The CEO of the world's largest Bitcoin exchange is currently
sabotaging Bitcoin on Capitol Hill.
Well, at least that's what the allegations are.
And we all know that Coinbase hasn't been a friend of Bitcoin
for many years now. But what they're being?
Accused of today. Is potentially the worst offense
they have ever made especially from a first principles Bitcoin
is money perspective. If this is true, it is truly not
a good look for Coinbase. So I'm going to start the saga
where it initially started, which is from our boy Marty Bent
from TFTC. And this is the initial tweet.
It happened basically right when we went live on yesterday's show
and then all of the backlash. So here's the initial tweet,
the, you know, Ground Zero for this accusation, for this
speculation. And here's Marty Bent and he
goes, I'm hearing that despite all the efforts in lobbying for
Bitcoin de minimis tax exemption, it's none other than
Coinbase trying to nuke it behind the scenes to push stable
coins only. Apparently they are telling
legislators that quote, no one is using Bitcoin as money.
A de minimis exemption for Bitcoin is a handout that will
be DOA. So from our perspective as
Bitcoiners, you guys heard me say this on the show a lot of
times that, hey, if Trump really wants to go down as the de facto
Bitcoin president, then what should happen is the elimination
of capital gains. If that happened, I think
Bitcoin adoption would go into OverDrive.
It would go parabolic because then you could actually use
Bitcoin and then people would realize, hey, this Bitcoin thing
is better for payments. Oh, wait, this is better money.
The elimination of capital gains on Bitcoin from our perspective,
because we believe Bitcoin is money would be the ultimate game
changer here because you could use it like you used a dollar.
You don't have a capital gains tax or rather a capital gains
loss on the dollar when you use it.
We want, as the Bankers Association keep saying, as the
banking lobby has has been saying in regards to the Clarity
Act, we want the level playing field here.
So this accusation coming from or Marty bat which I I do have
some other tweets here from what he said, multiple sources is
saying it looks like that Coinbase is currently in
Washington, Washington, DC fighting the idea of Bitcoin is
money. And remember Coinbase is one of
the biggest influence in the quote UN quote crypto lobbying
group. I've been showing you a lot of
the, you know, the people that are going to these meetings,
they the exchanges and the individuals behind the lobbying
groups for crypto. And a lot of them, as I
mentioned on the show, are a lot of these shit coin exchanges.
Oh, wait, hold on. OK, I made it past the first few
minutes. A lot of these shit coin
exchanges and this. Is why I keep.
Saying I'm really not that bullish on any favorable
legislation coming out of Washington, DC because there's
not enough bitcoiners in those rooms.
Yes, technically, you know, they're bitcoiners, whatever,
but they're not the hardcore type.
I want to see the Piero shards or even Jack Dorsey there like I
and he is, he put his hat in the ring on this one.
I want to see real bitcoiners in these rooms because when you're
crypto shit coin adjacent, you really have alternative motives,
alternative incentives. And this could be the case.
And this is where it leads me into Marty's next tweet, which
really lays out the incentive structure here and why this
potentially could be the reason for Coinbase actually fighting
Bitcoin as money and fighting this de minimis tax on Bitcoin.
And for you guys that don't know it, de minimis tax is basically
saying, hey, if you use, you know, X amount, if you sell or
use X amount of Bitcoin, then you don't have have a capital
gains tax on it. It it's this idea that, hey, if
we eliminate a little bit of it, a little bit of the tax on
Bitcoin under a certain threshold, then maybe people
will be allowed to use, maybe more people will use it.
And as as much as I believe that we should go further than that,
maybe I'm an extremist and I'm like, you know, I, I want to see
it just completely gone. A small win is a small win.
And maybe we ain't going to get the whole cake here, but we'll
take a small win. Now it seems like we might not
even get that small win here. So here is the further tweet
from Marty Ben or TFTC. And he goes coin base again, is
quietly lobbying to kill bitcoins de minimis tax
exemption. The company reportedly told
legislators, again, no one's using Bitcoin and that a Bitcoin
de minimis exemption would be DOA.
Basically, if we came as the Bitcoin lobbying group, as the
Bitcoin industry and we start talking about the eliminations
of capital gains, that essentially the legislator would
throw this out and be like, this is not a a level playing field.
This is never going to happen. You guys are dreaming.
You guys are in fantasyland. Get this out of here or else
nothing else is going to pass. That's the Coinbase kind of
idea, or at least that is what Marty Bent is saying his sources
are saying. Meanwhile, they're pushing for
the exemption to apply the de minimis capital gains tax only
to stablecoins, specifically regulated dollar peg stablecoins
like USDC. Now on the surface, a very
rudimentary surface level elementary look at this idea of
hey, instead of a de minimis tax on Bitcoin, which I think should
be further, we should do a de minimis tax on stable coins.
Now, if you aren't as initiated, if you aren't a true Bitcoiner,
maybe this makes sense to you. From my view though, and
probably from your guys's view, if you're thinking about this
like this, makes absolutely no sense.
By definition, a stable coin is stable, therefore there is no
capital gains. What do you mean an elimination
of a de minimis tax or a elimination of a capital gains
tax on a stable coin which is pegged to a dollar, which is
supposed to be stable? Where's the gain?
It it makes no sense though they're saying it may be, you
know, elimination of a gains tax on the fees, what have you.
It's like this is. Ludicrous.
This is ridiculous. This is insane.
It's it's. Damn near just playing
stupidity. Anyways, going further obviously
again another wrinkle here. USDC, that is the coin base
stable coin. So it looks like they are trying
to play games. To protect their Moat.
So again, going further, Coinbase made $1.35 billion in
stable coin revenue in 2025, up 48% year over year, almost
entirely from interest earned on U.S.
Treasuries held in the USDC reserves.
Bloomberg estimates that number could search 7 times under the
Genius Act. And every person who uses the
USD for payments instead of Bitcoin is a person whose
dollars are sitting in Coinbase's reserve pool,
generating risk free yield for Coinbase.
So again, this is the accusation being lightly.
This is the speculation as to what the incentive structures
here are and why it makes sense for Coinbase to say, yeah, you
know, we actually don't really care about Bitcoin for money.
We actually want stable coins to be proliferated because they
make a shit ton of money off the yield from treasuries sitting in
their USDC reserves. Of course, a de minimis
exemption for Bitcoin will let people spend it freely for
everyday purchases, which I mentioned.
And that makes Bitcoin a direct competitor to USDC and
stablecoins at large. Remember, the Genius Act
basically proliferated stablecoins.
There is this push in Washington for stablecoins first because
it's it's not as edgy, it's not as far fetched of an idea as
Bitcoin. It's like, oh, it's a, it's,
it's digital money, it's a cryptocurrency, but it's pegged
to the dollar. Therefore we can maintain dollar
hedge of money, We can maintain dollar strength instead of fully
embracing this alternative neutral, completely parallel
system that is Bitcoin. Of course they want you locked
into their centralized stablecoin ecosystem where they
clip the yield on every $3 you park there, so.
Now you're seeing the incentive structure, obviously, as I said
and, and, and Marty's saying in this tweet.
A de minimis tax on stable coins.
Literally just. It makes no sense.
It's pegged to the. Dollar, it's doesn't fluctuate,
there is no gains. It's a doll.
Like $1.00 is 1 stable coin. Like where's the gain here?
It just, it just makes no sense. Now, of course, there's been a
lot of conversations about what the de minimis tax.
Actually should be for. A while there it was a little
higher in the low thousands and it went to the 800, then it went
to the 600 and the latest was $300 and I forget what the total
year was, but it was it was like $1500 a year or something.
So a de minimis tax on what 5? Transactions of $300.
It's like it's not really using Bitcoin as money, all right?
It just, it, I guess a win's a win on on that front.
I guess it's president for something more.
But that wouldn't, I don't think that would really move the
needle. That's basically what I'm
saying. OK, so here's the accusation.
Now, I did watch Marty Bent's coverage of this and he didn't
put it in tweet and he basically said, hey, the only reason I
tweeted this out. Is because I got multiple
confirmation from multiple sources that this was in fact
going on. That behind the scenes in closed
door meetings this is what Coinbase was doing.
That they are fighting more for a quote de minimis tax on stable
coins and really saying that no one uses Bitcoin Bitcoin isn't
money you know we want without them saying it's like we want
people parking their money with us because then we make money so
it does sound like a Moat so that Coinbase could try to
protect their business model when you.
Think of it in this terms. You're like, it makes total
sense for Coinbase to be doing this.
Not saying I agree with it, but you can see the incentive
structure, you can see the logic in it.
Is it bad logic? Is it hurtful?
For Bitcoin as money, I would say 100%.
Now, as I said when I did the conversation with Tom Wongo,
nothing is official until you get an official denial that it's
an Otto von Bismarck quote. Until you get an official
denial, then you know you're it's speculations and
accusations. But we got an official denial,
which starts to make me think that in fact, this is what's
going on. And here are the official
denials we have. Faria Faria Shahzad, who is the
chief Policy Officer at Coinbase.
He goes, this is a total lie. Marty Bent.
We have never and will never lobby against Bitcoin.
Ever. Excuse me.
So first official denial quote tweets it.
We aren't doing this. This is miss.
This is misinformation, fake news.
Then we got another one. We got Cara Calvert who also
works at Coinbase and she goes TFTC is 100% false.
Reporting. We strongly support both Senator
Lummess's bill and the work in the House to create a de minimis
exemption for all digital assets.
OK, so second denial. And then we got an official
denial coming from Brian Armstrong himself.
And he goes, not sure where you're getting this
misinformation quote, perhaps you can share, but it's totally
false. I spent a bunch of time lobbying
for Bitcoin de minimis tax exemption, and we'll continue
doing so. It's obviously the right thing.
So maybe they got caught with their pants down and now they're
going to roll it back. And then this is where the
conversation further spread into other corners and we got even
and more confirmation from other people in the Bitcoin space that
are also have some Privy to these conversations.
Now here's the Marty Bent treat where he says I have sources
that say otherwise, not you personally, but your team and or
lobbyists are the ones that are lobbying against a de minimis
tax on Bitcoin. Will you commit to walk away
from the market structure bill if it doesn't include the de
minimis exemption for Bitcoin like you did for stablecoin
yield? So Marty, put them in a corner,
put them, you know, put them in a chokehold here publicly.
And ever since then, radio silence from the Coinbase team.
Of course, this all played out last night.
Scrolling through Twitter, scrolling through different
responses. No response yet, which really
leads into the idea of yeah. Maybe maybe it's true and and
Parker Lewis says the same thing you know Coinbase's CEO, chief
policy officer and VP of U.S. policy all came out and claimed
a combination that this report was misinformation, totally
false, a total lie and categorically false.
Problem is it's. True.
When TFTC, when Marty Bent stood by its reporting, they all went
radio silent. That's where we currently are
from the initial accusation to the Coinbase responses.
But to add a little more fuel to this fire, we did get some other
confirmations from people, like I said, that are actively
lobbying for Bitcoin on Capitol Hill in Washington.
DC, particularly the first one is from our boy Connor Brown who
works now currently at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and he
goes in response to Cara. He goes.
Barry, thank you. Thankful to hear that, Cara.
Of course, here is, you know she's saying the same thing.
Categorically false. Don't take the bait.
We are definitely not lobbying against Bitcoin.
Coinbase has been advocating for diminished exception.
For all digital assets in 2017, in fact, I was on the ground in
DC pushing for that bill. And a decade later, I'm still on
the ground lobbying for strong de minimis exemptions for all
digital assets. As for stablecoins, frankly we
shouldn't need a de minimis exemption.
Stablecoins so they they agree we're.
We're finally in some agreement. So Connor Brown again, very
thankful to hear that. Will Coinbase join Bitcoin
Policy in hosting a public roundtable with lawmakers this
month to erase any confusion on this issue and make clear how
important a Bitcoin de minimis tax is for the future payments
infrastructure in America? But that's not where Connor
stopped. He goes, of course, in response
to this tweet by Marty. This is extremely concerning if
true. I can confirm that over the past
three months, there's been a strong shift on the hill to
limiting the de minimis exemption to stable coins only.
So he's in the meetings, He's hearing that idea.
That's why he's putting his hat in the rink.
Of course, Bitcoin Policy Institute, they'll continue to
fight for Bitcoin. And then we got a couple more
responses. This one is from Frank Korba,
which if you guys remember was previously at Bitcoin Magazine.
He was the one that was in the White House in with the, you
know, official press pass in the White House for Bitcoiners.
And Frank Korbigos my sources on this matter have also told me
that one of the items in the Clarity Act that may be on the
chopping block in exchange for Coinbase slash crypto industry
getting interest on stable coins are the BRCA protections for
developers, which was in the. Clarity act this, you know,
bullet point saying that. We should protect open source
developers. So now we're getting multiple
confirmations that hey, OK, maybe they aren't necessarily
fighting against a de minimis. Tax on Bitcoin, but they are
willing to compromise on things that aren't that favorable for
the Bitcoin industry at large in favor of them being allowed to
get some stable coin yield. And remember the numbers they're
making billions of dollars off dollars parked in their USDC
stablecoin. Now remember when we were
talking about the genius act a while ago how we were mentioning
that of course the first thing they pushed through was the
stablecoin yields or rather sorry, the stablecoin
proliferation. Now you're starting to see why
these crypto exchanges are so hell bent on stablecoins going
in first is because they make a lot of money used on on
stablecoin yields. That's why the clarity act has
been held up is because of the quote stablecoin rewards, which
is basically just yields not just from the company that
issues the stablecoin, but so that the consumers can get some
gains. So I don't know who you want to
believe on this matter, but personally I've been saying for
a while I'm not a big fan of Coinbase.
It might be just because of my 2018 bear market roots where we
all went Bitcoin only we all took an ideological stance and
we realized like Coinbase is probably hurting Bitcoin more
than benefiting it because of their shit coin casino.
You just see the incentive structures are all off now.
Like I said, Jack Dorsey did throw his hat in the rink here.
Where is the Jack Dorsey tweet? Is it right here?
Here we go. So again, Jack Dorsey, who of
course has cash app, has bit key has has the block, you know,
allowed Bitcoin payments on Square app recently.
He is actively on the front lines and has been saying for a
long time that Bitcoin needs to be used as money.
Here his is his take and response.
Hope this is true for de minimis as well.
Brian Armstrong saying that they're not lobbying against
Bitcoin. Obviously, hopefully they're not
lobbying against the de minimis tax on Bitcoin.
And did I bring up my buddy? Oh no, I didn't bring up
Fernando's take, but you can see the dichotomy here.
Coinbase, one of the largest exchanges in the world.
Their incentive, their business structure is built on them
profiting off of shit coin stable coin yields.
They begrudgingly have Bitcoin on their platform.
They were huge in advocating for Bitcoin cash during the fork
wars. They haven't really been a
friend to Bitcoin for a long time.
Yes, when it's favorable for them, they will come out and
say, oh, bitcoins great. At the very next sentence,
they're talking about crypto. It's because they don't make
money off Bitcoin. They make all of their money off
selling shit coins and trash to their customers.
They make all their money off the yields of USDC.
And so here is the stark contrast.
You're seeing Jack Dorsey, love him or hate him.
I think he's really been doing a lot of good work for Bitcoin in
the recent years. He has devoted his life to
Bitcoin and and shouts out to Dante, he swears Jack Dorsey is
is Satoshi I. I don't know about all that.
But you can see the stark contrast.
On the one hand, we're hearing rumors and speculations and
accusations that Bryan Armstrong, CEO Coinbase, doesn't
see Bitcoin as money. On the other hand, we have Jack
Dorsey, whose whole Northstar is Bitcoin as money.
Everything he's been doing in the recent years is advocating
for Bitcoin being used as money. Obviously, Jack Dorsey isn't in
the White House. He isn't a part of the lobbying
groups. He's just building the products
on the ground for customers, to protect customers, to
incentivize people, or rather, building the infrastructure so
that people can use Bitcoin as money every single day.
We're starting to see in Bitcoin we're in like a multi front war
here. There's the Wall Street attack
on Bitcoin, where they're incentivizing you to give up
your keys, take your Bitcoin into these Wall Street products,
trying to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible,
potentially, again, speculatively crashing the
Bitcoin price so that they can scoop up Bitcoin on the cheap.
And now we're seeing that maybe one of our own, maybe an insider
from the crypto industry in quotes, is not doing what's in
in our best favor of Bitcoin being used as money.
Again, they've denied this allegation, but nothing is more
official than an official denial.
And maybe it's because I wouldn't be here without Marty
Bent that I I tend to think that Marty isn't just talking hot air
here. I think as he said, if you watch
his video covering this story, he said, look, the only reason I
felt comfortable tweeting this is because I got multiple
confirmation from multiple sources that in fact, behind
closed doors, that is what's happening.
Now we're seeing from, you know, the CEO, the CPO, the policy
officer, that they're officially denying this, that maybe, maybe
it's not them that are doing it, but someone close to Coinbase is
actively fighting Bitcoin as money.
Now maybe they're just straight up bold faced, lying to all of
us because they got caught again, like I said, with their
hand in the cookie jar. But this is not a good luck for
Coinbase, obviously for the Bitcoin industry.
Now, I was talking with a friend earlier and he reminded me of
when there was the meaning of the whole Bitcoin crypto
industry in the White House, that anytime Brian Armstrong was
talking towards Donald Trump, there was a very interesting
moment there. He raised his hand and he said
something to Trump or Trump basically asked, oh, I'm so
happy for everyone to be here. This is historic.
I forget what the name was when they all had that, like it
wasn't a round table, but they had the dinner table.
They did the press press release where it's like, oh, look, we
did the executive order, Bitcoin strategic reserve.
Look at all of us with all these industry people.
And there was a certain moment where Brian Armstrong raised his
hand because Trump was like, hey, does anyone want to talk?
Say a question. And Brian Armstrong raised his
hand, and you could physically see that Trump just completely
ignored him. So why am I bringing that up?
Because you could say that if that is the case.
Especially considering that the Trump children are all in on
Bitcoin. They very publicly said Bitcoin
is money. They love this thing.
Now, you could say there's political games being played,
but they're fully invested in Bitcoin.
I think they want to see it do well.
They think it's going to $1,000,000.
Maybe you could say there's a chance that they don't really
like Brian Armstrong on Capitol Hill.
Maybe it's just Congress that takes what Brian Armstrong is
saying seriously. And maybe when this stuff
happens or really comes to A to a point that whatever Brian
Armstrong does, they really ignore it.
But if he's part of the lobbying group, again, you got to
remember, personnel is policy. So if Brian Armstrong is able to
get to the personnel, they're the ones that are making the
policy. And I know a lot of people don't
think Trump necessarily reads everything, so some things could
slip through. But when I was reminded of this,
it's like, OK, maybe Brian Armstrong isn't as like doesn't
have as much influence as all of us would like to say.
So maybe there's some hope that they're trying to save some
face. So if we, if we come back maybe
next week or maybe over the weekend and we see that Brian
Armstrong is totally willing to sit down with the Bitcoin Policy
Institute, totally do a, a public roundtable with
politicians and stand on the ground of yes, we want a de
minimis tax on Bitcoin. Personally, I want to see more.
I want to see just complete end of capital gains on not just
Bitcoin. Personally, I, I stand with
maybe the hard, more hardcore people, like just let's
eliminate a period because that's a tax on saving, That's a
tax on the productive people, the smart people making the
smart choices. But I guess again, a win is a
win, a small win is a win. And we got to set some precedent
here. But man, looking at this,
knowing Coinbase's history in Bitcoin, I think they got caught
with their hand in the cookie jar and now they're trying to
save face because they know how bad this actually is.
What's the saying? You know, what you do in private
will be made public. Maybe they thought they could
get away with this in private and they never thought it was
going to be public news, a public news story for everyone
because maybe there's some form of Ndas or whatever they
thought. There's no phones recording
these conversations. They could say whatever they
want. They're playing the Wall Street
games of we want to maintain our regulatory melt.
They want to maintain their business.
They might have just got caught, is all I'm saying.
Again, this is still part of the rumor mill.
This is speculation. These are accusations.
But we have three people that have been in these conversations
on Capitol Hill saying I have multiple sources, each of them
saying that this is in fact going on.
Whether it's attacking de minimis tax on Bitcoin, whether
it's attacking the caveat, the policy of protecting open source
developers coming from Coinbase. They are not good actors in the
space. At this point, if you're still
using Coinbase, I can really say maybe only one of two reasons.
One, you're just lazy. And two, you really just don't
know what's going on. For better or worse, Coinbase
does have the mindshare. They do have the, the PR that if
you want to buy Bitcoin, you go to Coinbase.
You know, they've been doing the Backstreet Boys commercials and
you know, they're, they're getting the billboards on Wall
Street. Well, you know, they got enough
money to do the marketing aspects.
So for a lot of people, there's still a connection between
Bitcoin and crypto and Coinbase. And if you want to get Bitcoin,
you go to Coinbase. At this point, no one should be
recommending Coinbase. No one should be using Coinbase.
If you really want to, if you really want to vote with your
dollars, then the only thing these people will learn, whether
it's a politician, whether it's the crypto exchanges, whether
it's quote UN quote, some of the Bitcoin Ogs, you got to hit them
where it hurts. And that is their pocketbook.
So look, I tend to believe, Marty, I think this is probably
more truthful than not. It's not a good look for
Coinbase. We'll see what happens moving
forward. Again, this is accusations,
rumor mills going wild right now.
It is slow news story right now. There's a slow news cycle.
We're in the depths of the bear market.
We don't know how bad things are going to get yet.
Everyone's demoralized. People want something to talk
about. I'll be a little lenient.
That could be the case, but I don't think that's exactly
what's going on. I think they got caught anyways,
moving forward. Oh wait, actually, you know, I
know you guys love memes, so let me put up a good meme here and I
don't know who this guy is. Vexel, all right, hardcore
bitcoiner. And he goes, if your Bitcoin is
with these Bros, it's not your Bitcoin and it's a picture of
Larry Fink and Brian Armstrong. So that's my take here.
If you're buying the Black Rock ETF, if you're buying Bitcoin
from Coinbase and you're leaving it on Coinbase, that is not your
Bitcoin. You are sleeping with the enemy.
OK, not even a spicy take. It's not even a spicy take at
all. But hey, you know, you do what
you want with your money as far as I'm concerned, but there's no
one to blame if something goes horribly wrong but yourself.
Don't buy the IBIT BlackRock ETF and if you have Bitcoin on
Coinbase, get it off today or rather get it off this weekend.
That's that's the take away here.
All right, guys, so moving forward, there are some
interesting conversations happening.
One clip from CNBC, which is really leaning into what I've
been saying about Bitcoin in regards to what has currently
happened in the Middle East and how resilient has been.
It might be showing us something of where we currently are in the
story of Bitcoin, or rather what investors and people outside of
Bitcoin are starting to maybe see and realize Bitcoin could be
an alternative asset and alternative investment and
further in alternative money. Now again, I mind reading, but
I'm going to make the case that we are sort of seeing that
happen in real time. And then going further, we got a
huge, huge announcement coming out of the CFTC and SEC last
night as well. And then I believe Mateo from
Club Orange is coming on today, at least that's what my schedule
says. So he should be here in a couple
of minutes. On that note, let me hit the
first commercial and we'll be right back.
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se-ed.com store. Alrighty then guys, we are back
and the current Bitcoin price is 70,270.
We did get to a 69K low. I think the day's still on green
if it's we're in the 70K. So hey, there's some life back
in Bitcoin. Anyways, a 44.3% discount from
all time high and the market cap, we are still above $1.4
trillion, currently 1.41 and the block height is 940,417.
OK, guys, like I said, I'm going to be making the case as I've
been kind of making the last couple of days that what we're
seeing currently in the Bitcoin price action considering what's
going on globally, I think it's very resilient, it's very
strong. And I don't know, I don't want
to say this guy's watching, you know, simply Bitcoin, but I
haven't heard a lot of people say this kind of theme, this
kind of perspective. Actually I've seen a couple
tweets, I brought them up obviously, but we might be
seeing the tide shift around the perspective of Bitcoin.
I know a lot of people still view Bitcoin as a risk on asset.
We obviously believe otherwise. It's a risk off asset.
Yes, it's been trading very closely to some equities, but in
reality I think that's only in the short term.
And this clip on CNBC is saying a lot of the same things.
And when I was looking at this this morning and I was kind of
thinking about a little bit, I think when you connect what
we're seeing with stocks, with gold, with Bitcoin, I think
there is a story to be told. So let me play the clip 1st and
then I'll make the case for what I potentially think is going on.
Look, military conflicts. We know the drill.
It's oil's going to go back down and equities are going to go
back up. That's what's going to happen.
But number one, it's just sometimes hard to stay in your
seat. And #2 mitigating volatility in
a portfolio means a lot because you can get 8% a year with low
volatility. Actually, you'll compound to
more than 10% with lots of volatility.
So having diversified assets means a lot.
And so far in this conflict, actually, if you look at
Bitcoin, it's up a little bit and equities are down.
So the diversifying piece, I think, still stays intact as an
important theme here. And that's what I think is
important to focus on. So many folks have concluded
that cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP, that they're
just risk assets. But if you really run the
numbers, you can see that not only do they have de minimis
correlation with equities, but they also have extremely low
correlation with gold and silver as an example.
So I think the diversification story really holds in in this
current environment. Now let's ignore the whole shit
coin part. Obviously that's trash.
This this guy is pro from pro shares, which has various ETFs.
So I, I don't endorse that those shit coin aspect of this.
But anyways, if you're looking at equities right now,
specifically the S&P 500, NASDAQ, they've been on the
decline for pretty much since the start of the year there.
There's obviously been some volatility.
It's not like a crazy decline. I believe I did the the charts
this morning and it's roughly around like 5% on NASDAQ and the
S&P 500. And then the Dow is down about
7:00-ish percent. But we're seeing that, yes, gold
and silver are down from their all time high.
But if you're looking the trend of what equities are doing,
specifically those indexes that I mentioned, they've kind of
been, you know, a little toppy. They're rolling down and kind of
trending downwards. But gold and arguably silver
being in the conversation of precious metals and hard money,
they've corrected, but they've been slowly grinding upwards.
And that is the same kind of price action we've seen from
Bitcoin. And so when you connect the idea
of gold as our Big Brother in the hard money game and of
course Bitcoin as in my opinion the pristine hard money, are we
seeing? This may be realization as this
clip was saying, that you probably want something that
isn't correlated with the traditional financial system.
You might want a neutral money, you might want something that is
completely not dependent on the Fiat system.
And if we continue to see gold and Bitcoin and I, I guess
arguably as well silver continue to grind upwards, why we see
equities go downwards. I'm not saying we're seeing a
repricing and people selling their equities to get into
Bitcoin, but we are seeing the greater conversation of people
realizing that there needs to be a hard money alternative into
your portfolios, into your investments.
Now obviously, I don't think Bitcoin is an investment.
I think it's the best money period.
But are we starting to slowly see a trend of people waking up
to the importance of hard money? That's kind of what I'm saying,
especially in the face of a new global war or we're not in a
war. It's an operation.
It's a conflict. Though Pete Hegseth did say it
was a war. Like there, there's no consensus
on what is going on in the Middle East.
Again, like is it a war or is it not a war?
No one really knows. We're getting conflictive
narratives on what is actually going on.
I actually hit another tab. I don't know if you saw this
last night, but Trump went out there and said we are had
already won the war in the first hour.
And then you're like, yeah, but like, we're two weeks in.
So what have we been doing for two weeks if we've already run
won the war? Now this morning he's like,
yeah, we probably might be there for like another month.
You're like, what? Like what the hell is going on?
And then you see what's going on with energy.
We did see a lot of Western nations announce that they were
going to release some of their strategic oil reserves.
Though it is a pale in the bucket compared to what happens
if we see a prolonged close of the Strait of Hormuz.
If this continues, if we do continue to see energy prices go
higher, a shortage in oil, this, this could really cause a lot of
damage that we, we, we could really be in a very bad place
right now. And This is why I think we're
potentially seeing that people are starting to wake up to this
idea of like, I need some hard money.
I need something completely outside of the system.
I need a store of value. Now is it one of these things
where it goes to gold and silver 1st and eventually Bitcoin?
But again, I was really surprised last week when on
Monday the markets open after the attack in Iran that Bitcoin
didn't absolutely dump. I'm starting to get a little
bullish that maybe bitcoins holding up very well.
Maybe we're going to see a breakout very soon.
Again, trolling because I'm not the biggest TA guy, but I've I'm
a Wick off maxi right now. I I want to believe, I think
it's, I think it's hanging on. I I think that's what's what's
happening right now. OK, anyways guys, another
commercial break and I do see Mateo is in the background.
Mateo is in the building, so I will bring him in after this
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Back. I'm going to I'm going to
quickly cover this. Oh, OK, but Mateo is back.
Mateo, I I saw you turned your camera off, so I'm like, OK, let
me let me quickly cover this. But how you doing bro?
How? How?
Life been. What's up?
Bro. Yeah, Yeah, man, it, it's been a
minute here. Let me let me quickly cover this
and then wait. We'll just start chatting.
So guys, big news again. It is a lot of rhetoric, but the
implication here is seemingly very favorable for the Bitcoin
industry at large, at least the idea.
We'll see what actually comes out of this, but this is an
announcement. So we have Michael Selig, of
course. He is the chairman of the CFTC,
and he goes. The days of turf battles between
the CFTC and the SEC are over. SEC Paul Atkins and I are
working together. And today's memorandum of
understanding solidifies our efforts to achieve our mutual
goals of harmonization. Of course.
Read more. Here's the official press
release. I'm not going to read the whole
thing. I'll read the intro and then
I'll read the specific point about, you know, digital assets
or cryptos. And he goes.
The Commodities Future Trading Commission and the SEC today
announced that they have entered into a Memorandum of
understanding to guide coordination and collaboration
between the two agents to support lawful innovation,
uphold market integrity, and ensure investors and customers
protection. The MOU reflects both agencies
commitment to provide fair notice to market participants,
respect individual liberty and foster lawful innovation with
the minimum effective dose of regulation to enhance US
competitiveness in finance. So hey, look again rhetoric,
it's a press release, but seemingly a good thing.
And I'll, I'll probably explain that a little bit.
But anyways, here is what they support and it goes.
The initiative will support coordination across the policy
making, examination and enforcement functions of each
agency, particularly for joint applications and shared policy
efforts, including providing a fit for purpose regulatory
framework for crypto assets and other emerging technologies.
All these other ones you could say don't necessarily relate to
Bitcoin. But the idea here is one of the
things I've been saying on the show for a minute that in the
past we've seen from the SEC and the CFTC that they would
basically have two different definitions for what Bitcoin and
quote, you know, cryptos are at large.
And this announcement, it seems like we're going to get a
definitive perspective of what Bitcoin is.
Hopefully they go the, you know, CFTC route where Bitcoin is a
digital commodity and preferably everything else is a security.
That might be too much to ask, but for the for the longest time
the SEC has has really treated Bitcoin or crypto assets as
securities. Now hopefully if we do get some
some good harmonization here, if we do get a overarching view of
what Bitcoin is, this does bring in the idea of regulatory
clarity. Preferably, like I said, they
treat Bitcoin as a commodity. Preferably it'd get to Bitcoin
as a money. But again, I, I think I might be
asking a little too much here. I, I always seem to be on the
extreme side of everything going on here, but maybe a small win
is a win. I, I guess that's my short term
pain for long term gain here. I'm repeating A win is a win, a
small win is a win. So that's the big announcement.
Again, it's an announcement. We'll see what actually gets
pushed through or rather what they actually conclude.
But this is this is some big news in regards to how we're
going to see these agencies treat Bitcoin.
We'll cover it when it officially launches, but in the
meantime, at least we're aware of what's going on.
Anyways, Mateo, we could, we could pivot from here.
I just wanted to get that through, but man, or actually,
do you want to hit on this? Do you, do you, do you have
thoughts on this or, or we could just keep keep the conversation
going somewhere else? So I have thought on the SEC.
Well, I mean, it's my favorite institution in the world, so.
I. Surely don't.
No, man, I don't really. I'm not too worried about what
the government thinks Bitcoin is, to be honest with you.
It's at the end of the day, it's, you know, Bitcoin is what
Bitcoiners think it shouldn't be.
So I think it, it'd be easier, I guess for people that are
knowing to be coined if the SEC says, oh, it's money or it's
commodity. But personally, I'm not too
worried about it to be honest with you.
Yeah, I love that I I have. Definitely been on that train
for a while. I think, you know, Niko, Niko is
super big on on the politics stuff.
And you know, I was listening to to bad advice.
No, no, I'm trying like. Niko Niko is good advice.
And so I, I definitely got caught up in, in the, the
politics angle of Bitcoin and I definitely had to step back for
a little bit and be like, what, what, what am I here for?
I'm like, I'm here for Bitcoin. It's money.
Maybe I'm I'm a hardcore bitcoiner.
I know there's far and few of us still left here because everyone
became a suit corner. Everyone started shilling the
Bitcoin treasury companies and they made a bag all our friends
that did it. They made some money and we were
sitting here like damn, we should have been shilling them.
What are we doing just telling people to buy Bitcoin and take
it to self custody. Good thing we didn't though
'cause it seems like the reputations maybe took a hit on
that. But I agree, I think if I think
if we get a point where people use Bitcoin, everything will
kind of figure itself out. It's almost like what we saw, of
course, with the Internet, I know it's a it's a trope at this
point, but we saw in the past with new emerging technologies,
they do try to regulate it. And then at a certain point,
once everyone uses it, they realize they can't actually
regulate this thing. So hopefully we get to that
point. Hopefully enough people use
Bitcoin. I, I guess that's the big hope.
Actually, Matteo, I wanna, I wanna ask you this because I
know you are a hardcore Bitcoiner.
You're a hardcore Bitcoin is money person.
And one of the fears that I've had in recent years is the fact
that we aren't seeing people use Bitcoin or even caring about
Bitcoin. And I'm like, I think the only
failure that Bitcoin could have at this point, I don't think the
network will necessarily die. It's just that people don't care
about Bitcoin. So what's, what's your thoughts
on this? Are you seeing that from your
side? Obviously you're, you're a
company that connects Bitcoiners.
So maybe you're a little biased because now all I do is read the
headlines and I'm like, I just don't feel like people care
right now. But it could just be a bear.
Market thing. I mean, yeah, I mean the stuff
the bear market is not helping for now, right?
This is a momentary thing. I mean, if you've been in
Bitcoin 56710 years, 15 years and some people have been 15
years in Bitcoin, I've been in Bitcoin 1718 years actually.
So joking outside, you know, you know, it goes, there's a bull
market, then there's a bear market.
These four year cycles, one day it'll be over.
We don't know. But yeah, I mean, that option if
you look at yeah, so if you look at own chain, obviously fees,
that's basically it's zero. So there's not much volume
there. But this could also mean that
Bitcoin has scaled to the Latin network, right?
I mean, the Latin network is going parabolic.
If you look at the measures on the Latin network, like we have
a, you know, we have launched a wallet last year basically,
yeah, one year and change and we have done 4 million transactions
just us. So starting from zero, right.
So I think the Latin Macroid's taking away a lot of activity
from the layer one to layer 2, which is I should be anyway,
right? We don't wanna you mean nobody
wants to wait 10 minutes to get a coffee.
So so, you know, I don't know if they own chain is reflective of
what actually is going on in the Bitcoin ecosystem that much, you
know, and also this ETF, you know, people now buy on the ETF.
So there's no, you know, they can buy 1000 Bitcoin and do 0
transaction on the, you know, on on the blockchain.
There's a lot. Of, you know, it's definitely
change, it's definitely mature. You know, the ecosystem is
mature, right? Like a lot, especially since I
got in in 20/17/2018 and now the banks are going to come in.
Right now you're going to be able to get bitcoins from your
Wells Fargo Citibank account. And you probably don't even know
what is a blockchain, right? Or what is lighting like all
these things that they are going to go in the background.
I think, you know, if you ask me, how is Bitcoin going to win
is when people don't even know what's the blockchain on the
lighting. They just use Bitcoin from their
checking account, from their credit card, whatever it is,
right? I think that's when Bitcoin
wins. Is that like it's everywhere and
it just works, right? So that's kind of my that's kind
of my thesis right now. And the bird market is a great
time to build, as the saying goes.
So we're building a lot of cool stuff at Club Orange and you
know, we actually said on boarding merchants recently, I
don't know if you saw my tweet about this pizza guy in Los
Angeles. No, no I didn't.
I'll pull it up right now though.
Yeah, if you go on my account is the pin 1.
So what happened is, you know, cash shop now shows you a map of
merchants that accept Bitcoin through Square.
Cuz now if you have Square, you can just click a button on your
on your there you go. That's the tweet.
So if you have Square, you can just accept Bitcoin with one
click, which is amazing, and you can convert to Fiat.
You can keep the Bitcoin or whatever you like.
So on Cloud Orange we have a merchant section and so I'm
like, let's go and find out these merchants around delay,
let's drive around. You know, I got a friend on Club
Orange. Let's just go drive around and
talk to this merchant, right? And sign them up on Club Orange
so they can find local big corners they can go and spend.
Anyway, somebody told me, I went to a meet up a couple of weeks
ago and somebody told me that this pizza guy that does 70%
discount if you're paying Bitcoin, I'm like 7 zero.
Yeah, yeah, 70. I'm like, OK, we got to meet
this guy. So I drove, it's across town,
which in LA is kind of like it takes 3 hours, right?
I went to this place, the guy's not there.
The manager has no idea how to take Bitcoin.
I'm like, OK, great. That's why I give 70% discount
because nobody can pay Bitcoin. So, you know, so I left the
voicemail, I, I left the business card.
So I just say, hey, you know, whenever you see your balls,
just give it, give them this business card.
Anyway, we went back home, you know, and then, and then the
next day I wake up, you know, I checked my sign up and there is
pizza Man, which is the name of the, the pizzeria.
He got the founder membership, which is $500, which is the most
expensive membership we have. And then somebody told me, Hey,
did you meet the guy? It's it's there's a section.
About Club Orange on his WI say I never spoke to the guy.
But this guy just, you know, got the got the the founder merchant
A membership and then he put a whole section about Club Orange
on his website when it goes to pay with Bitcoin.
And I'm like incredible, right? I mean, this is really how
Bitcoin is like the grass root, like knocking on doors, getting
people to accept Bitcoin. So anyway, so we met the guy I
think, yeah, 2 days ago, super young guy, super very cool guy.
And it's like, yeah, I'm doing the boxes.
So now this guy's gonna the boxes for the pizza.
That's deliveries. It's gonna put Bitcoin
everywhere, the boxes, the QR code, it's like all in a
Bitcoin. And so that's the reality on the
ground right now. The price, it doesn't tell you
that there is a pizza guy that gives 70% discount if you're
paying Bitcoin and it's gonna put the Bitcoin log on all the
pizza boxes, right? You don't see that on the price.
So it's a long you need to lower your preference, opt.
That's my advice. Lower your preference, but we're
gonna get there. OK, all right.
You know, I I feel like I get yelled at by Mateo every time
you come on the show. It's either check my DMS on Club
Orange or I guess now it's lower my time preference.
OK, I heard you, Mateo. You know, I don't meet up with
as many new Bitcoiners as you. I I meet up with the same
Bitcoiners and we just complain about the same things
constantly. So maybe I need to go meet up
with new Bitcoiners. I'm like, I like my Bitcoin
friends. They're nice and.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's always you're on.
The you're on the other side. You know, there's always new big
corners means true every block, every block there's a new big
corner minted right. So I but you know, that's it's
if you have big con friends, it's good to get, you know,
especially during these, you know, these crashes 50% down.
It's good to get conviction from from your big con rose.
So I'm glad you're doing that. Yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm I'm seeing I'm like, wait, someone's messaging me on orange
pill app or sorry, sorry, club orange.
I dude, I still have it in my head.
I'm like someone just messaged me on club orange.
What what's going on? Like, don't they know I'm on the
show and they're like my tails up next let's go.
So yeah, but I I do want to talk about the the lightning just in.
General one of one of my really good friends.
Justifer, he's at Ambos. I I really want to just give him
a shout out and applause for what he's been building and I
know the lightning network doesn't get as much coverage
here on the show, but it, it really is truly incredible what
is happening on lightning right now.
It it's really becoming like the de facto layer 2 for Bitcoin and
it's moving a lot of money. I know you for you guys that
watch every day. I did cover the, what was it?
The million dollar single lightning transaction that just
happened like that was huge. And I, I keep seeing Jessifer,
my boy Jessifer. Actually, he docks himself.
It's Jesse. I think his last name is
Schroeder. I know him as Jessifer forever.
The the CEO of Ambos and the charts and numbers he's showing,
he's like, guys, you guys are really underestimating where
Lightning is and the amount of adoption and use through
Lightning. He's like, it's here, it's
finally here. And I guess it goes back to what
you said, Mateo. You know, I think it's Bitcoin
as we do get caught up because we're so obsessed with Bitcoin
day in and day out. That was like, oh, you know,
zooming back, I, I remember a lot of contention, a lot of
rumors and speculations like, oh, Lightning's not going to
work. It's dead, bro.
Like why is no one using lightning?
And here we are a couple years later and it's it's.
Almost working exactly as design guys.
It's almost like Bitcoin works exactly as designed.
I can tell you a funny story about the Lighting Network if
you want, Yeah. Yeah, go for it.
Before we had the wallets, you know, and I didn't really
understand the lighting network that well when I, when I
launched Club Orange, which is back in 2020 anyway.
So I got a guy on Club Orange that says, oh, you know, we
should test the, we should test the Latin neck and see how many
sats you can send. And so I'm like, OK, let me send
you a million SAS. You send it back this.
And so eventually we end up doing like a 20 million SAT
transaction. I never met the guy.
You know, he could have, you could have run away with the
SAT. So obviously send it back and,
and then and then, you know, then I go into like send the
Latin neck and it's like, you know, if you have a channel with
somebody with like 10 bitcoins, you can send 10 bitcoins, which
is what 1 billion sets back and forth, back and forth, you know,
infinite amount of time, no fees by the way.
And so, yeah, I mean, the 1,000,000 transaction on
lighting, it's, it's great. It's like what, 10 Bitcoin?
Like 12 bitcoins now? You could do.
AI think you could do a billion
transaction on lighting as long as you have the channel with
like, you know, 1000 bitcoins, whatever the number might be.
Now there is really no limit because then I ask, you know,
people like Jesse and other people that you know, they're
like deep down and be in on the lines like, is that actually a
limit? Of a biggest channel and they
say technically there is no limit so you could do.
A $1 billion transaction on the lighting?
I think we need to ask. Sailor to do that.
To see if it works like I'm sure.
I'm. Sure, he has a.
He has a square thousand big. Yeah, I'm sure he's got a
billion sitting around that You can.
He can totally just do that. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, I mean the lighting, it's, it's, I mean, I remember
when I got into, you know, when I was, I was here when the
lighting goes starting in 2018 and it was like 50% of the
transactions would not go through.
They said they would fail. And now it's like, I can't even
remember last time I got A and I do, you know, we do a lot of
transactions. You know, we get, you can buy
membership online thing through Club Orange, you know, and we
use, you know, different providers.
But nobody is going to say, oh, I sent this out.
So, you know, and they haven't got that in many, many years.
Yeah. I mean, the lighting works, man.
I don't know why people keep saying the lighting doesn't work
or they say the lighting is not Bitcoin.
I see those tweets sometimes. I don't know what's wrong with
these people. Lighting is Bitcoin obviously
and lighting works. It's gonna it's only gonna get
bigger and better. And and that's where I mean
again, that's where most of the activity of Bitcoin is gonna be
long term. And then you have on chain for
like, OK, you know, I need to send $10 million, right?
I need to buy grocery in 100 years and you know, I need to
buy, I need $1,000,000 of lighting of Bitcoin.
So. But yeah, it's lightning.
Works, man. Let's go the take away.
Lightning works all. Right, let me do the last.
Commercial and then we'll just chop it up about Club Orange,
what you've been doing lately. Here we go guys.
This is a quick one, so we'll be right back.
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digitaltech.com. All right, Mateo, actually, I, I
do, I do want to talk about this message that I just got by
Orange diet. I I literally thought it was
going to be you messaging me and being like Opti check your DMS
like I, I, I checked them. Mateo.
It's just, it's not every week. I I I've moved it, I've moved it
a little bit to probably like every month.
So I I'm still doing my duties here.
It's just there's a little, there's a little longer break.
OK, I'm I'm still on it. But Mateo, I do want to talk
about something else, which is about a lot of the meetups that
that I've seen you post on your Twitter, of course, facilitated
through Club Orange. And I'm not going to dox shocks
the person, but one of our Twitter Zoomers did hang out
with you recently. And we were all sitting there
and we just saw, we looked at your Twitter account and you're
like, ah, look at us. We're, you know, we're at a meet
up. And we all like looking in our
in our slack. We're like, yo, is that?
Is that who we? Think it is.
I'll tell you, I'll tell you off the show.
But anyways, let's just talk about Club Orange.
I know it's working. I know.
OK, OK. He's a cool.
Guy, he's, he's been helping us for a long time in, you know,
like design things. And yeah, it's a great guy,
great young guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we love
the kid. He's he's really, he's really
been, he's really been a, a hidden gem for us.
So we're we're super hyped for him too.
I've joined the team. But anyways.
Mateo, it's been a minute, dude. You know, you always send me
Brian and I love Brian. Brian, if you're listening, you
know I love you, bro. I I love the energy.
Me and him chop it up all the time.
But it's been a minute, Mateo. So what?
What have you been doing, man? What?
What's what's new over there at Club Orange?
Well, the name just to start, you know.
Yeah. Can we talk?
About that, what's with the rebrand bro?
Yeah, so. So here's what happened.
The number one reason why I've changed the name is because my
wife told me that she came out with the name forever.
And I'm like, this is not true. You didn't come out with the
name. I'm like, you know what?
I'm gonna change the name. No, I'm just, I'm just kidding.
No, it's true that it's true that she she claimed to be the
creator of Orange Flop, the name.
But that's not really the number one reason.
Maybe the number two reason? The number one reason why we
changed the name is because, you know, you know, there's a couple
of reason, but the, I guess the, the problem was that the name
was getting misspelled in ways that it's hard to believe, but
literally like I was one day I was in, I went to an accountant,
You know, I'm Italian. Maybe my English is not good.
I don't know. The guy is like native English,
right speaker. And I say, OK, what's the name
of the company? Orange peel up And he wrote and
like this guy's in front of me, right Orange.
Obviously you can't misspell orange, which is why we kept it.
Peel was TILL like a farmer and then up, up, like up.
And I'm like, are you? Kidding me?
Show up is crazy. And it's like, and it's like,
this was the most egregious misspelling, but people would
misspell it. Orange peeled like PILLED orange
peel, like you're peeling the orange.
And so you know, it's hard. So it's hard enough to get
people to download an app and if you have to tell them, hey, you
wrote the name wrong, like writing again, it's gets even
harder. And then there was like, you
know, 3 words, 3 words companies, you know, products.
They're not, there's no successful company that has
three words. It's always like one word or
maybe 2-3 words is really like, I couldn't find any.
And then the last reason was the word peel for those that spell
it right, PILL, it was a turn, you know, it was a turn down
for, you know, a certain kind of people.
You know, they didn't like the word peel.
You know, it sounded like a pharmacy, right?
And then, you know, so we said let's see if we can find a
better name. So we started like bouncing
around the DS I think the most. Clever idea that somebody gave
me was. Keeping, by the way, the other
thing was like, the name was so long that people would say OPA,
OPA, right? They would abbreviate it.
Yeah. Which obviously is kind of cool.
But if you go on Google, if you go on the App Store and you type
OPA, you're never going to find this.
So when people abbreviate your name, it's usually not a good
sign. So somebody gave us this great
idea was like, OK, how about this?
How about we call it orange people up.
So he stays OPA, but he get rid of peel.
That was very clever. But you know, eventually we
landed on club orange, which is, you know, shorter.
You can misspell a club orange. It it it keeps the name.
It keeps the orange, which is, you know, which is kind of
Bitcoin or like we love the color orange.
There's some continuity from Orange pull up to Club Orange.
So anyway, so we rebranded in November and then I found out
there is a company in Ireland that does a soda called Club
Orange. So that's great.
So, but if you go in the App Store, if you type Club Orange,
they don't have an app for the drink.
So that's the reason why we brand it.
I think it's I mean it is a better name.
Like, you know, like if if the original name was club Orange,
would nobody would ever say, well, you should change it to
Orange pull out, you know, like that's how you know you got a
better name. So new name, same mission, of
course, you know, like connecting big corners.
You know, you can find the vans, you can find merchants, you can
find your wife. Somebody, I mean some, I don't
know if you know this, but somebody did find the wife and
then get this. They had a kid and they call it
Mateo. That's crazy.
That is wild. They should have called it
orange peel. OPA.
Not OPA. OPA OPA.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's right.
You know they mean by like Dad, why is my name you know their
name? Well, Mateo, I know, I know
every time you've come on the show for, for years now at this
point, I would always tease you about it being you should just,
it should just be a dating app, bro.
Like, come on. And we would joke Everything's a
dating app if you're using it correctly.
So it shouts out to those two people 'cause they use the app
correctly. And now I know you, you don't
like that. But hey, everything's a dating
app if you use it correctly. So Club Orange.
Well. Honestly, look, hey hey, still
occasionally go to the. Club, you know, you, you want to
find your mate at the club. So it should be a it should be
part of the branding. Maybe not your mate, maybe just
like a night. But hey, do you know people do
what they want to do? The the right you know the right
thing is not everything is that is a dating app if you use it
correctly. The Right Thing Everything is
Dating is a dating app if you're good looking.
Hey, bars, that's true. That's true.
So. Which unfortunately cuts you
off. Damn, that's true.
That's why these, that's why all these apps.
Aren't working for me. What's up with your girlfriend,
Christine? Ah, dude, she's no, she's lost a
plot. I think she's taking this break
up really bad because they keep fighting Bitcoin.
They keep trying to usher in the CBDC.
You know they're not. Really doing a lot of good.
Stuff over there they're yeah, they're, they're cooked.
She's she's taking it really rough.
They're. You need to save her.
You need to just. You know, The thing is is I
tried. I tried and didn't work out.
I didn't even get a scarf out of the relationship.
So like, I don't know what I was doing, OK?
I was just, you know, I was blinded by it, was bonded by the
silver fox. Niko would kill me.
He's like, yeah, OK, what's it
going on? OK.
Anyways, anyways. Mateo, what?
What actually? Can you tease anything you got
anything in the books like any anything coming down the
pipeline? Yeah, Yeah.
Actually we have a huge thing coming down the pipeline.
So the wallet, the wallet that we launched last year has done 4
million transactions, like literally 97% of those
translation is geozapping, which essentially is a zapping people
based on the location, you know, because we have, you know, we
have the approximate location of the user.
So you can go on the wallet and type, you know, and type Iran
and there will be nobody, but you know, you can type like
Miami or you can type a city, a country, a continent.
You can even type a distance ends up people, you know, based
on the distance to you or the location.
So anyway, we launched the wallet and you know, it's
custodial. It's a custodial wallet, which
has some advantages and some disadvantages.
But I was in El Salvador in January for the Plum B.
Were you guys there? I think Nico was there.
Nico was there. Yeah, Nico popped in for a
little bit. I, I don't leave the basement
here, bro. I I can't leave the studio.
I literally sleep on the other side of the camera now.
Perfect. But I love it.
You should do it. You should.
You should do a 24/7 live stream of all.
Dude I could I you, you really want me to lose my mind?
Dude I I can barely do this one. I'm already losing my mind the
24 hours. Live of OPS.
I'd never come back. I would watch it.
So anyway, so I was in El Salvador and I met Roy from
Breeze. Great guy and he told me about
this thing called Spark. I don't know if you heard about
it last. Spark.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's David Marcus, right?
That's David. Marcus's.
Company, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they build this thing. It's kind of like a side chain
where you can use lighting and you can give wallet to people
without being custodial. And I'm not.
Gonna go into the details because I don't even know this
is myself but my developers do and I met but they.
Tell me it's a good idea. They tell me it's a good.
Idea, right? It's like, OK, yeah, we can make
that work. No, I went actually, you know,
Last Park is in LA. I'm in LA as well, so I went to
meet them. A few weeks ago and so we
actually today, literally before I jump on this beautiful live
stream with you Opti I we did our first non custodial
transaction on club Orange today.
And so in a couple of weeks we're gonna migrate our wallet
from custodial to South custodial, which means yeah,
yeah. Which means you're gonna be able
to download the wallet from Club Orange and import it on like
whether Satoshi or other wallets.
And but the cool things is that there is no changes in the app.
Like you can do ZAP and you can ZAP people, you can pay
invoices. Nothing is gonna change from the
user perspective. But on the background, it's
gonna be self custodial, which means it's better for us as a
company. Obviously we don't wanna hold
your funds and it's better for the user because obviously we're
never gonna rug our user even if we could right now.
But still, you know, it's better that you don't, you don't even
have that opportunity. Yeah.
And so, yeah, so that's the biggest.
So that's what we're working right now.
We're gonna announce it some somewhat somewhere in April,
maybe April 1st. So yeah, April Fool's Day.
That's a good day. It's, well, we've been doing a
lot of April Fool's Day in June, I know.
Forget a subset. Well, look, Mateo.
You're going to. Officially announce it, but you
kind of already officially announced it here on simply with
us so we I don't want to steal your your.
Announcement, we'll call this the announcement of an
announcement. You know, we, we could, we can
lean into the trend of that being in the Bitcoin space.
But I do have one quick question here.
You did say nothing's going to change.
So from a user perspective, are they just going to have to like
update their wallet and all their funds and everything's
going to be there? They don't even have to do
anything. It's it's it, man, it's so it's
so amazing. So the way it's gonna work,
right, let's get into the details.
Let's let's put people to sleep because it's kind of time to
sleep. Well anyway, no, the way it's
gonna work, it's like technically, as far as I know.
Well, it's basically when you you're gonna update the app,
right? There's gonna be an update.
You update the app, and then when you go to the wallet, we're
gonna automatically create a wallet for you.
But the seed phrase of the wallet is gonna only stay in the
device, so we can't see the seed phrase.
Now, as a user, you can download the seed phrase and you can put
it somewhere else, or you don't have to do that.
You can still use the wallet without downloading the seed
phrase. The wallet would just work as it
worked before. It basically gives you the
option to download the wallet, but if you don't do it, you can
use the wallet in a self custodial manner without you
even knowing that it's a self custodial manner.
Which honestly it's it's I should be right.
You don't want to have people download this Sid phrase, write
it down, put it in a safe box and then you can use the wallet,
right? That's not a good way to.
You know I mean. Really the reason why we built
the wallet is because I was talking to people on Club Orange
and I would say 80% of the user of Club Orange, which is
payable, do you have to pay? So it's kind of like the Bitcoin
maxi. They never use the Latin wallet.
It's the Latin network. And I'm like, at some point I
can't teach. Everybody about the.
Latin network, you know, like we have now.
We have almost 20,000 user and that's really the reason why we
create the wallet, because then everybody can, you know, is on
the Latin network without, you know, even knowing about it.
And so, yeah, I mean, that's how it's gonna work.
You update the app, we create the wallet for you.
The seed phrase lives on your device.
That means only you can see the seed phrase.
And if you want, you can download it, upload it somewhere
else, you can save it. You know, and then the other
thing is like you know people, you know the balance is on club
orange. It's not like you have one
Bitcoin or or two or three. You know, you have maybe 10,000
stats or 5000 stats or 100. You know, it's really like
pocket change. And so you know if you delete
the app, you know, just so you know if you delete once you go
South custodial if you delete the app or if.
You. Change device and you don't save
the the seed phrase, you lose your.
Stats. But it's, you know, maybe it's
1000 times it doesn't SAT and but you know, we're going to
make sure, you know, we obviously we're going to make
sure we tell everybody. There's going to be tutorials.
We're going to have Opti walking through every single one of you.
They can call Opti on Club Orange.
You can, you know, you can make calls on Club Orange now.
OK, yeah, dude, come. Come on bro, don't.
The call off to please. Do not.
Yo, don't do that. Don't no, don't do that dude.
Oh man bro. Yeah, it's gonna be.
It's gonna be beautiful, man. It's gonna be damn Mateo now my
phone's really gonna blow up. All right, My phone's on Do Not
Disturb forever here on out so. Airplane mode.
Yeah, airplane mode forever. OK, guys.
Sheesh. Mateo, this is bro, what are you
doing to me? I'm I'm already losing my mind.
Don't let don't have everyone call me now.
This is horrible. This is my nightmare.
Happening in real time, I barely pick up my friends and family's
calls. Dude, jeez, I know, but your
Bitcoin friends, they work more than your very few friends.
I mean, it's true, I do talk to my Bitcoin friends probably more
than my family, which is probably not the best thing, but
it is it's, it's literally a fact.
But but tell you I do, I do have again, not to get too technical
here, but for people that are currently using Orange Pill app
and they have some sets there, again, the transition's going to
be seamless for them. So they don't have to like send
their lightning out and then send it back.
In, it's just going to be as it was before.
Yeah. So yeah, again, let's let's go
even. Deeper into these details of the
new wallet. What's gonna happen?
You have a balance, you upload, you update the app, we create a
wallet which is sub custodial for you.
The seat phrase is on your device and you're gonna have an
address, right? Like the address is gonna stay
opti at cluborange.org. And then we take the balance of
your custodial wallet, which obviously means we were holding
this. As for you, we take that balance
and we automatically send it to your sub custodial wallet.
So literally there is nothing to do for the user, literally that
we're just going to take the sats from your custodial wallet
to your sub custodial wallet and then it's your wallet.
That's amazing. That's awesome bro.
Yes, that's that's cool. I I've seen a lot of, I forget
which one it is, but I saw another recent huge announcement
of another I think was it Wallet of Satoshi?
That went to Spark or. Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, right. They're they're using the.
First, yeah, they were the first to, I think adopt Spark, which
is how they'll be able to come back to the US And so, yeah, I
mean, that's a good point. You could then once it's that
could start and get the seed phrase, you can take the seed
phrase, go to Walter Satoshi and import the wallet there.
And then you see the same balance on Walter Satoshi.
And really, wow. Yes.
And then you can send this out and every time you send this out
from Club Orange or what's the sheet, the balance are gonna
update automatically. OK.
So it's gonna be very, I mean, it's the way it should be.
It's the way it should be. Wow.
It's Club Orange building the iPhone moment for Lightning
here. I think that might be a stretch.
I know, I know we're trying to get more people to use Bitcoin,
but it seems like the the ease and convenience factor really
goes into the conversation. We were talking about Lightning
earlier. It, it does seem to have come a
long way. Now you don't have to be a
hardcore, you know, bitcoiner technical developer to get a
lightning node up. I, I remember when the lightning
torch happened. I forget what year it was, what
like 2021 or something like that.
I was so. Frustrated, I was trying to set
up a a lightning node and I I could barely code, you know,
like hello world like that's as far as my coding went, you know,
and I was trying to set up a lightning node and I forget what
something dropped. I think there was, I think, oh,
actually it was Pierre Rochard's.
He had that like script for a lightning note and I literally
just like put in the script and it like did all the stuff for
me. And so I was able to do the
lightning torch so that that was good times.
I I completely forgot how to do any of that.
So I'm happy that lightning is now Hey, I just download an app
and I start using Bitcoin because, you know, it's hard.
It's hard having a 42 IQ in this world, but you know, I'm
surviving. I'm I'm surviving here daily.
I don't know how it's happening, but we're, we're making it
day-to-day here, Mateo. But anyways, yeah, you know.
But now with the eyes, now with the, you know, now with the
eyes, it's it's you might be able to code more than a little
world, I think. Yeah, maybe.
I don't know, I the AI stuff is
I, I hear everyone with the claw bots.
I don't know, I'm like, I'm like, dude, I do not need
another hobby where I'm looking at the computer all day.
I'm like, I I need to go outside.
OK, I know it's like a one time thing, but I don't know that's
that's that's above my IQ. Level anyways, rateo to wrap up
the show any any other things you want to mention?
Actually, let's just plug club orange real quick.
Where can they find it? Can they reach out to you?
You know all that good stuff. If they have some feedback, you
know, let let's do the final plug and we'll wrap up today's
show. Well, Club orange.org is the
website and then App Store, you know, whatever fun you have, App
Store, Google Play Store, you can get the APK file on the
website. If you wanna download the binary
file, Club Orange, you can reach me on Club Orange.
Obviously it's my name and last name.
You can also reach OPT on Club Orange.
Very important. Yeah, yeah.
But don't call me guys, please. I'll respond to the DMS. But bro
if. I literally Mateo, if I get if I
get phone calls, I'm going to crash out so hard.
I'm going to I'm going to lose my mind.
Oh man, DM me. Please no phone calls.
I, for the love of God, please you can.
Actually, actually. Maybe.
Yeah, actually, maybe I need to do reverse psychology here.
Yes, you know. Call me, definitely call me
please. I really enjoy you calling me.
I don't. I'm I'm dude, I'm going to get
cooked. Damn.
Oh man. And yeah, I mean, it's what is
Cub Orange? It's a it's a way to meet bit
corners. It's a social network, which
means there is no media to scroll and get lost in time.
You find bit corners, you meet them, you go to the, you know,
we have the largest database of events in the world, 800 events,
Bitcoin only events. We filtered them.
We, you know, we verify their Bitcoin events.
So basically you know you can find events anywhere you go.
We now have merchants you can go and spend the SAT's.
Which you should. Do by the way, instead of just,
you know, hoarding them, just spend the SAT's buy and replace,
you know, don't be join, you know, join the become part of
the economy and and there's a wallet, you know, did we talk
about the wallet or not? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did we talk about the wallet? Yeah.
No, I don't know. I don't think we did.
Right. Cool it's a wallet it's a
custodial soon anyway. Yeah it's it's kind of like, you
know, it's the reason why I build this app, in case you
wanted to know Opti, so I'm sure you did is because I was lonely,
you know, I was a lonely bitcoiner.
Nobody wanted to hear about Bitcoin, especially when it
crash in 2022 from like 69 to 1716, whatever it was.
And you know, I'm like, let's build an app to find big corners
because there was no other way to find big corners.
Twitter, you don't know where people are.
And yeah, I went to a meet up in LA and I went to a meet up in LA
and half of the people were not in Bitcoin.
And I'm like, what a waste. Some.
Yeah, I've done that. Yeah, you've done that.
Yeah. In the early days like 2018 era,
I went to like a Bitcoin meet up back home and I go and they're
like talking about shit coins the whole time.
I'm like, what the hell is going on here?
Like this is garbage. It's wild.
Yeah, yeah. And that's really where I got
the idea. I'm like, I can't go to a meet
up. People on Twitter, I don't know
what they are. So there's you know, there
wasn't a way to find local big cars.
So that's that's that's the kind of the incipit of Club Orange.
And it work. I mean it work.
We have 19, I mean almost 20,000 members.
Everybody has to pay. So we don't get the bots, which
obviously is going to be a huge problem going forward.
We don't get the sheet corners, we don't get this bombers, we
don't get the scammers, we don't get people that don't want to
reply to the EMS. So. Yo, bro, yo dude, I'm getting
cooked. Here I'm getting cooked.
Here I'm. Getting you're you're telling
everyone to call me now and I'm getting put on blast.
No, but you know, choking aside, the paywall is kind of like
Bitcoin, you know, you if you want to use the network, you got
to pay the fees, which you know, is very low, but one day might
be higher and it's $3 a month, you know, it's very low, but you
know, like we filter out the the noise.
So it's very high signal. Everybody's super friendly.
Everybody wants to meet and, you know, build a business or become
friends. I mean, there are people going
camping, people that have learned to fly on Club Orange.
They just, there's a pilot that just teaching people to fly.
It's you know, it's, it's, it's quite incredible.
You know, it's quite incredible. Optus is going to have a busy
day, it's going to have a busy month.
So what do you? Mean dude, my life is now more
busy than ever thanks to Mateo Oh.
Man, So yeah, that's Kevorage. It's it's, it's about going
outside instead of being online all the time and building these
local communities around Bitcoin.
That's that's what we do. Let's go, let's go.
I do want to read a couple of questions or comments from
Rumble. I I can't pull them up, but we
have AJN 240750 He goes yes, I'm I think some words are gone.
I'm going to find more retailers that accept Bitcoin.
I I think he missed a couple words there.
So you know, he loves that. And then we have Mr. Robot Zero
and he goes, this is how Bitcoin wins self custody and
transacting. Bitcoin is just as seamless as
any Fiat transaction. So they love what you're doing,
Mateo. So it's been a minute, man.
I appreciate you coming on, even though you roasted me.
And now I'm going to get phone calls.
But it's all love, OK? It's all love, bro.
So thank you so much for coming on today's show.
On that note, guys, you already know the deal.
We'll be back tomorrow roughly 12:40 PM Eastern Time for
another show of Simply Bitcoin Live.
Like Mateo said, get outside, get in public.
You know, get off the computer. There's real people out there.
Make sure you're stacking stats, eating good food, go touch some
grass, guys, get a workout and get out, get a walk in.
You know, let's make sure we're healthy and beautiful so that
you can turn every app into a dating app.
I know I can't, but it is what it is.
You know, maybe you guys can. So Mateo, again, thank you so
much everyone out there you. Already know we appreciate you.
We love you guys. I'll see you tomorrow.
Good night. Today's episode was brought to
you by bitcoinwell.com, a Bitcoin only platform on a
mission to enable financial independence.