you,
hey, not today. Come, you know,
in a week and maybe we'll have this million dollars. So
that's something that people don't really understand how the monetary system

(46:40):
really works. And I do believe
in there's a thesis by
Balaji. And I mean people were
know more about, you know, this crypto space. Probably they know who Balaji is
and he believes that eventually Bitcoin
will run supreme. And he has a theory that everything is gonna, you know, with

(47:01):
stablecoins, everything's gonna come on chain and they're going to be some
competition, you know, with the stable coins. Eventually, you know, maybe one or two like
the, you know, the US Dollars and the euro maybe, you know, will
succeed and eventually people will understand that why am I
locked, you know, with, with a coin that is attached to
a nationality when you know this

(47:24):
money, I mean on the blockchain can be anywhere. So and then
will. They will understand better, you know, the concept of what is Bitcoin
and, and all the, and all, you know, the,
the benefits of that and then that will be a move. So I have
one question for the panel that came in from a
viewer. Why

(47:48):
if there are tokenized money markets,
would that destroy stablecoin? And why would
anyone want a stablecoin with no yield?
Anybody have an answer for that? A couple of things that
I've seen recently. There's this contentious battle between the big
banks made sure that within the, within the stable act or the,

(48:11):
one of the, one of the bills that went out in crypto week was that
you can't offer yield on stable coins. And there's good
justification for that because we saw what went wrong in '22 and '23. Beyond
just yield and then it became rehypothecation and
greed. You have a lot of things in that, in that entire space. But
there are, and I was just wrote a piece for NASDAQ about this. There are

(48:32):
a lot of groups that are offering rewards for being a part of it.
So it's not yield, but it's still reward for being inside of it. And
to the audience's question, this is the
battlefield for the next six months for between. At the same time, let's
not forget this isn't a vacuum we're living in. But US Dollar
yields are likely going to drop next week given CPI

(48:56):
and labor statistics that are happening. I think
it's a great question and to the audience,
the viewer points is that yes, I mean probably if everything can be
tokenized and it probably going to happen and like what,
you know, JPMorgan is just doing, other banks may follow.
And if, you know, someone is offering me

(49:18):
something that has better yield, then why should they stick, you
know, to something that, you know, the inflation is going to ruin it. But
that might, might open the door to think about
the real DeFi products that we have that
I don't know, I mean maybe people say it's more

(49:39):
risky and the yield farm and all of that. It depends on what you invest
in and hopefully little bit
with some more education, I hope that now we'll have better education
for the public about what is blockchain and the
entire digital assets and what it means. Then maybe people will
start investing in DeFi, not this tokenized

(50:03):
bank, whatever and where they really can have a
real value that is not attached to the bank and what the bank wants to
do, but it's really decentralized.
I'm more than happy to write more about that. Okay, let's move on
to segment three. Cryptocurrency investing carries
significant risks and rewards. High volatility means

(50:26):
prices can swing dramatically, creating opportunities for gains,
but also exposing investors to substantial losses.
Security risks, including hacks and scams like rug pulls,
highlight the need for secure wallets. Two factor authentication
and thorough research before investing. Regulatory
uncertainty can impact market access and taxation, making

(50:49):
it essential to stay informed on policy developments.
Cryptocurrencies offer diversification benefits due to their
low correlation with traditional assets, but prudent
portfolio allocation is key. Strategies such as dollar
cost averaging, portfolio rebalancing, and limiting
crypto exposure to a small percentage of total investments can help

(51:11):
manage risk. Institutional adoption is growing,
bringing more stability, but retail investors must approach
the market cautiously. A disciplined, security
focused approach minimizes risks while allowing
participation in the evolving digital asset space.

(51:34):
John, you've shared your story of going all in on crypto,
nearly losing it all, and building it back. What's the biggest
lesson you learned from that experience? Yeah, I'll recap my story
real quick. So I bought Bitcoin way back in the day. The price was
$125 per Bitcoin. My wife and I bought
a bunch of it. It was really hard to buy back in the day.

(51:56):
We got it, we held onto it. I kind of forgot that I had it.
And every once in a while I check in on the price. And then
I remember about like 2016, 2017, price of Bitcoin hit
$10,000. I turned to my wife and I said, holy cow, this is the
greatest investment we've ever made. Let's go all in.
So we, we have this marketing company and decided we

(52:19):
were going to only go after crypto and blockchain clients.
And at the time this seemed like a great idea and it was. So we
pivoted the entire business and it really worked well. For three months.
And then the price of Bitcoin plummeted and with
it, the entire crypto ecosystem just
dried up overnight. All these new clients that we had attracted

(52:42):
just went away and we almost lost the business. It was
really, really dark days. Elon Musk once
said, being an entrepreneur at its worst is like chewing
glass and staring into the abyss. And
that's an understatement. Terrible, terrible.
And one day, I remember I was having coffee with this fellow

(53:05):
entrepreneur who was also trying to make a crypto business work. And he was
just out there just like grinding it out like us. And,
and he said, you know, when we make it through these tough
times, we come out with a tremendous gift.
I said, what is that? And he said, wisdom.
And so the process of making it through that, building

(53:28):
back our business, building back our own investment portfolio,
taught me something really valuable. And that's what I'm passionate about. Sharing and
it's one word. Diversification.
Diversify, diversify, diversify. I became like
radicalized on diversification. So
that's why today, the best approach

(53:50):
for most investors, like your listeners, Andy, is
again, highly diversified portfolio, something
like 60% all stock index fund, like the
Vanguard all stock index fund, like 30% all
bond index fund, and then no more than
10% high quality crypto assets. If you

(54:12):
are still skeptical about crypto, can be less, can be 5%
crypto. You want to start with Bitcoin for most people, maybe add
Ethereum and then if you really get into it, add other high
quality crypto assets. You want to contribute monthly,
do dollar cost averaging. So you're getting the average cost over time
and you want to hold for the long term. And that's it, that's the whole

(54:34):
plan in a nutshell. Valuable wisdom and
well earned. Well earned.
Nick, how do you feel about institutional players entering a
movement that started as a rebellion?
And it's pretty funny, the rebellion was against

(54:54):
institutions and they were against us. And you
know, first day, I don't know what the order is. First they laugh at you
or whatever and they, they hurt you. I don't know, I
forgot to say. And then they join you. So
apparently, you know, we were right. I was,
I was not treated well by the banks. I mean,

(55:17):
when, when I first opened in 2013, I mean, I was in crypto before that.
But when to open that exchange, you know, we had 6,000 square
feet on the ground floor of the Satai building right next to
the New York stock exchange and 40 foot ceilings.
And, you know, it was big cost. And I said, to myself, what the heck
am I doing over here? I just, I was so angry that they wouldn't

(55:40):
let me rent a booth that I had to open my own exchange. And
what happened was these, the
institutions would come in and sniff around and try to grab the coders
and many of them did. But I knew
because I, I've been in, I've, I've started many businesses
before that didn't exist.

(56:02):
I had Get a Room, no more hotels like the first Airbnb, one of the
first. Very early 1995. And no one knew what it
was. And it took a long time, you know, to get it. I
couldn't even get a merchant bank account because they would, they asked me,
oh, someone's going to sleep in someone else's bed. Where are the other people going
to sleep in the same bed? And it was so

(56:25):
new to people that it was difficult to adopt quickly.
And then I also built Livery Cab about four years before,
before Uber and. But it was. Most people had
sms, you know, so, you know, I burnt all
my money going that way. I never really took any investors money. I just make
it and sell it. I had Apartments Express, which was

(56:49):
access to listings that people would pay for in New York to
not pay the broker. I had a lot of new things that they made law.
As a matter of fact, they made a law department
information vendors license, they made the Bitcoin
license, the bit license. And you know, these
institutions are afraid to, you know,

(57:11):
they have their lobbyists, right? So they're afraid that they're going to lose their market
share and so they fight you
and they try to discredit you. When we first open, I thought, we're gonna get
arrested right away. That was the first thing I thought. So my heart was pounding
over there and. But my father taught me, you know,
thirío den gíneist, thirío den tros, a beast

(57:33):
you'll never become until you eat beasts.
So, you know, my father passed away and
I had to do it. I had to stand there and I stood there with
a bunch of my guys from the Ron Paul campaign
and we did it as an act of activism.

(57:53):
It wasn't. I don't know, I didn't know anything about Wall Street. I don't
know anything. I mean, I walked in there trying to rent a booth. I made
it all the way to the chairman chairperson, but, you know, they threw me out
of there. They said, was that video game money? I
said, no, the blockchain. I'm starting to join the blockchain on there.
Ah, it's a Lot easy, guys. It was a long

(58:16):
road. And now you, you know, you got all these creeps robbing
everyone. I don't know. I can't. I'm in here for the
freedom. I think humanity, there's a small window of
opportunity that we can embrace our
own worth as humans where other people
can't manipulate, where we store our work and our value

(58:37):
and our vote is where we move our
stored work. And you know, in the past,
they've bastardized that system to the point where
you're trading something that's not scarce. It's like you're trading
sand on the beach, but you can't see that you're standing on the beach.
And you know, some people do and some people

(59:00):
make more sand and you can't and you got to go collect and give it
back to them and they put you in a cage. The whole thing is
a Ponzi scheme. You know, the dollar, the
Federal Reserve system is a Ponzi scheme. I
helped put together the end the Fed movement. I
pushed all the candidates

(59:22):
that were against the Federal Reserve and marched on the Federal Reserve with Ron Paul.
I got the video online back in 2008 and,
you know, put bills forth in Congress which we got the
whole, we got the representatives to
vote for it, but then we went to the Senate and then Bernie screwed us.
He said he was going to vote for it and him another guy, and they

(59:45):
voted against it. And then Bernie put out his own audit, the Fed
bill, and then he, it had no teeth and they
passed that one, but there was no audit. So I think
everyone's living in an illusion. There's no scarcity.
And how are you going to store your work is scarce. How many hours of
work can you put out in your life? These guys can put out as

(01:00:07):
much redeemable of your work
as they want. What are they, magicians? They're witch doctors. The whole thing,
sick and perverted. And if anyone believes otherwise,
they have, you know, they're not. They're just followers. They can't use their
brain. See me, I'm lucky. I could use my brain.
And I saw through it pretty early. As a matter of fact, I registered cryptos.com

(01:00:29):
in 2004, five years before Bitcoin even tried mine
cash in 2004. And the government came
after us a little. They didn't come after us, but we got a bunch of
notices, shut that thing down. Opened the escrow payment
in '99 because of the not
being able to facilitate paying landlords

(01:00:50):
for the short term rentals of getaroom.com
and nomorehotels.com tiemposcordos.com
we had all different white label.
So to send money anywhere in the world was ridiculous. You couldn't even do it.
You know, it was very difficult. So I think there's
a new age. I think we have a responsibility, you know, to everyone

(01:01:12):
before who's their whole lives they worked and were driven into the
dirt because these guys printed more
of their work than they can actually put out. So these guys, they came and
buy us tuna fish sandwich. Now they could have bought a car with the same
money. So that's theft. And they're stealing from the
old people and they're stealing from the poor people and they're stealing from all

(01:01:33):
the people. And I think you know, there's a call to arms.
I know it's a bunch of investors there and but this is what's happening.
The reality is not only can you make
a lot of money money, not only can you make a lot of
worth, but you can save the world and your
kids world and your grandkids world and your great grandkids

(01:01:56):
before as far as humanity is going to go this time, this,
this into the future. I'm not sure how long that's going to be
but we can, we actually have this little tiny small window of opportunity
and if these sleaze bags get a hold of it and
turn it into what they can manipulate, it's the
wrong move for humanity and for your worth because the more they

(01:02:19):
manipulate it, the less you'll be able to, to make off of it.
So Chris, I want to take a step back.
Volatility is a big challenge for investors when it comes to
crypto. It's great when crypto is going up,
but it can kill you when crypto is going down. How
do you help investors to help balance the volatility

(01:02:41):
of crypto with the need for long term security?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I've always lived by the policy, when in doubt, zoom out.
And I have seen so I've been my, this is my be my third or
fourth cycle in crypto. Not, not as OG as Nick like I said. But I
didn't have any gray hairs when I started this game. I also had a four
year old daughter that was born around the same time. So I think half the

(01:03:04):
hair problem is her fault, the other half is crypto's fault and everything that's happened.
But volatility is one of those, that's one of the reasons why I love what
we did with the IRA is that it puts you in a place where, where
you're not only thinking long term, you're saving today to
change your life tomorrow and hand it down to the next generation. My
daughter, who's 12, has a Roth IRA from Earned Income

(01:03:26):
that's in Bitcoin and Ethereum for her college savings plan. Moving forward,
I think the big thing with volatility is you have to zoom out. And
Nick just went down something that just spoke to my heart, by the way,
is that tangent about everything that's been taken from us. There was one
thing in the 1970s and I, and I, and I, and I've done a lot
of pieces on the Nixon shock in 1971 and how that really, if you look

(01:03:48):
at every chart that has what's gone wrong in our economy,
especially domestically in the US but also globally, that moment in time that
really wasn't a big moment. In fact, if you go to the Nixon Museum in
California, I went there and I asked the lady at the front, I said, where's
the Nixon shock part? She goes, what are you talking about, son? And I was
like, when we took us off the gold standard, one of the biggest moments in

(01:04:09):
our economic history, there's nothing in there. There's everything else you could imagine in that
museum and there's nothing about this. That
same year, I think it's important to remember they took off the
gold standard, but they gave us something else. They gave us retirement accounts, they gave
us IRAs, the Roth and the traditional. And these are tools where
if you take the time to save long term and put it at an arm's

(01:04:31):
length distance from you, the government benefits you either by a tax savings today,
tax savings deferred in the midst. So avoiding capital gains taxes, if you're
swapping between tokens, et cetera. And then when you get to the ripe age of
retirement to maximize your tax advantages, taxes will always go
up. They've always gone up just like the dollar has always gone down since 1913
in the advent of the Treasury and the Fed. However, there are tools that you

(01:04:52):
can use to your advantage. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm
such a fan of the retirement setting. At the crossroads I sit
at of crypto and retirement is if you think something's, if you think your $5,000
is going to go to $5 million, what better place to have it than inside
of a retirement vehicle that the government gives us? And as Nick just mentioned, they
don't give us much. They usually take a lot, right?

(01:05:14):
Mehrav, you've been chomping at the bit to chime in. You're
a data scientist. Are there metrics or indicators that
investors should watch to better understand crypto risk?
Well, I've done a lot of research and work on
volatility. So yes. So you
can use all these models and volatility and kind of predict

(01:05:38):
to a certain degree what
I mean the volatility is and where, where it's going.
So that one, one aspect of it, the other aspect
is, you know, to look at the fundamentals.
You know, I don't know if I mean they know that our traders only look

(01:05:59):
at the, you know, technicals but this is new, only short terms but
if you really believe in the value like Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Solana, Hedera, channeling
the others, you know, really have like real world
use case so you can really do the fundamentals and look
at these key parameters, what they have,

(01:06:22):
what they're really doing,
how they are positioning themselves in this environment and
everything that is happening today and to
the future. And this is how I
would suggest that people we know will look at that. I mean

(01:06:42):
I would stay away from most of the meme coins
if you don't have the stomach to speculate. So don't do.
Doesn't have much value. So, so there's not much to do there unless you know,
you're going to look at the technicals, momentum and all of that. If you, if
you want to build this kind of an algorithm, go for it
but you know, understand that you have to have a stomach for it.

(01:07:07):
So that's, you know, I'm not giving any investment
advice but by any means. But I mean if, if you are
investing in this, in any market, I mean even in stock market,
you have to have, you have to understand it's not always going to go just
up. Nothing goes up all the time, that never
happens. But you know, if I'm allowed to say something

(01:07:30):
to Chris to not quiz. Sorry Nick's
point is that first of all I'm
happy, I mean that I got to know you and, and
that you are a true veteran that have been around for
since the beginning. I joined a little bit
after you but I stuck around even though I got

(01:07:52):
a lot of criticism why I'm there, why I believe in that, why I'm
advocating for it because like what you said, I do
believe in the true value and
of the technology itself, that it has the ability to really
democratize society, really free us from all
the attachment to governments and banks etc

(01:08:14):
and be able, you know, to be
individuals or control our
creativity, our work, our
whatever we do and what we call
connect with communities all over the world because
we are basically nowadays with digital

(01:08:38):
gold, it doesn't matter where you live. You just, you can connect
with, with anyone anywhere and transact with anyone
anywhere. And I, I do believe, I mean,
I might be too much of an optimist, but I have to
is that eventually we're gonna come
back to where the entire kind of

(01:09:00):
revolution of Bitcoin started and people will understand
that we are just, you know, a community, a global
community that can take care of each other. So
I do believe in that. Chris
giving the thumbs up, making a clear difference.
A good point, Merav, that there is a very clear

(01:09:22):
difference between investing and speculation. And
that can apply to stocks, it can apply to bonds, it can apply
digital, digital currencies. Let's move on and go to segment four.
Cryptocurrency's rapid growth raises ethical concerns from
environmental impact to consumer protections. Bitcoin's proof

(01:09:42):
of work mining consumes large amounts of energy contributing to carbon
emissions. Alternatives like Proof of Stake significantly
reduce energy use, with Ethereum's transition cutting its consumption
by over 99%. Decentralized
finance offers financial inclusion, but also lacks oversight,
leading to scams and money laundering risks. The legal

(01:10:04):
landscape for crypto remains inconsistent, with protections varying
widely across jurisdictions, leaving investors vulnerable.
Responsible investing involves researching projects,
prioritizing energy efficient cryptocurrencies and
supporting transparent, well regulated platforms.
Regulatory clarity could improve security while allowing innovation to

(01:10:25):
thrive. As crypto adoption grows, balancing financial
opportunity with sustainability and ethical considerations is
critical for long term viability. Investors must assess
risks beyond returns, ensuring their participation aligns with
both financial goals and responsible practices.

(01:10:49):
Chris, I'm sorry we cut you off. It's okay. No, it was so
funny. I, I, I. We've gone over the hour and I, and I've got
some things that I have to take care of today. But I just wanted to
thank both the other, all the other panelists as well as the audience for
here and, and, and keep doing like Nick said, this
is freedom and freedom takes education and there's a huge financial

(01:11:10):
literacy gap and a retirement gap in this country which is driving the income
gap in my opinion. And by being on this show and listening to folks,
continue to do your homework, do your research and I hope to connect
separately with all the other panels. I just want to say thank you for having
me today. I wish I could stay for the next few segments. You guys are
brilliant people and I definitely was the junior and I learned a lot and I'm

(01:11:31):
truly inspired. So thank you so much, Andy, for having me today. Chris,
thank you. Before you go, as crypto becomes more
mainstream, how do you anticipate regulation shifting
to safeguard the average investor?
That's a really good question. I think part of what they tried to lay
the foundation for in the Crypto Week back in July is

(01:11:54):
laying some of those foundations. There's this
challenge between giving
full. Nick said something about have to have the private key and I totally
agree with that as well. But I don't necessarily know if my great
grandmother could handle a private key or
if I died today on a flight to Los Angeles.

(01:12:17):
If my wife and my kid, as much as I am in my home studio
now and they see me speak about Bitcoin, could they handle my ledger device? So
there's a give and take between complete
independence and making it fit inside of a system that makes sense
to most folks. And we still have to evolve through that.
And what I'm really happy about is that this giant

(01:12:39):
black marker of regulation from the last administration in the last four
years before what we've seen this year is starting to go away and we're bidding
a much better, I think a more fine print
Sharpie to really figure these things out. This isn't a one size fits all
strategy as far as. And it's not just with crypto and it's not just blockchain.
Merav spoke about DeFi and CeFi (centralized finance) and all these other elements that

(01:13:01):
are coming to play. We have to be very strategic about it, but you also
have to protect the consumer at the end of the day because as, as Nick
said, there are, there are sleaze bags that walk into any unregulated
space. That's where rug pulls happen, that's where Yeezy puts out a coin and,
and pumps and dumps. That's where FTX happens and Alameda and all these others.
So it's a balance, it really is an important balance that we have to get

(01:13:22):
through and it's going to take collaboration and it's going to take a democratization
of it. We all should have a voice. This is a consensus driven protocol
and we should stay that course as we continue to evolve. I hope that
helps. Thank you for the rational viewpoint. Wasn't FTX
regulated? No, that was
the whole point. Out of, out of the Emirates

(01:13:45):
they. Had a license or Emirates or. Yeah, exactly.
No, I agree with you, Nick, is you can also. You can.
Yeah. In the Bahamas Yeah, you can, yeah, you can put
lipstick on a pig and make it look good in front of regulators as well.
Right. And regulators can set certain rules. This is going to come also with
an evolution of more younger crypto driven innovative

(01:14:06):
entrepreneurs like myself. My Twitter handle, if anybody wants to follow is Senator Kline. I
was joking about it at the beginning of the call with the other guests is
I'm not a senator. I made that Twitter handle in 2009 because I was
convinced that I was going to be a senator or retire by the time I
was 40. Well, I just turned 40 this year and, and I got to tell
you, looking at the cesspool of Washington D.C. and politics in general, we've got to
clean some things up before you can. People like myself and Nick may have others

(01:14:28):
will jump in to help be a part of that change we wish to see
in the world. But we've got, it's a step at a time. Right. We got
to take one step at a time. I believe that maybe
the clarity act which going to bring more clarity on how you can
really invest in the DeFi and the other, you know, instruments, not just,
you know, stable coins. Hopefully that will be

(01:14:50):
I think like the bridge to really understand what
the entire blockchain
has to offer. And that will be the first step,
not the end of it. I don't think that will be the end goal. I
do hope that the end goal will be that people will really everything is

(01:15:11):
going to move on chain and people will really understand the real
value. Like what was Nick, why he got
into it? Yeah, Merav, you talk about
responsible innovation. How can blockchain projects
balance rapid growth with ethics, sustainability and
inclusion? I mean

(01:15:33):
that's the false narrative and the misconception of people saying
oh, blockchain is only scammers and only
illicit transactions and all of these things which is not true.
I mean just to put things in perspective, I mean there are
stats on that. I think channeling another
channel they have a report and they're saying, you know, out of all the

(01:15:54):
transactions that are on chain only
like point 3%, point 3% are
illicit transaction and it's coming down year by
year. And if you now to put things in
perspective as still fiat is a
preferred, preferred method for, for

(01:16:16):
criminals because if there is a
report, I think it's from the International Coalition against
you know, Illicit Transactions, things like that. And they're saying that about 3
to 5 trillion with a T, not billion with
a T is fiat illicit
transaction. Just to put things in perspective and

(01:16:39):
so people went saying which is 5% of the global
GDP. So that's the first thing that people have
to understand. And in fact I'm saying to people that I
would prefer, I would dream that all
criminals will do all them for all transactions on, on
the on chain. Why? Because you can track them. And this

(01:17:02):
is how the, with the help of companies like
Chainalysis, I've done that too. I know I helped some
states departments. I'm not going to go into that,
you know, catch this criminals because everything, I mean
with some algorithm of AI. I mean I'm not saying that it's easy not to,
to do all this, but everything is recorded, it's

(01:17:24):
not erased, it can be tracked. So yes,
criminals, please go and do everything on chain, please
do because this is how we're gonna gonna track you. So
but, but they know, they know that creatino is a preferred
method method. So that's one thing. And going back, you know, to what I said
about the AI, Yeah I mean I think that

(01:17:46):
that blockchain can be
the, the way, you know, to authenticate everything. Nothing is
erased, everything is trackable, immutable. And this is how
I said, you know, you can track all these criminals, you know, you find them
eventually easier than to track fiat.
And so, so there's as I said, a lot

(01:18:09):
of false narrative about going around, you know, what, what blockchain
is all about. And going back to the beginning
when I said that AI fakes and blockchain authenticates. So
that's the main thing that people have to, if there is one message people
will take from, from this is that AI is the fake.
And, and, and blockchain can bring the

(01:18:31):
trust and not the other way around.
And this is what people should remember why they should, you know, go,
go back to that. And of course, you know, there are all kinds of other
benefits which Nick, you know, already spoke about that and why
you should invest that. And another one last thing about you know, the
energy issue when you say, you know that you know, blockchain

(01:18:52):
consumes a lot for energy and it has to do with the mining. I'm not
going to go into, into that. And yeah, you talked about staking everything but,
but again putting things in perspective.
You know, AI, it does something that kind
of like, kind of like
bleed energy is is

(01:19:14):
AI all these computations with all these large
models and everything, they are much, much,
much more energy consuming, much more
computation power. And
not just energy, water.
Because in order to cool these data centers

(01:19:38):
you need clean water, drinking water.
So the communities that. There are stories about communities,
especially developed
communities when they don't understand what is the concept of data
centers. And they sign up, okay, put it here. And then they
realize that they are deprived of, you know, electricity

(01:20:01):
and drinking water and everything like that. And, and
it's, it's like something that really have to be discussed. So if anything
is going to ruin us, is the AI and poaching.
Nick, what role do patents and intellectual property
play in open source crypto innovation? Is that fair
play or is that gatekeeping?

(01:20:24):
Well, I invented the multi branch blockchain
back in 2012 before there were
many block, you know, it was two blockchains and interchange
operability and all this stuff. And my fear was that the banks
would get the patents and block us out. So

(01:20:45):
there are many reasons to get a patent. Sometimes you have a
partners that see things in a different way.
But I don't know what I'm allowed to say,
but do I like patents? No, I don't like patents.
But the reality is that

(01:21:07):
if you don't get it, someone else gonna get it. So someone else gets
it, jam up the whole industry.
That's not good either, right? Yeah. So it's a necessary evil.
But, but Nick, to do. Just a question. Do you believe like in
decentralized AI, decentralized open source only

(01:21:29):
only yeah. Only yeah. And everything gonna come on chain and therefore,
you know, you don't need to. Yeah, it's just, it's a better database. I mean
in the beginning of the Internet, you know, we wanted,
you know, secure encrypted Internet. The Department of Defense didn't. As a matter of fact,
they visited my office too because we're sending encrypted emails.
I don't know how, but they didn't want that.

(01:21:53):
At one point it was, it
was considered a weapon or something like that. International
weapon trading. I don't know, something so,
you know, the Internet could have been built this way years ago, but it wasn't.
So we're just getting back to what we're supposed to have. We're
supposed to have privacy,

(01:22:16):
provability and everything else that comes along
with our technologies. Thank you for sharing
your thoughts. Stick with us everybody. We're going to go to the
last segment. Our remaining guests are going to share. Where
are we going from here? What's the future? Let's go to segment five.
Blockchain and digital assets are shaping the future of finance,

(01:22:39):
governance and online interactions. Web3 integrates
blockchain to decentralize applications, enhance digital
identity and give Users more control over Data.
Innovations like layer 2 scaling and interoperability solutions
improve efficiency while security advancements strengthen
trust installation. Institutions are adopting blockchain for asset

(01:23:02):
custody and supply chain management while governments explore central
bank digital currencies and regulatory frameworks.
Regulatory clarity on stablecoins, DeFi and taxation
is expected to impact adoption and market stability.
Blockchain's role in financial systems is expanding, offering
faster cross border payments, increased financial inclusion and

(01:23:24):
transparent market. Decentralized finance continues to
evolve, challenging traditional banking models. As blockchain
adoption grows, its ability to reshape industries will depend on
technological progress, regulatory adaptation and user driven
demand for decentralized solutions.

(01:23:46):
Merav, you earlier talked about JPMorgan,
you've discussed with me, organizations like BlackRock as well as
JPMorgan really deepening blockchain adoption.
Can you talk about how these
innovators, you know, those who are investing early
into this will benefit and what the competitive landscape might

(01:24:09):
look like for smaller innovators in the future?
Let's put it this way, I'm not talking about the fintech space, you know, with
the startups that have been in the crypto space, you know, for
and they definitely position better than anyone else because
it's always easier to build something
innovative from the ground up and not

(01:24:32):
try to change a traditional system that has been around
for decades. So they definitely position
they know what they're doing whether it's
the chainlink or all the other blockchain we have nowadays,
one and all those and the other

(01:24:53):
applications. So this is aside now if we're talking about
traditional finance then
they will have a harder
time, you know, to change into the
new economy or the new. Well, if they don't have any of

(01:25:14):
the infrastructure, they need the infrastructure, need the talent, they
need to build everything to understand the
technology, understand how it works. So this is not something that happens in a
day. So there are companies like JPMorgan, which
we just mentioned and I know that Nick has a lot to say about them
and not in a good way and that's a different story. But

(01:25:37):
you know, they did read the map. I mean they were the first, you know,
from the, from the space of the
traditional finance, I think they were the first to get into that.
They built, you know, their own private
blockchain back in 2015.
They didn't get into crypto because you know, you know what Jamie

(01:25:59):
diamond always said, you know, that he, what he thinks about it and I don't
want to use his language. He didn't tell us he got into crypto.
Yeah, but you Know, he did believe in blockchain technology. He
did invest in that. And we see the results now because they
are where the first mover now that, you know, just as
we stable coins, you know, and other things, you know, are getting

(01:26:21):
regulated and legitimized, then he's taken,
you know, that the first. They're taking, you know, the first steps. So they're
going to, to. Because they have positioned themselves for
a long time even before things, you know, became more regular and
more. There's more clarity in the space. They're going to benefit from it
because they've been experimenting with blockchain technology,

(01:26:44):
with tokenization and all of that for many, many, many, many, many, many years.
Same like with Blockrock. And there's also some
European banks that have done that and also from Latin America.
So they probably will be positioned to benefit
the most at the beginning. The other will have to catch
up. I don't know if they disadvantage will be

(01:27:07):
something that for the long run, but time will tell and,
but I do believe, you know, those who have invested a lot of time
and energy on that probably will benefit the most from that. So it's all
about, you know, positioning yourself and understanding where
eventually be headed.
But that's, you know, from the traditional finance perspective, I mean they definitely

(01:27:30):
not going to stay behind. They, they're trying to take,
you know, a group of it. And Nick was just mentioning that
coming back to him, like, hey, join us. Yeah, we
heard you before. But now you. We want to be your friend. So they're doing
this and you know that they have to do that right now. Be our
friends. That's for sure. They do not want to be our friends. The reality is

(01:27:53):
BlackRock. So one of my co founders
and friend and he was a chief data scientist
at Facebook for a while. He worked for me as a chief data
scientist for Dr. Ron Paul Hamdan Azhar.
He worked at Blackrock and he was
gonna be one of the ones that headed up the Bitcoin strategy. And then they

(01:28:17):
found out, I think, well, he was heralded by the COO on stage
as being a new rock star. You know, out of 30, 40,000,
how many employees have he. He was heralded on stage by
the COO and then a few weeks later, right before the
Bitcoin meeting, he curiously got ejected from the
building. And I think they found out that he was

(01:28:40):
a purist in Bitcoin and he wouldn't go along probably
with what they want to do or what they're doing because the reality what they're
doing is they're compromising the decentralization of Bitcoin. And
you don't need a 51 percent attack on, on mining.
You can just, especially with the fine print when you buy the ETF, they
can move that value into any fork they want. So they could

(01:29:02):
say hey, they can have some fake quantum collisions
and say oh, you know, shot
256 is at risk. We're gonna move to this group
of state quantum resistant Bitcoin
fork which is pretty easy to make. I can make one right now before

(01:29:22):
the end of the show and we're
gonna move the value there. And don't worry, you're gonna also have the
Bitcoin coin and the other because that's what happens in forking.
You're gonna have both. But what's going to happen is the value of the Bitcoin
is going to go down. They're gonna, but they're gonna pump up the value of
their fake coin and there's gonna be proof of stake and they're going to give

(01:29:44):
it to the member banks of the, of the Federal Reserve, maybe the
nodes. So this thing, I believe
they have the ability to do that and they can move the value around
and kill Bitcoin. And I think everyone should take their money
out of the ETF and put it somewhere where it's actually
coin that's being stored but in a decentralized

(01:30:06):
fashion. If it's smaller outfits, I mean the bigger the outfit
that has the larger control of a market share, the more
effect they can have on, on this. I mean, you know,
Ethereum forked and look at Ethereum Classic. You
know, it's dead.
You know, I think because people don't have this

(01:30:29):
history of what has had occurred, what has occurred.
You know, the thing history is going to repeat itself. And they've even made
it clear that they think, you know, 21 million isn't enough.
But the way we got it under the wire is that, you know, there's a
hundred million satoshis per Bitcoin. So the
21 million didn't scare them. It was more like a Trojan

(01:30:51):
horse. And that's why we're alive today. Because if we
told them how many satoshis there were, we would
have been in trouble really early. So they thought we're,
you know, just playing with a toy because there's only 21
million. But you know, there's 100 million pieces these each one of them.
So I think, you

(01:31:14):
know, one of the executives from BlackRock said that it's not enough and we're, you
know, we're going to need to make more Bitcoin and change the,
the amount of the supply and that's really
threatening, I think to this whole thing.
That's one of my predictions that they're going to attempt to do that.
And then they're going to OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) any wallet that's not

(01:31:36):
white listed through them. So you're going to have to white list your wallet with,
you know, institutional company
of body, whatever and you know, you have to docs
up, you know, give all your documents and stuff. It's gonna follow your
new Bitcoin on the fork and,

(01:31:57):
and if you don't, you know, it's gonna, you're gonna be
OFCA. So the Office of Financial Asset Control is
gonna go after you, give you 20 years for having a Bitcoin wallet.
And the mining companies, now that they're all going public,
they're gonna have to abide by the new rules, of
course. And you know, the small miners might

(01:32:20):
get some of the trades, some of the transactions out of the
mempool and post them in a block here and there. But
the institutional miners, which is growing every day because they're buying up the smaller
miners because they have, you know, Main Street, Wall Street and Main Street money
to be able to do that in the, in the ebb and
flow of the, of the price and the up and ups and downs of the

(01:32:43):
price, they're going to be able to buy more
percentages of the mining. And this is,
this is a future that's probably going to happen unless we fight
and not allow it to happen. So that's one of my predictions.
You don't want to hear the rest. That was the soft one. Thank you for
the soft predictions. Things to definitely watch out for.

(01:33:06):
I think we will leave it there. That was quite a conversation, gave
us a lot to think about. We touched upon many different
aspects of crypto and blockchain, even
philosophically thinking about what is money to us
today and what is the future of money. One of my favorite
takeaways from the panel today is that you don't have to be

(01:33:28):
all in on crypto to start learning and benefiting
from blockchain technology. As our guests have
reminded us and taught us, blockchain's real potential goes far
beyond speculation. It's about trust,
transparency and innovation across industries.
So I want to give you one thing to do this week. Take

(01:33:50):
30 minutes to learn about one real world use
case of blockchain beyond cryptocurrency. Whether it's
supply chain transparency, digital identity, or
decentralized finance. Pick one area,
read an article, watch a video, or even explore a
project's white paper. The goal is not to

(01:34:12):
invest necessarily. It's to educate yourself so that you can make
informed decisions in the future. And if you found value in
today's discussion, please share this episode with a friend. Leave us a review
and subscribe so you never miss a conversation that can help you become a
more inspired investor. A few more things before we part
ways. Let's connect on LinkedIn. Find me by searching

(01:34:35):
for "Advisor Andy." Would love to connect there.
Inspired Money is created and produced by me and Bradley Jon
Eaglefeather. Bradley is behind the scenes during the live stream.
He edited segments. Chad Lawrence does our graphics,
animations and editing. Last but most certainly not
least, I want to give a big shout out to our amazing guests. Go follow

(01:34:56):
their work and keep learning from the best. Dr. Merav
Ozair learn about her work at
drblockchain.io where she explores emerging
technologies and responsible innovation. She has lots of
writings there. Sir John Hargrave pre order his
upcoming book the Intelligent Crypto Investor and read his

(01:35:17):
insights at bitcoinmarketjournal.com.
Chris Kline, check out BitcoinIRA.com
to learn how to invest in crypto for retirement securely and
tax efficiently. And Nick Spanos, discover his
pioneering work in blockchain at nickspanos.com
and make sure that you watch him in the documentary. Nick, what's

(01:35:39):
it called? Banking on Bitcoin? Yeah, Banking on Bitcoin. Yeah,
that's on Netflix. Anything that either of you want to
plug since you have made it to the end.
Just, I, I know that Nick kind of left it, you know, in a kind
of like a pessimistic, you know, you
know, like, oh God, you know, we're gonna lose everything. I would, I'm, I've

(01:36:02):
always been a little bit more of an optimistic because, you know, I,
I want to be because I do believe in, in
humanity and that we rise to
the occasion eventually. And I think that with
education we do need to educate. That's what I've been doing for a
long time. I think that also Nick with his center is trying to

(01:36:24):
do that and I can join forces and we have to
grow and educate more and more about that and the benefits and
what and know, make sure that Bitcoin will
not get to what, you know, Nick is, is, you
know, predicting. I, I hope not and I have
more faith, you know, that if people will better understand

(01:36:47):
the benefit the true benefit of this technology and
how they can really be independent,
independent of their identity if their privacy,
their security, their creativity,
the work, I mean everything about them.
They can control everything and no one has

(01:37:09):
any control over that. No one. Whether it's a government
or the application or whatever else, they are the ones
who have the control over whatever they do, their life,
their identity and everything. And if people really understand that,
I believe that, that maybe we do have a, you

(01:37:29):
know, a more rosy future. I
hope so. Thank you for leaving us on a positive
note. Thank you Merav. Love that. I love that you're
powerful. Lioness, my dear, we need you in the space.
Keep talking to me please. Yeah, of
course it's not, you know, that's not gonna happen for a long time and the

(01:37:52):
more people get educated like you said,
the less probability that that would happen because just saying it is
going to bring a big, you know, social media is going to attack them and
blah blah, many people are going to find out. So yeah, it's our job to
protect this gift we're given from Satoshi and
protect humanity and the future of humanity and we need,

(01:38:15):
you know, lionesses at the gate just like yourself my dear.
Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you Merav.
Thank you Nick. Thank you to John and to Chris who had to hop
off earlier. Thank you to you Inspired Money
Maker for joining us today. And together
we can be inspired on a path

(01:38:38):
to invest better, to do more with our money, to have a bigger impact.
Inspired money returns next week on Wednesday, September 17th
at 1:00pm Our topic will be the Art of Wealth Preservation:
Strategies for Protecting and Growing Your Wealth. I hope to see you
then until next time do something that scares you because
that's where the magic happens. Thanks everyone.

All Episodes

Why You Can’t Miss This Episode

Meet the Expert Panelists

Key Highlights from the Conversation

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

24/7 News: The Latest

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Future of Cryptocurrencies: Exploring Blockchain and Digital Assets