0:25BSo today I was just talking about the regulatory aspects of cryptocurrency, specifically stablecoins. What are some of the problems? Me as an accountant, I think it’s absolutely absurd that every single transaction that you do in the space, you have to document, send to the IRS every time you sell, spend, or trade. And so you got people spending stablecoins and they have to report that to the IRS. And as you know, a stablecoin is typically pegged to the US dollar. So why is there a capital gain on the small little swings in the stablecoin. It creates so much work for me. It’s not creating a lot of money for the government, and it’s making my clients spend more money on me just to stay compliant.
1:02BI think some of these rules are atrocious, and I think they need to be addressed. But at the end of the day, cryptocurrency, stablecoins, Bitcoin -- they were not created for an intermediary to control it. And so if you’re trying to tax something that was built to not be taxed, then there’s always going to be problems. And so for me, I’m just trying to find resolutions and solutions and hopefully just not be taxed on it. Or if you are, let’s at least create a de minimis or an amount on an annual basis. Hey, your first $10,000, there’s no taxes on it. Something like that. Some type of compromise.
1:35AIncentivizes people, right, to get in as well and figure out how they can actually participate in a constructive way.
1:40BYeah, for sure. Because if you realize you got to do all this paperwork and have a capital gain on every single time you transact, people are going to be disincentivized Like, they don’t want to spend it because then they got to pay me, an accountant, to do the taxes, and then they have to pay the IRS and pay more taxes versus a simple rule. It’s like, hey, your first $10,000, your first amount of transactions, whatever that compromise is, you don’t have to pay. I think that’s really what it’s about. We want to incentivize people to use the technology, not make them afraid. Afraid it’s going to cost them money just to even figure it out. Correct.
2:18AI’m just making sure the microphone is on. Okay, cool, because it was right -- I was off. So, you know, I’m curious for you, when you got into this, what was the first thing that clicked and was like, wow, this is different, this is an opportunity, this is, you know, revolutionary in some capacity? Was anything like that for you?
2:32BFor sure. So the first time I got into Bitcoin, it was about the money. That’s all I cared about. Um, the second time I got in Bitcoin, it was about money. Uh, that’s all I cared about. And then I was in LA And I was about to submit my CPA application. I went to the post office to submit it, to send it off, and my card got declined. I checked my app. I had the money still in my account. I was like, what’s going on? Tried it again. They said decline. They said this wasn’t a case of insufficient funds. You should call your bank. I called the bank.
3:03BThey’re like, hey, we closed your account. I’m like, for what? We can’t explain. You’ll just get your money in 2 weeks through a check. I’m like, 2 weeks? I need my money now. I didn’t get my money for 2 weeks. And so in that time, I had -- luckily, thank God, I had some money on my Coinbase account. And I sent my roommate the Bitcoin and he sent me some US dollars and I was able to navigate. I still had to sleep at the airport. I was hungry that night, but after that I was able to move around and I realized, wow, to be outside the system is revolutionary.
3:32BBecause what if I didn’t have the Bitcoin? How would I have moved? I would have been hungry for almost 2 weeks. Because they took all my money that was in my account. And so for me, that’s when I realized that Bitcoin is not about the monetary value. It’s about the freedom that it provides to not have an intermediary be able to control your transactions.
3:49AI love that. And I’m curious, what do you think about DeFi? Like, DeFi, you know, Kamal, you know Kamal, he has a book, right? DeFi for the Diaspora. And he invited me. He’s writing our newsletter now. He invited me to ask people here, they feel like DeFi is still a big opportunity for our community.
4:05BI think DeFi is huge. I think first, before we talk about DeFi, I gotta talk about my guy Reggie Middleton. He has a lot of patents in the space. Everybody’s using his technology and they’re ignoring him. I think Reggie needs to get paid. And I did the calculations maybe 2 years ago, and I think he should be getting close to the neighborhood of $1 billion just off the royalties from his, uh, his patents.
4:26AHmm.
4:26BAnd the fact that they’re not paying him and he’s got to go through all these different lawsuits, I think that we should be rallying around this man because we are the inventors. Um, you look at You know, the light bulb, Lewis Latimer. He doesn’t get the credit for it. He didn’t, you know, his downline didn’t get all the money, but he created the filament to keep the light bulb around for a long time. Well, now we got a Black man who invented DeFi, at least a large part of it, and he’s not getting paid for it. And I think we’re supposed to rally around this guy. I mean, I think DeFi will be utilized more and more as we go on. It might be done in different ways, but DeFi is being used with all these different coins Like on a business level. So whether it’s individual or business, it’s being used already. And I think it’s only going to increase as we start tokenizing everything and crypto becomes more mainstream.
5:14ASo can you define what DeFi is for somebody who has no idea what that term even means?
5:18BYeah, decentralized finance. So say I have Bitcoin and you have Ethereum. Instead of me going through an exchange, I can simply go to a platform and say, hey, I’m going to put X amount of Bitcoin on this platform. As long as the blockchains are in sync, then I can be able to exchange. So basically, let’s take Ethereum because that’s the easiest one. I put Ethereum onto the platform. That allows me to then transact without a middleman controlling it. I just have to put up a piece of what I have on the platform to pay for the fees for it to move around. So it eliminates an intermediary from controlling your transactions. You just have to make sure that you put up basically collateral, and then you allow yourself to transact without an intermediary. You can do this all around the world with a multitude of different cryptos, but do your research because you want to make sure that you’re using the proper blockchains. And I’m not going to get into like rap coins and things of that nature, but do your research. But definitely, I think that DeFi is where it’s headed to.
6:31AIt’s already here. And, you know, my question I’ve been asking people, how do they understand and think about the relationship between inflation and cryptocurrency? I think a lot of people, they just see inflation as the price of goods going up. Is that what inflation is to you?
6:46BSo inflation is an influx of anything. It’s that simple. If you If you love peach cobbler, right, you like that first 2 bites, you like your plate, that’s great. But if all of a sudden you’ve got more and more and more and more and more peach cobbler, the value of that peach cobbler goes down to -- because now you’ve got too much, and eventually that can hurt your stomach. It can create actual problems. So inflation is the influx of anything. When it comes to money, it’s just the influx of money being put into the system. And they start putting more and more money into it, your stomach’s going to start getting hurt.
7:19BIt’s going -- your stomach’s going to start hurting. And when it comes to money, that means The economy is going to start hurting because prices for things have to go up when you have an influx of money in the system. And I think with Bitcoin specifically, because there’s a max supply of 21 million, it eliminates that inflationary aspect of it. Not every crypto has a max supply, so you want to make sure that if you’re invested into a crypto, check to see if there’s a max supply, check to see what the circling -- circulating supply is, and then check the schedule of the mining of it. Those are just different things you got to study.
7:54BBut when it comes to the US dollar, as the Federal Reserve is printing more money, the purchasing power of what you have goes down. So I like to say they’re robbing you blind. You still got your numeric value of your money, but you have less purchasing power. They’re stealing from you and you don’t even realize it.
8:09ASo if Bitcoin wins, what would that mean, you think, for the dollar?
8:12BIf you say that one more time.
8:14AIf Bitcoin wins, like the race for the reserve currency, you might say.
8:17BI don’t think Bitcoin is going to be the reserve currency. I think that it’s going to be the asset that everything thing is denominated in. So instead of things being denominated in US dollars, the thing is going to be denominated in Bitcoin. So for instance, if I go to Kenya, which I’m there all the time, a lot of times they’ll say, oh, this is 90 million shillings. But then they might also say, well, the US dollar, it’s closer to like $70,000 or something of that nature. Instead of them saying this is this in the dollar, I think they’re going to start saying it’s this amount of sats or this amount of Bitcoin. But I don’t think the Bitcoin is going to be the world reserve currency. I don’t think it’s going to be the mainstream currency ever. I think it’s going to forever be the digital underground currency. But I think it’s going to be more and more powerful as time goes on. And as these companies start accumulating their Bitcoin, owning your keys becomes more and more important than ever. If you don’t understand owning your keys, you need to start coming to these conferences.
9:16AOkay, awesome. How did you first find out about this event?
9:19BI’ve been coming here for a long time. Maybe I heard it from Lamar Wilson, who’s the best developer. in the space. Maybe I heard it from Sinclair Skinner, who I met when I was in DC on tour with Najah Roberts. I don’t remember, but I’ve been coming here for many, many years, and I’ve been speaking for many years. And every time I think about the Black Blockchain Summit, I think about it as a family reunion.
9:43AAll right, that’s fine. And, you know, we’re trying to essentially create a citizen journalism network around doing these kind of street interviews and pivoting away from just doing crypto journalism. And we’re just asking people what kinds of questions they would want to ask people around the world. So I’m curious for you, if you had a citizen journalism network you could deploy called We Them Media, what questions would you want us to go out and query the world?
10:01BMan, look, are you happy working for money that goes down in value? Are you happy that your prices for goods and services keep going up? Are you happy to continuously work all these hours and not feel like you’re moving forward? What are you doing about it? If you don’t like it, what are you doing about it? Are you just accepting it? Like, to me, I quit my job in 2016 because I was tired of working for 40 hours plus a week, and I felt like I was getting nowhere. Like, are you living the American dream, a white picket fence with a house, couple kids and a wife, and, you know, you know, nice cut grass?
10:43BOr would you rather have land where you don’t have the clean-cut grass but you got vegetables growing, um, and instead of you working a corporate job, you’re working for yourself? and selling some of the stuff that you farmed on the land? Like, what is your goal in life? And there’s nothing wrong with it, but like, really look introspectively and be like, what do you want in life? Have you asked yourself? And if you don’t know what you want, what do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? Like, like, one thing that Nipsey used to say was, if you ain’t found your purpose, like, you wasting air.
11:10BAnd so like, if you don’t know what your purpose is, I think that’s the question you gotta ask. Whether We Them Media’s asking that, whether you asking yourself that, what’s your purpose? And if you don’t know, you gotta really look internally. What are you good at and what would you do for free that you absolutely love doing? And to me, just get really good at that, and that’s how you progress in life.
11:26AAnd in terms of the working for money that’s going -- that’s not keeping its value, what are you doing for that? What are you doing about that?
11:33BI said I accept Bitcoin. Um, that’s what I do. If I’m accepting Bitcoin, then, uh, my savings, instead of it lowering in like purchasing power, decreasing in purchasing power, mine increases. Like I’ve been accepting Bitcoin for payment since it was $4,000 March 2020. So even if it goes up to $100,000, it comes down to $80,000, I’m still up from $4,000. I could care less about the short-term volatility because I’m looking long term. Like if you look at, you know, 2020, like I said, it was $4,000. Yeah, it may hit $128,000, came down to $80,000. The media is going to say, wow, it went down by 33%. Yeah, but I’m looking at it like I’ve been in this since it was $4,000. I don’t even know the percentage of that. That’s like a 2,000% increase even with the dip. So to me, earning in Bitcoin is the easiest way to become a Bitcoiner even before you start buying it yourself. Just start earning.
12:27AYeah. So if you have a good service you’re already giving people, let people pay you in Bitcoin is what you’re saying?
12:32BThat part.
12:33AOkay, cool. You have a message for, for the people? Message for the people?
12:37BFor sure. Look, find your purpose or you’re wasting air. That was Nipsey. That was my mentor who was working at Vector 90. Between Nipsey and Dr. Boyce Watkins, they’re the ones who, you know, was like, hey, get into this Bitcoin cryptocurrency stuff. Nipsey had gone to, um, the Netherlands and there was a city out there where they’re doing the cryptocurrency transactions. And so through watching that video, I was like, hey, I gotta study this. Started working with him at Vector 90, 2018. Unfortunately, he’s not here. But I’m doing the 2 things he told me to do, which is A, try to make being intelligent cool. Hence the name CJ the Smart Guy. Make sure y’all follow me on all platforms. No spaces, letters, or anything like that. Those are fake pages. Another one was to go to Africa, connect Africa to LA, to Silicon Valley. And that’s what I’m doing. I’ve been traveling all around Africa teaching about Bitcoin. I learned about Bitcoin in Silicon Valley when I went up there. And so I’m still running this marathon. I hope you do too. The marathon continues. Chush.
