The #1 Thing People STILL Don't Understand About Bitcoin...

0:00 When did you first learn about Bitcoin?

0:01 I really got into crypto when we started getting debanked.

0:03 Um the same people that were coming after

0:05 us uh were going after all the crypto people.

0:06 The same people that were shutting down our bank

0:08 accounts were shutting down the crypto people's bank accounts all

0:10 because those people believed in a different you know

0:12 type of finance um a different way to move money.

0:15 Think of Bitcoin.

0:16 I mean I think it's really important for people to kind of you know zoom out.

0:19 Um we we have a company that literally can mine

0:21 a product for roughly 50 cents on the dollar, right?

0:24 So the spot price of Bitcoin right now is, you know, 115,000 roughly,

0:27 you know, and we're mining it every single day for roughly 50% of that.

0:31 Go talk to anybody who does copper.

0:32 Go talk to anybody who does gold.

0:34 Go talk to anybody who mines lead.

0:35 Go talk to anybody who mines silver.

0:36 Most of the time they're actually mining at about par.

0:40 And then they're using complicated options

0:41 and and and financial kind of mechanisms to otherwise get,

0:44 you know, they're selling futures and all sorts

0:46 of other things in order to make their profit.

0:49 You you also have a product that's limited, right?

0:51 And I think it's the only commodity in the world,

0:53 the only product asset class in the world that, you know, can't grow.

0:57 You've got 21 million Bitcoin,

0:58 slightly less because some of it's been lost over time,

1:00 but you have 21 million Bitcoin.

1:02 If if the cost of gold ever went up to $20,000 an ounce,

1:05 I I would break down this wall.

1:07 there's concrete behind it, you know,

1:10 and we would extract gold from those columns because there's gold in, you know,

1:14 virtually everything, right?

1:16 As price goes up, Elon will put a a spaceship on Mars

1:19 and he'll extract gold and and the supply of gold will go up.

1:23 That can never happen with Bitcoin, right?

1:25 So, it's this it's this unbelievable asset, but it's global.

1:29 It has immediate liquidity.

1:31 You know, try walking through an airport with a gold bar, right?

1:33 they're going to arrest you and they'll probably

1:35 call the IRS even if it's your own money.

1:37 You know, around the world, it's become such a powerful tool,

1:40 even maybe more so outside of the the United States

1:42 and that you've got absolute government corruption all over the place.

1:45 You've got massive inflation, you know,

1:47 I often use Zimbabwe because I've I've been there and I've seen it.

1:49 But I mean, you had Zimbabwe,

1:50 you had inflation that was going up a thousand% a year.

1:52 You had inflation that was actually more than

1:54 that during certain periods of time under Mugabi.

1:57 I mean, imagine getting a paycheck.

2:00 You work in in Zimbabwe.

2:01 The second you get the paycheck, it's gone.

2:04 Set it on fire, it's it's gone.

2:05 Now, all of a sudden, with a with a basic phone,

2:08 being able to connect to, you know, the internet,

2:10 which virtually everybody has in in the world now,

2:12 you can buy an asset class that is has 24-hour liquidity, uh that's global,

2:17 that's incredibly in demand, that has a limited supply,

2:20 that can never be taken from you, that can never be confiscated from you,

2:23 that you can't get debanked, you know, you it's can't be burned,

2:27 it can't be taken out by a tornado or a hurricane.

2:30 You know, it's it's not subject to your little local branch that can be robbed.

2:34 Um, Bitcoin has become an unbelievable an unbelievable asset.

2:39 Try and transfer money.

2:40 We transfer a lot of money in because we're a very big company.

2:42 Try and transfer money at at 5:01 p.m.

2:44 on a Friday afternoon.

2:46 Now, through the Swift system,

2:48 that money won't get to its intended recipient until,

2:50 you know, Monday afternoon, maybe Tuesday morning.

2:54 Why isn't finance 247?

2:56 Why isn't it immediate?

2:57 Why is it that every bank in the world

2:59 has to have their fingers in absolutely everything?

3:01 you know, if I want to go buy a watch out of Geneva,

3:04 you know, why do I have to transfer money from, you know,

3:07 Chase here or whoever the hell I bank with to to Geneva,

3:11 you know, you have FX, you know, currency exchange fees.

3:14 The bank's going to have his finger in the transaction.

3:16 Why?

3:16 Why can't why can't you just send me a link, you know,

3:19 a link to your wallet and instantaneously you receive

3:21 the funds at at virtually no cost to move

3:24 that money and instantaneously that watch is

3:26 in a FedEx coming over to the other side of

3:28 How does this compare then to the dollar?

3:30 Couldn't the dollar be digitalized in such a way

3:33 that it could do the exact same thing?

3:35 It is being digitalized, right?

3:36 Right.

3:36 It's called stable coins and but but you're then betting

3:39 on on on completely you're you're betting on on the dollar, right?

3:42 I mean, Bitcoin is a store of value.

3:45 It's digital gold, right?

3:47 That's here.

3:47 Stable coins is obviously, you know, uh digitizing obviously a currency.

3:52 It doesn't have to be the dollar,

3:53 but the vast majority of stable coins is the US dollar.

3:56 We have USD1, which is the fastest growing stable coin on on Earth right now.

3:59 And it's pegged one:1 with treasuries off of the US dollar.

4:03 And so there's no question that the Swift system is going to disappear.

4:06 There's no question that finance is going to become 24/7.

4:09 There's no question that you're going to have this DeFi atmosphere, you know,

4:15 using blockchain and smart contracts that can play a major

4:18 role in the role that traditional finance is playing right now.

4:22 If you have a million dollars worth of assets,

4:24 right, and they're in they're in JP Morgan Chase,

4:26 why are you going to JP Morgan Chase to ask them to give you financing?

4:30 And why does that financing take you 120

4:32 days to get after going through paper contracts

4:34 and and know your customers while they have

4:35 every skyscraper in every city around the world?

4:38 Why why can't you just go on there and say, "I want to borrow against my money.

4:41 I'm going to do this in a smart contract." And 3 seconds later,

4:44 it's in your bank account.

4:46 Right?

4:46 And that's what's going to happen to finance.

4:47 We we are on the one yard line to to something incredible.

4:50 I mean, listen, crypto and what we're doing,

4:52 it's growing faster than the internet grew in the '90s, right?

4:55 That's just a fact.

4:57 When you look back in 5 years and 10 years,

5:00 the entire financial landscape is going to be much different.

5:03 And that's all because of cryptocurrency.

5:05 And that's why I'm so damn excited about it.

5:06 And I would have never gotten excited about it had it not been for this.

5:10 Had it not been for siege.

5:11 Had it not been for debanking.

5:12 Had it not been for deplatforming and realizing

5:15 that there are a couple people, you know,

5:16 sitting in their ivory towers that can control what you do,

5:20 what I do, what what all of us do.

5:22 We've all been he's been on the receiving end of of being

5:24 deplatformed all because he believed in industry that was the future of finance.

5:27 And we we've all been there.

5:29 And um and I really believe it can never

5:31 happen again based on the moves being made in crypto.

5:34 What does it mean to be debanked?

5:36 Does that is that just something that happens overnight?

5:38 You check your accounts, there's no money in it.

5:40 I'll give you an example.

5:41 His is much more extreme.

5:43 But a really scary truth is just how vulnerable your digital life is.

5:46 And most people have no idea until it's too late.

5:49 And then they're stuck spending several hours trying

5:50 to solve a problem that they did not create.

5:52 So don't be like my roommate Kevin because I kid you not,

5:55 his identity got stolen 2 years ago.

5:57 And guess who's still paying for it?

5:59 Me.

6:00 Because the one thing he still can't recover is his Venmo.

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7:09 What does it mean to be debanked?

7:11 I'll give you an example.

7:12 His is much more extreme, but we started the company.

7:15 We're young entrepreneurs, just raised our series A, right?

7:20 All of our money was in Bank of America, all in one bank, one bank account.

7:24 We were just starting the company.

7:25 We didn't have a bunch of different bank accounts.

7:27 And we get an email and said, "Your account is shut down.

7:31 You'll receive a check in the mail in the next

7:32 4 to 6 weeks." And we just said, "What?" Like four to six weeks.

7:38 We have to pay bills.

7:39 We have to pay employees.

7:40 We have to pay our vendors.

7:42 We raised the money to go buy equipment to go build a facility.

7:45 And so we had this period of time where people said,

7:49 "Do you actually even have money?

7:50 Are you a real company or not?" We're like, "We do.

7:53 We just don't know what's in the ether." Who decides that at Bank of America?

7:56 It's crazy because you you go into the branch.

8:00 Exactly.

7:59 And you say, "Where is my accountant?" And they

8:01 look it up and they say, "It doesn't exist.

8:03 We can't help you here." But then what what does that escalate into?

8:07 You say, "Okay, well,

8:08 you literally just wait and check the mailbox you can call." It's insane.

8:12 You go into the branch.

8:13 You're not in the system anymore.

8:14 So, who's making that decision then?

8:16 Bureaucrats.

8:17 People who can hate you because you believe in something that they don't,

8:20 which is exactly what's happening to us.

8:21 So, you were posing as competition for Bank of America.

8:24 I'm guessing I think it was just cuz

8:26 we were in the We weren't even buying Bitcoin.

8:28 We were in the business of buying equipment

8:30 that were building data centers to support the Bitcoin ecosystem.

8:34 A call in the middle of the night.

8:37 I did.

8:37 In fact, I got a letter in the middle of the night.

8:39 I got it from Capital One.

8:40 I got it from all the banks, but I I the biggest one was Capital One by far.

8:43 Eric in your accounts are all shut down, right?

8:46 You know, where you give you a couple days to to migrate your accounts,

8:48 but they're all shut down.

8:49 Now, think about a company like ours where you

8:50 have some of the biggest commercial buildings in the world,

8:52 some of the biggest hotels in the world where you have thousands of vendors,

8:55 thousands of tenants.

8:56 Um, you've got lockbox provisions in in in loan documents, right?

9:00 Where, you know, money has to flow in and out of certain accounts, right?

9:03 So, you know, mortgages can be paid first after

9:05 taxes and everything else and then it can waterfall.

9:08 You've got a payments coming in from every direction.

9:10 You've got real estate taxes.

9:11 You've got, you know, you've got hundreds of employees.

9:13 You've got every cost imaginable, right?

9:16 Thousands of inputs.

9:17 This isn't a this isn't a a personal account where

9:20 you pay a credit card out of and you pay,

9:21 you know, a couple bills, couple homeowner bills.

9:23 You have thousands and thousands of inputs.

9:25 And then you take that and you spread

9:26 that out to 300 accounts that all have that scenario,

9:29 that all have that Christmas tree.

9:30 And they call you up saying, "Congratulations, you know, you're done.

9:33 You're closed or you gave you a couple days.

9:35 The account's closed.

9:36 Go somewhere else." Right?

9:38 They wanted to take the rails out from under us, right?

9:42 They wanted to see us bankrupt.

9:43 They wanted to see us gone.

9:45 They didn't want us to be able to, you know, to to conduct normal business.

9:48 These are for condominium associations.

9:50 These are for, you know, golf courses.

9:51 And who is they?

9:53 Who do you think it is?

9:54 Well, I mean, two things.

9:55 Um, in a lot of cases, it was the actual bank and the higher-ups in the bank

9:58 who simply didn't agree with let's make America great again, right?

10:00 And they weren't wearing the red hat.

10:02 Um, you know, and and they didn't like my father's political

10:05 views and the fact that I was standing on that stage.

10:07 It was so they assert them them and then I think

10:09 in a lot of cases it was it was well it's not that I

10:12 think I know it was government regulators going in and you know they

10:16 happen to flip to page 17 or whatever the hell page it was.

10:20 Oh interesting.

10:20 You have the Trump organization.

10:21 I'd be very careful doing business with them because we're the regulators

10:24 and you know we we we will you know start looking.

10:27 I can't tell you how many of my friends ran ran big banks and they were shaken

10:31 down by the government saying I hear you

10:32 bank Trump and you better not do that anymore.

10:35 Guys, this is real world stuff.

10:36 This isn't this isn't make believe.

10:38 This isn't and I would have never believed it

10:40 could have happened in the United States of America

10:42 if it didn't happen to me, right?

10:44 If I didn't see see assets that had no affiliation with politics shut down

10:48 in the middle of the night

10:50 for no reason whatsoever other than political affiliation.

10:54 What banks shut you down?

10:56 Oh, let's start.

10:56 Capital One, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, um, uh, First Republic.

11:03 First Republic was was was was big, right?

11:06 And then about, you know, 12 others behind then.

11:09 But but beyond those, you know,

11:11 I' I'd say just about every major financial institution in the country,

11:14 but then you had the AON insurancees of the world.

11:16 Then you had the Shopifies of the world.

11:18 I'm never forgetting, you know,

11:19 all our e e-commerce platform for for Trump was on Shopify at the time.

11:22 And you know, congratulations, you're hereby closed.

11:24 Why?

11:24 Like why are we closed?

11:25 Because we're selling golf polos that say

11:27 Trump National Golf Course on it, right?

11:30 And that's when you realize that there's nothing that can be done

11:33 in that world that can't be done better on blockchain using smart contracts.

11:37 They can't do that to you.

11:38 How is your relationship now with those banks?

11:40 Well, they all kiss our ass.

11:41 I mean, what do you what do you think they would do now?

11:43 You know, how many of them have come back to me and lick their wounds?

11:45 You know, and how does that look like?

11:46 Do they just apologize?

11:47 Do they ever give you a reason?

11:49 Yes.

11:49 Normally, uh, you know, we very much, you know,

11:51 Eric, it's so great to see you again.

11:52 You run into them at like, you know,

11:54 cocktail party or or a lot of times they'll reach out to you and, you know,

11:57 we we really like to bring the teams back together.

12:00 you really have an amazing company.

12:01 We're really proud of everything that you've been able to accomplish.

12:03 And I'm sitting there gritting my teeth saying,

12:05 "You dirty I can't say it on the podcast because but you can only imagine

12:09 my anger uh when I had hundreds of employees who didn't sleep for months on end,

12:15 you know, as as as we're working on on Hail Mary after Hail Mary to find

12:19 try and find every little small regional bank

12:22 who by the way loved our accounts, right?

12:24 because of the the the value of them after

12:26 being thrown off for dogs for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

12:29 Did you ever talk to him and be like,

12:30 "Hey man, let's just like go off to the side.

12:32 What happened?" Like, "Who told you this?" Yeah.

12:34 But my my conversations aren't I think the conversation you would have

12:37 is probably exponentially nicer than the conversation that I would have, right?

12:40 And I think maybe that's a little bitterness over what happened.

12:44 Sure.

12:43 And you'd probably be in the same seat if they did the same thing to you.

12:46 What's funny, my Bank of America account was shut down.

12:48 This is back in 2020.

12:49 And my theory, and I've had this account, by the way,

12:52 for 15 years, and I had a mortgage with Bank of America.

12:55 And my theory was that I had too much

12:57 money going in the account that it flagged it.

13:00 And they gave me, thankfully, 60 days.

13:01 They said, you know, after 60 days, we have to shut down your account.

13:04 That was very kind of them.

13:07 But I had everything going into one account,

13:08 but I think too much money was going

13:10 in and then I would transfer that to investments.

13:12 And I think they saw like big transfers

13:14 in and out within like I guess it was that.

13:18 I'm not sure.

13:19 I never found out you exactly.

13:21 Uh yeah, it was just it was a letter I got in the mail.

13:23 I reached out and they say, "Oh,

13:25 your your account has been flagged for something." And I I looked it up online.

13:28 I couldn't find exactly what it was.

13:30 The employees at those banks, right?

13:31 Obviously on a smaller retail account.

13:34 You probably don't have an exact account rep that just kind of owns you.

13:38 Mhm.

13:37 I remember calling some of our account reps who would be crying,

13:40 which is like their entire livelihood was managing the Trump accounts

13:43 at these various financial institutions and they were they were gone.

13:47 They were just they were out of they were out of work.

13:49 I mean, you know, everything that you know,

13:51 all our accounts were just closed down

13:52 for no reason other than some call from above.

13:55 Um, it can't happen.

13:56 It can't happen.

13:57 And I'm proud to say I've I've held a lot of the banks accountable.

14:00 You know, I was one of the first that started talking about this.

14:02 Asher was the first one to say it.

14:03 It's like he's like,

14:04 I never talked about this because I always found it embarrassing.

14:06 And and by the way, back in the day, I almost found it embarrassing, too.

14:08 Like, how can you lose a bank account?

14:10 Like, we're we're a great business.

14:11 We're one of the greatest real estate companies anywhere on earth.

14:14 How the hell do you lose a bank account?

14:15 like it was it was almost like a mark of shame and now honestly it's

14:18 like almost like a badge of honor that we fought through it and I've held

14:22 every single one of those banks accountable

14:23 and there's probably one that I'll sue next

14:25 week so I'll keep but honestly just to make the point they guys it wasn't

14:29 just us they were doing this conservatives

14:30 all across the country right like again not

14:33 not not back to this but this whole concept of of what I wrote about

14:36 under siege it's they were coming after all

14:38 of us they had they weaponized the IRS

14:41 against you know churches right against conservative

14:44 causes They weaponized every aspect of this system.

14:47 The fact that both you and you have been debanked and I've been debanked.

14:52 Like that's more than coincidence, right?

14:54 I mean, this was happening to a lot of people

14:55 that they didn't like and and and so to crypto,

14:57 like why am I such an advocate of Bitcoin?

14:59 Why am I such an advocate of of blockchain and and DeFi?

15:04 You know, I would love to see so many of these banks fail to exist.