Triggered - Donald Trump Jr


Building the Future with American Bitcoin, Plus Eric's Triggered Debut! | TRIGGERED Ep.272


Summary

Join Marty as he sits down with Asher Janute, CEO and Founder of American Bitcoin, to discuss the company's journey to becoming a Bitcoin mining and treasury company. Asher and his brother, Eric Janute discuss what it means to be an American Bitcoiner, why they chose to go public, and why they believe Bitcoin is the future of finance.


Transcript

00:06:23.000 Hey guys, welcome to a special episode of Triggered.
00:06:28.000 Today, we will look at all things Bitcoin and take a look at American Bitcoin.
00:06:33.000 An incredible company that I'm thrilled to be a part of.
00:06:36.000 So we're going to do a deep dive with the brains behind it all and lay out the incredible trajectory ahead.
00:06:44.000 So for those of you who haven't seen what we're doing, uh, we took ABTC public on the NASDAQ yesterday.
00:06:50.000 That's a Bitcoin mining and treasury company.
00:06:53.000 Uh my brother who will be on the show today for the first time.
00:06:56.000 Uh Asher Janute, who's been one of the founders, he's actually been on the show before talking about crypto in general, uh and the genius act and all of those things.
00:07:05.000 But we're gonna be talking specifically today about American Bitcoin.
00:07:09.000 Again, took it public on the Nasdaq yesterday, Wednesday.
00:07:12.000 We were actually filming this today, uh, in the middle of all the pressure, but we're gonna air it on Thursday at the normal time to make sure we get the most exposure.
00:07:19.000 So this is gonna be a fascinating one.
00:07:21.000 Also, first appearance ever of my uh my brother Eric on the show, so we'll have some fun with that as well, probably.
00:07:27.000 Uh may go off the rails.
00:07:29.000 You never know if the big brother shit starts happening, and it just could happen, and you never know.
00:07:32.000 We'll try to keep it together.
00:07:34.000 Uh it's a serious thing, but something everyone should be learning about.
00:07:37.000 Truly believe this is the future of finance, not just in America, but across the world.
00:07:41.000 So make sure you guys are liking, sharing, subscribing, so you never miss one of these major episodes.
00:07:47.000 Remember, if you miss the show here on Rumble, go over to Apple, go to Spotify, check us out there.
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00:07:56.000 For all of the top headlines that we cover here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.
00:08:04.000 And of course, don't forget about our brave sponsors, people who have the guts to support this program.
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00:09:00.000 By the way, also so much going on.
00:09:03.000 I mean, you got to see the data centers where they do a lot of the Bitcoin mining.
00:09:07.000 I'm going to clip in some of the videos, maybe some of the good press stuff that they've done just so you can get an idea of what's really going on to this.
00:09:14.000 There's There's so much confusion about what these things actually are.
00:09:17.000 People remember their like weird friend that 10 years ago was mining Bitcoin from a laptop.
00:09:21.000 That ain't happening anymore.
00:09:23.000 It's so different.
00:09:23.000 So you're going to want to see the infrastructure that American Bitcoin has, the partnership they've done with HUD 8, one of the biggest guys out there in the energy side and tech side of this.
00:09:34.000 It's really fascinating stuff.
00:09:35.000 So I'll either clip it in during the interview again, since we're not uh you know going live, uh, even if we're live in studio, we're not airing it live, so I can add some of these things in.
00:09:44.000 So you can really get an understanding of what's really going on into this thing and really dispel, you know, the notions of this is just funny money stuff, the nonsense that you hear every day.
00:09:52.000 So uh I think that's a big deal.
00:09:54.000 All right, guys.
00:09:55.000 Uh good to have everyone on.
00:09:56.000 For those who don't know, uh first time appearance, I think, for my albino brother.
00:10:00.000 So there'll be some uh we live at first on this podcast.
00:10:04.000 Of course we are.
00:10:04.000 Rumble say whatever the fuck you want.
00:10:06.000 It's great.
00:10:06.000 It's uh you know.
00:10:11.000 They have to rumble up on their you know large screen television.
00:10:14.000 I try to keep it a little bit, but it goes off the rails at times.
00:10:17.000 So it's good.
00:10:18.000 So I'm sure, yeah, and I'm I'm sure Eric will get his uh fair share of revenge on this one.
00:10:22.000 But Asher, great to have you back.
00:10:23.000 I know you were on a couple weeks ago.
00:10:25.000 Uh we were talking about sort of the you know the the Genius Act uh and everything as it relates to crypto, but obviously really big news with American Bitcoin, uh, which we can't co-founded and are bringing it out there.
00:10:37.000 So a lot's happened basically in a pretty short period of time, last five months.
00:10:42.000 Why don't you talk a little bit about American Bitcoin, what it is, what it means, how this could be a great way for people new to the crypto space to be able to access crypto without the complexities of wallets and pass keys and all of that.
00:10:55.000 Uh, and then we'll get into the details.
00:10:57.000 Sure.
00:10:58.000 Happy to start there.
00:10:59.000 American Bitcoin was formed really to give the everyday American the ability to have a little bit of exposure in their portfolio into Bitcoin.
00:11:08.000 And an easy way to do so.
00:11:09.000 So with American Bitcoin today trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker ABTC, which is one of the best stickers in the world, thanks uh to these guys in a nice dinner we had, it will allow people to say, you know what?
00:11:21.000 I want I need a little or I want a little exposure into Bitcoin.
00:11:24.000 How do I do it?
00:11:25.000 Okay, I can own American Bitcoin or I can buy Bitcoin or I can buy an ETF.
00:11:28.000 Why should I own American Bitcoin?
00:11:30.000 And the key is because we have a competitive advantage to acquire Bitcoin almost better than everyone else.
00:11:35.000 Talk about that a little bit, right?
00:11:36.000 Because that's what people don't understand, right?
00:11:38.000 They see, you know, the market price of Bitcoin, you know, obviously American Bitcoin does mining.
00:11:43.000 Uh, it's a treasury, so they're holding and, you know, I don't I don't want to say hoarding, but basically hoarding Bitcoin because of the long-term store of value, uh, you know, amongst other things.
00:11:52.000 Talk about that a little bit, because I think that diversification aspect is something people don't necessarily understand.
00:11:56.000 That multi-pronged strategy is key.
00:11:58.000 We're able to acquire Bitcoin by mining it at almost a 50% discount to small market rates.
00:12:04.000 And you'll see that in our recent financials in our uh publicly reported financials.
00:12:09.000 We're also able to borrow capital at zero to a couple percentage interest points to buy Bitcoin, which has been a 70% uh kager over the last decade in terms of appreciation, right?
00:12:20.000 And so we're able to mine Bitcoin cheaper than most people out there and at a discount where the average Joe can't do that.
00:12:26.000 And then we're also able to borrow cheap capital to do it.
00:12:28.000 What that allows us to do then is increase Bitcoin per share exposure.
00:12:32.000 And what that means is if I go buy a Bitcoin and Bitcoin goes from 100 to 200,000, great, I just made 100,000.
00:12:39.000 If I buy American Bitcoin, not only will I have to have that appreciation, but now because of these different strategies, if I own 1.01, 1.02 Bitcoin, I'll get that 100,000 appreciation, but I'll actually own more underlying Bitcoin itself.
00:12:53.000 And there's a finite amount.
00:12:54.000 There's only 21 million Bitcoin ever produced in there.
00:12:57.000 You have a great kind of analogy of Bitcoin versus gold and the scarcity.
00:13:01.000 Maybe you can touch on that a bit.
00:13:02.000 Yeah, listen, if you look at commodities around the world, right?
00:13:05.000 Every commodity, as price goes up, you will find more, right?
00:13:07.000 You will open up new mines, you'll explore different countries, you'll make it will exploit small children in third world countries.
00:13:13.000 They will have to if gold ever goes to uh to 40,000 bucks an ounce, I'll knock down this house, and I guarantee you I'll find some gold you know in the concrete in these walls, right?
00:13:21.000 I mean, so you almost have an infinite supply.
00:13:24.000 If you go, you know, if it gets expensive enough, you'll have a guy like Elon Musk will mine it on Mars, right?
00:13:28.000 I mean, excess gold will exist with Bitcoin.
00:13:31.000 You don't have 21 million and one Bitcoin, right?
00:13:34.000 It's it's so so you really have something that's a true finite supply, and that's well, it's actually depreciating in a certain way in the sense of the supply, because I mean, how many times do you read about a wallet?
00:13:42.000 Some guy that had a wallet from 2012 and you know he had a few thousand Bitcoin worth a billion dollars today, whatever it may be, and he lost it, or he forgot his past key.
00:13:51.000 And I think that's the other part of what American Bitcoin does.
00:13:54.000 By being on the NASDAQ, it's like you're trading a stock.
00:13:56.000 If you have an e-trade account, you can do that without you know, not that it's a risk, but it's uh it's a risk, right?
00:14:02.000 You you you lose those things, and all of a sudden you get a serious problem.
00:14:05.000 That's right.
00:14:05.000 I mean, Mike, one of our other co-founders, he wrote his keychain on a post node once.
00:14:11.000 And this was when Bitcoin is trading a couple dollars, and obviously now it's trading a lot more than a couple dollars.
00:14:16.000 And he's like, where the hell is that post-it node?
00:14:18.000 Did he really lose it?
00:14:19.000 He really did.
00:14:21.000 So it's near and dear to home.
00:14:23.000 We've come a long way.
00:14:24.000 We've come a long way in terms of the safety and security and uh well we we certainly have, and you know, there's other ways to do it, but this is like the easiest thing in the world.
00:14:31.000 I mean, this is someone, you know, someone can buy this in a 401k.
00:14:34.000 And that's the key is being a publicly traded institutional great company, we are able to buy the Bitcoin, mine the Bitcoin, store the Bitcoin, and we're gonna hold it forever, right?
00:14:44.000 American Bitcoin will be holding its Bitcoin and will be continuing to compound on that.
00:14:48.000 And we were on a conversation earlier today, and they're like, So who transfers the Bitcoin when you guys are transferring?
00:14:54.000 I was like, thank God, none of us, because there's all these authentications and multi-factor.
00:14:58.000 And so, like the security and the sovereignty of that coin is really important in making sure that it's safe for all of our shareholders.
00:15:05.000 Listen, I don't I don't feel bad for Mike.
00:15:06.000 He's doing just fine, but out of here, I'll say how much did he lose?
00:15:09.000 Because I gotta I gotta write him like C biscuit later on.
00:15:13.000 Uh millions and millions of dollars, yeah, tens of yeah.
00:15:17.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:15:19.000 At the time, not much.
00:15:21.000 That's more than that.
00:15:22.000 It's always a rough road.
00:15:23.000 You always love, you know, I get pissed if I lose like a grand, you know, if I lose a hundred bucks that I was like, I swear I had everyone in this video.
00:15:29.000 You lose it.
00:15:34.000 One day we're sitting in an office together and we're like, we're grinding, and he just starts laughing.
00:15:38.000 I'm like, what are you laughing?
00:15:39.000 He's like, I just found seven million bucks of this coin that was in this wallet that never opened up.
00:15:44.000 And so these are early guys in crypto invested in all these things.
00:15:49.000 It's it's an interesting thing about the early guys.
00:15:51.000 Like it's really more about like the game and the love.
00:15:54.000 Like there are guys that are worth hundreds of millions on paper on some you know shit coin, whatever it is, and they're just like, they just want to stay in and like ride and die.
00:16:03.000 They don't care.
00:16:03.000 Like, no, I've seen guys lose a couple hundred million dollars in a day.
00:16:06.000 The guys that started really early and probably it wasn't a big investment at the time.
00:16:10.000 It turned out to be a good one.
00:16:12.000 You know they don't necessarily care as much for some for those early adapters.
00:16:15.000 That's actually exactly why you're seeing the price go parabolic, right?
00:16:18.000 So if you want to buy Bitcoin call it 10 years ago, what do you do?
00:16:20.000 You went to a DeFi exchange, convoluted as hell.
00:16:23.000 You had to be you know, what fucking computer scientists to go figure it out.
00:16:26.000 I mean, it's really really difficult process.
00:16:28.000 You've been through a little bit of the DeFi process in the modern in the modern area.
00:16:31.000 Even the simplified version, I wouldn't have been able to figure it out.
00:16:33.000 I'm way too much of a boomer.
00:16:34.000 Now all of a sudden, over the last really 12 months, you know, a little bit before, but not much.
00:16:38.000 Over the last 12 months, all of a sudden, guess what?
00:16:40.000 Charles Schwab's doing it, Fidelity is doing it, JP Morgan's doing it, BlackRock's doing it in a major way.
00:16:45.000 You've got you know, rate exchanges like Coinbase, like Kraken, like Binance.
00:16:48.000 I mean, go down the list.
00:16:49.000 I mean, you have all these places where you can get exposure.
00:16:52.000 Then outside of that, you've got the spot ETF.
00:16:54.000 So now all of a sudden you could buy an ETF, or you can buy a company, American Bitcoin, which you know, as Asher mentioned before, not only are you accumulating on one side, you're you're mining for approximately 50 cent dollars.
00:17:04.000 So every day we're adding a creative Bitcoin into the stack, you know, while kind of dollar cost averaging down.
00:17:10.000 So most of the other companies that accumulate Bitcoin, what do they do?
00:17:13.000 They go out and they buy it at that volume every single day as we mine.
00:17:17.000 We're actually taking the price and we're we're dollar cost averaging it as our holdings go up.
00:17:21.000 And so it's an amazing system, but it's it's why Bitcoin's getting the traction it's getting right now.
00:17:25.000 I mean, uh retail investors for the first time can actually invest in an asset class that historically has appreciated 50, 60, 70% a year, year over year, and has been one of the great stores of value of our generation.
00:17:37.000 Well, so I mean, taking a company public ABTC on the NASDAQ, I mean, that's a major milestone.
00:17:41.000 But you know, what what does it mean to you guys about attracting, you know, new people into crypto?
00:17:47.000 Again, we talk about the complexities.
00:17:49.000 You and I in the last few years have gone through all of it.
00:17:51.000 And I mean, half the time I'm still confused.
00:17:54.000 Uh, but what does it mean uh, you know, for the sort of more traditional type investors and the institutional guys, you know?
00:18:01.000 I I remember, you know, seeing some of the biggest guys on Wall Street, you know, six months ago saying, hey, this is all a scam.
00:18:07.000 Now they're all literally putting billions and billions of dollars.
00:18:10.000 I mean, Jamie Diamond came out and he said, you know, they picked that was you know 18 months ago, that's a massive sham, and now all of a sudden he's you know, they're literally you know recommending you the private wealth managers at JP Morgan that are literally recommending that people put like two to five percent of their their savings into actual Bitcoin assets.
00:18:26.000 So it's kind of amazing how that that world comes around.
00:18:28.000 But it's not just them.
00:18:29.000 I mean, it's the biggest Fortune 500s that are holding it on the treasury.
00:18:31.000 It's the biggest family companies.
00:18:33.000 Obviously, we hold a lot of a lot of BTC.
00:18:35.000 We really we really believe in it.
00:18:36.000 It's the sovereign wealth funds, it's the biggest families around the world.
00:18:39.000 You know, there isn't a day where there's not legislation that's going through some state.
00:18:42.000 Texas just passed it, Wyoming passed it.
00:18:44.000 I mean, there's all these states every day that are passing DTC to be actually.
00:18:48.000 It's really becoming institutional.
00:18:49.000 Uh uh, I mean, it's an asset class like like anything else at this point for for so many of these states.
00:18:55.000 I yeah, that's exactly right.
00:18:56.000 And I think uh another really important element is for shareholders of American Bitcoin, like the right shareholders are the ones that want to buy and hold because there will be volatility.
00:19:09.000 The stock will go up, the stock will go down.
00:19:11.000 And that volatility is actually to our advantage because we can sell that volatility and get really cheap cost of capital.
00:19:17.000 And so if you're trying to get into this game and trade with the hedge funds and whatnot, like that's a tough game to play.
00:19:22.000 If you're coming in and saying, I want Bitcoin exposure, I'm gonna hold it for the next couple of years, and this is my exposure to this asset that will be increasing in value, that's really powerful.
00:19:30.000 There's a second element, which I think American Bitcoin is focused on as well, that is really important is Bitcoin will be and is already starting to be an international recognized store of value.
00:19:41.000 And so that's really important because if it's an international store of value, we want the network that securitizes the whole Bitcoin blockchain to be built in the US.
00:19:51.000 And so building these mining facilities here, being able to build American infrastructure, using American energy, American jobs to support this ecosystem, that's a critical part about the business as well.
00:20:03.000 Um, and so not only are you investing into the company and becoming a shareholder to be long Bitcoin, but you're also long America and America being at the forefront of Bitcoin as well in securitizing the network.
00:20:12.000 Yeah, I mean, Eric, maybe you know, touch on this.
00:20:14.000 I I know I've probably made the point, you know, a couple times on you know, less even crypto specific projects, but the notion of like, you know, I I think we all sort of view crypto in general uh, you know, as the future of finance.
00:20:25.000 I mean, Bitcoin's the sort of the gold, it's the store of value.
00:20:29.000 You know, Ethereum is you know, the oil that keeps all these engines flowing, the rails that you know keep the train on the track.
00:20:35.000 Uh, but talk about that a little bit in terms of you know, where uh Bitcoin, where crypto was basically being pushed out of America.
00:20:44.000 It's like taking, imagine taking banking in the early 1900s and being like, you know what, we're gonna like send that to a third world country and hope that it works out, as opposed to keeping it here, regulating it appropriately, making sure that the playing field is available for everyone.
00:20:58.000 Yeah, because it's a great threat to the big financial institutions that are otherwise irrelevant with crypto, right?
00:21:03.000 I mean, I I joke about it in almost every interview, but you know, when Lauren and I went out to get a mortgage for a house, uh, interest rates were two percent, right?
00:21:11.000 But the bank that I've literally banked with for the last 20 years, right, went 120 days of doing a know-year customer only to deny us at the end for political reasons.
00:21:20.000 Yeah, by the way, you had just so we're clear.
00:21:21.000 And you had the same problem.
00:21:22.000 Yeah, I had the same problem.
00:21:24.000 Every one of your listeners had the same damn problem.
00:21:26.000 Well, the political targeting was thing, and that's why it's a threat, right?
00:21:29.000 Because this actually democratizes finance.
00:21:33.000 And I think as Americans, no different than, hey, what I thought as a naive baby, you know, 35-year-old baby, 38-year-old baby, whatever it was in 2016.
00:21:41.000 It's like, what do you mean?
00:21:42.000 No, it's America.
00:21:43.000 This would never happen.
00:21:44.000 You know, when they started Russia, Russia, Russia, I was like, there must be something.
00:21:48.000 It was like they wanted to throw me in jail for a life, maybe the death penalty.
00:21:51.000 They said that on TV and not some clown, but like the head of the intelligence committee at the time.
00:21:55.000 Like, I was like, well, there has to be something.
00:21:57.000 Like, maybe I took a thousand selfies yesterday.
00:21:59.000 Maybe there was some asset that got it.
00:22:01.000 No, it it was all bullshit.
00:22:04.000 And that's the problem with the system is we believe it to be this great thing because we want to believe that everything we've heard is true, but the reality is it's all a big thing.
00:22:10.000 And remember, we still live in the greatest democracy in the world.
00:22:12.000 Now go to Zimbabwe, all right, where you have you know thousand, 10,000 percent inflation every year where you know, you get your paycheck and just uh honestly set it on fire because it's gone.
00:22:22.000 Now all of a sudden using a basic iPhone, you know, people can go in, they can they can buy cryptocurrency, they can buy Bitcoin.
00:22:29.000 It's uh it's an asset that's you know 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
00:22:32.000 You can trade it on a Saturday night at at midnight, no problem.
00:22:35.000 It's worldwide.
00:22:36.000 It's not dependent on any government.
00:22:37.000 It can't be stolen.
00:22:38.000 It can't be, you know, set ablaze.
00:22:40.000 You can't be taken out by a hurricane or a tornado.
00:22:43.000 You have instant liquidity.
00:22:45.000 Well, the hedge against inflation is, I mean, sort of the incredible one as well.
00:22:49.000 When you think about, you know, you look at inflation, certainly under the Biden era, uh, and you compare that to treasuries, like you're literally losing five, six, seven percent a year on your liquid assets on your cash.
00:23:03.000 I mean, better than the rest of the globe, right?
00:23:06.000 It's still everything's relative, but it's still a loss of you know, purchasing power.
00:23:10.000 So when Asher and I were in we were in Hong Kong, we were just speaking at you know the biggest conference over there, Bitcoin Asia.
00:23:15.000 I mean, you couldn't see the end of the room.
00:23:17.000 This is the biggest convention center you've ever seen.
00:23:18.000 You couldn't see the end of the room.
00:23:20.000 I mean, the cracks are forming.
00:23:21.000 And that was a society that always kind of held back cryptocurrency because they want to.
00:23:24.000 Asia's big in crypto because, you know, I mean, mainland China, they understand if one day, you know, your social credit score isn't quite up to par, like everything's gone.
00:23:33.000 If they can have these assets, I mean, you know, the people that are playing in it in the Middle East, right?
00:23:38.000 And so again, it's it's entire countries, it's entire societies, it's it's regions of the world that are all sprinting toward it.
00:23:44.000 You've got major cities around the world that they're using the energy from those cities in the middle of winter when they only need to activate all the HVAC systems in the high-rise buildings to literally go out and mine Bitcoin, right?
00:23:55.000 Now all of a sudden it's in 401ks.
00:23:56.000 It's it's being custodi by Schwab, it's being custody by Fidelity and all these, right?
00:24:00.000 All of a sudden, Bitcoin is being stickier than ever.
00:24:03.000 It's no longer those people who were smart enough to go figure out how to pop up a ledger and pop up a you know DeFi wallet and you know, buy a little bit of a coin.
00:24:11.000 I mean, it it is institutional, not just to everybody in America, not just to the NASDAQ, which is where we just appeared uh, I don't know, four hours ago on the exchange.
00:24:19.000 I mean, it's it's really available to everybody.
00:24:22.000 And that's and this trillions of dollars worth of liquidity that's just starting to come into kind of the digital assets for the first time.
00:24:28.000 And by the way, let me just make one other comment about about digital assets.
00:24:31.000 Like it saves the US currency, right?
00:24:33.000 What we're doing.
00:24:34.000 I mean, that's that's more stable coin than Bitcoin because they're you're gonna backfill the void by these countries who no longer want America to have that power, you know, of dollar hegemony uh throughout the world.
00:24:44.000 Listen, no, no one wants no one wants a euro.
00:24:47.000 No one.
00:24:48.000 The Europeans don't want the fucking euro.
00:24:50.000 Like I don't blame them, right?
00:24:51.000 I mean, I mean, 10 years ago you'd be like, you'd look at Europe and be like, this is a place I could probably do business.
00:24:54.000 Now you go over there be like zero change.
00:24:56.000 Like who would invest in Europe right now?
00:24:58.000 Certainly, at least, you know, Western Europe, which would have traditionally been a bastion of civilization.
00:25:02.000 Now it's like this is like a shithole.
00:25:04.000 You think the wealth of the Asian countries, you know, trusting the currencies over there, I mean, is there any sizable currency in Africa that that anybody has any trust in?
00:25:11.000 You know what they all want?
00:25:12.000 I mean, go to South America.
00:25:13.000 Look at Argentina.
00:25:13.000 I mean, Argentina effectively runs on the dollar, right?
00:25:16.000 So does most of Central and South America.
00:25:18.000 People want the US dollar and they want those inflows into the US dollar.
00:25:21.000 So I really believe that crypto as a whole, not just Bitcoin, but you know, stablecoin, everything else.
00:25:26.000 Um, I really believe it, it actually saves the dollar, and you're gonna see trillions of dollars flowing into our country from all around the world, which is great for the liberty of those people, by the way, because they didn't stand a damn chance, right?
00:25:36.000 If we think we have problems in our financial system with the weaponization, the targeting, it's nothing compared to what those people have, where you know, one day the bank could just fail to exist, one day you could have massive corruption, your account and everything you worked for your entire life was gone.
00:25:48.000 You know what?
00:25:49.000 A basic cell phone and a basic exchange and the ability to buy ABTC from around the world on on you know in the US equity markets, or the ability to buy Bitcoin as a whole, yeah.
00:26:00.000 It's changing the game in in such a meaningful way.
00:26:02.000 And one other thing, I mean, crypto just in general is growing faster than the internet was growing, you know, that back in, you know, before the kind of dot com.
00:26:10.000 It's it's exploding all around the world, and every single country is sprinting at it.
00:26:14.000 And honestly, because we've had good leadership in this country, we're leading the way, but you better look, you know, China's watching and they are they're sprinting the Middle East.
00:26:22.000 I mean, everybody in the Middle East is endeavoring.
00:26:24.000 And guess what?
00:26:25.000 The number one asset is in all of the crypto space by far, by market cap, by notoriety, by brand, um, and and frankly, by function, and really the only one that that really stands as as digital gold and and and a true hard asset that's not kind of linked to payment rails, it's Bitcoin.
00:26:42.000 And that's why everybody wants it.
00:26:44.000 And you'll see this circular kind of connection, right?
00:26:47.000 Today, if you have money in a bank account, you can put your money into CD accounts and create interest and so forth.
00:26:52.000 If you have your money starting to go into stable coins, now your stable coin becomes an on-ram to have this wallet where you have your stable coin.
00:27:00.000 It's much easier to buy Bitcoin within a second from there, any other cryptocurrencies.
00:27:04.000 And so you're bringing a much larger pool of capital that is just one degree of separation away from buying Bitcoin as a new digital store of value or digital gold, as a lot of people like to bring it up.
00:27:13.000 But it's also transferability.
00:27:15.000 For a lot of people who don't own Bitcoin who are listening today, Bitcoin is not only one of the best stores of value, but it's actually one of the best transfers as well.
00:27:24.000 It's not great if you're trying to have it replace a credit card and you're trying to do a bunch of microtransactions, but as large transfers of store of value, an example that I like to give is we transferred around 200 million dollars and we transferred it at 9.54 p.m. on a Tuesday.
00:27:39.000 And so the banks would be closed.
00:27:40.000 There's no way you could transfer it.
00:27:42.000 Closes in one second.
00:27:43.000 Exactly.
00:27:44.000 With almost no fees.
00:27:45.000 67 cents on 200 million dollars.
00:27:48.000 67.
00:27:49.000 And for anyone who's ever run a small business, you know, you try to get get payroll out.
00:27:53.000 You try to make a transfer from an operating account to the payroll account or whatever it is, try doing that at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon.
00:27:59.000 That's right.
00:28:01.000 But by the time it clears, by the time you deal with the fees, uh it's absolutely insane.
00:28:06.000 I mean, you know, and that's in the United States, America, right?
00:28:09.000 Now try now try and take the US dollar and go buy the euro, go buy the yang, go buy some, you know, kind of half-assed currency anywhere in the world.
00:28:17.000 You're gonna get your your FX exchange rates are gonna absolutely kill you.
00:28:21.000 The banks on either side of the transactions are all gonna totally deplete your money, right?
00:28:25.000 You know, whereas you give me a wallet address and you can send Bitcoin over and it'll be there in one second anywhere on on Earth.
00:28:31.000 It's a game changer.
00:28:32.000 And by the way, it's why the banks fought this for so long.
00:28:35.000 Well, 100%.
00:28:36.000 I mean, how many bankers do we collectively know, you know, making seven figures a year to do nothing other than push paper?
00:28:41.000 There's no value add, you know, as real estate guys, title insurance.
00:28:44.000 It's like, well, I'm buying a building that this family's own for 75 years.
00:28:47.000 That's probably not really a problem with it.
00:28:49.000 Can't that be done on the blockchain and not have to pay points in?
00:28:52.000 I mean, title insurance was always amazing in New York because it was a statutory rate.
00:28:56.000 So it was the same price no matter what.
00:28:58.000 And so you gave it to the guy who took you to the nick game, not because they did anything better or added any value to the process.
00:29:04.000 And you know, I guess again, when you're the sort of sort of joke, like we were the top of a Ponzi scheme.
00:29:09.000 We didn't even realize we were just because we had that ability to call anyone, and of course we're gonna do it for you, whatever it was.
00:29:14.000 So many people were left by the wayside in that process that it creates a real problem.
00:29:18.000 This literally creates democracy within finance.
00:29:21.000 There's nothing that can be done on blockchain.
00:29:24.000 There's nothing, you know, better, faster, cheaper, more transparently.
00:29:28.000 I mean, it solves everything.
00:29:30.000 Why does JP Morgan have 70-story buildings in every single market around the country?
00:29:34.000 I mean, you know, New York and Philadelphia and Boston and Charlotte and you know, go go across the country.
00:29:39.000 Think think about the hundreds of millions of square feet, the tens and tens of thousands of employees pushing hard paper that can be written into a smart contract that give you access to your own capital.
00:29:48.000 I mean, you go into one of the big banks right now, you want to pull out 5,000 bucks in cash, they ask you why you're pulling it out.
00:29:53.000 So why are you asking me why I'm pulling out, you know, you're money and all the time if it's more than 5,000 bucks, you know, they're reporting you to some terrorist watch list.
00:30:00.000 And like that's not actually, and by the way, I have heard that you are a terrorist.
00:30:03.000 I mean, you you would be both a big knife right here.
00:30:06.000 Yeah, you never know when you need a knife, man.
00:30:08.000 You know, what's the thing?
00:30:10.000 You know, you always carry a knife because you never know if you're gonna have cheesecake or have to stab someone in the face.
00:30:16.000 Preferably cheesecake.
00:30:18.000 Um I don't know.
00:30:18.000 Some days you feel like stabbing, some other things.
00:30:20.000 I don't know.
00:30:21.000 You never know.
00:30:22.000 Anywho, no, but but uh, but I I think one element on this is like a lot of great businesses are created out of necessity.
00:30:32.000 And something that I think you guys have done really, really well is you've taken all of the problems you've been faced with and it's created unbelievable businesses, right?
00:30:40.000 From the media side and creating new voices when basically modern media shut you guys down, wouldn't give you a voice, right?
00:30:46.000 With truth.
00:30:47.000 And then also then on UST one and World Liberty when the bank shut you down, it's like let's own democratize this.
00:30:53.000 And then now with American Bitcoin, I think the a uniform piece of all of this is not only how do we go bring this new type of industry forward into the world, but how do we do so with America as a forefront of that?
00:31:06.000 Like, yeah, no, that's uh I've I've obviously talked about it on the show a bunch, but I mean, Eric, you were certainly dealing with a lot of this stuff, you know, at Trump org uh, you know, more so than I was, um, you know, when it all sort of went down and you know, you wake up one morning and there's a few hundred bank accounts.
00:31:20.000 It's like, hey, we just don't want to do business with it anymore.
00:31:24.000 And it's like, well, how do I pay, you know, the dishwasher at the restaurant?
00:31:27.000 It wasn't like they were actually hurting us.
00:31:29.000 They were actually more taking out on these people that are just showing up to work.
00:31:33.000 They weren't political people, they weren't this.
00:31:34.000 And, you know, I understand they wanted to send a message to you know anyone who would threaten, you know, to stand up to them or maybe not go along with the narrative or the talking points, their hegemony in general, no different than what we're talking about with the banks.
00:31:46.000 But I mean, people are like, well, are you doing this and taking it?
00:31:50.000 It's like, no, man, this isn't what we did.
00:31:52.000 We we built buildings.
00:31:53.000 We we did this literally out of necessity because we had the the means to fight back.
00:31:58.000 We had the soapbox to push it from, and you know, enough of the sophistication to actually come up with something.
00:32:04.000 Talk about that a little bit because it it is sort of, I don't think people understand just how bad it was.
00:32:08.000 And if they could do it to us, who can't they do it to?
00:32:10.000 Listen, I think I think you know my hobbies, right?
00:32:12.000 Like I'm a consummate builder.
00:32:13.000 You you know I love hard assets more than anything.
00:32:15.000 I love construction, it's it's who I am.
00:32:17.000 It's it's uh I mean it's it's in my blood and it's my hobby.
00:32:21.000 When you wake up in the morning to a Capital One, you know, send you a letter, you know, congratulations.
00:32:26.000 300 bank accounts are are canceled.
00:32:28.000 Like for what reason?
00:32:29.000 On a golf course in upstate New York on uh on condominium buildings where you might not actually even own the dirt, you're managing a building for you know a building that you sold out a long time ago.
00:32:37.000 Three hundred accounts gone gone overnight.
00:32:40.000 You you actually realize how fragile you are and and why, because they didn't like the fact that you and I wore you know, make America Great Again hats.
00:32:46.000 They they they hated DJT for whatever reason that they were being you know espoused by some woke ass board at some big you know public company that was you know running through another DEI initiative that you know that week, their their 14th of that week.
00:32:58.000 That I'd talk crap about it online, that was enough.
00:33:00.000 Yeah, and listen, they they wanted to destroy our lives.
00:33:02.000 And as you said, I mean, you know, these these are buildings that have you know, possibly thousands of tenants.
00:33:07.000 Um, you know, millions of dollars going through them, hundreds and hundreds of of employees, contractors pay real estate taxes.
00:33:14.000 I mean, that the people depend on every single day.
00:33:16.000 I mean, what are you doing?
00:33:17.000 You're you're gonna cancel the the engineer, you're gonna cancel the housekeeper at at one of the hotels because you've got some, you know, vendetta.
00:33:24.000 You know, you'll put you in a loan default because you know, oftentimes those banks are subject to kind of lockbox accounts and and other things.
00:33:30.000 So and they didn't give a damn.
00:33:31.000 They didn't care about those people.
00:33:32.000 They they they wanted to cancel you at any cost possible because they didn't believe in your political beliefs.
00:33:37.000 And they did that kind of companies all across the country.
00:33:39.000 It wasn't just us.
00:33:40.000 I mean, we're the biggest target because of you know who we are, but the amount of people that came up to me, yeah, I make I you know, I make I have a spring factory and we make springs that go in a fishing reel, and that fishing reel sold at Bass Pro Shop and Bass Pro Shop sells duck hunting ammo, and so fuck you, I'm gonna cancel you.
00:33:54.000 Yeah, I I mean, this is what we saw all across the country.
00:33:56.000 And so honestly, if there's one thing that comes out of our crypto ventures, uh I hope we we we I hope we destroy some of the big banks, honestly, and and make them dinosaurs, make them relics, because what they did is not it's not fair, it's not right, it's not America, it's not constitutional.
00:34:12.000 And um, and and I I think you know, cryptocurrency is is upending all of those you know, the those laws.
00:34:18.000 And there's no way that our family would be in this industry, you know, had they not done this.
00:34:22.000 Oh no, but by the way, that's what I say.
00:34:23.000 They're like, they're like, is are you just we're not jumping on a trend.
00:34:26.000 We literally did it out of necessity.
00:34:27.000 I would have been glad to we we did pretty well doing the stuff that we did for you know three generations now.
00:34:33.000 Like we're we're gonna think it was.
00:34:34.000 Have you ever heard of the law of unintended consequences?
00:34:36.000 Like, yeah, 100% 100%.
00:34:38.000 The law of money.
00:34:39.000 They literally created their own worst enemies.
00:34:40.000 I mean, Michael Saylor's been a friend for like, you know, 25 years.
00:34:43.000 I knew him in in New York.
00:34:44.000 He's kind of the the, you know, the the OG of of Bitcoin, certainly one of the most impactful people, one of the smartest people, you know, I've ever met.
00:34:50.000 And I used to literally tell Michael Saylor, he was telling me to buy the stuff at you know, like, you know, 11,000, Mike, I I can't heal it, I can't see it, I can't hit it with a hammer, right?
00:34:58.000 It's like it's not for us.
00:34:59.000 Like, we're a hard asset.
00:35:00.000 And I realized that Bitcoin is actually the greatest compliment of the hard assets, right?
00:35:04.000 For for all the for all the great aspects of of real estate, and there are are so many, right?
00:35:09.000 You know, the intense growth of that asset, you know, location, cash flow that can come out of it.
00:35:14.000 There's also a lot of downfalls, right?
00:35:16.000 And and a lot, a lot of those pitfalls are like it's not liquid.
00:35:18.000 You you know I I sold old post office, right?
00:35:20.000 It took me what, 18 months, title insurance, bankers, uh, hotel management company.
00:35:25.000 You feed to death.
00:35:26.000 You could have a great sale, and by the time you get done net of fees, it's like and there were probably five people in the world who who could have bought that asset, you know, got whittled down to the one who barely made it through, you know, the actual closing of it, you know, it it took a year of my life to do, you know, in in about two and a half seconds, you can do a transfer that's substantially larger while having a glass of wine with your uh your husband, your wife, you know, whoever the hell it is on a on a on a Saturday night, it's instantly liquid.
00:35:50.000 It's global, there's 24 hour markets all over the place.
00:35:53.000 Uh, you know, it it's it's supported by energy uh from around the world.
00:35:57.000 Um, you know, it can't be taken down by political corruption or or or or fraud or waste or or fires or storms or bad management.
00:36:05.000 It's um it's the ultimate hedge against kind of what what you and and I and and our family has has done for for generations.
00:36:13.000 And that's why I believe in this so much.
00:36:14.000 Actually when you hear people talking about, oh well it's really high now, it's really high now.
00:36:18.000 I mean it's not all time highs, but it's it's it's still up there on a relative basis.
00:36:22.000 You know, what what do what do you say to them, you know, if if you take them through the case and point of the last you know five, 10 years of Bitcoin, uh doesn't feel like it's all that high actually.
00:36:31.000 I mean, you know, people are buying the dips, you know, that I know that are sophisticated about this when it when it when it drops, you know, 100 bucks, you know, at you know 10,000.
00:36:41.000 Yeah.
00:36:41.000 Uh people buy Bitcoin at the price they deserve it at.
00:36:45.000 And so I looked this up actually last night, knowing that we were going to have a lot of conversations today.
00:36:49.000 And Ched over the last decade, Bitcoin has compatted it at a 77% keger over the last 10 years, which is an insane growth rate, right?
00:36:59.000 And so I think a lot of people don't realize unlike a lot of other things, whether it be the printing of money in some of these countries that you mentioned that can just print whenever you mean like the United States of America over the last four years I've been like I don't know it's you know we're maybe not Zimbabwe but you know kind of following the playbook.
00:37:17.000 And so the the money printing random coins being created like Bitcoin every single Bitcoin was actually mined in a facility somewhere there are hard infrastructure assets that's to securitize a network.
00:37:31.000 Today there's over 14 gigawatts of power out there that's to prioritize a Bitcoin network so bad actors can't come in and hack the system.
00:37:38.000 Put that talk about how that works and what that means because you know the the power side of things you know gets a little confusing but you know you're you're not mining Bitcoin anymore with your laptop like you could have 10 years ago.
00:37:48.000 Yeah.
00:37:49.000 Guys that were doing it and I was like I don't even know what the hell they were talking about and their laptops running all day long and you know their utility bill goes through the roof but it's like, you know, that's probably a good deal.
00:37:57.000 And I think it worked out pretty well for them but uh that that's not that feasible anymore.
00:38:01.000 Can you talk to people you know how those systems actually work, how it protects it so people aren't like, well how do you just can't someone just hack Bitcoin and make it disappear and it's yeah definitely and so the way that you think about how Bitcoin works is you have all of these servers and computers and as you mentioned today they're at massive scale these are data centers.
00:38:19.000 These are full data centers.
00:38:21.000 The one you guys have in Texas, it's five football fields long.
00:38:25.000 Correct.
00:38:25.000 It's connected to a power plant generating power.
00:38:28.000 These are large data center campuses, large amounts of energy is consumed.
00:38:33.000 We're trading around grid dynamics, like massive infrastructure projects.
00:38:37.000 And you have these all over the world.
00:38:39.000 And each one of these servers in the data center essentially have one job, which is verifying that when point A transfers a Bitcoin to point B, that is a true transfer and that no one else is trying to change that ledger.
00:38:53.000 And so millions and millions and millions of these computers have to unify and agree to that.
00:38:59.000 So even if you took over one data center and said we're gonna have you try to hack the system et cetera you wouldn't be able to because of the scale and the massive scale of this network.
00:39:07.000 And so I think that is something that people don't realize is it's not centralized in one place.
00:39:12.000 That's right.
00:39:12.000 And there's and that's why building in America is so important as well is because we don't want all this Bitcoin mining being built in China or being built in uh North Korea or being built in these these places you want it you want it decentralized for sure.
00:39:26.000 You want a large amount of infrastructure built in the US to make sure you have a presence within this ecosystem as well.
00:39:32.000 And I think overall like in in in in regards to uh general value kind of creation is Bitcoin is not only worth what it is because of the limited supply that can never change but because of the amount of energy real physical infrastructure and assets it goes to produce one and securitize that network a negative bad actor even like a nation state really couldn't touch it at this point.
00:39:57.000 Like no it it it wouldn't wouldn't even be possible.
00:40:00.000 By the way to put put in perspective what you know um one of the sites is roughly two percent of of all Bitcoin mining worldwide right I'm not sure if this the city of White Plains means much to a lot of people listening to this but you know it's a fairly large city in the suburbs of New York that's yeah and and we're roughly we're roughly two X the total amount of electricity used by the city of White Plains to hold down this one facility that's that's you know 2% of the you know for the the world's total Bitcoin mining.
00:40:25.000 People talk about you know could Bitcoin ever be hacked?
00:40:28.000 Well honestly Bitcoin ever got hacked the Pentagon's gone Amazon's gone Facebook is gone Google is totally gone right because I mean the amount of energy I mean put put that amount of power, the worldwide power consumption that protects the Bitcoin network.
00:40:40.000 Put that in comparison to I mean nation states.
00:40:44.000 You're as large as nation states in that significant nation states, not like not like basically.
00:40:49.000 Yeah, you're not talking about like you know, you know, of the 200, whatever 1800 people's republic.
00:40:54.000 You're in the top 20, not the top, not the bottom 20.
00:40:57.000 And what what's really good, I think for the kind of average person learning about Bitcoin and understanding this, how that power is consumed is really important because we got destroyed in rotary from all these green peace people when they're like, oh, you're taking our power, you're driving up our energy bills.
00:41:11.000 Like costs of power is so important to mining at a low low cost.
00:41:15.000 And so we consume power in places where there's excess power.
00:41:18.000 For example, in Amarillo, Texas, where we just built our new facility.
00:41:22.000 That wind farm was fully subsidized by tax subsidies.
00:41:25.000 It was producing power at negative rates at times because of the tax subsidies it was getting.
00:41:30.000 And the transmission didn't actually transport it to places that actually needed the power.
00:41:34.000 And so essentially the wind farm, they're like, not only are we producing negative, we're also being told to shut down at times because no one's consuming the power and it's going too negative.
00:41:41.000 And so they asked us to come and bring consumption nearby.
00:41:45.000 When prices go up, we shut down the facility.
00:41:47.000 And so there's a you beautiful element of Bitcoin outside of just securitizing the network, but we help stabilize a volatile energy game.
00:41:55.000 You're utilizing the what would be waste.
00:41:57.000 Waste power.
00:41:58.000 That's right, or uncaptured power.
00:42:00.000 Yeah.
00:42:00.000 I mean, and there's a reason, you know, there's certain areas that are just energy deficient.
00:42:03.000 And there's a reason you're not building a data center.
00:42:05.000 Like you're not gonna do that.
00:42:06.000 So one of the great advantages that America has.
00:42:08.000 I mean, we've got some of the greatest energy policy, especially now.
00:42:11.000 We've got some of the best, you know, we have the best energy anywhere in the world.
00:42:14.000 I mean, can I try and mine Bitcoin in Scotland?
00:42:16.000 Like, you know, could good luck.
00:42:17.000 Like, you know, your average cost to mine a Bitcoin.
00:42:19.000 Well, Eric, you and I've spent some time building in Scotland over the last few decades.
00:42:21.000 It's like go try to build a wall in Scotland.
00:42:23.000 It's like that easy.
00:42:25.000 Versus in in in West Exis, where you've got incredible renewables, you've got you know the greatest oil and gas reserves anywhere in the world.
00:42:30.000 You know, a lot of it, as as you said, is is totally inefficient, you know, including natural gas, which oftentimes just gets flared off the whale wheels, which oftentimes people recapture to use, you know, for this mining purpose.
00:42:41.000 But Bitcoin is truly one of the great assets.
00:42:44.000 And um, and and this company, I think it's truly gonna be, you know, like we all started this, including you, to win this race, right?
00:42:51.000 It's you know, I don't think that we've ever gotten into a a company, a business where we're where we didn't want to build the biggest, we didn't want to build the best.
00:42:58.000 You know, that's always what we kind of aspire to do.
00:43:00.000 And you know, between Asher and Mike and the entire entire team, incredible.
00:43:04.000 Um, and and to have gotten here in five months.
00:43:06.000 I mean, we we literally launched this five months ago and to go public on the NASDAQ today, and then to see what it's done all morning.
00:43:13.000 I mean, it's it's been such an unbelievable story.
00:43:15.000 And um man, we're gonna have a lot of fun.
00:43:17.000 Yeah, we're gonna have a lot of fun.
00:43:18.000 Asher, how do you see AI playing into all of this?
00:43:21.000 Uh, whether to create efficiencies or uh, you know, uh adapting that technology, obviously, you know, this is complex stuff, at least at the level that you're doing it, not necessarily for people who want to partake and you know, again, buy on a listed stock exchange.
00:43:33.000 Uh, how do you see that coming into play with all of these things?
00:43:36.000 You'll have more need for energy, right?
00:43:38.000 And so American Bitcoin has a partnership with HUD 8.
00:43:41.000 Uh, Huddy is a big shareholder, HUD is long energy.
00:43:44.000 So we're building energy infrastructure platforms for American Bitcoin for AI use cases outside of the blockchain as well, with large-scale tech companies that everyone has known about and hears about, and American Bitcoin is long Bitcoin.
00:43:55.000 Ultimately, I think AI, you're going to see a competing for energy resources for sure, and that will drive net new development of energy assets in the US and globally.
00:44:04.000 And then I think that technology will help figure out what are additional use cases.
00:44:08.000 That's something I think about a lot is in a world where you have a digital currency, you have smart contracts, and then you have these AI agents that can run your everyday life.
00:44:19.000 I mean, you can literally have in your calendar, all right, we've got to go meet Don for this podcast.
00:44:24.000 A car waits for you in the front, you get in the car, you get out, you never have to think about payment once.
00:44:28.000 Everything's handed automatically.
00:44:30.000 And so I think with some of these AI use cases and that integrating with the blockchain and actually being able to transact, you're gonna see a lot more use cases and then a lot more adoption overall.
00:44:41.000 And I like, look, I've been in this, and when we were at 16,000, we were at 60,000.
00:44:46.000 I thought it was expensive, right?
00:44:48.000 Yeah.
00:44:48.000 And today we're at over 100,000.
00:44:50.000 I think it's cheap because we are just at the start.
00:44:53.000 Like when we were in Asia, so many people are just starting to understand, starting to dabble in to Bitcoin.
00:45:00.000 and like my key advice is buy and hold and just leave it and let it be, then you won't regret it.
00:45:06.000 Yeah.
00:45:06.000 Where do you see you know uh American Bitcoin in in five years, Bitcoin in general, that landscape?
00:45:12.000 I think Bitcoin will be one of the most recognized stores of value.
00:45:15.000 It already is very much on that path, and you're seeing institutions, not just retail folks jump in and when institutions come in, they come in big, and you're saying across the world.
00:45:24.000 I mean, we were at dinners where people left those dinners and said, All right, like I'm bought, I'm sold, and I I want to buy Bitcoin.
00:45:30.000 American Bitcoin, you guys sold us when we started, is if we're gonna do this, we're gonna become one of the biggest in the world, and we're gonna be one of the biggest accumulators that creates one of the best exposures for shareholders to own Bitcoin.
00:45:41.000 And in a short five months, we've already had massive success, not only in the listing of uh American Bitcoin onto the NASDAQ under ABTC, but once we tell the market how much Bitcoin we've accumulated in a short period of time, how much mining we're doing every day, I think people will be shocked and we're just starting the journey.
00:45:57.000 So, you know, Eric, I want to ask you, I think one of the things, obviously, we sort of embraced crypto uh across the board.
00:46:03.000 We have a couple different projects going on, you know, the other big one, Azure you mentioned earlier, you know, World Liberty Financial.
00:46:08.000 You know, one of the things I see even online, they're like, well, so is which is you know, can you sort of separate out the two, talk about the differences, how they're actually complementary, not not separate and distinct, but they are they are separate and distinct projects, but they sort of work together and they're they're coming at it from uh you know very different perspectives.
00:46:24.000 Because it's it does seem like there's a lot of confusion.
00:46:25.000 These are all very big projects, all sort of happening at the same time.
00:46:29.000 Again, because we had no choice.
00:46:30.000 We had to figure out you know, ways to transact, ways to store value.
00:46:34.000 They're a little bit different.
00:46:34.000 Can you take us through the Yeah?
00:46:36.000 So Bitcoin is really store of value, right?
00:46:38.000 It's a digital gold, and that's how you can partneralize this digital gold and honestly has tremendous utility as well in terms of you know, um, the ability to make payments, etc.
00:46:46.000 But it's a store of value that's secured by a massive ecosystem.
00:46:49.000 You really have kind of DeFi, which is you know, decentralized finance, C5 centralized finance, you know, and you really have kind of the stable coin infrastructure.
00:46:56.000 And that's how do you digitize the you know the dollar?
00:46:59.000 How do you digitize really you know anything?
00:47:01.000 You're gonna get to a point in the world where where everything gets digitized.
00:47:04.000 If we want to go build another Trump power, if we want to build uh Trump Power and you know, X X, Y, and B C place.
00:47:08.000 Why am I going out to Deutsche Bank to get financing for Deutsche Bank where you know they get to dictate the terms?
00:47:13.000 Why can't I put that out to you know, all of our fans, all of our followers who otherwise say, listen, I want to be, I want to invest.
00:47:19.000 I want to be able to invest in something that I would never otherwise have had access to it, right?
00:47:23.000 Everything's gonna become digitized.
00:47:24.000 Taylor Swiss, she comes out with a new album.
00:47:26.000 Guarantee you it can be digitized, art can be digitized, sports teams, franchises can be digitized, hotel chains can be digitized.
00:47:34.000 Um, you know, we're we're entering that world, we're entering it, you know, very quickly.
00:47:37.000 But you also have people that demand, you know, 24 hour banking.
00:47:40.000 You have people who who want to be able to send a wire at night.
00:47:43.000 You want to you have people who want to be able to drive by a house with their with their boyfriend, with a girlfriend, with their husband, with their wife, say, I want to buy that house, I've got a million bucks in the bank, and I want to be able to take leverage against that house.
00:47:53.000 I want to be able to borrow off of that house.
00:47:55.000 And it's one of the things that cryptocurrency does very well.
00:47:58.000 You know, oftentimes, you know, you have to sell down assets, you know, say say you have a million dollars, you have to you have to sell down whatever you have, and you have to take that in order to go, you know, and what happens.
00:48:06.000 Parlay the cash into something else.
00:48:08.000 And what happens when you do that?
00:48:09.000 You pay, you know, 40% in in terms of, and by the way, if you live in a communist state, you pay a hell of a lot more than that.
00:48:14.000 But so now all of a sudden your whole now all of a sudden you take an asset like Bitcoin.
00:48:18.000 You take, you take a stable coin, right?
00:48:19.000 All of a sudden you borrow against stable coin.
00:48:21.000 You never actually sold anything.
00:48:22.000 You have something that continues to appreciate in value while being able to take that money that you borrowed against and be able to go buy your dream house.
00:48:29.000 And I'm not talking about like, you know, waiting for some antiquated bank to go through 120 days of of know your customer, you know, BS, not to mention massive fees.
00:48:37.000 I'm talking about you drive by the house, you say to your husband or wife, I want to buy that house, and five minutes later, that money is in your account and and you're at the closing table.
00:48:45.000 That's one of the things that blockchain can do and will do so effectively.
00:48:49.000 And so again, think of Bitcoin, store value, digital goal.
00:48:52.000 Think of really USD one, and and we're we're very fortunate.
00:48:56.000 And and you know, Azure, in fact, one of the ways we got put together is because of the the World Liberty team.
00:49:01.000 They love these guys, Azure loves them.
00:49:03.000 I mean, we're we're all very close, as you know so well.
00:49:05.000 But you know, USD one stablecoin that's really just a digital dollar, and then the D5 platform, C5 platform is really the banking lending side of that.
00:49:14.000 It's it's the payment rails to everything.
00:49:16.000 How do you take a digital dollar and how do you be able to use that on Amazon?
00:49:19.000 How do you take that digital dollar?
00:49:20.000 How do you buy an airline ticket?
00:49:22.000 Or that was the hard part, right?
00:49:23.000 Bitcoin, you say, well, I'm gonna have to sell it out somehow, convert it to cash, do that.
00:49:27.000 I mean, this is one that you could transact like a credit card.
00:49:30.000 I mean, basically three.
00:49:31.000 And you're gonna have major industries that uh transfer over.
00:49:33.000 I mean, let's just look at commodities, right?
00:49:35.000 Trillions of dollars worth of oil get traded a year, meaning, you know, it's If all of a sudden, you know, you you can get payment for oil instantly.
00:49:43.000 Well, well, think about it.
00:49:44.000 I mean, if you if you had to wait that full weekend because you're trading oil on a Friday or Saturday, and you couldn't get until Monday afternoon across trillions of dollars.
00:49:51.000 A couple of days wait on the interest on a multiple billion dollar transaction, is still a lot of money.
00:49:56.000 Hundreds of billions.
00:49:57.000 And by the way, that's in good scenarios where you're trying to transact, you know, currency, same currency to same currency.
00:50:03.000 Now, now take opaque situations where you're trying to, you know, a currency convert, and now you have the FX fees, and then you've got the latency of the Swift system and everything else.
00:50:12.000 The world liberty financial system really really takes all of all of those rails, standardizes it, puts everything on the US dollar, which brings trillions of dollars into our economy.
00:50:21.000 Yeah, because each USD one is one-to-one back with US treasuries.
00:50:25.000 So when China stops buying them because they don't like America having that power to borrow and you know, do stuff around the world, uh this actually backfills a lot of that.
00:50:34.000 I mean, uh to your point earlier.
00:50:35.000 I mean, this is gonna actually preserve, you know, what would be you know, dollar hegemony or the petrodollar, however you want to look at it, because you're actually backfilling those nations who haven't exactly been our friends, who've probably been our enemies, and they want to be in that power button.
00:50:47.000 And it gives their citizens to support the US dollar.
00:50:50.000 Because before you had nation states buying US treasuries, now you're having individual citizens of those nations saying, you know what?
00:50:56.000 I trust the US dollar more than my local currency.
00:50:59.000 And then they're the ones that are supporting the docking the currency.
00:51:02.000 So it's amazing.
00:51:03.000 So Europe decided to try and pop up a stable coin, right?
00:51:05.000 And it's a funny story.
00:51:06.000 And and they went out, and one only one half, one half of one percent of Europeans were willing to buy a European stable coin, right?
00:51:14.000 Well, if you look at Europe, yeah.
00:51:15.000 No, I'm not sure.
00:51:17.000 I mean, our mom's European, right?
00:51:18.000 So like the the point is guess what everybody wants.
00:51:20.000 Yeah, but you can't go to the major city in Europe without getting stabbed anymore.
00:51:22.000 So it's kind of a you know, uh but guess what they all want?
00:51:26.000 They want the US dollar, right?
00:51:27.000 Now, this is freaking Europe, right?
00:51:29.000 This isn't this isn't some, you know, kind of third world, you know, African country that has massive and guess what?
00:51:35.000 They really want the US dollar.
00:51:36.000 Guess what Asia wants, right?
00:51:37.000 Because of the makeup of the government.
00:51:38.000 They all want the US dollar.
00:51:39.000 Guess what South America wants?
00:51:40.000 They all want the US dollar.
00:51:41.000 And so, you know, kind of stable coin business is gonna take trillions of dollars and reattract it.
00:51:46.000 And and honestly, I like I'm as I said before, I I really believe that that saves the US dollar.
00:51:51.000 People want our currency, people want our our way of law, as tested as it's been.
00:51:55.000 Uh, you and I have bitched about this every day based on what they did to us, but people believe in America, they want to invest in America, they aspire to be Americans, they believe in American freedom, they make believe in, you know, the American dream, um, our way of life.
00:52:08.000 And and that's that's a great thing for their financial freedom all around the world.
00:52:11.000 It's also a great thing for our country.
00:52:13.000 Asher, there's been a lot of talk sort of about the regulatory framework, obviously.
00:52:16.000 The Genius Act started, you know, chipping away at that.
00:52:18.000 Uh uh, you know, I think people who are investing, I mean, when we started this crypto journey, it was like we go to the biggest lawyers in the world.
00:52:24.000 This is in the last like two years.
00:52:27.000 Well, can we do this?
00:52:29.000 I mean, it seems good, but you know, we don't really know.
00:52:31.000 I mean, what do you mean you don't know?
00:52:32.000 They you know has there been enough progress made on the regulatory framework to be able to, you know, allow those institutions to come in where you could be with the most sophisticated people in the world and actually know that you're able to do this and stay within those rails.
00:52:44.000 And what do you think needs to be expanded on?
00:52:47.000 Because these will, you know, always be an evolution a little bit in terms of that process.
00:52:50.000 That's right.
00:52:51.000 People who've been billing in this industry, I mean, all we've ever wanted is regulatory clarity, right?
00:52:56.000 Give us the framework of how to build and we'll build it and then create a lot of people.
00:53:00.000 It's hard to believe.
00:53:01.000 I mean, a potentially multi-trillion dollar industry.
00:53:03.000 And they was like, no, we don't know.
00:53:05.000 Right.
00:53:05.000 It seems fine.
00:53:06.000 And it looks totally cautious.
00:53:07.000 There's nothing wrong with any of this, but we don't know that they won't decide to throw you in jail next week.
00:53:11.000 That's right.
00:53:11.000 And I I met these these entrepreneurs at their peak, they told me that their trading volume was three X Coinbases, and they were former Amazon Microsoft engineers.
00:53:19.000 And they said, we're building in the USA.
00:53:22.000 The problem was in the last administration, they got attacked, they got subpoenaed, they ultimately went bankrupt, and they hold like ton of Bitcoin today, right?
00:53:30.000 They were early.
00:53:31.000 And I was sitting with them, and they're like, you know, our biggest regret was when people told us it'll go off short.
00:53:35.000 We said no, we'll build in America and that destroyed us.
00:53:38.000 And so now fast forward to where we are today, we had dinner in Asia last week when we were there for Bitcoin in Asia and speaking at the conference, and I had this one entrepreneur who was built one of the biggest companies within this industry.
00:53:50.000 And I said, How much time did you spend in the US two years ago?
00:53:53.000 And then how about this year?
00:53:55.000 And he was like, I spent almost literally zero days in the US two years ago, and I've spent Almost 70, 80% of my time in the US this year.
00:54:02.000 And like not only do you have entrepreneurs starting to build in the US and being confident to build, you have entrepreneurs coming back to the US to build.
00:54:09.000 And I think like you're not going to be able to do it We always wanted to be here.
00:54:12.000 Correct.
00:54:13.000 But we we literally set it up so stupidly.
00:54:15.000 And that's that's the problem.
00:54:15.000 That's why I was so glad to see, you know, a guy like a you know David Sachs being a crypto czar, like maybe someone who actually knows something about this as opposed to what happens in Washington, DC, which is like, well, that's it's gonna be a big money thing and it's sexy.
00:54:29.000 So I've been here longer.
00:54:30.000 I may not be able to tell you the difference between you know Bitcoin and Ethereum or you know, even know what it is, but I've been here longer, so I'm gonna make trillion dollar decisions that I can't possibly comprehend is is basically you know the methodology of DC.
00:54:42.000 So it's great to see those changes.
00:54:43.000 What are what are the other things you want to see continuing to evolve that make it even more attractive?
00:54:48.000 I think overall the Genius Act was a really important move in the in the right direction.
00:54:53.000 We compare it to kind of the Securities Act back in the day when we created the financial hub of the US, which was really led global finance.
00:54:59.000 Um, you'll see more regulatory uh framework come out around other kind of tokenized elements, right?
00:55:05.000 Today, you see kind of stocks being tokenized and people can trade in DeFi on stocks, and how does that really work?
00:55:10.000 Where's the regulatory framework there?
00:55:11.000 And so I think in general, it's one in understanding and an open dialogue to for like look on American Bitcoin side, our business is pretty simple, right?
00:55:20.000 We go and we build infrastructure assets, we mine Bitcoin, and then we go and buy Bitcoin.
00:55:24.000 So a lot of this tokenization element doesn't really have to deal with us, but I think broader as an industry, people want clarity.
00:55:32.000 They also want the ability to have productive discussions with regulators and saying, hey, we're thinking about doing this, what do you think?
00:55:38.000 And that would have never happened two years ago.
00:55:41.000 Today, a lot of people that are friends of mine in the space, they're having active dialogues with whatever regulator is is is is associated with their industry, and they feel comfortable to have those because they know that the mindset is how do we support growth in American businesses to be built here rather than how do we go and throw you all in jail for one little slip up that you do on a law that you might not even know existed.
00:56:02.000 Yeah, how many guys that are some of the biggest players in the space like are convicted criminals for for nothing?
00:56:08.000 I mean, you you see it all the time.
00:56:09.000 They you know they throw them in jail, and it's like, you know, then there's guys, you know, the SBFs of the world are you know, that's a little different.
00:56:14.000 That was a big scheme.
00:56:16.000 But there's other people like, hey, we we tried doing the right thing.
00:56:19.000 There's nothing here, but it's like they they were literally forcing them away.
00:56:22.000 So but so by the way, they left.
00:56:24.000 You know, but but but but one of the one of the really interesting things is everybody's trying to play catch up with the US right now, right?
00:56:29.000 So it it's most people don't have enough balls to actually sit out there and say, listen, I like the idea, I like the idea of Bitcoin.
00:56:34.000 There's been a couple of you know, South American countries that have been kind of all in, you know, yeah, Bukele over in you know uh El Salvador.
00:56:41.000 Amazing.
00:56:42.000 Yeah, very well.
00:56:42.000 They've done really well.
00:56:43.000 It's like a big pillar of their economy, frankly.
00:56:45.000 But very few people have done that.
00:56:46.000 And so now all of a sudden, what what America did was by you know the genius act, so many of the other you know, legislation, all of a sudden it justified you know what it was, and everybody realized that they kind of had to follow.
00:56:55.000 And so you look at you know, Vietnam as an example, they've probably, you know, six weeks ago they were saying eight weeks ago, they were saying absolutely now we're not ever getting into cryptocurrency.
00:57:03.000 And now all of a sudden they're they're actively exploring cryptocurrency because they realize that the world is getting ahead of them and they need to catch up.
00:57:08.000 And so America is absolutely led the way.
00:57:10.000 It took the first person with a little bit of fortitude and you know, a and backbone to say we're doing this.
00:57:16.000 And that justified it for all these regulators, all these government officials all over the world who would much rather just say no than actually say yes to something.
00:57:22.000 So it's actually fun to watch the worldwide doors open up.
00:57:25.000 And and we saw that first hand.
00:57:27.000 I mean, I gave the keynote speech in uh in in Hong Kong, and I mean you can see the end of this convention center.
00:57:32.000 I mean, that's how many people were there.
00:57:34.000 Same thing in in Japan.
00:57:35.000 I mean, and but remember, some of these some of these societies are actually still regulated because their government's trying, now a lot of people get around it using VPNs and a lot of other things, but all of a sudden these cracks are starting to form in these entire societies, these these trillion dollar markets are starting to open up and they're trying to embrace it.
00:57:51.000 You take that along with the fact that Bitcoin already has a scarcity that it does.
00:57:55.000 And I I just think it's um it's it's a really beautiful kind of explosive situation.
00:57:59.000 I think the people who get in now, right?
00:58:01.000 You know, as people's still like literally early pioneers in my mind.
00:58:06.000 You know, everyone thinks, oh, it's 10 years old, I really missed out.
00:58:09.000 I'm like, does not feel that way because once you create utility, once it's AE, once it's easy and we're starting to make it so uh that to me was when that opportunity really pops.
00:58:19.000 What one of our closest friends, you know, he is the first name, uh, starts with a Jay, you know, runs one of the private wealth management offices in the biggest areas in the country, the wealthiest, probably the wealthiest suburb in in the entire United States.
00:58:31.000 And a year ago, he kind of came up to me.
00:58:32.000 I said, Are you buying Bitcoin?
00:58:33.000 And then You can better be buying Bitcoin.
00:58:34.000 This one Bitcoin was like 50,000.
00:58:36.000 He goes, you know, that stuff's funny money.
00:58:38.000 He came to me two months ago, a month and a half, two months ago.
00:58:41.000 He goes, how do I buy it?
00:58:42.000 Like I'm totally convinced.
00:58:43.000 Now, now this is a guy that call it the biggest bank in the country.
00:58:46.000 You can probably figure out which one it is, running the biggest private wealth office, arguably in the country, who was telling me a year ago, don't buy that crap, you know, saying to invest in treasuries now, all of a sudden he's saying he wants to go all in, right?
00:58:57.000 Like the mindset's starting to change.
00:58:59.000 Like you do have no different than you have kind of rhinos and in in politics, you very much have kind of rhinos in in the banking space.
00:59:06.000 I mean, as we said at the beginning of this interview, like, you know, Jamie Diamond was crapping all over it, you know, 18 months ago.
00:59:11.000 And now all of a sudden, you know, JP Morgan's buying a like BlackRock, that the billions that are going into buying Bitcoin every single year are by BlackRocket.
00:59:18.000 It's it's really becoming mainstream.
00:59:20.000 You know, those those dams are breaking every single day.
00:59:22.000 And Asher, talk about that for a second.
00:59:25.000 Because, you know, again, a lot of those people that were haters and naysayers and stuff like that, you know, are they adapting it because they see the ability to make some money and you know, maybe they're just playing, you know, an administration that's favorable to that.
00:59:37.000 But if uh you know, if another administration, you know, like that maybe has a mindset like the Biden administration tries to lock these things down, do these people just kind of feel where the wind is going and they get out, or or or are even the institutional guys uh you know that are susceptible to that kind of political pressure, are are they still in?
00:59:54.000 Or do they not even have a choice to get out at this point?
00:59:57.000 So this is really, really important for folks who are dabbling within crypto in general that that are listening.
01:00:02.000 Back in the 90s when the dot-com era happened, you had every company have dot com at the end of their name.
01:00:08.000 The reality is a few of those companies are now the biggest companies in the world.
01:00:11.000 But a lot of those companies did not actually make it.
01:00:14.000 I think today it's really important to invest in that in the right companies because there are a lot of people out here trying to make a quick buck, and they're not building projects that they deeply believe in that will grow.
01:00:24.000 And I think I want investors to be safe, do their diligence, do their homework.
01:00:27.000 And I think that that was one big thing about building this, right?
01:00:30.000 Like, let's make a simple company surrounded around Bitcoin that is very simple to understand.
01:00:35.000 We mine at a discount, we buy with cheap capital.
01:00:38.000 And if people want exposure to Bitcoin, they can buy American Bitcoin.
01:00:41.000 But even as we launched today, I mean, I was showing you guys earlier.
01:00:43.000 There's a million and one tokens called APTC out there, and I'm like, there's all these scammers because the only place you can buy this is on the NASDAQ under ABTC.
01:00:50.000 Yeah, I mean, it's not, yeah, it's not a meme coin.
01:00:52.000 I mean, listen, we we played with that.
01:00:54.000 I mean, that was sort of a case study for us being like, okay, we actually we we do have a real following in this space, and but that I mean, it it's cool and it's fun to partake, no different than tokenization.
01:01:04.000 Like, you know, I'd love to tokenize Mar-a-Lago, and everyone can have a little piece of Mar-a-Lago.
01:01:08.000 I mean, I think it'd be incredible and it'd be a cool way for people to participate.
01:01:11.000 That, you know, but that's like, you know, again, a participation thing.
01:01:14.000 It shows you're just you know vested in something that you believe in.
01:01:16.000 And that's cool.
01:01:17.000 And I mean, I think we had a lot of following.
01:01:19.000 These are actual real functioning assets.
01:01:22.000 And you're building real technologies on the use cases, and you're in, and as you guys mentioned, the banks said no because they didn't want to be disrupted.
01:01:30.000 Yeah, of course.
01:01:31.000 Today they realize that they will be destructive whether they like it or not.
01:01:34.000 So now they're starting to build the technologies and try to keep up with the industry and not even banks within the US countries.
01:01:41.000 There are countries that said no crypto, and now they're coming out their own stable coins that are coming out with their own technologies because technology has never been held back.
01:01:50.000 It's always found a way to progress and move forward.
01:01:53.000 And this is just a technological advancement of how we operate, how we transact, how we transact value, how we store value.
01:01:59.000 And we're just at the start.
01:02:01.000 For everyone listening here, I'm sure the majority of you haven't actually experienced cryptocurrencies, and that only goes to show how early we are.
01:02:08.000 Honestly, I think Rumble, there's probably a lot more it's an independent mindset.
01:02:13.000 It's uh it's a free speech platform.
01:02:14.000 It's like, you know, the the people who didn't like playing by the rules of YouTube, you know, they sort of end up here.
01:02:19.000 So I think it's it's probably a lot more our people, but there's definitely gonna be new people and they're gonna share it with their friends and show, you know.
01:02:24.000 I again, to be, you know, by buying ABTC, it's more an easy way to get a start.
01:02:30.000 Once you're sort of it it's sort of funny.
01:02:31.000 The first this first time I bought crypto, all of a sudden, even it was a couple bucks.
01:02:36.000 It was like, now I'm paying attention to everything that's popping up.
01:02:40.000 And you know, the the sort of learning curve just went so exponentially high in such a short period of time.
01:02:46.000 That first step is sort of what it takes to sort of start really paying attention, and then you're sort of forced to because your mind just works that way.
01:02:52.000 That's right.
01:02:53.000 Yeah.
01:02:53.000 Um look, for everyone that uh is listening.
01:02:58.000 We are very excited and appreciative of where we are today.
01:03:03.000 And I think follow the journey of what we're building.
01:03:05.000 We're just at the start, and we will be building one of the best Bitcoin mining companies that has ever been created.
01:03:12.000 Good.
01:03:12.000 thank you very much.
01:03:13.000 Guys, go check out ABTC.
01:03:15.000 Uh what I want to do, I'm gonna actually take a bunch of the clips and stuff like that from like the people have to see the data center.
01:03:20.000 Because I mean Eric as a builder, I I mean he's walking around with a little bit of a chub, you know, just look at you know five football fields of servers and it just everything's perfectly neat and like you know it it it's just like someone with like they just literally when I say like OCD, like if I moved his phone a quarter of an inch on a desk, he can't function until he moves it back into place.
01:03:41.000 So as someone who's i it was pretty spectacular.
01:03:45.000 So we'll I'll clip in all of this stuff because obviously we're talking today, day of launch.
01:03:48.000 I know you guys have a bunch of other press that we're doing.
01:03:50.000 We're gonna air this tomorrow because I figured it makes sense just to s spread it out a little bit.
01:03:54.000 But uh uh good times.
01:03:57.000 Awesome.
01:03:59.000 Thanks a lot, guys.
01:04:01.000 Guys, thanks so much for tuning in.
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