A Beginners Guide to Crypto! The Next Step to Financial Freedom with WendyO - Zuri Hall's Hot Happy Mess | iHeart (2024)

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hot Happy Mess Celebrate your magic in the middle of
life's messes Happy. I'm Zeri Hall and this is hot
Happy made. Oh shoot, what's up? Welcome to another episode
of How Happy Mess. I am your host, Zuri Hall.

(00:30):
We have new episodes on Wednesday. So if you're listening
to this on day one, Happy Wednesday, it's not happy
whatever day today is. I'll tell you one thing. It's
a beautiful day. The sun is shining and I may
or may not be sipping a light Roway. Quick update.
What am I watching these days? I started watching The
guilds at Age on HBO. Is anyone into it? I
don't love it as much as Downtown Abby, I'll be honest,

(00:50):
but I was really excited because I'm such a history
nerd and I love period pieces, and so this just
felt like the next step for me. Julian Fellows executive
produced this. He also did Downton Abbey. I like it.
It takes place in New York and the guilded Age,
which I think was like the late eighteen hundreds into
the early nineteen hundreds. I like it. The costumes are pretty,

(01:10):
the drama is interesting, and it's kind of this idea
of like old money, like the people who Loki hopped
off the Mayflower clashing with new money, the people who
were making their money in the early nineteen hundreds via
like oil and railroads and all those things. So like
the new industry, tycoons and the fight for power. I

(01:32):
also particularly love there's a character. It's been a while
since I been so I gotta fresh it up. But
they're really centering the story of one of their characters
who's a black woman. The character's name is Peggy Scott,
and I love that there's a black storyline that feels
meaningful and interesting, and she is, you know, an elite
black woman in the nineteenth century, which I love because

(01:53):
so often, you know, we are the sidekick. We are
someone to stay in the background. We are a part
of helping move forward a different protagonist story. So what
I'm really enjoying, the thing I'm probably enjoying most, quite frankly,
about this period drama is watching this beautiful, super intelligent,
ambitious black woman's story play out in a way that

(02:15):
is her own completely, like she is the storyline. She's
not just there to assist someone else's story. So I
would recommend you guys check it out you might like it.
And in the meantime, let's get into today's episode of
Hot Happy Mess. Yeah, this is the episode that we
have all been waiting for. I've been so excited since
season one to give you this. We are talking crypto, baby,

(02:38):
We're deep diving into crypto one on one that's cryptocurrency,
and our expert Wendy Oh is breaking it all down.
You're gonna want to grab a pen and a pat
or a tablet and I've had something all right, I'm
telling you right now or you know, just check Hot
Happy Mess dot com for the episode show notes because
I got you covered. We're breaking down all of the
questions by time code so I can make life easier

(03:00):
for you. But before we dive into the episode. Over
the last few weeks, I've been asking for listeners to
join me on the show. So if you want to
chat with me and talk self care, relationships, our favorite episodes,
hit me up hello at Hot Happy Mess dot com
subject line, chat with Ze and let me know if
you want to come on the show. Let me know why,
let me know what you want to talk about, if
you want to recommend a friend, and then we'll get

(03:21):
you in Okay, all right. In the meantime, let's get
into this episode. I am super excited for you all
to hear the combo with Wendy and begin your journey
or continue your journey to financial freedom, because I genuinely
believe that this new space we find ourselves in with Crypto,
n f T S Web three point oh is one
of the most optimal paths to financial freedom. It's a

(03:42):
really special opportunity and I don't want you to miss
out on it. And we're gonna have more episodes in
this space. Okay, so let's do this. Here's one too,
all right, you guys, It's time to get our crypto on,
not just crypto, Crypto, n f T, S D five, metaverse, gaming,
all the things. Actually, we're talking about it with Wendy
Oh Becaus. She has been doing the daily crypto news
for over three years, following the trends and the pulse

(04:05):
of the industry, the regulation, the technical analysis, the interviews, reviews,
um basically anything and everything to do with crypto. She
is such a pro inner space and she is sharing
her wisdom and her expertise with us today. So Wendy Oh,
thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much,
sorry for having me on. I'm excited to chat with
you guys. When I got the email, my team was
so excited, like, oh my god, you have to do this,

(04:27):
you have to this. I was like, of course, I'm
gonna do it because I love to chat about crypto
with everybody because it's just so much fun. Yeah, it's
so much fun. Um. There's such a significant empowerment angle
for me too. That's what I'm really passionate about. When
they think about leveling the playing field. UM, a point
of injury that just about anyone can access. UM, it's

(04:48):
really exciting in that way for me. So I'm really
grateful to you for, you know, helping put us on
game learn learn a little bit more than we might
have known before this episode. But before we get into
the nitty gritty of all of this amazing technology, UM,
I wanted to learn a little bit about you. You
were in healthcare before before you got into crypto, right, Yeah, So,

(05:08):
I'm born and raised in Los Angeles County, and prior
to Crypto, I actually worked at the largest HIV AIDS
and nonprofit in the world. And if your listeners are
primarily from l A County, you guys have seen the billboards,
You're gonna know what company this is. I'm not going
to say what it is, but you guys are gonna
know the company. So I worked at that company for
seven years. UM I basically did patient coordination care, like

(05:30):
I coordinated their care. I had two to three hundred
clients that I service monthly. I made sure they were
going to the doctors, that they were taking their meds,
that if they needed additional help outside of what we provided,
I was linking them with different people. Sometimes we get
We also offered HIV testing at the site, so sometimes
I would get clients that were newly diagnosed. They didn't
know where to go they were. It was kind of

(05:50):
like a shock to So that was my job was
really it was providing health care services, but it was
really kind of getting to know my clients because the
interesting thing of at HIV AIDS is that it's not
just one demographic. It literally can be anybody from any
background because that does not there's no discrimination there, like
that's just what it is. So it's important for me
to get to know each individual client, their culture, their personality,

(06:15):
where they came from, like just everything about them. So
I worked in healthcare. I did that, and I finally decided,
you know, I was going to have a baby. So
I have my daughter. But my commute was so crazy,
and everybody that lives in l A or l A
County you know that there's traffic. Like there there is traffic.
So my commute was three hours round trip, four times

(06:36):
a week. I was currently like nursing my daughter, so
you know, like you get a little bit uncomfortable in
that car ride, and I just remember I was like,
I have to do something. Like I initially wanted to
um to become a pharmacist because I thought, you know,
making six figures a year was great as like whatever.
But then I learned that if I wanted to become
a pharmacist, you have to take out student loan debt.

(06:57):
And with student loan debt, you have to um, I
was going to have to have like three hundred thousand
dollars worth that I would have to pay back. And
on top of it, my stuff was going to be
capped at like a hundred thousand dollars or wasn't any
room for raises. So it just kind of it kind
of set me off. So I was like, you know,
I want to become an entrepreneur, like I was able

(07:17):
to put myself through community college selling like use vintage
designer goods on eBay, and I decided to switch interest
over into um business. And then end of seventeen, I
kept hearing about bitcoin on libertarian radio, so I just
kind of decided to buy in because I initially heard
about it in twenty from a family member, but I

(07:37):
don't think I was smart enough to participate because it
was tech heavy, and I'm like, I don't come from
a math background. I don't come from a tech world.
But I finally got the confidence to do so in
Seen and I bought some bitcoin ethereum lightcoin and my
daughter was holding my daughter. She was crying, but I
was able to do it on coin base, and then
it just kind of snowballed into this really amazing career
that I have today. Yeah, I'd love hearing about that evolution.

(08:00):
We started buying in around the same time, it seems them,
because seventeen and is when I was like, wait, what
is this thing. I don't get it. I'm not into
the tech stuff. And then by the end I would
be in the newsroom and I was like the person
making the transfers for the old coins that you can't
quite get on the bigger platforms yet. And my coworkers
are like, wait, I want to buy XRP. Wait I
wanted this or that, And I was just like, what

(08:22):
is this new world? But it was so fascinating to me,
and it's been really fascinating to see just how quickly
um it's it's really blown up into this mainstream conversation.
I mean, you're here in l a as am I
We've got the Crypto dot com arena, and right, isn't
that wild that it was? That's the staple center, isn't it? Yeah,

(08:45):
it was a staple center. But now it is like
the Crypto dot com arena and they're great. Like they're great,
and there's so many Like one of the biggest problems
we have in Crypto's lack of customer service and all
my clients and like any of the companies. I talked
to him, like, you guys need to do better with
similar service. You need to do better with education, because
one of the biggest problems is in the United States,
I don't care what your background is. Well for the

(09:07):
most part, in public schools. In public schools, we are
not really STEM heavy, and in other countries they are.
We don't talk about personal finance, we don't talk about money,
we don't talk about finances. We don't really push too
heavy on STEM. And I grew up super poor. So
my mom's like my mom, her primary job was to

(09:28):
get me and my two sisters to get to school,
to get home to our homework, and that was it.
So like focusing like heavily on tech or focusing on
math wasn't really we didn't have to didn't have time
for that. And you know, you know, I had to
learn about tech and math later on in my life
because I you know, I worked in healthcare and then
now I get to do it in crypto, which is

(09:49):
really interesting because I never do you ever do something
and you think to yourself, like I would ever do
this in a million years, and then here you are
doing this particular thing. Yeah, and that's where you found
yourself looking up and just smack dab in the middle
of this world of crypto. Wow. I love um, particularly
you sharing that about your background right, growing up for

(10:09):
and yet finding yourself in this space that again, it
is such an opportunity for economic empowerment and equity UM.
You know, I really look at this space as an
opportunity to whether it's quitting the nine to five or
starting a side hustle, passive income, storing value UM, traveling,
whatever it is, generational wealth. It's a really great opportunity

(10:30):
um to balance the scales right, particularly for women, for
particularly for people of color, people of socio economic backgrounds
like myself growing up in the inner city and to Lead, Ohio,
where I came from nothing too. I had to figure
it all out. I went to the best private country
day school in my state, arguably um on an academic scholarship.

(10:52):
I could have never afforded to go there otherwise, And
yet still no one taught us about financial literacy or
like how to even balance a check look, or how
you know the credit system works so you grash savings
accounts like how like? Or student loan debt like I
remember because I started like because I had like a
bit of a rough upbringing, so I got in a
lot of trouble. I made really poor life decisions and

(11:13):
plus like there's other things that are out of my
control that happened, But I just remember like going to
I started laid back at community college and they just
kept trying to push student loan, student loan, student loans,
and I'm like, okay, like education is important, but like
why are you putting like why do I have to
take money out to go to school to get a
good job. I didn't understand how it works. I was
like always like against that, but they don't teach you.

(11:36):
They don't teach you what interest rate is, what is
an a p R, what is it a p Y,
Like what that's gonna look like. And I feel like
they kind of should do that. I feel like it's
kind of their responsibility, like that the SEC is supposed
to be protecting investors, but at the same time they
allow all these predatory financial products, and I'm just like, like,

(11:56):
this is not you know, it's legal to show up
your freshman year of college when you are clueless and
know nothing and convince you to potentially sign your life
away really for these credit cards. I remember when I
got my first credit card at eighteen, and I was like, wait, what,
I just have to sign here and then I can
borrow five thousand dollars from you, never mind the fact
I'm not thinking about how the hell I'm going to

(12:17):
pay that back. When I barely got five hundred dollars,
or what it's gonna do to my credit score, or
what the repercussions are when you go through life with
a back credit score. No one talks about. Okay, well,
one day you're gonna have to finance a car, one
day you're gonna want a mortgage. One day, you know jobs,
employers will potentially run credit checks on you. And it's
really sad that we have to learn these things the

(12:39):
hard way. But I am so grateful for technology that
allows people like you to spread the good news, to
spread the knowledge and share that wealth of information for
people who otherwise wouldn't be able to. You said that
you grew up poor without a father, you experienced a
bit of trauma, that your crypto journey hasn't been easy,
but that you want to be a voice for the voiceless,

(13:00):
the underdogs, which I love and so um that so
resonates with me. I feel the same um in that way.
You want to be a representation for others who experienced
and survived similar things to you. So I'm curious to
know what does that look like in the day to
day for you. Now, what does it mean for you
to be an influencer in the crypto space. What are

(13:20):
you doing? So for me, the way I start my
day is like I have a five year old, so
she is she always comes first, and like we wake up,
we do our positive affirmations. Of course someday she fights me,
like she tried to fight me the sport. She's like,
I'm not getting up. I'm like, you're getting You're getting up. Um,
But like I get up and I do like like
a deal. A daily day with me is I get up,

(13:40):
get my stuff together, do some positive affirmations. I'll do
like some jumping jacks or jump squats. While making my coffee,
I do like a YouTube short so I cover bitcoin
price because I you know, I trade a little bit,
I know a little bit about training. And then um,
I get her my daughter situated. I prep for my
news and I put a YouTube piece out and it's
basically about news. So basically the news segments that we do.

(14:01):
I always encourage my audience. I love. I want my
audience to listen to me. I want them to resonate
with At the same time, I'm like, don't listen to
everything I say. Take the information I'm telling you, Listen
to it. If it resonates with you, great, But at
the same time, I want you to continue to educate yourself.
Just because I say something doesn't mean that it's the
end all be all. We need to check multiple media sources,

(14:22):
we need to edge self educate ourselves, we need to
empower ourselves. So I try to push that off to
my audience. So we do all I do all that stuff.
I have clients, I get calls, and then I'll do
like a second content piece to TikTok and stuff like that.
But my main job when I'm making media doesn't matter
if it's a sponsored piece, it doesn't matter if it's
like a sixty second piece, it doesn't matter what it is.
My job is to be real with my audience. And

(14:43):
there's a lot of people in crypto that just like
kind of spew and they talk out the side of
their neck. And that's great, like the idea of getting
rich and you know, bitcoin going to the moon and
whatever coin going to whatever, you know, dollar, that's great,
But we like to focus on realism and we focus
on self education. The way that I learned about blockchain
tech and bitcoin, I really understand the importance of bitcoin

(15:06):
was I remember when I was on my lunch break
at work, I was pumping, and I think we would
get like fifteen minutes at the time. I would take
ten minutes and I would just read about what is bitcoin,
what is blockchain technology? What is finite mean? What is
a public ledger? So I would take this time and
I would Google search stuff and I would research things.
Invest a pedia, you guys. Investipedia is one pent free.
It is a website and it talks to you about

(15:27):
traditional financial products, anything in traditional finance and starting to
talk about crypto. If you want to let to trade,
you start there. If you want to know anything like
you could look up trying. I think the term transitory
and which is kind of a meme now it is
on that website. And if you don't understand something, there
is no shame in Google searching and figuring out what
that term is. I do that too. There's sometimes I

(15:48):
remember when I heard the term transfer, I'm like, what
is this? What does transitorin? So tell us because I
know half seventy cent of the people even I can
probably define it right now, even though I hear it
all the time. What is transitory? For the folks list
transitory supposedly means temporary. But the government, and I'll be
nice and I'll just call them the government are public servants.
They like to use big words, they like to use

(16:10):
words that are not in playing English to write their bills,
to push content out, whatever it is. And to me,
I'm thinking to myself, you guys are not using playing English.
But we are taught playing English in the public school system.
So I don't care what your background is. But if
you have a group of kids, and I grew up
in Alley County, so everything is super super there's people
from all over the place. You have public school, you

(16:32):
have a classroom, and you're teaching kids things in playing English.
But your public servants are not speaking and playing English.
And the bills and the laws that they're passing, or
like five thousand pages, a hundred pages, two hundred pages,
whatever it is, and it's not playing English. That's a
problem right there. That is a massive problem because you
can have people from all different backgrounds in one classroom
and if you're not teaching them and playing English, you're

(16:52):
doing a disservice to in the entire community. So but
there's no shame in Google searching and researching stuff like
we have our cell phones, we have most people have
access to internet in the United States. There's no shame
and researching the stuff and educating yourself. We all learn
at different places. We all there's different things that are
exciting to us. So just continue to educate yourself. But

(17:12):
my main goal is to remind my audience. You have
to take profit, you have to learn about personal finance,
you need to what is disposable income? You know what
what are what are these terms? So I try to
break things down as simple as possible. And the reason
why when I first got into crypto it was filled
with mostly men and it's still very heavily male dominated.
Most of these guys are super tech savvy and smart,
which amazing, but they were really nasty, like if you

(17:34):
were not a coder there like if you don't code,
you need to leave. And I'm like, I'm not leaving.
You're not going to tell me I need to leave
or do anything like I don't know who you are,
but no, I'm not going to leave. Bitcoin is for
the people, is created by the people. I'm not leaving.
So you can take your how you can take yourself,
and just no, you're not gonna tell me. It was like,
there are a couple of ways we're gonna ender that

(17:54):
sent is you can take yourself, and there's a few
a few places my mind went, but I'm figuring out
what you're putting down. Um, you're so right about that
education UM being so necessary and how ill equipped we
are through no faults of our own because for you know,
those first formative eighteen years or whatever it is, if
we're not lucky enough to be in a private school

(18:16):
or you know, homeschooled, then we're just a part of
a public school system. And the government is very much um,
the organization, the company that the administration that dictates what
that is that gets us ready for the real world.
UM to that point of education. This is a crypto
one on one UM web three point oh meta one
one one on one conversation for the listeners. So just

(18:40):
for those who are listening and still are like okay,
I think, I know, I'm not entirely sure, Like what
is cryptocurrency? We're talking like the most basic question I know.
So crypto is it's money, it is intangible money, It
is electric Somebody actually on TikTok is like electricity dollar.
So I was like you know what. I like that,

(19:01):
but it's basically intangible money, and I know that when
you hear cryptocurrency, like what the heck is crypto? Like
this seems hard as complicated, and yes it is. It
is because if you look at the actual tech behind
this stuff, it can get a little bit complex. But
guess what, just because you know, come from a tech
heavy background, just because you might not understand this initially,
doesn't mean that you cannot participate in this decentralized economy.

(19:22):
So when you think about cryptocurrency, just think about money.
We all use credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, Samsung's Pay,
whatever it is, so we're using money that's not really
tangible as it is. So just think of crypto as
a step further, and it's electric cash to an extent
because you're able to send Like if I wanted to
send you money, I can send you bitcoin, I can

(19:45):
send you whatever currency that you want to be paid
in for whatever it is, or I can send anyone
from the audience you know, bitcoin or any type of cryptocurrency,
and you can go ahead and take that cryptocurrency to
a centralized exchange or to a decentralized exchange, and then
you can flip it into currency that you can go
ahead and cash out and put it onto your bank account,
and then you can go ahead and spend those fiat dollars.

(20:06):
So it's just it's it's simply electric cash, right. And
I'm hearing all of these terms, and while I know
what they mean now, I remember that chapter when I
was like, wait, what decentralized what what? What? So decentralized
versus centralized, decentralized um transactions a decentralized space worlds, Like,
what is that exactly? So the term decentralized is it

(20:31):
sounds like a complex topic, but it's really not. So
let's first talk about what centralized is. Because we're all
living in a centralized economy, so we're talking about a
centralized economy. It could be different sectors also, So for example,
let's talk about the banks. So banks are centralized, and
that means we have these entities maybe like ten twenty
what however, many banks, but we have these central entities

(20:53):
that we go that you and I go to, maybe
as well as Fargo Bank America. We all go to,
we put our money in, and that's that. And then
these centralized entities they have more bodies on top of
them that dictate what they can and can't do. So basically,
a centralized entity is a bank, and there's all these
laws and regulations requiring what you can and can't do

(21:13):
at a bank. There's f D I C insurance. So
let's say something happens, you call your bank, Hey, somebody's
you know, charging this on my debit card or whatever.
You can go ahead and get a refund. Okay, that's
great now, but there's a problem when we're talking about
centralized entity. The problem at hand is is you have
all of these people, you have humans in charge of
your money, and that can trigger some things. Some of

(21:35):
those things that can happen. People can be discriminated against.
You might not be able to get a car loan
or a loan for your small business or whatever it is,
maybe based on the color your skin or your gender
or whatever that can be. And that's because you have
people making decisions for you. Yes, there are laws and
regulations to you know, kind of stop that from happening,
but unfortunately that doesn't stop people from discriminating when and

(21:55):
I'm like, I'm like I got stories on that too,
so please, because there's a local box engine out out
to the self care lab in Pomona, California that I'm helping.
We're trying to get them back open again. We could
talk about that later, but stuff, there's stuff that happens.
So when you're dealing with the centralized entity, you get
to kind of there's there's a lot of restrictions, so
that's what it is, and there's laws and regulations that
can potentially when we talk about the man, big brother

(22:18):
like this this sort of all knowing power that controls
our lives, right like yeaheneral, final reserve, the government, whatever
it is. So when we're talking about a decentralized entity,
a decentralized entity, everybody is treated equal. Because when we're
talking about the bitcoin network, we're talking about bitcoin. Bitcoin
is a decentralized entity kind of in a way, and

(22:39):
it's like it is a currency. Some people like to
use it as a store value wealth, but we're talking
about the bitcoin network is truly decentralized because you do
have miners that kind of in a way kind of
facilitate those transactions, so they kind of act like a bank,
but they're not a bank because they don't have laws
and regulations. Because you don't know who's mining your bitcoin.
You don't know who's facilitating that transaction for you, so

(23:00):
you can go ahead. And what is mining to not
mining is basically how bitcoin works. You have to have miners,
and what these miners do it's called proof of work POW,
and they kind of facilitate transactions. So if I want
to send you bitcoin, there's gonna be some miners that
are kind of in the middle of that transaction and
their computers are fighting, fighting, fighting, trying trying to solve

(23:21):
these math equations. But I know that sounds kind of crazy.
But whoever wins that math equation solves it, they get
to facilitate the transaction and make sure the bitcoin I
have is being sent to you, and then they get
a little bit of that reward. So there is a
transaction fee. But I don't know who these miners are.
They can be from China, they can be from Mexico,
they could be from Africa, they can be from Spain,
they could be from Italy, and I don't know who

(23:42):
they are, and there's no way for me to say,
you know, I don't want this minor to facilitate my
transaction because of X, Y and Z so that's what
we talk about decentralized. But at the same time, decentralization
can be a little bit scary because a lot and
a lot of people don't want to talk about this,
especially in crypto, because you can pretty much do and
say whatever you want. But that's another topic for another time.

(24:03):
Because it's it's a very it's a very complex thing,
but it's essentialization is actually really cool and it bitcoin
really does, in my opinion, empowers people from all different
walks of life. Like all you have to do, all
you have to do is self educate yourself. And there's
a lot of free rese out there, free resource out there.
I've got a newsletter. I do a free newsletter. Everything
I do is like a d percent free. But all

(24:25):
you have to do is just find out, like empower
yourself and understand that you're smart, you're brilliant, you're beautiful person,
and you are equipped to self educate yourself about this stuff.
And I think it's a really beautiful and cool thing.
Hey man, well said, so true. Um, you dropped the
phrase fiat. We're not talking about cars when we say not,

(24:49):
so fiat is and it's I really hate the term fiat.
Because it's like, what is this thing? But fiat is cash.
So basically United States has a dollar, Mexico has a
paso um, other countries have a different fiat currency. So basically,
when you hear the term fiat, all it means is
a centralized currency. That's all that it means. It is
not a decentralized currency. It is a centralized currency. And

(25:11):
the reason why fiat is a centralized currency is because
you have people that are controlling how much money is printed,
what is happening with this money, and vice versa. With bitcoin.
There's only twenty one million bitcoin that we're ever made.
And bitcoin is a little bit different than fiat because
it's backed by code and math is actually pretty cool
because no matter what, one plus one is two and

(25:34):
two plus two is four, and you can't you can't
change that. Like if I hand you four oranges, it's
always gonna be four oranges. You can unless you know, obviously,
let's you eat one, but you know what I mean,
you can't. You can't change math. And bitcoin is back
by math. So if somebody says, you know, I want
to make more bitcoin, you can't because that's the way
the code is set. And you cannot change it. But
when we're talking about dollars, and I know a lot

(25:56):
of you guys in Los Angeles County are feeling the pressure.
Inflation is at seven point five. That means your one
dollar bill, well you're one U s D. Your one
fiat currency is not worth one dollar anymore. You're purchasing
power is gone down, and that means you cannot buy
as many things as you used to with that one dollar.

(26:17):
And I know everybody can relate to that, because gas
is crazy, milk is crazy, everything is crazy. But but
the issue with bitcoin is then there's a negative side.
When we're talking about true decentralization, we're talking about freedom,
self sovereignty, which we could talk about that a minute
with bitcoin because there's no centralized entity controlling it. Because

(26:37):
there's no centralized entity controlling it. If you if I accidentally,
let's say, I need to send you thousand dollars in
bitcoin for something, and I accidentally screw the walle to
dress up and I send it to somebody else, there's
no entity I can call and be like, hey, you
know I sent that thousand dollars somebody. We're supposed to
go to Zuri there's nobody I could call. That's it.
But at the same time, with great or how what

(27:00):
is that saying? With great responsibility? What did they say
the Spider Man saying, I always but your approach this podcast,
I can't. Okay, great power comes great responsibility. Yes, And
the reason that that is that is exactly right. Um.
So the reason why that's so powerful and why it's
so true is because with bitcoin, you actually if you're
not utilizing a centralized exchange like f t x U

(27:22):
as a coin based a crypto dot com, and you
actually hold it onto your bitcoin, whether it be a
paper wallet or a ledger, Um, you have true custody
of it. Let's say, for example, let's say, for example,
God forbid, something happens in the United States and we're
invaded and the banks gets shut down. Your money is gone,
your money is one percent gone. There's nobody that you
can call. And we're very blessed. Like the United States

(27:44):
does have its problems. I'm not saying that we're perfect,
but at the same time, we have never really kind
of been invaded like some of these other countries. So
let's say somebody comes in and invades US, shuts the
banks down. Everything is down. You don't have access to money.
But if you have bitcoin, and you hold bitcoin and
a sent on a paper wallet or Ledger treasury, you
own those keys. You simply memorize your private keys, which

(28:05):
is your seed phrase. You never give your seed phrase
out to anybody. I don't care whose d I mean
you on the internet. I don't care who's asking for
your seed phrase. That is your That's like your firstborn child.
You're never going to keep that up, you know. And
what is your sea phrase again, that's sort of the
password or the key code to access your bunds, your cryptocurrency.
So your private your private sea phrase is basically like

(28:26):
a password, is a very special unique password is generally
a different combination of words. And you keep that private,
and you keep that to yourself, and you keep that
somewhere safe and secure. There's different ways that you can
protect that um but you keep that safe and secure.
But you memorize that seed phrase in your head, or
you store somewhere safe and secure. And guess what, you
have your money. You have access to your money and
people can no one can take that from you. But

(28:47):
if you leave your money in the bank, and then
let's say let's say let's say you say something and
that somebody doesn't like that, somebody big in powerful doesn't
like that. They can come and this happen in Cuba
way back line, It's happened in oppressive countries, has happened
in my family, um on both sides. But they can
come in, they can take your money and you can't
get your money back. But with bitpoint, if you have
control of your keys, if your private seed phrase, you

(29:09):
own your money, nobody can take your money and you
can flee wherever it is. You can start off in
the United States, swim across the ocean, end up in
another country and be able to access some sort of
system there and get access to your money because you
have your private seed phrase here. And that's why there's
a problem with gold is because people think, oh, well,
I'm gonna get gold and silver. That's great. I'm not
telling you not to. But at the same time, God forbid,

(29:31):
somebody comes into your house, what are you gonna do.
Take go get your gold, go get your safe gold
bars and throw in the back of my getaway car. Yeah,
but if you have your private seat phrase, you literally
you have that up here and you can run and
you can flee and you can access that at a
later time. You talked about storage. Let's talk about cold

(29:52):
storage for a minute. Alleger, what exactly is alledger? And
is it true your daughter has one? I read that
you're your five year old has her own personal ledger.
So my daughter, my daughter has bitcoin and I bought
I bought her some so she knows she has bitcoin.
And like, I don't get I'm very private with what
I talk about, like my family and stuff. But she

(30:13):
goes by low and so she says, you know, mom,
that's my that's my internet name, that's my stage name,
and nobody knows, nobody needs to know my real name.
And she's like, I also don't tell people I have bitcoin,
but she has. She has bitcoin, So I have a
little ledger for her. It has put away very safely
and securely. She doesn't know where it is. She doesn't
know her seed phrase because you know kids, they just
out the side of their neck. So she blow up

(30:35):
your whole spot exactly. So she doesn't know, but she
has bitcoin. And I what I did was and some
people might think I'm absolutely crazy, But when bitcoin broke
below ten tho dollars and I um, I liquidated her
savings account. There's like a thousand couple thousand dollars and
there I bought her bitcoin and so she doesn't to me,
doesn't that sound crazy? That seems like, okay, striking on
the iron is hot and the best thing you could

(30:57):
do for her. Yeah, So I went and she's got bitcoin,
and you know, I don't know what the value of
that will be in a long time, but I figure,
you know what, either I take this chance now, because
you know it was it was I had I had
money other cash in savings accounts and that was supposed
to be here like her college or whatever it was.
But I was like, you know, I'm gonna take this
chance and I'll figure out to make more money later.

(31:19):
And I did and it worked out really well. So
she's outperformed quite a few traders. And but but back
to what cold storage is, basically, there's there's different ways
to utilize cryptocurrency. We talk about centralized versus decentralized earlier
on in the show, so I explained that sent a
centralized entity is similar to a bank. So we do
have cryptocurrency exchanges. We have like f t x U

(31:41):
s and coin based and crypto, dot com Voyage or
Gemini sell. Those are centralized entities because there is a
person that is there's a group of people or a
person that is holding onto your crypto. Because what happens
is get your cryptocurrency and you deposited one of these
centralized exchanges, you can earn passive it. There's you know,
they kind of act like banks. You could trade, do
whatever it is you want to do. But now in

(32:04):
two and this really wasn't super prevalent back in twenty seventeen.
Basically nobody was using decentralized applications gaps in seventeen because
there wasn't a whole lot you kind of I felt
like in seventeen to access adapt you had to be
like super tech smart because nobody was using meta masks.
Nobody was doing that. But now in seventeen UM, when
we're utilizing like cold storage like a Ledger, a treads

(32:26):
or meta mask, trust Walt, whatever it, maybe you get
to actually control your keys and that means you have
your control of your cryptocurrency, you have control of your
your password, and you are not putting your money onto
an exchange for somebody else to hold. You get to
have control over your keys, that and your crypto. So
let's say you want to use a decentralized exchange, you

(32:47):
can simply go ahead and log on. Obviously you have
a password for that, which is going to be different
from your private seed phrase, and then you get to
control your crypto and dictate what you want to buy
and sell and whatnot. So we're still in crypto, the
crypto industry. We're still building out our dex is to
make them a little bit more user friendly. But they're
a lot better than what they were like seventeen and eighteen.
But owning owning like some people, and I'm gonna say

(33:09):
this too, and this is this is not necessarily a
popular opinion. A lot of people in crypto get mad
about it. But if you're brand new to crypto, you
have no idea what a private key is, what is
centralized while it is, you're gonna learn. I promise you
you're gonna get it. You're gonna understand it. You're gonna learn.
But I highly recommend you don't jump into cold storage
right away, because if you forget your private seed phrase

(33:29):
and your passwords get into this stuff, your crypto is gone.
There is no customer support line because you're talking about
it essentially, you're talking about true deessentialization there. I think
it's a little bit better. Like when you're first starting out,
obviously you want to use disposable income. Do it works
best for in your family, but try using a centralized
exchange while you're educating yourself. And then once you educated
yourself and you feel confident and you know good opt set,

(33:51):
then you know, slowly but surely move over to a
decentralized entity, like you know, utilizing a ledger, treasure or
paperable or whatever it is, right right, And just for
further clarification for anyone who might be like, Okay, I
think I get it. We're talking about something tangible that
you can hold. So this is like a leisure that
you can put away in a closet, set away on
a table, block away and is safe. Um, but that

(34:13):
is it anyway can be telling anybody, Well, you don't
need to be telling anybody random people where your stuff is,
like you need to keep that safe. But obviously, like
God forbid, something happens, you do need to have like
a plan or something. So yeah, and that's still kind
of being worked out because the laws and regulations regarding crypto,
they're so uncertain, especially in the United States. So I

(34:36):
feel like we're going to see more attorneys that are
going to be like I trust attorneys are gonna be
able to help people with that stuff. So I can't
I can't wait for that because we really it's a
really big problem that we have. Yeah, blockchain, that's a
big word that we hear all the time and in
these conversations in this space, what exactly is blockchain? So
with blockchain, because it can get super tech heavy, I'm

(34:58):
gonna give a very simple explanation. Blockchain is the technology
that makes cryptocurrency work. Blockchain allows for me to send
you bitcoin, and blockchain allows for you to send you know,
your mom bitcoin or you know who your friend or
whoever it is, or any type of cryptocurrency. But it's
basically the coding and the technology that facilitates everything that

(35:18):
makes everything works. So it can get really tech heavy
and complicated. And I don't even like to get into
the super tech heavy stuff behind it, because let's face it,
do you know how your debit card works? Girl? No,
I just swipe it and keep it moving with my
new purchases. Yeah, I mean so That's the thing is,
we don't really know that, like, and I couldn't tell
you how my my my cell phones work. I couldn't

(35:40):
tell you that iPhone, Android, none of it. I don't
want to know how to tell you how this stuff works.
And that's okay. You don't have to know the super
like you don't have to know exactly how this stuff works.
But basically blockchain technology, you want to educate yourself on
it more, that's totally fine. Google Social You've been able
to read a lot of different great articles. But basically,
it is the technology that makes crypto work, and it's code,

(36:01):
it is math. It is a bunch of ones and zeros,
all that type of stuff, heavy tech, heavy tech, ones
and zeros. Okay, so you guys go do that due diligence.
If you're interested in it, you can obviously research that yourself. UM.
I want to quickly just kind of break down the
difference between some of these coins. You know, we talked
a lot about bitcoin, um Satoshi Nakamoto being the person

(36:24):
who who gave this to the world, this gift to
the world, but there's so many coins now and so
many different creators of various coins. We've got meme coins,
all coins, stable coins. What what is sort of the
biggest fundamental difference between each of these types of coins?
And are there ones that is there one type of
coin that you get behind or are you kind of

(36:45):
a yolo whatever you're in to do it person like,
are there some that you're like, don't touch it with
a tin football. This is the thing with me, I
really believe in each individual's person right to choose. Like,
if you want to invest in project A and that
you like it, great, I don't want to tell you
that not to invest in it, Like obviously, like there's

(37:06):
certain projects I don't like and I won't touch. But
at the same time, who am I to think that
I'm smarter than you or that I'm better than you
because I'm not. I might disagree, and you know, I
don't agree with this, and I'll give you a reason why.
But I'm not here to tell anybody that they're wrong
or right. Um. But there are a lot of different coins.
So we have bitcoin. Bitcoin was like one of the
first cryptocurrencies ever created. It is essentially like it is
electric cash. Um, it's more like a gold standard like um,

(37:30):
you know, a store of value. These days but a
lot of people like it because it's been around so long,
So I love bitcoin. A lot of my portfolios in
bitcoin um. Then we have stable coins. Stable Coins are
essentially one to one, so one stable coin equals one
US dollar vice FIRSTA, and they don't really fluctuate in
price because they are paid one to one with the
US dollar and their back by bonds all this other

(37:50):
kind of stuff, So it's essentially kind of like they're
kind of centralized to an extent, but at the same time,
the cool thing about a stable coin they don't fluctuate
in price. And now in two you can take your
fiat currencies, your dollars, you can buy stable coins, you
can leave it on a centralized platform like celsius, f
t x U, s gmin or whatever, and you can
earn passive income up to um. Your bank only pays

(38:12):
the point one to point and serio three. So that's
a that's a cool thing for some people that want
to get some passive income by not doing anything. And
then there's like the top one hundred coins like Ethereum
is a great coin because you could a lot of
people like to build on top of it. We have
different chains, Um ethereum, salana um, phantom atom, all these
different chains, go chain, whatever it is. So we've got

(38:34):
all these different chains, and then like we have the
meme coins and the pump and dumps and the risky stuff.
So you can make money on these things. Um. But
at the same time, like if you're going to be
investing in some of the really really really risky assets,
the ones with low liquidity, not a lot of people
are interested in the market. All I'm gonna tell you,
I support your decision to you whatever it is you

(38:54):
want to do. But one on thing I'm gonna tell
you better be using disposable income. You better have a
trading or investing plan. You better if you're gonna invest
in crypto, I don't even care if it's bitcoin. You
need to expect that your money can go to zero
at any day. And even though I love bitcoin, I
believe in it, it is still a risk. Just like
the US dollar. The US dollar can literally be worth
nothing tomorrow because of all the crazy things that are

(39:16):
happening in the world. So an investment is a risk.
You're not guaranteed anything. Um. So there's there's different sectors
of different coins. Some of them have more utility than others,
and that's just how the game works, and you just
have to be Like, one of the things I do
want to say is make sure that you understand what
you're putting your money into before you do it. Just

(39:37):
because maybe your cousin told you, or your friend told you,
or this person told you. You don't believe anybody, like
listen to what they say. But you're all smart enough
to educate yourself on this stuff and educate yourself on
the risk. Yeah, it's really great that you say that,
because it's so true. You know, I think at this
point we've all had those experiences. Hell, sometimes I've been

(39:58):
the friend or the family member texting the people I
care about when I see an opportunity financially and say,
you should look into this, you should really consider investing.
But I also get the text, don't just blow it
up inst Sheba, you knew, like I know, it's a
meme coin, but I can tell him you like, in
three months, it's gonna go here or there. Um. So
doing your own duets is so necessary. And to that

(40:20):
point about you know, Sheba and Doge, like those specifically
are what we're talking about when we say meme coins, right, yeah,
so those are meme coins, and there's like it's super
easy to create a cryptocurrency. Anybody can do it for
the most part. They have websites, you put codes or
whatever what. I don't know. I don't do it. I
don't have my own coin. I never plan on having
my own coin. I don't think there's a reason for it. Um.

(40:40):
I don't want to deal with the sec in any way,
shape or form. I literally pay all of my crypto
taxes and I cry to my cp A attorney. I'm like,
here's my stuff. Just tell me how much I owe
I'm having I'm not okay right now, just tell me.
But like but honestly, like you can't. You totally can
make money with she being new in doge coin, you can't.
But at the same time, there's a opportunity to lose money.

(41:00):
Like I remember I was telling people, everyone's like doge
cooins is gonna hit it allar. I fought with all
of TikTok. I fought with TikTok like this is not
going to hit a dollar Like I'm not here, And
they're like, you're mad because you're poor, and I'm like
I'm like listen, I was like, I bought I bought
doge coin when it was like under a penny, like
I have, Yeah, I bought it. I think at fifties
sotoshies or something like that. It was under a penny.

(41:22):
So I bought it, and I I knew that it
was gonna pump because it's a cyclical cooin. You could
literally tell by looking at the chart. So basically doge
cooin is a long term thing. You buy when this
thing is like when it's like like dumping, when it's
like worth nothing, that's when you buy it. You hold
onto it for a year or two. It's gonna pump
because it's very cyclical. But they were fighting with me
like it's gonna be a dollar year and you don't

(41:42):
what we're talking abou I'm like, okay, fine whatever, Like
I literally what happened was I took my like once
it started pumping, I sold um. I think I sold.
I made ten thousand dollars. I sold some of it,
and I was just I still have a bunch left.
And and I told I told my audience, I was like, dude,
take your profits, make a moon bag. And well, I
want to talk about a moon bag after this because
moon back were like, Okay, I don't even know what

(42:05):
that is. So let's talk about a moon bag. And
I this. When I talk about a moon bag. It
was my most viewed video on tick Are. On TikTok,
I think I got five sixty views and on YouTube
we got six d and sixty views. But this is
what a moon bag is, and please listen to this
and replay this over and over again. A moon bag
is when you invest in any asset. It could be

(42:26):
a traditional financial asset, but for purpose of this, we're
talking about crypto because that's what I do. But basically,
you get some disposable income. And notice I'm saying disposable
income money for your mortgage. You want to make sure
you like you don't take that. But if it's like
extra stuff like Starbucks or like play money, whatever it is,
that's fine. But things that you have to actually pay
your bills for, you do that. So basically, this is
money that you can afford to lose. If it goes

(42:47):
to zero, you don't care. So you take that money,
you invest in an asset. Okay, great, so you've got
some skin in the game. We'll guess what the market
starts going crazy and the the asset starts appreciating value.
So let's say you bought um cryptocurrency a B at
one dollar and the market and then all of a sudden,
the market started going crazy, and then cryptocurrency a B

(43:08):
is now we're ten dollars per coin. So you're like,
oh my god, I ten times in initial investment. So
once you see that, oh my god, I made money,
you pull out your initial investment and you pull out
your profit. So let's say you invested a thousand dollars in.
You want to take that thousand dollars out, then you
want to take an additional thousand dollars out, or whatever
you feel comfortable. You have to make sure you know,
pay attention to your trading investing plan, and then whatever

(43:30):
you have left over you own free and clear. And
that's called a moon bad. And the reason why it's
a moon bad is because you removed your initial investment.
You remove some profit you paid yourself. So whatever you
own free and clear, this thing could literally go to
a million dollars per coin, great, you made money, or
this thing could go to zero because it's crypto, and

(43:50):
that happens a lot. And then that's okay. Yeah, that's
okay too. And then depending on what the project is,
if it's a project you could earn passive income on,
you can stake, you can farm it, like, do whatever
it is, that's fine. But making a moon bag is
going to be the best way for people to thrive.
And the reason why we don't talk about this a lot,
but trading and investing is very psychological. There's a lot

(44:12):
of emotions involved. And when pete, when there's money on
the line, money makes people ugly, Like I can't begin
to tell you how ugly. Like I grew up poor,
so I like, if I go back to being poor again,
I'm fine, Like I live that life. I've been there.
It's don't care. But I've seen other people and I'm
just like, oh my god, Like, you guys are just
ridiculous with money. But when you remove your initial investment

(44:32):
and you have this like big stack of bricks that
you've lifted off your chest and you're just not super
stressed out about you're not constantly checking your portfolio any
of that stuff. So it's a really beautiful thing to
remove your risk and to pay yourself and to acknowledge
your gains and then what you do is is you
take that, because it was disposable income in the beginning anyways,

(44:52):
you take that, the profit and the disposable income, and
you decide what you want to do. Maybe you want
to take that disposable income and you want to put
it into another set and maybe that asset does the
same thing, or maybe it only does like one time
or two times or whatever it does. And then you
just keep removing profit in your initial investment, and you
just keep doing that over and over again. You rinse
and repeat, and you do it over and over and

(45:12):
over again, and eventually you're gonna start to compound your
gains and you're gonna notice like, hey, this twenty bucks
I just tossed in, Now this twenty bucks is worth
the hunter bucks, or now it's worth a thousand dollars.
And that's a really cool thing. Like if you can
do that, and you can be good at it and
time the market and just continue to do that, you're
going to outperform most people in crypto. You're gonna perform

(45:33):
outperform hedge funds, traders, all types of stuff by doing that. Okay,
moon Bag, I just love the phrase. I've never heard
of it being called that, but makes total sense. It
is certainly a way you're right to a slowly but
surely maybe not so slowly, but surely build wealth. It's
an opportunity to to grow, grow your your money. Alright.

(45:59):
So we've got a few listener questions. We let our
listeners know that we were having you on the show.
Everyone's really excited. So one of our listeners at Gerald
Deane m says, can you tell us about the environmental impact?
Of course, So I'm gonna tell you guys this. We
need to stop as a society. I don't care what

(46:21):
your background is, as collectively as a society, we're all humans.
We need to stop listening to mainstream media because mainstream
media is going to give you random things because they're
trying to push a particular type of narrative. Always educate
yourself on the stuff. So, yes, there is a little
bit of an environmental impact that does happen with bitcoin
because it is proof of worker does take computing power,
and the same with pos which is proof his state.

(46:43):
But humans are notorious for leaving a carbon footprint. The
carbon footprint that bitcoin uses is not as big as
it as when the United States government is printing Fiat
or when we're driving a car, or when we are
maybe taking the bus, or when we are consuming particular
types of foods or things like that. So, yes, there

(47:04):
is a little bit of a carbon footprint that is
being made by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But the cool
thing about it is like, yes, we came up, we
found you know, bitcoin was created. It's it's solved a
lot of issues. But the cool thing about it is
like we're seeing out of El Salvador. The president legalized
and it made it legal tender, and he went ahead
and said, oh bitcoin is bad for the environment. Guess

(47:24):
what we're gonna use on geothermal energy from volcanoes to
mine it. So it's one natural So all the bitcoin
mining done in El Salvador is done that way. There
was two early twenties, um young boys, I think they
were like twenty five or twenty four. They figured out
a way to mind bitcoin. I don't have the story
in front of me, so I can't sign it. But
they figured out a way to mind bitcoin a hundred

(47:46):
percent to where it does not impact the environment with
um with resources. So and one of the things I
do want to say to the audience. Bitcoin is still
super new. The technology is new that it's only been
around like a decade. Um. We it does impact the
environment a little bit, but at the same time, we
are coming up with ways to make it towards safe
for the environment. So I think that I think, um,

(48:08):
I think instead of like focusing on the negative aspects
of it, I think we should focus on the positive
aspects and how great bitcoin is and how great it
is and improving people's quality life from all different backgrounds,
and also come up with positive ways that we can
not hurt the environment, which we are currently doing so
and so instead of like being negative about I think
we should all support each other in these endeavors. Yeah,

(48:29):
there are two sides to every coin, right, and we
can focus on the negative of anything. You can focus
on the negative of your husband, your wife, the kids
that are driving you crazy, or you can focus on
the overwhelming positive things that make you decide to show
up every day and still actively engage with those people
and things in your life. So I hear you with
that one. Another listener question at checks chi or checks

(48:49):
chai says, what apps do you recommend to buy? Crypto
slash hold wallets, Okay, So there's two pieces of that.
So when you're talking about holding all it's um that's
gonna be something completely separate from used from buying cryptocurrency.
So when you want to hold your cryptocurrency and you
want to actually have self custody, and please understand, if

(49:10):
you're brand need to crypto, I don't recommend self custody.
And the reason why is because I want to see
you educate yourself a little bit more. And that's not
me being mean in any way, shape or form. I
just don't want you to be Okay, I'm gonna buy
bitcoin and then I'm gonna put it on my ledger,
and then you don't understand the importance of self custody
and you lose your private seed phrase and then you
lose your money. Because that does happen a lot. That

(49:30):
does happen a lot. There's nobody that you can call.
I'm not going to send you bitcoin like any of
that stuff. So just before you you take that step,
just please make sure that you are fully aware of
the implications if you lose your private seed phrase and
how to keep that. So the places that I like
to go to to buy cryptocurrency, UM I like and
these are all places that I use personally. I like Gemini,

(49:52):
I like crypto dot Com, I like um self sis.
I don't think you could buy there, but I use
that platform UM I like um ft I, c us
and where Else and Voyager. Those are platforms that I in.
Coin based. I don't really care for coin based too much,
but I will use them in a pitch if I
have to be curious to know why, No, I'll tell
you why because I will tell because one of the

(50:14):
reasons why I don't really care for coin bases. They
have terrible customer service, and the people that are running
coin base, I just don't feel like they're for the people.
I feel like they're very like Ivory Tower dwelling and
they feel like they're above everybody else cryptos for the people,
and to have that type of Ivory Tower mentality, I'm
just not really with it. I don't I don't think
that anybody is better literally the opposite of what we're

(50:35):
trying to do with this new movement, in this new opportunity.
But at the same time, coin base is a decent
platform to go ahead and buy cryptocurrency on. So those
are those are what I use. UM one thing I
will tell you is if you're brand new to crypto,
you do not you have no business being on some
random exchange that is not mainstream, like none. And the
way that you can kind of check that there's a

(50:56):
there's a website. It's called coin get Go. I use
it for a lot of different things, um, and you
basically can go there and you can kind of see
all the exchanges that they have to offer, and there's
they make sure that they don't put any kind of
weird stuff there. But you want to use, like if
you're especially for brand neto crypto, you want to use
a top crypto platform, a top crypto exchange instead of
one of these janki ones. The reason why is because

(51:17):
a lot of these come and go and they could
be spam and they could like steal your money and stuff.
So you want to just just pay the extra fees
if they're more expensive, and use like a Gemini coin
based ft x U S because you're gonna be a
little bit safer there. Okay. And that's what one of
my questions was going to be is how do we
avoid scammers? Because we hear about these horror stories, we
hear about people saying I wired it to so and so,

(51:37):
or I did the transfer right now my money's gone.
So working with these top platforms or exchanges tends to
be the best route if you're really new and more
susceptible quite frankly, to being scammed. If somebody is coming
to you, especially on the Internet, and problem making you
a promise that you're gonna make all this money. If

(51:58):
if if a random per said walked up to you
in the street and said, if you send me one,
if you give me one hundred dollars out of your wallet,
I'm gonna give you five hundred back. If some crazy person,
if some person walked up to me, I'd be like,
get the hell out of my face, like I would start.
I'd be throwing hands and feet at that point, and
I get out of my personal space, like no, you're not. No.

(52:18):
So you have to think of it this way because
there's gonna be a lot of people that are going
to approach you and be like, give me money and
do this, So you don't. You never give anybody money.
There's no there's nothing you need to pay for on
the internet, Like there's nothing encrypting you need to pay for.
Like sometimes there are educational groups whatever it is, and
that's fine, that's your business. But you do not need
to be sending anybody money. Nobody is going to be

(52:39):
trading for you. Anybody that's promising you gains, they're full
of it. Do not give your passwords out, do not
give your private seeds out, do not click on links,
do not click on links, and stay at a d
M so strangers, stay at a d M so strangers. Yeah. So,
to be honest with you, it is hard, and you do.
You're gonna get approached by a lot of scammers. But
what I'm telling you sometimes take a step back and

(53:02):
kind of analyze the situation and be like, should I
send that person five hundred dollars? I had somebody in
my telegram group. I have a telegram chat. There's like
people in there and they're like, hey, Wendy, this person
I gave this. I met this guy at a conference,
which was really it was really weird. He's like and
he told me and like he's gives me trading signals
and I pay for them, which you don't know, you guys,

(53:23):
do not be paying paying for trading signals. It's literally
all a scamp and he's like, but I I he's
told me I need to sign up for this exchange.
I never heard of this exchange he was talking about
before ever, like it was some random exchange. He's like,
and so I put nine hundred dollars in there, but
he told me I need to deposits to be able
to withdraw it. And I'm like what, I was like, okay,

(53:44):
but you hear things like that, and I'm just like, Okay, now,
in what worlds did that even feel like it made
sense for like point zero zero five seconds. But I
guess it's such a new world, a new landscape that
people are like maybe in this space, that's the thing
that's possible. But the thing is is that people do
take advantage of poor people and it's not your fault.

(54:06):
But at the same time, like cryptos can be very,
very dangerous, So I would not don't give anybody money.
You guys don't like if you're not using a coin
based a Gemini and f t x us, a crypto
dot com, a Voyage or some of those are like
the top five crypto exchanges, don't be giving random people
your money, Like you're just please, don't do it. You're

(54:26):
gonna get and there's no one that you can call
for a refund, No one, right right? Um, our listener
at Fluffy Tree asks our n f T s a scam,
So I kind of want to use it as a
springboard to back up actually and just talk n f
T s quickly. So can you break down exactly what
n f T s are? Should we care about them?
What do you think about them? Are they worth it?

(54:47):
Because this is the next thing that I'm trying to
wrap my mind around. So at this point I am
all ears because I still cannot fully wrap my mind
around why we should here. Like, I understand there's money
to be made. I understand that long term. No, that's
all I understand. That's all I understand right now, honestly,
that there's money to be made. What what is an

(55:09):
n f T Why should we here? Okay? So first off, yes,
there's money to be made in n f t s.
But more importantly, do you know anybody in the music industry? Yes, Okay,
the people that you know in the music industry, were
they ever preyed upon by predatory record labels or merchandizing
companies or any of that licensing? So you know that
that happens that it's something very common. So I've had

(55:31):
a lot of musicians that were friends of mine growing up.
My grandpa was a jazz jar or my aunt was
a guitarist. My mom always had like you know, always
was always friends with musicians, and I dated musicians whatever,
way back my my wild days. So there's a story
about it. It's a punk rock band called the Ramones.
Most people, if you haven't heard of them, that's fine,
but most people know who they are. The band from

(55:52):
like I want to say, it was Broken whatever. They're
very popular punk rock band. So they sold their merchandizing
rights I want to say in the eighties or seventies,
probably for like less than a hundred thousand dollars, which
and back then there was a lot of money. But
when you sell your licensing or your merchandizing rights, so
basically they said, this predatory company says, we'll give you

(56:12):
a hundred thousand dollars, and that might not even been
the mount but it was kind of close up. We'll
give you a hundred thousand dollars, but we want to
own your merchandizing rights. So your band logo, well guess
what the Ramones band logo. You can literally walk into
almost any store and you're gonna see it. You will
see it. They have the Ramones logo to their band.
I went in Nordstrums and I saw it and there

(56:33):
was some shirt that it was selling for eight five
dollars five dollars. So and their friends or their their
family members, their wives that they've left don't have access
to any of that like that merchandizing rights because they
sold it. Oh no, continue, I'm realizing, Okay, So I
take it back. I do remember this, and I remember
when I first heard the concept, loving that as someone

(56:55):
who came from the music industry and working in the
business side of it. Just power back in the hands
of the creator. So actually, I'm really okay. But let's
say that n f T technology was available back in
the seventies, days before the Ramones decided to sell. And
I'm sure there's a bunch of like the reason why
I know this story is because I know somebody who
is their neighbor, is very good friends with them. That

(57:17):
this story is just remembers me. But there are so
many artists to that this impact like so so many
artists and not just them. But can you imagine if
they had n f T technology and they're like, you
know what, well, we'll sell you our licensing rights for
a hundred thousand dollars, but we're gonna do it. I'm
gonna sell you an n f T that's going to
grant you these licensing rights. So every single time you

(57:38):
want to use the licensing rights or the logo, whatever
it is, we're gonna get royalties and we're going to
utilize smart contracts and ensure that this happens. So every
single time that licensing um that excuse me, that merchandizing
right is sold, the ramones would get a royalty, so
it could be sold a million times, but they get
five percent or one percent or three percent or how

(57:59):
are that set up forever? And that's why n f
T s are so powerful because poets, um, guitarists, musicians, writers,
creators can literally have this n f T. You'd have
this n f T and they can have the smart
contracts set up to where we're gonna sell I'm gonna,
like I want to say, Snoop Dogg just acquired death
Row back, which was absolutely super amazing, and they're gonna

(58:23):
they're doing this with this company called Galla, and so
they he released an n f T and I think
they're gonna he's gonna be working with them to do
more things. But basically what's going to happen is is
he's going to probably from the articles and things that
he's probably going to utilize n f T s for
a lot of his music and then people will be
able to buy that, so instead of people buying c
d s or whatever it is that these young kids

(58:45):
use these tastes because I know back of my dame
with CDs. But basically, anytime something is sold that is
associated with one of his music or his music, his licensing, whatever,
maybe he's going to get royalties for the rest of
his life. And yes, there is money to be made
with all these collections that you're saying, but the underlying
use case of n f t s was to give
power back to the creators. So you can you can

(59:08):
create a song and you can say, you know, I'm
gonna release the song and if you want to buy,
if you want to be able to listen to it,
or however they set up, you can buy parts of it,
but I'm gonna be getting royalties off the back end.
So every time you flip this. So that's why n
f t s are so important, and that's why I
love them so much, is because there's so many creators
from all different cultures and backgrounds, artists, musicians that have

(59:29):
just been preyed upon, Like especially if you look back
in the early like when we're talking about jazz and
R and B, like, so many of those artists were
taken terrible advantage of. Like it was not even just
with the contracts, right because certainly these record labels and
these sometimes the business managers that can be your own
agents or lawyers are taking advantage of you, but just
the medium. Like as a creative I feel very passionately

(59:51):
about this, As someone who used to record and write
music and watched people give really beautiful art to the
world and then not be compensated fairly for it. It
really to me seems like a new era of artistry,
a new way of creating art and being compensated for
it to where it doesn't take as much to see
a return on your creative investment, right, Like, whether it's

(01:00:14):
five people supporting your work or ten or twenty, you
get to see dollars. You get to see money every
time where you know, up until recently, I feel like
the industry is finally shifting and we're figuring out ways
to compensate um artists fairly. But really it feels like
n f t s might be the new opportunity. You
You would throw your art out into the world, your music,

(01:00:34):
whatever it was, and people could just kind of take
it and run with it. And you would never see
that money unless you're touring and literally exchanging it for
your physical presence. And who wants to do that every
day or the rest of their lives. But the opportunity
for passive income has really just been stolen from a
lot of artists. And also to like a lot of
people don't understand, there's just it's just it's a beautiful

(01:00:56):
thing for people to get their power back and also
to for example, let's say that there's a small a
small like a Midwest small town creator and they're like,
you know, and they're really super talented. Well, in order
for this Midwest super talented creator to get discovered, a
lot of times they move to l A. I love
l A. But at the same time, there's some predatory
stuff that goes down here. Okay, like some predatory so okay,
So this creator is going to have to move to

(01:01:17):
l A, pick up, leave their family, leave their hometown,
whatever it is, to potentially get discovered and potentially be
put in some dangerous situations. Guess what, this creator can
now utilize social media to grow their following and say
I'm gonna make an n f T, I'm gonna sell
my art, my teacher, whatever it may be, and get
on a platform, get on one of these centralized you

(01:01:38):
know which I We're still working on some decentralized options,
so give us some time, you guys. N f T
s finally like took off over like over the last year,
so please be patient with the technology. But they can
literally go on a platform like open Sea or looks
Rare or whatever it is, or x curate or f
T x us whatever, and they can literally they can
literally post their artwork, their music, whatever it is, and

(01:01:59):
reach a glow audience with n f T technology, So
they no longer like, obviously you want to move to
l A. We'd love to have you, but just be careful,
don't make icun't But what I'm saying is the one
thing is they're going to have an option now from
n f T s to stay at home, to stay
close to home and potentially you know, make a decent
income in with with these n f t s without

(01:02:20):
having to travel, and they're going to be able to
get discovered easily. That's just my personal opinion and just
for for the sake of clarification, this is art, um, music,
etcetera that you can only experience in the digital space.
Well actually too so so basically, a n f T
is like a token and stand n f T stands
for non fungible token because when you create it um,

(01:02:41):
once it's minted, once it's put on the blockchain, it's immutable,
so that means you can't change it. Like obviously there's
there's new things that these people are all this new
stuff that's coming out, but they're the way. The smart
contracts are also facilitated by blockchain technology, so you can't
modify the smart contracts. Like once it's done, once it's
put on the blockchain, that's it unless there's some sort

(01:03:02):
of code, unless there's code that's written into it to
modify it. But once it's up there, like it could
be art, it could be music, it could be a game,
like whatever it is you want to create n f
T camp. But what some people are doing is some
people are creating um like for example, I think it
is Dulch and Gabana, or correct me if I'm wrong.
But what they're doing is is they're issuing like they're

(01:03:24):
they're still selling their bags, but they're putting an n
f T with it so you can verify the authenticity
of it. And some people are selling sweatshirts or T shirts,
but with those t shirts they're also sending out n
f T s so that people can verify that this
was the first one made, or this is the tenth
one made, or different things like that. So you're able
to use n f T s also to track food
items and to do all different kinds of really cool things.

(01:03:44):
And I think in the future, once n f T
s are more they're understood a little bit better, we'll
see them in healthcare, We'll see them of voting, We'll
see them with all this all different industries. You said
two is the year of financial freedom. The best way
to be your own boss is to invest in crypto.
I love that because one, I just love the idea

(01:04:05):
of being one's own boss and the empowerment that comes
with that. You touched a little bit on self sovereignty
earlier um in our conversation. For anyone who's on the fence,
who hasn't invested in crypto yet, but it's seriously considering it,
why why now? What would you tell someone who wants
to do it and is maybe just a little bit hesitant,
because you owe it to yourself. You owe it to

(01:04:27):
yourself and whether you decide, Let's say you you, you
listen to the show and you're like, you know what
I want to I want to educate myself, because the
first step is always self educating. Unless you know, unless
you want to throw a little bit of money a
bitcoin ice fully support your decision in doing so, that's
your business. So that's not my business. That's not financial vice.
But honestly, you owe it to yourself. The world is
such a really, it's just so many things have happened

(01:04:50):
over the years. It's just so sad and so tragic
just to see people fighting about just the smallest petty things.
People are canceling each other, all kinds of crazy stuff.
I feel like as a society, especially in the United S,
is we're focusing on all this petty stuff instead of
making ourselves better, Like everybody deserves a shot at having
financial freedom and improving their quality of life. Like I

(01:05:12):
don't care if it's just making yourself happy. Is just
like moving it, like you know, leaving your apartment and
being able to buy a home, and that's like the
extent of your success. That's dope. Like that is absolutely amazing.
It's something to commend and everybody owes it to themselves.
So I think it's important to learn about what bitcoin
is because I I when I first invested in bitcoin,

(01:05:35):
it kind of forced me to learn about the financial markets.
It forced me to learn about more about government and
how the FED works and all these predatory traditional financial
products that they have, and it kind of forced me
to learn about them, Like oh my god, Like what
this is crazy? And bitcoin is cool because not only

(01:05:57):
is does it force you to learn about history, but
it forced you to learn about finance. But it's also
very empowering. To me, it is the most like no
matter how much money I make, like making money is great,
I have a family to support, But at the same time,
I always feel most empowered when I help somebody else
and when I teach myself something new or I learned
something new. And part of the cool thing about my

(01:06:18):
job is I get to like talk to people and
I get to hear difference of opinions and learn different things.
And part of being in crypto and investing in bitcoin
is you get to connect with so many people that
are might be different than you, and you're gonna get
to learn something. And I feel like humans where we
take we take for granted how powerful our minds are.
Like we were so focused on how our bodies look,
which great, you know, everybody wants to look and feel good,

(01:06:40):
but what about your mind? We forget to exercise our mind.
And I feel like with bitcoin and crypto, you're gonna
be able. You're gonna be in this really tech heavy space.
It might feel a little bit uncomfortable, you might not
feel like you belong at first, but guess what, You're
gonna find your place. You're gonna find where you belong.
And being in crypto is going to or n f
T S or metaverse, whatever it is. It's going to
force you to to to to work your mind down

(01:07:01):
to educate yourself. And that's where the change starts to happen.
Is once you start to kind of step outside your
comfort you learn about other people, you learn about other cultures,
you learn about different financial markets, how different systems work.
And that's a beautiful thing to be able to take
a step back and like, oh, well I heard this here,
so I'm gonna apply it to this conversation. And let
me tell you something. Part of the reason why I

(01:07:21):
was able to be so successful in crypto and bitcoin
is because of my network. Because I was always super shy.
I didn't think I was important and I I mattered,
but I was like, you know, I'm gonna start putting
myself out there. So I started putting myself out there
and networking and it's just the best thing ever. And
I just I feel like it's so important for people
to teach themselves and learn. I do free meetups in
the l A County. I can't wait to host one again.

(01:07:41):
I just haven't because all the crazy stuff, But but
those are there's so much fun because I get to
learn from other people and it's it's a beautiful thing.
YEA beautifully said. I couldn't agree more. Um, you offer
so much information and so many educational tools online. One
where can people find you? What resources do you currently
offer and is there any book or course that you

(01:08:02):
recommend people check out if they do want to learn
more about this space. So all of my handles are
always at Crypto, ndio for YouTube, for TikTok, for Twitter,
for Instagram. I will never d M you. I love
you all. I think you all are amazing, beautiful people.
But I'm never gonna be in your d M s.
I don't have time to be as do not send
anybody money anything. I've got a lot of impersonators, but

(01:08:22):
I'm all over social media. UM. I have a free
I've got my website. I have a free newsletter. We've
got a lot of really great information there. Um, So
if you want to subscribe whatever, that's cool. I also
have I'm a part of a community called Cryptonites, and
we're a discord. We have a premium and we have
a free um chap. But basically the premiums like five

(01:08:42):
bucks a month. But you get like there's like four
or five of us creators and you get you get
access to us. You can literally ask me a question
or whatever it is. And if you don't want to
do that, that's fine, you can send me an email.
I promise I'll do my best to get back to you.
As far as free information, I've got the free newsletter
Wendy's White Paper. It's a really really great thing. Um.
It will always be free. It's self funded by me,

(01:09:03):
but a really great place to start to learn about
UM kind of get your feet wet. I really love
Investipedia and I sell it all the time just because
it's free and it's literally you can learn so many
things there. So there's that also to um f t
x us. They have an app. They have an app
and on that app, like you can track your portfolio
and stuff at the Cool thing About and it's a

(01:09:24):
hundred percent free. But the cool thing about is they
have a bunch of news stories and I think it's
important for people to start educating themselves and reading news
and all of those all that type of stuff, because
that's how we start to learn um. What else? What else?
What else? Is free? Coin get go is a hundred
percent free and you can learn a lot about cryptocurrency there. Um.
But there's a lot of there's seriously a lot of

(01:09:44):
free resources out there, and it just it kind of
depends what you want to learn about, but there's there's
different free resources. And again I do daily videos and
all that type of stuff. And if you guys have
any questions, drop me an email and we'll try to
cover something for you. I love that, Crypto Windy. Oh
you guys. Um. Lastly, this podcast is all about best
life minus the burnout. So it's okay, how do we

(01:10:05):
do the things we want to do? How do we
go after what we want to do but from a
place of wellness and being centered? Because I'm a big
believer in you know, achieving your goals is only worth
it if you're happy while you're achieving them. Being surrounded
by beautiful, pretty, nice, expensive thing, whatever the things are,
doesn't matter if you are miserable or stressed or constantly

(01:10:25):
swallowed by anxiety. UM. So we always ask about the
self care regiment that the way to wellness for our guests.
So I'm curious to know, you know, investment is so
high stakes, Crypto, especially for a lot of us. What's
the key for you? What are the things that you
do to seek balance and wellness? As not just you
know this this kind of seur in this space, but

(01:10:47):
also a mother and a woman who just deserves to
feel good for herself. What are your non negotiables? How
do you practice self care. So self care is super
important to me, and I love that we're talking about
this because a lot of people forget to take care
of themselves. So some of the things I do, exercise
is so important to me, very very very important to me,
because I suffer from like um, from extreme anxiety and depression. UM,

(01:11:13):
I have a d h D. Like I've got all
different types of issues. Some of its trauma related, some
of it is, you know, just genetic. So one of
the things that really helps me is exercise. And I've
really You guys might think this is crazy, but I
have taken solace in boxing. I learned it's so much fun.
You have to come Okay, so you're gonna have to
come down. You're gonna have You're gonna have to come

(01:11:33):
down to Pomona, California. UM, there's a boxing gym I
support called the Self Care Lab. The owner is Miss Nita.
She is a good friend of mine. UM. Where still
if anybody is watching this and you guys know of
a facility of building UM in Claremont Laverne a, Pomona,
please email me. We've been looking for a building for
six months. UM. The story is like I just want
to go off and go off on this professional boxer

(01:11:55):
that bought the building from Nita. Anyways, we'll talk on.
I'm not going to go off too much. And so
you want me to go off, I'll go I'll go off.
I'll go on. You have you have a thirty second
go off if you need to speak your le So
so so mr Mr professional boxer Leo Santa Cruz that
took that bought the boxing gym the Self Care Lab
from Nita and Pomona, California, which is a fully licensed

(01:12:17):
nonprofit that service as inner city kids. We're looking for
a place because this guy stole our building. But anyways, okay,
we're gonna have to talk more about that because I'm yeah,
we're curious to hear the back to Yeah, so I
and I had to call him out too, because please.
But anyway, so I go to the Self Care Lab.
We don't have a facility right now, but she she
offers boxing as a form of mental health. So boxing

(01:12:38):
is a really great way way for me to cope
and kind of being because I feel like I'm in
control because I could I toss those paws. I've been
boxing since I've been sixty but working working out is
really great for me. It helps me. Um, I do
one of the things I do in the morning when
I wake up, I forced myself to do positive affirmations.
I forced myself to do positive affirmations and UM just

(01:12:58):
tell like there's certain things that I want. But after
I'm done doing my positive affirmations, I think about how
I can, like when I achieve those goals, how I
can give back because you have to give it to
get it. You have to give it to get it.
And it might like everybody is different, but one of
the ways, like for me, sometimes I'll smile at somebody

(01:13:18):
or I always make sure when I'm in a store,
I asked to Casher, how is your day? And make
eye contact people even if it's like that and like
and so that's important to me is to give back
to my community centers. Community centers are a big thing.
UM to the House of Ruth in l A County
that helped dv Essay survivors. So it's always important to
give back. And I just I try to be as
thankful as possible. And um that's how I practice self care.

(01:13:42):
Beautiful answer listen, I gotta see you in these gloves now. Like,
I'm so curious. It's been a while since I was
in the ring. But when I tell you the best
way to blow off steam, I never feel stronger. Um,
the natural endorphins like I, I will gladly go check
out the lab. I don't know. Are you guys just
kind of hopping around picking spots and doing your things

(01:14:03):
right now? Okay? Me and she is. She is in
the park with the kids, and so what we like.
We really need a facility, So if anybody knows of
a place, please drop me a line. We have money.
We've been able to raise quite a bit of money
in crypto, in krypto, so we've been able to raise
money krypto. We're just looking for a spot now and
it's kind of hard because you know whatever. But if
anybody knows of a spot, please drop me a line.

(01:14:24):
We'd be happy to check it out, alright, be happy
to have you too. I'm gonna hold you to that.
You have to come down. The kids would be so
they would be so happy. Oh I'm down, I'm down.
Sign Yeah, we'll talk. We'll offline um to continue that conversation.
But in the meantime, Wendy, oh, thank you so much.
This was such a great one on one like I
feel like we we lead a little bit into like
one on one point five even um in a great way.

(01:14:45):
So hopefully our listeners, I know our listeners are gonna
walk away with a lot of new tools and information
and resources. So thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, and I want I needed to get you
on too, so we can talk two point oh yes,
let's go at two point out. Let me start studying
up so I can dust off the dust off the rust,
shake it off, or just come ask me whatever, we'll
talk about it. Perfect. Okay, now I'm definitely in Thank

(01:15:08):
you so much, Wendy. You guys, if you want more information,
if you're interested in utilizing any any of Wendy's resources
or tools, don't forget you can follow her crypto Wendy
Oh or check out her website, which is crypto wendio
dot com. Okay, you're happy, Ben, Thank you again to

(01:15:28):
Wendy Oh for the deep dive into crypto. Now, all
I want to know is who's ready to buy? Are
we ready to buy in? I'm curious to know what
you think. Leave me a review, shoot me a d
m at ZERI Hall at Hot Happy Mess and stay
tuned for part two of the Crypto Conversation because I
have an amazing sit down with a real woman who
I absolutely adore. You're gonna love her. She is killing

(01:15:49):
it in the crypto game and she's sharing gym's on
how we can build generational wealth before we head out,
I really really want to hear from you, so tell
me what you're thinking of this episode. He can head
over to Hot Happy Mess dot com and drop me
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It could be a review, it could be a question.
You could just say what's up. And speaking of reviews,
here's a quick one from a lovely listener at two

(01:16:09):
queen He says, no complaints. I absolutely love this podcast.
I appreciate all of the gym's literally, no complaints, love
the energy. I love you, Queenie. Thank you for that.
I so appreciate the support. If you're listening and loving
what you're hearing, drop me a review on Apple Podcast
and leave a five star rating on Spotify or Apple
and share this episode with a friend. Send it to

(01:16:31):
somebody right now for full four if you liked it
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send it a matter of fact, Put it in the
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(01:16:52):
on Instagram if you want to talk when I stay
up to date with my quereabouts and happenings until next
week's episode next Wednesday at z U R I H
A L L and at Hot Happy Maps, and I'll
see you next Wednesday. Bye bye bye