VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey everybody. What’s up. Justin is live from the B2B vault, the payment technology podcast with your host, Alan Kopelman. And we’ll be providing you with educational information about business, payments, FinTech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today’s world. And in today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about cryptocurrency. It’s been in the news. It’s been going crazy up, down, left, right, left, right, BA select start. If you got the cheat code, let us know, we would love to get in on it. But so yeah, man, what you got to say about it? First, we do not give financial advice or investment advice.
We like, we’re going to talk about what’s been in the news with crypto, which has been driving the up and down, mostly down, and the crypto market. We’ll talk about some of the stories that have been in the news. We’ll talk about NFTs Bitcoin mining. We’re going to talk about crypto and business because businesses are very interested in crypto, but at the same time, you know, what is what’s going on with crypto? And you know, many things are going on with it and the news and even the largest holder of Bitcoin, the owner of FTX, you know, that’s where the heat plays.
He wants to know, you know, the bucks loss eat as they’re playing the Celtics. So I don’t want this. Neither do I want the heat to win. So he came out and said he’s the largest holder of Bitcoin globally. I think the owner of that company? Yeah. And it’s local to Miami, and they what’s his name again? I forget I don’t want to give anybody’s name. We don’t like to provide them with the press. We’ll say the owner of FTX, Sam, something, that’s that guy’s rich. That’s all; I’m sick. Yeah. He started his crypto exchange, and now they will sell NFTs on the platform and everything. But he came out and said he’s not sold on that. Bitcoin can be used for transactions.
I disagree with that. I oppose what that is. And then the other, one of the other big stories in the news was Luna. So Luna took a dump, and that went down to zero. So I looked it up, and I was like, how much was Luna worth? Luna was worth over $1.6 billion. Now totals, Luna is worth three grand.
So people invested in Luna like that’s a blood bath. I had some Luna, and yeah, that’s a blood bath. Sorry. And then buy a Luna. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to be BI, but the other thing that people didn’t understand what happened with Luna was he connected it to this. He connected it to Bitcoin. And it was also connected to, I think, tether, which is a stable coin worth around a dollar. It fluctuates very close to a dollar 98 cents, 99 cents a dollar of three. And I, and for some reason, something happened with those connections that made Luna go down, and it also made Bitcoin go down.
Also, many other things made Bitcoin go down because I think many people started selling their Bitcoin to pay attacks. People were panicking, and there was some panic, you know, with the economy and the way it is the other big.
So there were, you know, a lot of big rides up and down. The other big thing was a story that came out was the CEO of Coinbase. Don’t ask me the guy’s name. He came out, and he said, if Coinbase goes bankrupt, you could lose all your coins, bro. You could lose all your crypto holdings. Well, then he’d go bankrupt.
I did look up their stock today, and today their stock is at $64. That was the IPO. I think that IPO was around two 50 to $300 a share. So it went down, it’s down at $64. Now it’s marked by everybody on the internet, saying buy at $64. Cause it will go up. Of course. So that’s crazy. But their stock took a blood bath down a hundred. Did you see and easy to look at any other platforms that are like, well, they’re the only ones they don’t have. They’re not publicly traded. Oh, that’s right. They’re not. Yeah. So that’s the only one that’s publicly traded. There are some other ones like ants are having problems.
There’s a lot of when you go to coin; let me see which websites here. So I [email protected]. So that tracks like all the coins. So I looked up a few different points.com. Yeah. So I looked up a few coins to see how they were making some mark to buy Bitcoin by theory I’m by like coined by, there was a lot of ones with no by next Sheba. Should they say buy Sheba? I know if someone I know just buttons, there’s a lot of people buying Sheba. They think that I told them I had like 5 million and Sheba. And so he bought $5,000 worth of Sheba. So I don’t even know how much he’s paying. That’s all I got. I don’t even see a trillion.
And you can all say it’s an exciting site because you can see what the market cap is, how much money it’s in that it’s worth right now in dollars, you could see how much trading is going on. Most trading is done with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Lite Coin. Those are the heaviest traded. Are these the coin going to be used for business? I say yes. I mean, there are still people buying NFTs. What NFTs will be. We don’t know yet. I think. And if teaser, no, they’re going to go back to what I initially wanted them to. Right. I think it will be more like an artist thing, a collectible item, a utility token for businesses, nightclub events, etc. Maybe some people use it like Gary Vee did to raise money, or you buy a Gary Vee friend’s NFT, and then you get to come to his conference every year. I think you know, but I look at those things like fundraising or crowdfunding for your projects. I think they’re going to go way past the avatars, but we’ll see what’s going on with that. You know, and you know, w how that’s going to work. But a lot of people, I spoke to a client who was telling me when Bitcoin went to 70,000, he sold off quite a bit of his Bitcoin and took some money off the table.
Then he told me somebody else he knows didn’t take his advice on that. And then they a ton of money. And now their investment is worth less than they paid for it. So, you know, we don’t give financial advice, you know, but there’s a lot of people making money as Bitcoin goes up and down. Because they’re playing the Bitcoin market or the crypto market, they’re playing the market, just like they play with Forex, which is currency trading and the stock market. So it’s very volatile. If you lose money in the stock market and coin trading, you lose money for X—the same thing. You know, the other thing is, is that was also, that’s also controversial is this staking of coins.
So people stake their coins, and then they’re making five to 10% interest on their coin. Plus, people are making money off a coin by using these credit cards attached to these exchanges. And they’re getting earning, like I saw Coinbase, if you use our credit card, we’ll give you 2%. I was thinking about it. I go like, okay. So if I charge up, let’s say, ten grand a month on my business credit card, 2%, I would get $200 worth of Bitcoin. It’s kind of interesting. It’s not a bad deal to think about it. I’m just saying you would get that money, but you have to keep in mind that these coin companies are not FDI C insured.
So if something goes wrong, you, as you said, could keep your coin. Right. They can keep your coins. But you know, as I said, Coinbase stock took a blood bath first reward. What do you say? Oh, you know, if you invest wisely, don’t invest all your money in big and crypto. You got to spread it out. You got to have some cash. You have to have some bonds. You have to have some, you know, CDs. I mean, banks. I mean, I don’t know, banks need to change because banks need to start paying people interest. They’re not paying people interest: even the federal government. Now, you used to be able to walk into the bank and buy savings bonds or buy treasury bonds. The bank can’t do that anymore.
You have to buy them online. Really? Yeah. And you have to register for this new thing. It’s called ID, and they have to ID you basically; you have to upload a picture of your driver’s license. They take a selfie of you. They make you answer a bunch of questions. They verify like when Justin is Justin, it’s good. Because I think that’s important. There are all kinds of technology coming out because I think one of the biggest problems we’re facing is identity theft. And there’s also been a lot of stealing that’s gone on with crypto, and it’s hard. It’s tough to steal crypto.
Because you have to go to your wallet physically, you have to scan a QR code or something to send crypto from your wallet to someone else; someone just can’t. It’s not like, oh, here, let me open up my wallet. Right. And here’s my cash. And you walk up, and you take me, you pickpocket me. No, it’s not that easy. It’s not like, oh, I stole the guy’s credit card number. And then they used it. Right. And then a bunch of fraudulent charges. Right. That’s what I’m saying. So stealing Bitcoin, most of it’s being done like today; I just watched this cyber security question and answer thing. So they gave they, they were giving out scenarios, and you had to guess, or think, you know, the answer to the question, right?
So one of the things they talked about was social stealing, and the social heist is entirely out of hand. Right now, it’s out of hand with social robbery. It has to do with texting. I call it social because it’s being used through social apps, like texting apps, WhatsApp, SMS message, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, places like discord, you know, like community type apps where people are chatting in a community. Right. So there are a lot of them, right? So a lot of the crypto stuff’s going on, mostly on discord. Right? And they’re like, oh, you want to get this? Oh, we want to send you an NFT. Everybody, 50 people get the first 50 people that give their address. Right.
Give their address. So they send them an NFT. Right. But then they start the friendless people. Right. And then the scam is they friend you, and they go, Hey, Justin, we’ll give you a free NFT. So you post your wallet. They send you the NFT. Then the scammer chats with you. And then he’s like, Hey, you know, you want to buy this board API club for a thousand dollars. And you’re like, well, I know it’s worth, you know, it’s worth, maybe you’re a novice, right? So now you transfer the guy a thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin. This guy sends you some JPEG of a yacht club, and you got ripped off. Right. You shouldn’t be buying; that’s what’s happening.
That’s where most of the S the scams are going on with many deceptions. And with the NMT stuff, people are getting, or they’re getting like an email, like a bogus transaction, like a business thing or a personal thing. And the person says, Hey, you want to pay me with a Bitcoin? And then it turns out that it was a fake, you were on a phony website, you got contacted by a fake person. It was like a local, like, you know, a website spelled like Twitter with two T’s, or you were on some shopping site, and it was spelled wrong or with extra letters. And then, suddenly, you end up getting ripped off. That’s where most of the stuff’s going on.
I had a friend of mine over the weekend. I was reading on Facebook. She was all bent out of shape. She was selling entertainment. I thought this was a crazy scam selling an entertainment center. So a Guy contacted her and said, ” Oh, I want to guide the entertainment center. She goes, oh, Zelle, me the money. Right. So the guy goes, oh, by mistake, I Zelle you $200 instead of a hundred.
So can you send me a hundred back? She started laughing. She was like, LOL chews, like posted the whole conversation. No, cause she didn’t see the Zelle go into her account. Right. Right. And the person’s scamming her. And those are going on. That’s rampant on Facebook. You’ll get a message from somebody that looks like your friend, and they’ll say, oh, by accident, I’ve got a cash app. You 200 bucks, send it back to me. Or you get an SMS message that says, Hey, log into your bank account. Or, oh, you had a bogus charge on a Chase account or a Bank account. Those people are just guessing, and I just got one that said, I bought a MacBook Pro on Amazon. Right? You got all these phones. No, but I’m just saying, you get these texts, and then it looks like you’re logging into Amazon right now.
It looks like it, but it’s not; you’re not on Amazon. And if you’re not careful and you’re not looking, or you’re not on your bank, you’re putting in your login credentials. Right. Cause if it was the right website, it would auto-fill. Right. So it’s not right. It’s not the right website. You punch in your thing. Then they get your login information. The scammer does. And if they get it to your bank, they sell themselves like three, 400 bucks.
They said they’ll get into your bank account and do a transfer. They get on your credit card and run a charge. They could do all kinds of stuff. So don’t be messing with any of this stuff. You don’t want anybody getting your logins, and you don’t wreck. Like, I don’t recognize things. I just deleted especially attachments. Someone sends me an attachment. I don’t know who that is. Delete.
You have to be careful. Some other coins that I saw were from a company called city coin. Their coin is doing well, but they’re the company that sponsors coins for other cities. So the new york coin never took off, but the Miami coin took off and was worth about 5 cents. And it started at like 0.001, but now it’s worth only 0.05. So it lost a lot of value: 40%, 50% of its value is down. So, there was a whole big thing because the mayor of Miami was touting the Miami coin. And also that they were going to take all this money that they made from Bitcoin and distribute it to people or use it to feed the homeless or to pay for a house fun, the Miami coin cards so that everyone would have a card, like a Miami coin card where they could use to pay to park. Right. Well, forget the Miami. Cohen’s not worth any money, so that’s probably not going to happen.
So they’re having a problem with that. But yeah, and they built a hotel in Miami that they were supposed to be like, everything was supposed to be, it was supposed to be cryptic. Oh, there’s a company in Miami that was building, that’s making a hotel, and it’s going to be, you have to buy an NFT to stay at the hotel. You’re going to be very exclusive—the hotel is kind of cool. I mean, there’s, I had a meeting with a nightclub the other day, and they said, oh, we’re going to sell NFTs. So you can be a VIP at our 37 nightclubs across the United States. I don’t want to say who owns 37 nightclubs. But somebody more, maybe, probably more than that. But the 30 plus nightclubs and restaurants, you know, it’s a hospitality company, and they weren’t going to sell NFTs.
So then they had called us up saying, Hey, can you help us get set up? Cause we make payment consulting with a company that’s compliant, you know, because they’re a public entity, that’s compliance to meet their compliance as a public company, which means are they SOC two compliant and comply with all, any IRS rules. We had a meeting with them, and hopefully, we’ll have a second meeting with them to help them, you know, cause they want to accept Bitcoin and Ethereum in conjunction with the NFTs they’re going to sell. So, you know, but I think NFTs are going to be, be around. But I think that market is going to change.
Like if you’re looking to buy NFT now with the price of the theory, I’m down; it’s now would be the time to get an NFT one for a reasonable price. The other thing is that it’s been in the news a lot is as big as Bitcoin mining, and China had put a temporary, they had put a ban on Bitcoin mining. Some states like California and New York just had a significant and trying to put a kibosh on Bitcoin. Mine and New York is having the same thing. They don’t. There are too many. There’s like, well, they use a lot of electricity. Well, there’s like, yeah, exactly. Cause some groups are coming together to form almost like Bitcoin, like a mining gang. No, it’s a farm. Well, that too.
But I’m saying some people are bringing all of their equipment to each other. Right. They’re all collaborating, which caused a massive brownout in New York not too long ago. And the same thing happened in California. So they’re trying to ban Bitcoin mining. We saw enormous riggs, right. They were built inside a shipping container. There’s one whole side at a conference that I felt was dedicated to Bitcoin mining. Oh yeah, there was massive. But I mean, the booths were huge. There were straight shipping containers and shipping containers. They were showrooms with special shipping containers and air conditioners to keep it cool in air-tight towers.
Right. And then we saw those guys with extraordinary solar things, right. Memory, solar charge, and yes, a Bitcoin mining, like when you’re on an island, and there, they were thinking outside of the box with one, they were like, well, what happens if you don’t have electricity and you want to steal, you know, mine for Bitcoin. I don’t sit in there; listen to this guy. Like, yeah, it’s crazy. Who are very dedicated. And I could understand why this might come to use for someone, but at some point for me and also, you know, like they try to locate these Bitcoin miners and the that are in them like I know someone, they built one out in a walk-in cooler.
People are trying to move them. Especially the shipping Dinner wants to come to like places where it’s cooler, like Idaho and Wisconsin and Michigan and stuff like that. And they rent land from people and just put those things out there. And some of them are even put up in places like the windmills, but that doesn’t; it generates part of the Bower. Those things don’t generate all the power, plus some of them can freeze up in the winter. So, they got a helicopter that runs on gas above it to spray it down with lubricant like they do with the airplanes. It doesn’t make much sense.
Like you’re going to use fossil fuel to fix a non-fossil fuel item. Well, real quick, before you get to the next part, I want to shout out our sponsors. We want to thank NPS printer, nationwide payment systems, NPS bank, and the payment advisory board. Thank you guys for everything that you do. They provided this NPS printer and gave it to us. This incredible backdrop that you see on the YouTube video if you’re watching.
So yeah. Thank you guys again. Please check us out on all digital streaming platforms you listen to, such as Stitcher, Google podcasts, apple podcasts, and Spotify. I heard radios, now Samsung podcasts, and Amazon music. And Allen said that I need to get back on the title thing. So I’ll start working on that again so we can get listed on the title. Yeah. Several different platforms have contacted us. Some of them are not easy to maneuver. So then also if you, if you’re interested in catching up on the past episodes, catch up, check out YouTube, B2B vault on YouTube. Subscribe, and turn on post notifications. So you never miss an episode, please.
If you want to check the website out, it’s B2B vault.info. You can connect with Alan there. If you don’t have any questions or want to get involved in our new weekly small business shout out. We don’t have one for today. Dewey. No, we went and visited a small business. We did, but we shouted them out already. So, I’m wearing another local eight and nine clothing company. It’s a clothing company out of Miami. Shout out to those guys.
We’re going to be having a new program. We’re calling it “Small Business Shout Outs.” So on each episode, we’re going to feature one small business. If you get picked, we have a new Facebook page coming out. So you’ll be seeing information about that on our social media group page. So you’ll see our new group page on Facebook to join the group page or follow us on LinkedIn. You’ll be able to make, you know, make a pitch for your small business you’ll, and then you’re going to get like, we’re going to make a special t-shirt and the sign that we’re going to send to you. And then you guys can send us back a picture if you’re picked to be on the podcast. And besides being shouted out on the podcast, be shouted out on all of our social media channels. So it’s an excellent program. We did it for small business week, people like that. So we decided we were going to incorporate that into the podcast.
And you know, so back to Bitcoin and NFTs, you know, I think the, you know, this is an ever-changing market. We see that the IRS laid rules for Bitcoin transactions. If you hold onto it for less than a year, there’s a hefty tax. If you have had it for more than a year, the tax is lower. So in the first year there, I think that that’s also driving the price of Bitcoin down because people, when you’re buying and selling, you know, actively trading, then there are capital gains taxes. And I think like, but I believe that accountants will figure that out.
And you know, who knows, I’m not an accountant. Either somebody will figure it out, so they don’t have to pay taxes, and we’ll have more active trading. So, the trading seems it hasn’t stopped because, as I said, if you go to the coin market cap website, coin market, coin market cap, you can see how much coin is being traded. It’s in the billions, and it’s crazy billions of coins. I was watching the ticker was going. It was going, but I think it’s a fascinating market. On the podcast, the last thing I want to touch on, on the podcast, cause we always get asked, what can businesses do with crypto?
I think that business and cryptocurrency that the market for it currently is large transactions. So, people who have Bitcoin are looking to spend it; they’re not looking to sell it. They’re looking to spend it. Okay. That’s number one. It’s cheaper to spend your crypto than to cash it out quickly. So it’s more affordable for the person who has the coin. So why not buy a yacht? Right? So the significant transactions are yachting. We’re seeing, you know, we signed up, we’ve had yachting companies that we’ve connected so they can get, you know, accept crypto real estate companies, car companies, we’ve signed up some car dealers, luxury watches, luxury jewelry stores. And it’s straightforward to use.
And the three-way you can use cryptocurrency in your business is an in-person transaction. So you have an app on your phone, or you do it on a computer tablet, bring up a QR code, the customer scans, and sends the money. And then you see it’s paid, and you get a paid message on your app. Send the person an invoice. The same thing happens. They click the invoice, make the payment, and then e-commerce does it on the website. The website is more accessible than people think too. So yeah, the website’s very easy. We built that out. For example, websites show people exactly how it works. We shared videos on it before explaining, and it’s on our YouTube channel. So you can see a video. If you’re listening to the podcast and want to see exactly how it works, you know.
There is a video. We can put a link to that episode. Yeah. You can go to cabaretmerchant.com, right? And then you can see it in action over there, but you can see the videos so you can see how it works and you know, so, you know, where’s the Mar and where, where it’s crypto headed. I think that crypto, we could see that, you know, this is not the first time crypto took a drop. So the first time crypto took a drop was a couple of years ago. Crypto started going up to 25,000, 28,000. It was headed towards 30, and all the coins were up. So like Cohen had gone from $25 or $30 earlier that year. And was that $350 a theory.
I’m also more than double, and it’s crazy. And Bitcoin cash also went insane, went from like a hundred dollars up to like two, $3,000. So tons of people started selling their coins—boom, boom, boom. And the market went down, right. It went down, and Bitcoin was around three or $4,000. Then guess what it started going back up, up, up, up, up to crazy and went up to $70,000, you know, soon after that. So we’re just going to see the same thing. Again, this is a pattern and a seat. We’re going to see this. But again, you know, like I’ve talked about this before on the podcast. People in the United States used to look at cryptocurrency one way, and people outside of the United States.
And we can see that from moves where several countries were saying, Hey, I think it was Guatemala. Now a couple of other countries have come out and said, oh, we’re going to allow people to pay us with cryptocurrency. So didn’t Thailand just do that too? Well, they’re talking about it. There’s, there’s a buck. Quite a few countries cannot because they’re looking at it because their currency is a mess. Right. So even though Bitcoin is a mess, right? Their currency is correct. It’s better. And then I think you also might see some countries move to like the USD stable coin, because a dollar is a dollar, right?
Like they adjust to talking to one guy, blockchain.com, a dollar is a dollar. The guy said, oh, you can buy. Like, I think the buy-in was like 10 or 20 grand. Something like that. Of stable coin. You purchased the USD stable coin. They would pay 9%. I think it was 9% interest. Yeah. That’s crazy. And people are doing that. They’re taking their money out of the bank, not all of it, some of their money and putting it into these, you know, small amounts of this to earn interest because they’re not making interest in the bank. It’s not a bad idea. So, but it’s dangerous. Not FDI seeing insured that is dangerous. If something happens, squirrely, all your money’s gone. So you can’t take, you know if you can lose it, do it. If he can’t afford to lose it, don’t do it. Cause if you can’t, you don’t want to lose money, you can’t afford to lose.
So that’s our episode on cryptocurrency and the news wanting to get that out there. We like to talk about what’s in the news and how it’s, how it’s affecting everybody, you know, and, and all that. So we give good information to our listeners about crypto and what we think about it. And you know, sometimes when we’re talking about what are people, businesses doing with it, there are billions of dollars being transacted every day. And a lot of it is international because it’s a lot easier to do an international transaction with crypto than with money. After all, you don’t have to do an exchange break. Right? You don’t have to deal with swift banking.
It’s done instantaneously transferring bank to bank, even though that sounds like it’s real easy. Sure. In the U.S., the transfer of money from one bank account to another it’s done in a day. But if you’re transferring money between countries, it could take up to five to seven business days to happen because the transactions have to be authenticated. So, you know, there is a big, big market for this, you know? So we’ll post some links in the podcast notes where you can go look at the video that we have on YouTube. That shows how it works with e-commerce. And we’ll post a link to Coin Market Cap tracking, one of the coin tracking software in the market. Yeah.
Coinmarketcap.com or one of the other ones, and check it out and, you know, keep up with what’s going on. Thanks for listening. Follow B2B Vault @b2bvault on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Don’t forget to follow b2bvault on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, and look for the new group on Facebook B2B Vault Community.
Peace Out! Carpe Diem. Have a great day.
