VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey everybody. It’s Justin Live from B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast with your host Allen Kopelman and we’ll be providing you educational information about payments, business, FinTech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today’s world. And in today’s podcast, we will be talking about crypto.
It’s still taking a big old down the drain. No, it went up today. Oh, today did go up, that’s right. It’s going up today, but it might go to take a turn down tomorrow, but it’s been going like that up and down every day. Yeah. It’s going up and down. It’s going to, at some point, it’s got to settle down, and I think most people don’t understand what’s going on.
There are a lot of talks, Right! Well, what is going on? So, what’s going on with it is there. Too many altcoins, and somebody’s got to get with it. What the hell is an altcoin? All these other coins, there are thousands of these coins; yeah, there are way too many coins. And then what happened was Oh, I have an altcoin! Which of the SHIBA INU dogecoin?
No, I don’t have an altcoin, but I’m saying that’s that easy. Everyone can have altcoin. You can just go make a coin, but they, I still don’t understand. I still don’t understand what it’s backed. Ethereum or Bitcoin! Dada! Right! So that one coin we talked about Luna, right? Took a big, downer yeah! That’s and went to zero. Solana too, right?
A bunch of them. Solana is about to go bankrupt. They just went down, down, down, because it’s all like mixed together. And people didn’t understand that. And these coins are all backed by this coin’s backed by this coin. And then the Celsius Ethereum. At the end of the day. No, that’s all I don’t know, man.
No. And then the Celsius company, I’m not a crypto expert, so not. Then the Celsius company, they’re in a bunch of trouble too, because they’re doing these crypto-backed mortgages and so what it was is like, okay, let’s say you add 500 grand of crypto. You would give, put it to the Celsius company doing that staking thing, which is like having a CD at the bank.
At the time it was worth 500 grand and they let you borrow, let’s say 300 and you went and bought a house. Now that same 500 grand of crypto is only worth, let’s say five bucks, two 50, 250 grand. Now you’re upside down and you’re like, you’re loan with this Celsius company.
So, they, this crypto back mortgage thing, like backfired. It sounds like they jumped a gun for that. Yeah, I don’t, crypto back mortgages just sound scary to me. We saw one, we were at Bitcoin 2022. We saw what? Oh, that’s right. We did see that. We saw how many, a lot of companies offering crypto back mortgages.
Yeah, that’s right. We saw a bunch of companies there doing staking small business loans. No, remember that? Yeah. They were loaning people money against the crypto. They were given small business loans against crypto and personal loans. Remember they were doing that staking where they were paying up to. The staking sounds made sense to me.
You know you give it’s just you invest some money and then they hold it. So, when yeah, they wanted you to do was, but some people were staking like Bitcoin and Ethereum and light coin. The one guy we talked to, they were like, oh, you buy that U.S. stable coin, which is at $1 and it’s still at a dollar.
So, it’s, just a digital dollar. And they were taking that money. That made sense. And they were paying 10% interest on it. Really? You had to put 20-10, I think one company said 10,000. Another one said a minimum, I think was 25,000. But they’re paying 9.9% interest. That’s crazy! And remember I asked the guy, what were they doing?
Yeah, I was just, they were doing with the money. They were loaning that money to the Bitcoin miners so they could buy their equipment. I wonder how much. If they’re paying you 10%, almost 10%, right? Yeah. What are they charging the Bitcoin miners? Probably some outrageous that’s amount.
Bitcoin miners can’t be making any money right now with the price down. They’re not making as much money anymore. But what people don’t understand is in the U.S., we look at Bitcoin one way people look at it like it’s an investment.
Right? So, it’s an investment, they’re like doing it like the stock market buying, selling, trading, the coins. But that’s not what they’re doing with it in Europe. In Europe, people use it as a way to do business because let’s say you’re in France. Okay. Then you want to buy something in England or Germany or some other country. You still have to transfer money across the banking system.
You don’t have to do that. With Bitcoin, right? Or let’s say you’re in Europe and you’re buying something from a guy in Brazil or a person in Brazil wants to buy somebody in Europe or somebody in Columbia wants to buy something “that makes perfect sense” from Europe. So, they, what they do is in these countries is they put their money into the stable coin.
Probably the U.S. stable coin. So, it’s a dollar for a dollar plus they’re getting probably more money because they get interested in it. Because the dollars are worth more. Then they’re making interest in it because they’re staking it all at these companies. I mean it’s dangerous because it’s not FDIC insured. It’s not FDIC insured, he’s on you’re right though!
That’s like those are if that’s how you want to do. Yeah! That’s the way you would do it. Right! So, this is what they’re doing. Because I talked to this company, that’s been doing Bitcoin transactions in Europe, trying to get them to do business with us so we can use their system. So, what they tell me, people do is they put money in the stable coin, then let’s say you know they’re ready to do a transaction.
Got it. So, they don’t care what Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin is. It doesn’t matter. They just need to convert it quickly. So, they take their stable coin, they buy the Bitcoin, then they send it to the person, they do the transaction, where’s doing the selling, the business transaction, that person cashes it out on their end.
Everybody’s happy! And they did business, but they’re not investing in Bitcoin! They’re only using it to transact. Right! I think that’s where a lot of this is going, right? And the billions are still being, even with the price down, billions are being transacted. I just talked to a, but we say all the time, like people who say, oh, no one wants to spend their crypto.
No one wants to do it. Everyone’s investing that’s bull crap. Exactly. There’s a whole level of people that are using it to transact. Like I have a jewelry store guy he’s done like a couple hundred. In the last couple of months in Bitcoin transactions, right? The average transaction is about 40 to 60 grand selling diamonds to people in other countries.
And they’re just paying with Bitcoin. They’re doing the exact same thing. They’re taking a stable coin. They’re buying a stable coin. They’re holding it. Then when they’re ready to do their transaction, they buy some Bitcoin and call the guy on the phone. Boom, do the transaction. It’s a done deal. They don’t care if Bitcoin’s up or down, just that they get.
Like they’re doing a $50,000 transaction, right. They make buy enough Bitcoin to have $50,000 boom! And they do the transaction right away. Because these transactions, happen fast. You got to do it in 10 minutes. The price of Bitcoin’s not going to fluctuate much in 10 or 15 minutes. Not generally!
No, yeah. Generally, it’s not doing that. It’s, some days it’s up and then it goes a little bit down. Even if, I don’t know, like the gateway that they give you or anything of, but the price is the price and then it goes down. Do you still have some time to get rid of it before! Right, but I’m saying when they’re doing a transaction, they’re doing the transactions during the time when they know that the trading is going on. So, the price is staying steady for a few minutes. Correct. And they don’t care because they took their money from a stable coin and bought the Bitcoin enough Bitcoin to do their transaction.
And that’s! That’s what they’re doing. So nobody’s, worried about this. This is how they’re doing. This is how they’re doing these transactions in Europe. And it’s still going on in the United States too. I saw recently where one gateway announced that you can get paid in a stable coin.
Mm-hmm! I guarantee there are people doing that, like in these countries where they’re having a recession and their money’s not worth diddly squat, they’re going to take the money. I can’t remember the name of the country right now, but I know they’re. They’re moving to Bitcoin as their countries. I don’t know if that’s a good idea!
I mean. It’s too volatile to be your country only. But for these countries that are ready, extremely volatile. I don’t think it really matters. That should be a stable coin. Yeah, but like for the general population, right? If it’s super difficult or you’re worried about your family being kidnapped because you have a little bit of funds, it’s probably a lot easier to hide Bitcoin than it is.
I don’t know about that. It’s not so easy anymore to hide Bitcoin. No, I’m saying from like people? I don’t think you can hide it from anybody. You would never know how, if I had a hundred thousand dollars of Bitcoin, I right. Yeah, nobody knows! But that’s what I’m saying, like as a person. People. Yeah.
But people that live in these third-world countries, who are like going through really bad stuff. Right! Like they don’t get paid, and if they do get paid, they’re going to cash their checks. And then the check-cashing place is getting robbed. There are a lot of scenarios as to like, it could be a good thing where you know, you work for an employer, they pay you in Bitcoin.
That’s it. There’s no. There’s no more. There’s a lot of that going on, people are getting paid at Bitcoin, Stable Coin. They’re getting paid, the equivalent. So, you see what NYC did with the Bitcoin mining? Yeah! They outlawed it! If it, a lot of. If the governor signs off on it. Yeah.
They want to outlaw it because it’s using too much electricity. It’s causing straight brownouts in certain neighborhoods in New York. Yeah. The one people it’s just one group of 20 people or something like that. They had said it was, I don’t know exactly how many people it was. All I know is there was a group of people that were all mining for Bitcoin, and they were probably in some sort of, discord group or whatever.
And they literally all joined forces and they were all mining for Bitcoin out in NYC and caused the brownout because they had so much electricity. Listen, they’re having a lot of problems. They were telling. I like it. I love that kind of stuff. They were telling people and. in, in Texas the other day in one town.
Oh, don’t charge your electric car tonight. It’s too much stress on the grid when it gets hot. They got to figure out like what’s going on with all these, technology, we talk about this in podcasts all the time, how fast technology is moving. But the infrastructure of the United States needs to catch up before all this technology takes place.
You can’t just say, everybody, go out and buy an electric car tomorrow. Right! Can’t charge an electric, there are a few people that own Teslas in our office complex, and I see ’em they got an extension cord run out to that car. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. There are two or three guys. I know! They don’t even have a fast charger.
It’s just plugged into a regular plug. It’s just regular, a regular electric plug all day probably gets enough juice maybe to drive home. Yeah. I don’t know about all that. No, I’m just saying that’s it. I asked the guy; he goes, yeah, it charges enough so I can drive home. Crypto is not going away!
Okay… No, the one thing is, you have to hold your crypto. If you have crypto, don’t be all freaked out. I’m sorry that it took a major drop. We don’t give financial advice. There’s no financial advice, but stop trying to send, get rid of it now, if you have some crypto and you’ve watched it go from whatever to down to here.
You still have that amount of crypto, right? It’s just not worth anything right now. right now, we don’t know. Nobody knows we don’t have a magic ball, but one thing for sure is if you have a business, but look at right really quick, look at Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin. When it first started, how much did it start off as?
No, it was like 10 cents a coin. Yeah. But then it’s stabilized around two, $3,000 and then it went up and it was up as high as 28,000. Then it went all the way down to $3,000. Now, what did we have? It went all the way from 3000 all the way up, To what? Up to 70, 80 grand. Oh yeah right! The market decided then it tumbled out, but it tumbled out because the government put taxes.
Put regulations on, put regulation on it, tax the hell out of it. And then ba bam people that had tons of Bitcoins. Why do you think the government did that, do you think there’s the older generation that’s so out of touch that they just don’t want to, because like when you would talk to like certain people, they don’t want even think about it.
It’s a threat to the banks because if your money’s in Bitcoin, your money’s not in the bank. Okay1 That’s one major thing. What do you think would you rather take buy a $25,000 CD, right! Today you’re going to make 1%. Or take 25 grand and go stake it on a stable coin. And definitely, I would put my money in a crypto market.
Right! A lot of people are doing that and they’re for, so a lot of the companies weren’t licensed now they’re making, ’em go out. Oh, you must be SOC too compliant. Oh, you need to be ISO compliant. You need to have. Be Coinbase is laid off all those other, those people too. They’ve got to 15% of their workforce. Yeah. Buy ants also. And a bunch of other companies laid off crypto.com. I heard not doing so hot. Yep! Yeah, because they’re because people are taking, they’re pulling their money out, pulling their money out of the staking because they need the cash!
So, cash right now. Huh? They need money to spend. They need, they’re spending money that tough out here meant to be, huh? It’s been tough out here. I know, but I’m saying it wasn’t meant to be like a long-term investment. Staking, Bitcoin. Oh, staking your Bitcoin out, staking your coin.
So, people don’t want to stake their coins. Those are for danger, you know, and like the same thing, we talk about NFTs. So NFTs. Right now, if you paid a lot for some board a yacht club, I feel bad. NFTs right now are probably not worth too much money, but guess what? It’s going to probably go up.
That’ll be worth it. Eventually, yeah! And that’ll be, I but like it’s supposed to be art at the end of the day, right? Yeah. But it’s more of a utility because you get benefits by owning this board a yacht club to do. Yeah. I know. Special networking events or, maybe now, if you want to join that Gary V restaurant, you can find somebody who’s selling off one of those Gary V restaurant NFTs, and then you can get a bargain on eating at that special sushi bar.
Shout out to Philly! I was just out in Philly. Yeah! Yeah, did you get a Philly steak? I don’t eat meat, bro. Oh, they don’t have a vegetarian Philly sandwich. I don’t like really. I don’t, what’s going to be on it. Pepper and onions and cheese. That’s not going to be so good. Nah, I’ve had a vegetarian cheesesteak before it, the one that I had, maybe with that Satan.
I don’t, not Satan, C tan Seaton, whatever you call it. C tan. That’s what I call it. CTAN C tan or with tofu. Maybe if they have that tofu meat like that Tofurky stuff. Like some jerky, you had veggie jerky? Yeah. Vegan jerky? Yeah. Okay. That they sell it. It comes in the little holiday maybe where whatever, but we’ll get back to the crypto.
Yeah. So no, but the crypto, it’s still moving. There are billions of dollars being used. Business transactions every single day. And when we’re talking about NFTs. So no, but with the NFTs, there’s a lot of theirs, and a lot of businesses are going to start using them. Yeah. Businesses are using NFTs
so that you can get utility from them. It’s a special member. Those brands get, yeah. You’re going to get brands like Gucci brands, like your nightclubs, restaurants, Nike, and Adidas. Yeah! All these major corporations they’re already in the process. Of purchasing land in the metaverse right. Developing their shops in the metaverse, someone asked me, can we have, can we do payments in the metaverse go?
Yeah. Why not? It’s just, only a website, right? It so wants to pay for something in the metaverse you set up credit card processing and then whatever you’re doing, I’m sure that, with an open API to the gateway, you can this, so this is something interesting that yeah. Is for another podcast.
But because I don’t want to forget. Okay. Have you ever set up a merchandising account for a performing artist, like a musician? Yeah, we do! We have one set up for a guy. Okay! That’s all I wanted to know. Yeah, we have one set up for somebody and then they can get paid in crypto too, right? Yeah.
They get paid. Yep! They actually sell their merchandise and their music, on their website. Right! And all their merch and they take crypto and credit cards and that guy’s actually working on setting up an NFT. So that guy’s probably very comfortable in paying his rent every month or mortgage without a problem.
Yeah. I don’t think he has a problem. See, no, I think that, yeah. Anyway, so NFTs real quick, I think that these brands are going to incorporate NFTs into their marketing material, and their commercials. Like everything that you can possibly have, it’s prestigious to have NFT, right? It’s going to be, they’re going to have like upscale restaurants.
They’re going to sell NFT. And by buying the NFT, you’re going to get special treatment for reservations because these people, I did a lot of people were at special events, uneducated about NFTs. They just think that it’s your avatar and that’s it. Right! Like they think that this is for your Facebook profile and that is it.
And that is just a small portion of what the NFT is actually used for. Yeah. But that’s also another talk because, with these, with the metaverse, everybody’s going to have to have these goggles, as we went to that Oculus joint. Yeah! But we went to that show. What was that show?
Where we were at the Emerge show and yeah Emerge America’s. We saw somebody that glasses that looked like regular glasses. Yep! and they were like a beta test. Yes. Right, and then you could put these glasses on and see the metaverse. Google tried that. Remember Google tried to get glasses.
It was just too expensive. I know. And now the Oculus glasses, they dropped the price though. Yeah. Like it’s really affordable. Yeah. The prices. What? 3 99. I think it’s cheaper than that. 1, 2 99. Yeah. Wow. That’s crazy. I remember my fir I had the very first generation of that. Yeah. And there was, I had this fishing game.
Yeah. Oh, man. That was. That was cool. That was just more augmented reality than it was the metaverse. Yeah. So basically, what is the metaverse, and augmented reality is the same? It’s emerging together. It’s merging together but a little bit. Augmented Reality is really cool. I remember I had a guy come to the office one time he opened a book and animals started running around at the conference table.
Yeah, that’s cool. That was crazy! You had glasses on it, obviously, right? No, with no glasses, it was running around on the table! It was the wildest thing I have ever seen. It was a hologram coming out of it, like in Star Wars? Yeah! It was like a hologram. That’s cool, I’ve never even seen anything like that. Then I asked the guy how much it cost? I started laughing.
Dude! You got to be kidding me, bro! How much? Said like thousands of dollars. He’s yeah, I can make an ATM, pop up out of the thing. I was no, not paying for that. It’s crazy. Oh, he actually did that stuff. Yeah. They made it. The guy had like animals in it. Is he still in business? I don’t know. I think I showed it to you was like a book that opened up.
I showed it. Didn’t I show that to you? No, yeah. It’s a with a crazy. Have that book. I don’t know if I still have the book. I thought I showed it to you on a website, the guy doing that. I don’t know! NFTs though, but NFTs, crypto isn’t going anywhere. Yeah. I think that digital currency isn’t going anywhere. What’s going to happen is that businesses and the crypto market are going to adjust to the taxes and regulations, and then it’s going to change and grow and move on to what it is.
And I think in the US. Do you still think that crypto’s going to replace cash? No! I think they’re, talking at a meeting the other day within the finance committee and they were asking the guy from the fed and they’re just still in the talking stages of having we’re researching, having a digital coin.
So, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, because anything that private businesses can do is going to take longer for government to do. That’s, what’s going on with crypto. Crypto’s going to keep going. I think crypto’s going to adjust to the government thinks. Government rules and regulations. And then once that adjusts and more people get into the market with crypto transactions, it’s going to grow.
I don’t know if the price of crypto will skyrocket again or if it’ll just like level out and go up slowly. I think it’s going to be more of a, like a. It’s slow, but we’ll see, we don’t know the future. So, thank you for listening to the podcast today about crypto. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can visit B2BVault.info or go on the B2B vault community page on Facebook.
Get in touch with us. Set up a free 15-minute consultation. We’ll talk to you about what’s going on in the crypto market, and how you can use crypto in your business. Carpe Diem! Peace out! Crypto think of Nationwide Payments Systems.
