The Brandon Davis Show
Samuel Armes - Pioneering Business and Political Strategist
X: @SamuelArmes
Can local civic engagement turn the tide for cryptocurrency advocacy? Our guest, a prominent Bitcoin and Web3 advocate, shares his journey from an economics background to establishing Florida's largest Bitcoin advocacy firm. We explore the weighty influence of state-level organizing and lobbying, shedding light on landmark moves like the anti-central bank digital currency bill and the strategic political coordination that parallels efforts like overturning Roe v Wade.
Imagine a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Trump, once a vocal critic of cryptocurrency, suddenly shows his support. We recount that astonishing evening and delve into how interactions with the crypto community, including the founder of Polygon, may have reformed his views. The political divide in cryptocurrency support is laid bare, contrasting the backing from Republican states like Florida and Texas with the opposition from Democratic bastions such as New York and California, driven by financial entities feeling threatened by the crypto revolution.
Lobbying and political influence are dissected, likened to venture capital funding, where early investments in candidates yield long-term sway. The episode emphasizes the power of local political engagement, recounting real-world scenarios where tech-friendly policies could boost local economies. Finally, we round off with a rapid-fire session, offering swift reactions on a myriad of topics from Bitcoin and Elon Musk to Greta Thunberg and Saudi Arabia, ensuring an engaging and enlightening listen.
X: @SamuelArmes
Can local civic engagement turn the tide for cryptocurrency advocacy? Our guest, a prominent Bitcoin and Web3 advocate, shares his journey from an economics background to establishing Florida's largest Bitcoin advocacy firm. We explore the weighty influence of state-level organizing and lobbying, shedding light on landmark moves like the anti-central bank digital currency bill and the strategic political coordination that parallels efforts like overturning Roe v Wade.
Imagine a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Trump, once a vocal critic of cryptocurrency, suddenly shows his support. We recount that astonishing evening and delve into how interactions with the crypto community, including the founder of Polygon, may have reformed his views. The political divide in cryptocurrency support is laid bare, contrasting the backing from Republican states like Florida and Texas with the opposition from Democratic bastions such as New York and California, driven by financial entities feeling threatened by the crypto revolution.
Lobbying and political influence are dissected, likened to venture capital funding, where early investments in candidates yield long-term sway. The episode emphasizes the power of local political engagement, recounting real-world scenarios where tech-friendly policies could boost local economies. Finally, we round off with a rapid-fire session, offering swift reactions on a myriad of topics from Bitcoin and Elon Musk to Greta Thunberg and Saudi Arabia, ensuring an engaging and enlightening listen.
you're now tuning in to the brandon davis show on the r2r network, where news, crypto and politics collide. Get ready for raw, unfiltered discussions, fearless insights and a relentless pursuit of the truth from the shadowy corners of the blockchain to global power plays. Join us on this journey of discovery and defiance, and remember the only thing we aim to change is your mind. This is the Brandon Davis Show.
Speaker 2:Sam, we'll go ahead and just kind of get started here, Just kind of roll into it. It's not a big deal. First off, man, appreciate you deciding to take this interview. I spoke to Gary, your counterpart, maybe three or four weeks ago. Really good conversation there and he absolutely encouraged me to speak to you. Apparently he likes you or something. I don't really get it.
Speaker 3:It is what it is, I hope, so we work together so much I hope he likes me, so you guys do like Twitter spaces pretty regularly yeah yeah, we got one tonight at five uh awesome and we're going to be talking about the elon musk uh trump interview actually, so that'll be a good one goodness, gracious man, yeah, that's coming.
Speaker 2:And, um, man, I I saw the the eu man. They're really coming after elon, right now too. Yeah, I mean they are doing it Election interference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the free speech is under attack and you know, I just kind of shudder to think what the next five years in politics could be like. If the wrong people take power. A lot of damage can be done in five years and then you can claw back a lot of power in five years. So, eu man, they want to shut down free speech. They hate the fact that people can talk to each other without a middleman.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what does that tell you? What does that tell you? That they hate that you can talk freely. That's not a good sign.
Speaker 2:No, you know, they've got to be that filter. They got to be the filter because they have the narrative. And you know, what's frightening too, is the amount of coordination. I was listening to a politician today that I hold in pretty high regard, believe it or not, of legislation that is proposed and even passed between houses you know, the house of congress, and then also overseas and different legislative bodies and what they were trying to ask was like who's the person that's coordinating all this? Like, in some cases, these bills are almost identical, even in the name, the verbiage and all that. Do you have any insight into that at all? Well, I can say, at least in the united states.
Speaker 3:I meanbiage and all that. Do you have any insight into that at all? Well, I can say, at least in the United States. I mean, you have the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and those institutions are going to coordinate with their counterparts all over. So, for example, overturning Roe v Wade and this is a strategy that both parties employ. But okay, so you want to overturn Roe v Wade?
Speaker 3:Republicans had to do what they had to wait for the Supreme Court to be in their favor, which took years of coordination. But then they had to produce laws which created lawsuits in multiple states with the hope of that lawsuit reaching the Supreme Court. So you pass, you know, anti-abortion laws in five to ten states, and one of them will stick and land at the SCOTUS, and then you can overthrow Roe v Wade. So that happens in other countries. But the key is there's coordination, essentially around people saying here's different policies, here's the objective, here's how we're going to get to that objective, and it's going to be by passing different types of legislation which essentially all say the same thing, but maybe with slightly different targets, so that you can get to where you want to be. So both institutions, both Republicans and Democrats do that all the time.
Speaker 2:And then I guess there's global organizations that kind of connect these parties together with common goals and interests, correct? And I think people fail like you're illustrating this right now, people fail to understand, I think, how coordinated this is, but all the strategy and tactics involved, like they're not just thinking about next year, this is multi-year, this is multi-decade strategy to be able to shift and shape the world in the direction that you want to go. And I think having you on right now is really interesting because I think you're going to kind of bring that perspective about how public policy is shaped and formed and all that. So tell me and tell the audience here, like who are you, yeah, and what do you do, man?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So as soon as I got out of school, I started Florida what is now Florida's largest Bitcoin Web3 advocacy firm. So I created a lobbying firm in a chamber of commerce, all because I just I've always loved politics. It's funny because my degree was in economics and international finance, with some intel in there, and I can go over my intel background too, but I've always loved politics.
Speaker 3:I come from a very politically watchful or mindful family and in 2017, it was kind of that first, I would say, real wave of adoption where politicos were talking about crypto and Bitcoin and focused on it. So I saw an opportunity in the state of Florida because I didn't want to move to DC to essentially start organizing people here, and that's exactly what I did. I traveled to every major meetup in the space, met with all the major businesses and players here and said, hey, why don't we channel that energy toward Tallahassee, which is our state capital, where all the legislation is made and passed? So I did that for about five to six years and I stepped back just recently. I was the executive director. Now I'm simply a board member and trying to transition it to other leadership. So it's still self-sustaining, but we've passed in that five to six years over five pieces of legislation all kind of Bitcoin and Web3 related with our landmark legislation being the anti-central bank digital currency bill that we passed.
Speaker 2:What was that all about? Talk to me about that.
Speaker 3:Well, everyone, most people, know what a CBDC is a central bank, digital currency and it was my opinion that, and still is my opinion that efficient money is fine, right, we use credit cards, debit cards. Most of our money is electronic, although I'm not anti-cash. But efficient money is perfectly okay, right, to be able to transact quickly, I think, is a good thing, but authoritarian money is not, and authoritarian and efficiency sometimes go hand in hand and efficiency sometimes go hand in hand. And I think what some of the powers that be realized is you can't take away human rights in America because of the Bill of Rights, like freedom of speech, even though they might try. But what you can do is you can circumvent the Bill of Rights through money, because it is mandated that we as citizens have to use the dollar. Right, of course, we can use maybe other forms of currency, but you have to use the dollar, and so if you just turn the dollar into an authoritarian vehicle because you have to use it, you can start subverting some of our constitutional rights. So, back in, I guess I want to say 2023, right, but really maybe at the end of 2022, you kind of hide this idea of a CBDC coming into prominence.
Speaker 3:I believe like you had the Federal Reserve talking about FedNow, which isn't necessarily a CBDC, but essentially like quicker payment rails for the US dollar, and then you had the Republican presidential primary right and so you had people like Vivek and DeSantis essentially trying to stay competitive, earn votes, and Vivek was always a pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto candidate and so, in kind, desantis kind of responded and still, being our governor, is able to actually pass legislation. So we were able to kind of use the presidential election cycle to pass language that said CBDCs are banned in the state of Florida, which then obviously became a huge deal, ended up influencing Donald Trump's campaign to where now he's anti-central bank digital currency, and then other states soon followed suit and passed similar language. Yeah, um, so that was kind of the culmination of, you know, building relationships in dc and in tallahassee and in other states and other institutions for about a five-year period so now, this is interesting.
Speaker 3:I went down to um, I went down to Mar-a-Lago for Trump's NFT dinner this past summer, the famous one where the kid with the sunglasses made that video go viral. Was that the same one?
Speaker 2:Very cool, yeah. So I was there and you know this was really before Trump really had come out in the media talking positively about cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like he's up there giving his speech and he kind of pauses and, uh, you know, he says, uh, he says something. The fact he says, uh, should I support cryptocurrency during my presidency? What do you guys think? And of course, this is a room full of cryptocurrency people and everybody cheers and jeers and this and that yeah. But I took a step back and realized that you know, of course, he had that very infamous tweet about Bitcoin a couple of years back, you know, kind of compared to the US dollar and this and that. But he changes his worldviews and I realized that he has raised millions of dollars with NFTs.
Speaker 2:I think this is the third iteration of him fundraising with NFTs. Come to find out. I think he was on a plane ride from New York. This is during that whole time when he was caught up in, you know, the felony counts 32 felony counts. He's going back and forth throughout the country. He had to be in New York at the end of every night, so he'd fly down to Florida and come back, but I think he flew down york at the end of every night, so he'd fly down to florida and come back, but I think he flew down to florida with the founder of polygon, on the airplane.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that, no way yeah, and, and that guy was out there in front and talking too, and trump was just like you know. I thought it was a charade. I thought he was just saying that for votes man, but the way that he talked about it really indicated to me that he had some sort of understanding of what Bitcoin was, what cryptocurrency was, and he was smart enough to utilize that to his advantage, and I would estimate that he's got a lot of money. But at the same time, new York was really trying to lock him down and I think these funds were pivotal for him. I think he saw the crypto community come together and kind of help him out in that way. So I think that there might be some sort of loyalty Maybe that's too strong of a word to cryptocurrency, but he sees it as a positive thing because it really helped him out. My question to you is do you think that? Do you think he like CBDCs we're talking about? Do you think he actually understands what a CBDC is?
Speaker 3:I think he probably does in like the grand concept. I mean I also like I don't hold trump's negative quote-unquote bitcoin views is a big issue because a lot of people forget one the marketing was terrible and it still is kind of terrible sometimes. But the marketing when trump was president was we want bitcoin to overthrow the us dollar. Okay, no president in america wants. The largest geopolitical tool at our disposal is the dollar. So any president coming out and saying I hate the dollar is stupid Geopolitically and just from a voter sentiment base. No voter wants to hear that, especially if you're a boomer, right. But then on the flip side, people also kind of memory hold that Meta tried to launch a token and that was a very big deal.
Speaker 3:And Donald Trump and Zuckerberg do not like each other, right. Facebook was one of the largest funders for Hillary Clinton's campaign. They were a big funder for Joe Biden's campaign. So everything in crypto in Trump's eyes was, hey, this is not going to help me and in fact, some of these crypto people are trying to sink my campaign, right. That all changes, I think, post 2020, where the Bitcoin community essentially starts saying, ok, well, we need allies because Elizabeth Warren does not like us, right, they kind of pick Trump and if you look at the tea leaves, the Republican states were always the ones leading on Bitcoin policy. It was always Florida and always Texas, whereas you had New York and California and Illinois trying to either ban it or make it unusable. Like Illinois had a KYC law that was applicable to mining, which would essentially have made mining illegal, in Illinois.
Speaker 2:Why is that, dude? I don't want to let you keep going. Just who?
Speaker 3:their funders are Just who their I mean, some of it's very simple is Bitcoin and crypto are a new tech industry with new players that will hurt certain other players, right? Like money is not universal, I don't think, right. Sometimes it is a zero-sum game, and when you innovate, whoever is being held back is not going to want you to innovate because it hurts their bottom line, right? So I think there was some perceived threat that Bitcoin and crypto were going to be bad for the democratic donor base, and I'm sure some of them believe that it was only used for criminal activity, right? So maybe, if I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, some of them believe that it was only used for criminal activity, um, right, so maybe if I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, some of them did not, that's a weak art.
Speaker 3:It's the weakest argument for crypto that there is it is the weakest argument, uh, but that doesn't mean it's not. It's the weakest argument on paper. It's the best sounding argument public for those who need correct exactly.
Speaker 3:So you know, and that's only if I give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise I would just say you know it was in their interest. Like Elizabeth Warren, some of her biggest donors are who, the big, large financial institutions. And to be clear, it was never my opinion either that they were trying to ban it. I think a lot of them just want it harder for retail to get access to, so that they can buy it up and hoard it and just keep it to themselves.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so is what you're going to see now. You're living in two interesting worlds, I think, because you're able to appeal to the Bitcoiners, you're able to bring that knowledge and education to businesses, and then you're able to kind of talk to lawmakers. But then there's this whole other world that Bitcoiners look at, and that's the you guys refer to it I wouldn't say you guys generally referred to as the crypto world, which is everything else but Bitcoin. So I guess my question to you is it difficult in any way to balance talking to those two folks, because there's a lot of animosity on both sides towards one of each other? Charles Hoskinson, he went to Capitol Hill what two years ago, yeah, and he finds out that there's a lot of congressional staffers that are working to create legislation to shut down crypto, decentralized finance, and then he kind of reported on that and talked about that. So have you found it difficult to kind of be in both worlds or kind of what's your secret to bring those together?
Speaker 3:Well, as far as navigation goes, it's the communities that kind of make the division, but the people with money in the matter don't really care. They kind of view it all the same way. So like, for example, you just had the XRP lawsuit finally kind of come to a conclusion, unless the SEC appeals again. But it's the community of the XRP people versus the Bitcoin people that are jabbing each other. The people who are funding these lobbyists they're all using the same lobbying firms, they're all using the same chambers of commerce. So the Bitcoin companies and the XRP companies or the XRP itself are funding sometimes the exact same people on Capitol Hill. So there's no issue when it comes to advocacy. Now to your point. There are always sometimes misaligned incentives. For example, you might have a bill that is great for Bitcoin and kind of kills a little bit of the DeFi aspect, and the people just in Bitcoin might go well, we just want the win, right, so we're willing to throw DeFi under the bus just to get the win for Bitcoin. Maybe they don't care about DeFi, so there will be some division there, and that's kind of like with any industry. So of course you want to balance that and that's where it kind of takes a really strategic perspective, because you always want to manage.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, who do I represent? What do I think is best for the industry? Do I take a win that might not happen at all because it's so hard to get a win? Do I take a win and sacrifice a little bit on one end, or do I say no? I want the complete package and I'm willing to delay, you know, five to 10 years for good policy, because I'm standing pure to what I believe right. Both approaches work and both have negatives and both have positives, and, you see, both carried out by political strategists all the time. So I think to me it's kind of whatever the moment is.
Speaker 3:For example, the CBDC bill. We were at a great moment. We had a very hot, contested presidential primary for the Republican Party and you had people like Vivek and DeSantis the two most likable candidates besides Trump talking about crypto. So we had a really nice opportunity to say this is the perfect piece of legislation to pass in this moment, right? So sometimes it is just well. What are the politicians seeing on the ground? What's the media saying? And so if the media and public opinion is drifting toward one way, it's your job to go okay. Well, if this is where it's drifting, do I have a bill that I can kind of float that fits into that current narrative? That is good for the industry. So it's, you know, it's political chess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, jeez. This is probably a good segue to get into this part. So you've got Bitcoin, you really love it, you believe in it. Let's say you're in the beginning, the heydays here, and you decide that you want to start creating legislation, and this doesn't just have to be Bitcoin, it can be any cool idea or any idea that you care about. The thing that most people don't know how to do is to kind of get involved in that legislative process. So if somebody has an idea or something that they're passionate about and they've got an idea for legislation like where do they start? Where did people in crypto start, like how does all this work behind the scenes? Well, it's a good question. I guess I'd say they start. Where did people in crypto start, like how does all this work behind the scenes?
Speaker 3:Well, it's a good question. I guess I'd say they start on Twitter, right. But I've actually moved my focus because when I first started my organization, my goal was kind of to be a NRA type organization or like an Act Blue, where you're moving people on the ground, you're getting small dollar donations and you're raiding politicians. But I soon realized that a lot of people on Bitcoin and the crypto sphere as a whole don't like government, don't want to talk to government and are more concerned about kind of themselves and like making a bag, so to speak, than influencing policy. And I talked to Bitcoiners even today who aren't going to put up a fight, they'd rather just leave. And that's still a common mentality. It's especially common in libertarian circles where instead of fighting, you'd rather just get out. And so I was like, well, that's not going to work right If I'm going to have a political organization. So that's when I made the shift to businesses, because businesses it is harder to move right, they normally have a tie to their community and they have money and skin in the game, so they take it more seriously. And when I made that transition, I also understood that well, the businesses know the exact legislation that's hurting them and that's why they want to be in a chamber of commerce to talk to other businesses and say, hey, what's something good that all of us can get rid of? Maybe there's one or two taxes that are preventing us from being profitable of us can get rid of. Maybe there's one or two taxes that are preventing us from being profitable, right, like that's kind of.
Speaker 3:Where the legislative process starts is really with these business leaders who are directly impacted, say, by the SEC or say, by your state's financial office, because they're actually getting hurt by the expenses of the red tape as opposed to getting hurt by the expenses of the red tape as opposed to. You know, I might be a DeFi trader and I might be using Uniswap, but if I suddenly can't use Uniswap on my computer, oh, what do I do? I get a VPN or like I just find some workaround, whereas a business, you're not going to risk that right. You want to be in compliance with the law, you're not going to go to jail for that right. So I think the best place to start really is looking at the business community and then following what they're doing and seeing okay, well, what are the actual needs? That's why you're seeing right now.
Speaker 3:I think one of Trump's talking points is self-custody. Self-custody is a big issue for a lot of these Bitcoin companies and if you're not allowed to self-custody Self-custody is a big issue for a lot of these Bitcoin companies and if you're not allowed to self-custody, a lot of these exchanges and a lot of these Bitcoin companies are probably going to fail, if not just have a very overburdened some regulation that they're going to have to deal with. So obviously it's in their favor to want self-custody to be allowable, as opposed to not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's quite a bit to talk about there. I'm going to just kind of recap here real quick. So when you first set out on this endeavor and I explained this with the NRA, second Amendment stuff Second Amendment is more entrenched in the common day every man man individual's mindset in America, so it's probably easier to kind of rally people to a central focus with that sort of thing. But you found with what you were trying to do it just didn't work too well and you pivoted over to business. I imagine you were running all over the state going to meetings and things and probably didn't have too much traction initially until you started focusing on business.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, people are lazy and people love the idea of change, but no one wants to commit to the change. They always want somebody else to do it, which is perfectly fine, but that's human nature. That's why media and elections is so important and we can get into that. But, like I, would go to meetups and some of these meetups they'd be like well, bitcoin doesn't need government to succeed and we don't believe in government, even though we live in the state of Florida under a state and federal government. We don't believe in government. Why would we want to talk about it? Right, and a lot of people still believe that, and I've never believed that.
Speaker 3:I've always held the opinion that everyone should be politically active and involved, because you either have a say or you don't. And I think there's a correlation between the people who have gotten stuff done in government and their belief in government and the inverse. So I think a lot of people are jolted because they've never actually been involved at a community level, to see what can happen with government. Like you can get a lot done as an individual at the county or city level, right, like it actually doesn't take much to get involved and really create issues for people if they're not representing you correctly. Give me an example.
Speaker 2:How would you create issues for for people if they're not representing you correctly? Give me an example. How would you create issues for for some asshole?
Speaker 3:oh well, yeah, the city council, the city council, has to meet sometimes, at least once a month, and you can show up to every individual meeting right, and you can call them out to their face yeah right, it's not like congress.
Speaker 3:Like, how often do you get to meet your congressperson, right? Uh, you can book a meeting when they're in their district. What are you going to do? Go to dc, like they're? So they have so many more people that have to meet with them per district. Uh, they're more out of the way to get a hold of, whereas your city council member has to live within your township, within your neighborhood and it's great content.
Speaker 3:It's recorded. Yeah, correct, correct. So there's just more opportunity and it's the most tied to local businesses, which you're more than likely shopping at right. A congressional district can be pretty big and there might be parts of the congressional district that you have never even been to. Right, it's just a bigger game at the congressional side where money is a bigger factor money and influence, with bigger companies participating, as opposed to the city level. Don't get me wrong. City depending on the city can be very expensive and get very involved, but you're still closer to the ground floor, you're still closer to the people and no one votes in city elections. So 100 votes could make a huge difference in a city or county election.
Speaker 2:And that takes a whole lot less human energy to collect those votes right, correct, and financial energy, I'd imagine, as well.
Speaker 3:Yes, correct.
Speaker 2:So all right. So I'm in front of a city hall or a city council and I'm passionate about cryptocurrency. Whatever that may be, yeah. Whatever that may be, yeah. How can cryptocurrency benefit a state or local or regional area? What would I be presenting to this city? For Bitcoin to benefit the city or for some crypto Ethereum to benefit the city, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3:There's all kinds of nuance and the funny part is a lot of it is just marketing and showing that you're crypto friendly so that people want to live there. I'll get specific and then I'll get general. Specifically, for example, there is a bio waste reactor or a dump in Orange County, florida, that has been fined multiple times for excess methane emissions. So I have gotten people and they're actually running for election right now to essentially propose hey, what if we capture the methane and use it to mine Bitcoin? So, instead of getting fined and I'm going to pay the fine because of excess methane emissions we're going to capture it and actually produce revenue for the county. Now, how likely is that to happen? Well, that's a pretty tough climb still, just because people are like well, you're going to be mining Bitcoin, whatever, but you're doing two things You're capturing methane, which you're getting fined for, so now you're not going to get fined. So you're turning a negative into a neutral and then you turn the neutral into a positive because hopefully you'll be mining Bitcoin with that.
Speaker 3:A lot of municipalities operate their own waste infrastructure and their own electricity. Right, I think in the state of Florida, you might have upwards of 30 different municipalities that have their own electrical grid or I shouldn't say grid, electrical powerhouse, power generation and so you take those and you say, well, the city council are the people who have authority over that. How can I influence my city council to say, hey, I have a solution for you. And the flip side, on just the marketing side, it can be very easy. It could just be telling your city council members hey, I'm a business owner, I employ 20 people, I'm in crypto. Be nice to my industry because I'm bringing you guys jobs. Yeah, right, no one needs to understand Ethereum. No one needs to understand Bitcoin. If you're an elected official, you just need to be like oh, you're supporting a family, oh, you're creating jobs, that's great, right, like, that should be the main talking point, because that is real. They don't need to understand Bitcoin mining. Why don't I show you my facility and have all my employees which maybe there's five or 10, stand outside and have you shake their hand? Right, that makes it a lot more real.
Speaker 3:We had in my hometown. We actually ran into this problem because we were trying to get a crypto company to move there and the crypto company actually wanted to buy the rights of a local stadium there, which was going to be awesome. But the county commission actually did not allow them to buy the rights of the stadium because there was a larger company that didn't want that to happen and didn't want my hometown to be known for crypto, I guess. So it ended up getting quashed and then that company then moved to another city in Florida, which I was happy that they were still in Florida. But it shows you, man, if that county commission would have just said you know what they're willing to pay for the naming rights of a small stadium here, why not? They could have gotten at least 20 more jobs in that area and started trying to show like, hey, we can attract tech here. So that's kind of the political dynamic on a local level.
Speaker 2:And then also, I'd imagine that many of these folks sitting on town council and city council all across of America they have no clue how cryptocurrency works. So if you have a tactful way to position that information to them without kind of, without stealing their dignity or making them feel stupid, you're also doing them a service. You know it might not be your thing that causes the whole concept to click in their head, but you know they might think back three or four or five years from now when they've been in contact five or six times with the industry and they say, okay, now it makes sense. Cool, let me go call that Sam Arms guy. He was talking all about this back then.
Speaker 2:He lives in the city Right Um all right, so, uh, so you talk to city council and uh, and, and you get some sort of visibility. Okay, and then you know you realize that you want to do more. You want your government to be involved more in crypto. You're super passionate about it for all of these reasons. Okay, what's the next level up from, I guess from a state perspective, you've got congressional leaders, and kind of, how do you even approach that? Do you hire a firm? Do you knock on somebody's door? Do you call in? What do you do?
Speaker 3:It really just depends on what you want to do and what your strategy is so. I've worked with lobbying firms in the past. I've done a lot of the work just myself, through relationships that I've built. That sounds bad.
Speaker 2:Lobbying firms? A lot of people don't. It's like a negative connotation. Maybe you can provide some clarity on that before you move forward. What are lobbying firms?
Speaker 3:It's always a great conversation because I love getting people a little riled up, because essentially, as long as you have a democratic system, you're going to have lobbying, and so anytime someone's complaining about lobbying, they're really just complaining about democracy, which is perfectly fine, but that's really what it is. So what is lobbying? Lobbying is you have B2C business to customer, you have B2B business to business and then you have what I call B2G business to government. So lobbying is marketing toward the government. You as a CEO or as a person, don't have the time to know what's going on at the government level, who's friends with who, what bills are coming up. There's so much that happens from government as an organization, a lot of people will hire someone to say, well, just tell me what's going on.
Speaker 2:So these people, in a nutshell, they are the people, they're the watchers of the political system. They go between a business person or a regular person and government, so they're kind of that middleman they're the watcher?
Speaker 3:Yes, and they have the relationship, and that's the most important factor. So, unfortunately, or fortunately, relationships are still the backbone of American society. Everything is about trust, which is why they say there's a revolving door between politics and lobbying, because what will happen is I run for office, I'm in office for two years. My two years in office I know every senator, every representative, some of them my best friends, some of them my worst enemies. But I get to know and work with all of them. When I leave, that Rolodex doesn't go away.
Speaker 3:So then I can say, hey, actually I have at least five friends' phone numbers. I can start a lobbying firm and call up Steve and say, hey, steve, it's Sam, I got a client with a bill. Can you at least meet with him? Would you entertain sponsoring the bill? Right, and me and Steve have been friends for two years. I probably helped Steve with something in the past or he kind of owes me a few favors. And so Steve goes, yeah, sure, why not? And then I tell my client I go hey, so Steve is a good friend of mine, but we should donate to his campaign, because once Steve likes my client, the business.
Speaker 3:I want to keep that relationship going. And now that Steve and the client have a good relationship, it's in the client's incentive to make sure that Steve stays elected. Because why would I want someone new when I've spent two, four, six years building a relationship with a politician, which is why, more often than not you will notice these people stay in office, because the people who have been working with them so long don't want a new person. Because that new person means rebuilding relationships. That new person is going to bring in their own relationships, which means you're not a priority anymore, and all this is just simply the democratic process. You may hate what I'm saying is lobbying, but this is just simply the democratic process. You may hate what I'm saying is lobbying, but this is just how democracy actually works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, oh, go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off.
Speaker 3:Well, I was just going to say people have finite time and finite resources, and so lobbying essentially fills in that gap of finitude for your average person or business that can't afford to pay attention or have these relationships.
Speaker 2:Got it. So how robust is, I guess, the rules and regulations with regards to lobbying? Because I think most people think just it's a corrupt, you know this or that. That's just the general notion, but obviously not everybody is corrupt in that way. So kind of what's that look like?
Speaker 3:everybody is corrupt in that way. So kind of what's that look like? Yeah, I mean, define corruption, right? I mean I love the graph that it shows bribing or bribery all over the world. In the US, you know, there's no bribing here because we call it lobbying, right? So it's pretty much the same. And where it gets corrupt is just the different ways that you can move money around.
Speaker 3:So one example I give is every politician launches a book. Why do they launch a book? Because the publisher can find a way to get revenue to the politician. Like, politicians don't create books for marketing although they do but a publisher can buy the first 50,000 copies of the book they publish to create a cash injection for the person who wrote the book, who can then use that for campaign finance, right? So Obama was very famous for a lot of his book deals, and you know this could have been happening before Obama, but that's when it kind of registered in my head that book deals are a great way to raise money for a campaign, right, that book deals are a great way to raise money for a campaign, right. When you see politicians make an appearance in Hollywood, you don't know what they're paid, but it's a paid position that then can be directed toward campaign finance.
Speaker 3:Normal people, or your average person, just thinks of like PACs and super PACs, which are just C4s or C3s, where I want to give money to a candidate, so I donate to a PAC, and then that PAC spends money on ads and marketing on behalf of the candidate. And, okay, the biggest donor to this PAC was an oil company or it was an environmental solar panel company. So then obviously, the person who is being supported by that PAC is going to have positions friendly to that industry, right? That PAC is going to have positions friendly to that industry, right? I know that sounds dirty, maybe it is dirty, but it also. It's just the way this works. It's the way it is, and the only way to limit that is to essentially encroach upon what we would call democracy in our current republic, which is the freedom to voice your opinion, not only through voting and through speech, but through the use of your funds. So that's where everything gets really hairy. A lot of people point to like Citizens United where it's like, okay, well, how much can a corporation give?
Speaker 3:Can we set caps on what they can give? But money always moves. And if I go back to my example with the book deals, I mean, okay, so you set caps on what a super PAC can give, maybe? But then I just find a creative way to say, well, will you be my advisor on the board of this company? And the advisor for this position gets paid a million bucks a year. You know what I mean. So it's very tough to regulate campaign finance because it's hard to regulate what should be a free market. And as long as there's a free market, people are going to gravitate toward giving those in power money to coerce them into favoring their company over somebody else's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a problem. It's a problem that has existed for a very long time, that's thousands of years here, okay, and I don't think that we've, you know, I don't think that we've been able to solve it. Nobody's come up with a better system at this point, I think.
Speaker 3:And that's why I would say, I don't even know if it's a problem, as much as human nature is a problem. And that's where it gets tricky is. I'm like okay, how do you solve human nature? I mean, that's the question, isn't it? I don't know how you solve human nature.
Speaker 2:Well, capitalism, how do you solve crony capitalists? You know late stage capitalism, how do you? You know all that Correct. But we do create. You know we strive to create systems that find a way to combat human nature, which is we can be broken and sinful and we can be greedy and we can be corrupt. So the system in and of itself isn't corrupt, but the people running it are. So you know it's a it's a difficult thing to tackle, especially when it's so entrenched, I think, in American politics. Good things come out of it undoubtedly, but it's also a sticking point for a lot of people in a frustrating way. Let me.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I think that we've got a pretty good idea of what lobbying firms are now, right, yeah, so let's get back to it where I asked you. You know how do we go to the next level, and you kind of you talk about lobbying firms to reach to those upper echelons of legislatures, like where do you go from there? What do you hire them to do? Like, what do you tell them to do?
Speaker 3:Well, once again, that depends. So a lobbying firm you would say, you know, you'd shop around and you'd say I want to pass this legislation or I want to stop this legislation from passing. And so you shop around. Different lobbying firms are going to give you different rates and costs and how do they guarantee do? They guarantee this stuff? No, and you can never guarantee it because it's, it's chance. For example, one thing I teach a lot of people is that politics, or like elections, are like VC funding.
Speaker 3:So, one of the best ways that lobbying firms and individuals can build political relationships to then use for lobbying is getting involved in elections, because no one needs more help than someone trying to get elected and, like VC firms, the earlier you bet, the bigger your reward if you win.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:But you can still lose, right? If you were to give Donald Trump in 2015 a million bucks, that says a lot more than giving Donald Trump now a million bucks. Right, because you bet early and you bet hard. So now a lot of people who bet early on Trump are still in his circle and very powerful. So if you're looking at a political dynamic, a lot of these lobbying firms will bet on someone and say, well, I'm going to donate a lot of money to this candidate and if that candidate wins their election now the lobbying firm can say, okay, now I have a good relationship, I have a little bit of control. So now they have to figure out how do I monetize that relationship.
Speaker 3:And that's what lobbying really is. It's monetization of relationships, like any kind of consulting, right? What do you know, who do you know and how do you know it? And so they will go okay, you want a pro-crypto bill passed. I did some pretty good betting on.
Speaker 3:You know about 10 different politicians, so I'm going to charge you X amount of money for the chance that your bill is going to get passed, and a lot of times they pocket about 75% of that money and then the other 25% they put back into the campaigns of the people that they're trying to get to pass the legislation so that they can continue the favoritism and hopefully next year get them reelected.
Speaker 3:And so when you're thinking, okay, how do I get involved on the federal level? What's the next bill that I pass? That's why Chamber of Commerce models become so effective, because you have 20 different companies that join together and say we all support A, b and C policy proposals. They can all donate through the chamber and have the chamber give money so that they can say their unified voice, or they can all give individually, but essentially creates an industry group that says here's what we believe, here's what we're for, and you've had that in crypto now for quite some time. You have quite a few DC industry groups, groups and even dc, uh, crypto focused, uh lobbying firms that essentially push those agendas huh.
Speaker 2:So it's very um, this is very interesting to think about. It's like, uh, to affect change on a local level, it's pretty easy just to show up to the, to the events, but to affect change on the larger levels, you have to have a bigger part. You got to have people together. They have to rally together, they have to be represented by one voice. So that way, when these people go to legislators and lawmakers, these folks realize that, hey, there's more on the line here than just telling one person no.
Speaker 2:Now I'm telling 150,000 people no, and those 150,000 people know 10 people that they're going to trash me in front of during the holidays, for example, and that 150,000 is actually a 10, x or 15 or 20 X difference. So I had to be very, very careful. I have to be very political in my answers. And how am I going to say yes, or am I going to say no in a tactful way? Am I going to give them some sort of concession but not giving them everything that they want? So that's uh, that's very, it's very interesting to think about here.
Speaker 3:I walked in on a politician. We had a bill that looked pretty bad. I called it a mini-bit license and some of that was marketing, but some of it I did believe it was a bad bill. Last year Walked in with a few companies that I represented or that were part of my chamber. I should say and we sit down. And he sits down and I go well, we want to talk about bill you know one, two, three, four, five, and I just want to let you know we believe it's a bad bill and here's why.
Speaker 3:And he cut me off immediately, he didn't even let me finish. He goes hey, man, listen, I haven't read the bill. I don't even know what's in the bill. I'm glad you're here, but I was just told by my buddy that this would be good for the industry and that's why I did it. If you don't like it, that's fine. I have no intention of passing it. I can give you my buddy's number and you guys can talk it out. That's how it went. A lot of these politicians are not reading the legislation and they can't be experts in everything. Some of them will try to pick an expertise in one or two things, and that's what you call your champion and that's who you run through. But a lot of them are just trying to get by and try to become an expert or have a trusted circle around them of people to trust. And this guy just happened to trust somebody who, I guess, wanted to hurt the industry here in Florida for their own gain. And so it's sometimes that simple.
Speaker 3:I tell a lot of people man, you just got to show up right because yeah, had we not shown up, this guy would have gone along and been like, wow, I'm promoting pro web 3, pro crypto, bitcoin legislation, I'm awesome. And then I come in and be like, hey, you know, that bill's terrible. And he's like what? No, I had no idea. I didn't even read it, right. My buddy told me it was good, so I thought thought it was good. Really, it can be that simple.
Speaker 2:Huh, well, okay, so let's talk about the crypto industry now. And this is yeah, maybe this is through the eyes of a libertarian Okay, sure, so you're in an event. Some guy comes up to you and he says hey, man, the Satoshi, you know what the Satoshi white paper outlined is completely different than what we're seeing right now. You've got you know, you've got institutional guys involved, you've got BlackRock and you've got you know, you've got MicroStrategy and all this. Bitcoin is at the very top, is becoming the supplies becoming very centralized and a small amount of wallets so is. Is that a reason for concern, sam, okay, and that's what the guy tells you. Is that a reason for concern? Are we drifting away from from what it once was? Should I be worried that governments and and the people who play ball with governments are getting involved more? What are your thoughts there?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, I like to say we all get what we deserve, and a lot of people in the Bitcoin community have wanted adoption and wanted the number to go up, and they haven't really talked about what that actually looks like. But what we're seeing is adoption and the number going up, and so for a lot of people who got in early congrats like you're holding a great asset, do I think it's going to be harder for people to get in. Are they going to try to create barriers to entry? Probably, because that's what happens when assets that are new become adopted. Is it a worry? Probably that depends who you're worried about.
Speaker 3:A lot of these people aren't worried because they've already got enough of it, and so what do they have to worry about? Right, you have like the Michael Saylors of the world. The guy's a genius, you know he's not. What's he concerned with? He's got enough. Bitcoin MicroStrategy is going to continue to do well. Is he worried that it's becoming centralized? Or is he worried that, you know, etfs and government are starting to regulate it? No, right, because all it means for him is he's made a good financial investment.
Speaker 3:Now, if you're someone currently who hasn't gotten into Bitcoin, well, one, you probably don't know that you should be worried. But if you do find out you're probably going to be worried because there may be a day where you can only invest and buy in the ETF and can't self-custody, or like you've missed the boat right and you just now Bitcoin's too expensive and you've missed the opportunity for generational wealth. So once again it kind of goes back to like the human nature side of things is this is kind of just the natural process of what happens. I think my goal for a lot of people is to make the best of what happens naturally. So obviously I'm never in favor of centralization, but you know, centralization brings about what. It brings about maturity in a market and it also brings about higher prices right In the asset because we have financial products being launched. Financial products, whether you like them or not, are going to bring in more liquidity and bring in number go up, which is all that you know. A certain subset of people seem to be care, be caring about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when did that? When did that change, Like I guess?
Speaker 3:probably this cycle. I mean, you can look at videos of me talking to some friends in uh, maybe 2022. And even back then, I was saying this is the last real Bitcoin cycle where generational wealth can be created. After this, it's going to be owned by the institution, so I think, kind of FTX getting involved, but then, especially now with BlackRock, is where Bitcoin has officially become financialized, you know, within the Wall Street world, and so it went from being a product for consumers or retail to now an institutional product, which some would say that's good, some would say that's bad. It depends on your vision and what adoption means. Right, and that's, you know, probably too lengthy of a conversation, but the fact is that, yeah, now the institutions are here, which is what Bitcoiners have wanted for forever. Back in 2017, everyone was stating well, one day, right, I remember it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Constantly and they have like a graph. They're like yeah, it's, you know, this person's going to buy, and then this person's going to buy, and then this country's going to buy, and then United States is going to buy and yeah, it kind of went that direction and they thought you know.
Speaker 3:They said you know everyone's going to adopt it. You won't have a choice. And they're probably right. And this is what adoption looks like. This is what that process looks like. So, people complaining about centralization or, you know, government getting involved Well, this is actually natural. This is what you've wanted. This is what you've talked about since when you first got in, whether that's 2013 or 2016. And it's always quote unquote the cost of the next group of people that get in, right. So if you get in now, you're extremely happy, regardless of what happens, because as long as the price goes up, you're going to be excited right Now, not trying to be doom or gloom or negative. This is just general, what I think is human psychology. Of course, you're going to have people who are like, well, we really need to be concerned about you know, are we funding bitcoin core devs enough? Are we really trying to build out lightning network or an efficient alternative to lightning network? Right, like, are we really keeping the dream alive?
Speaker 2:and I see some of those conversations on Twitter, but it's definitely a smaller subset now that the institutions are involved, I mean how do you I think I mean, if the institutions have gone through all this rigmarole you know ETFs and obviously they're not just going out here and buying Bitcoin they're having backdoor conversations with these liaisons, banking liaisons between the government, this and that Wouldn't you think that those guys are actually going to be responsible for creating, maybe, the next iteration of the Bitcoin core updates? Don't you think they're going to take more responsibility for this code now and push things? There's a huge financial sacrifice that they put up and they put their name out there to be associated with Bitcoin, so why would they let the network fail?
Speaker 3:I don't know. You know I saw rumors a while back that Michael Saylor didn't want to support Bitcoin devs. I don't know if that's still true. I've talked to Bitcoin devs who have said we're underfunded. And then I talked to Bitcoin devs who have told me well, we don't need to do anything, we don't need to do any more updates to Bitcoin, it could survive perfectly fine, as it is right, this second Right and unfortunately I'm not technical enough, but even if I was, all these technical people still seem to have differing opinions on what works and what doesn't, you know. So maybe BlackRock has realized well, we don't really need to be involved. Or maybe BlackRock has a 10-year plan and they go well, we can do this for 10 years, we'll exit, and then we've made our buck. And who cares what happens?
Speaker 2:There's something going on. I don't know if they're going to have, like you know, exchange your Bitcoin for our new thing, or something like that at some point in the future.
Speaker 2:But I'll tell you dude Sam, what is really going to change everything in the next three years is going to be AI, and people don't see that train coming down the road. Man People just don't understand, and that has huge implications for the cryptocurrency community as well. All these existing blockchains that are out there, the ability for things to be compromised, grow exponentially as we begin to spend more power or more money on power and energy for AI, I think. So that's another topic we could cover at some point.
Speaker 3:Well, that's where you're definitely on the policy side. You see AI and Bitcoin converging, because one of the biggest policy sides of Bitcoin is Bitcoin mining and cheap, efficient, reliable energy. Now Bitcoin miners have a competitor and that is AI. Right, the need for compute is going to be exponential, never ending, and both Bitcoin miners and AI companies are going to be constantly searching for it. And if we get the policies right, I mean I think it could usher in a golden age of energy production to invest more in nuclear and the most efficient forms of electricity known to man, just so that we can almost stay level and normal with the needs of a world reserve asset and AI demands, which are only continuing to grow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a national security threat too. They have to spend money on energy, because if China is spending 5% or 10% of their GDP on on energy infrastructure, then we've got to do that too, because these, these AI civilizations that that are going to be around man, it's like it's like nuclear bombs and you have to have your deterrent. So what's interesting? I talked to I was talking to Gary before and he kind of brought this up and then I've been thinking about it quite a bit, which was either you're going to have Microsoft or IBM or Google turn into an energy company and then kind of bring crypto together, or you can have the energy companies come in and snatch up all these mining entities, because energy companies get the energy straight from the source.
Speaker 2:So from an overhead perspective, it would make a whole lot more sense for them to be mining Bitcoin in the next 20 or 30 years rather than a publicly traded company who you know. I guess a lot of their energy does come from renewable. At this point I think they've kind of made the shift towards that. But he was talking about they're looking for the exit. Okay, so the mining companies, they're looking for an exit. Who better to give them that exit than the energy companies, because they can source that however they want and use that however they want and turn a profit on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, gary made me realize a few things just because of his energy expertise. Like, for example, I never thought but nuclear energy is can't be shut off, right, it is always being produced and the grid doesn't always need that energy, nor can it always handle it. So I think every nuclear reactor is going to have Bitcoin miners to absorb the energy when it doesn't have to be needed elsewhere. And then you're going to have sovereigns like the state of Russia who can quote unquote get the energy for free, right, because they print their own money. So anything that comes out of the ground they have the infrastructure for, and then just go okay, well, we're just going to use the energy that we're paying people for in rubles to mine Bitcoin, right, and so we can just build this incredible energy capacity and infrastructure and essentially turn it off and on using Bitcoin miners at a whim. So it becomes this efficient energy product that nation states, I think, almost have to use over time, especially if they want to invest in things like nuclear. So it's very interesting to me.
Speaker 3:It's actually one of the reasons why I think Democrats are either going to continue to be anti-crypto because I don't think, besides hydropower, that you can do this with renewables like solar and wind reliably, or it's going to force the democratic party to kind of ditch some of their talking points around like a green new deal. Uh, because in order to have the exponential energy consumption that is ai and bitcoin mining, you have to use fossil fuels and I think you have to use nuclear. I don't think renewable can cut it. Uh, and that's my personal opinion. You know I'm no uh energy expert.
Speaker 2:Just for what I read. How crazy this is. For the first time in my life, I've seen a dramatic way in which an election will affect policy, which was the complete capitulation by the Democrat Party via the SEC, to stop the clampdown almost overnight. Dude, that just blew my mind. Okay, I haven't seen the. I've not seen the vitriol from Elizabeth Warren's Twitter account about cryptocurrencies. Yeah, they told her to shut up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they told her to shut up and it's because there was a wave of people and they were crypto people and they were all behind Trump and they're trying to scratch that back. They're trying to capture that back. Do you think at this point, with who you know and who you've talked to, that Kamala takes the presidency?
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, that's where you're going with that. Which, by the way, elizabeth Warren, all her power was with Biden. So, with Biden out of the picture, elizabeth Warren's power is not so great, right? About a third of her staffers went to work for the Biden administration and Biden owed her favors, because she's the reason Biden won the primary in 2020, because she kept it away from Bernie. So her power has waned and will wane in a Kamala presidency. How likely is Kamala to win? I have no idea. You know, I think it's 50-50 chance. To be honest, americans have short memories and there's so much that could happen.
Speaker 2:So much has happened in 60 days. It's been insane, I know right.
Speaker 3:In a month, in 30 days, so much has happened. So you know, 90 to 95% of Americans have made up their mind on who they're going to vote for. It's this arguing over this 5% in these small swing states I should say small, but like Pennsylvania?
Speaker 2:Wisconsin.
Speaker 3:Wisconsin, michigan, arizona, nevada quote unquote Georgia, north Carolina, virginia. Um, that's all that matters. Like, florida doesn't matter. Florida is going to go red, texas is going to go red, utah is going to go red Right, so it all matters what happens in those States, with that 5% of the population that you know legitimately swings back and forth between who they're going to vote for. Um, you know, I, uh, I really I don't know um, what is the future?
Speaker 2:what is the future of cryptocurrency look like under uh a kamala presidency?
Speaker 3:I think it'll be more institutional and more centralized. I think she'll pick her favorites and try to make the market cater toward her favorites. I mean, no one's going to forget these people who have backed the Republican Party right, and they might be the reason that the Republicans flipped the Senate because of all the money they put in these Senate positions, senate races. So politics is about rewarding your friends and hurting your enemies, and so if Kamala wins, I guarantee you she's going to figure out a way to hurt the industry. Maybe that's a promotion of Gensler right to Treasury. Maybe that's someone worse than Gensler, because she proved that she didn't need our industry to win. If she does win, so it's.
Speaker 3:You know we're taking a bet. You know the industry is taking a big bet on Trump. I'm not being doom and gloom, because BlackRock will never let you know Bitcoin ETFs be, you know, regulated to where they can't make money. Right, institutions are involved. But what does matter is you know these court cases we've seen with the SEC and and Ripple and Gemini, and you know any of these other companies. So we'll see targeted, we'll see targeted campaigns, um, and it'll be very interesting. I mean, it'll be very interesting to see who they go after and who they leave alone.
Speaker 2:Cool dude. Um, all right, man, man, I'm an hour type of guy here. I like to keep it right in an hour and I think keep people's attention pretty well in that way. Talk to people about if they need to get in contact with you or want to get in contact. Do you maybe talk about some of the services you provide, if you do at this point, just kind of talk about that.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I mean you can just go follow me on Twitter. That's probably the best way. My ad is just Samuel Arms. Now I've transitioned. Right now I'm working with Gary Cardone on media. I've gotten him politically involved, as you've probably seen over the past month, so now that's kind of my full focus is ensuring that we build kind of a powerhouse around Cardone Digital Ventures as far as media and politics goes and influence, and so that's kind of my shift right now. But it's just as exciting and it's all kind of in the same avenue and same world. So, yeah, just Samuel Arms on Twitter. It's the same on TikTok, instagram, youtube. You know, just Google my name and you'll find me easy YouTube you know, just Google my name and you'll find me easy.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Let me do one more thing here. You have to give me your snap reaction in two or three seconds. Okay, I'm going to give you a word and you just react. You ready, yeah? Yeah, all right, we're going to do like 15 or 20 of these.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Bitcoin Great Elon Musk Good guy. Blockchain, yeah sure, bitcoin great elon musk good guy blockchain cool opec opec uh dying ethereum. Fine donald trump, love them greta thunberg. Weird Vladimir Putin, intense Solana. Funny Carbon tax, stupid Mark Zuckerberg. Also interesting Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3:Saudi Arabia. What's my reaction to that? Cool, maybe not cool Depends.
Speaker 2:Hawk Tua. No, I'm just kidding, we're not going to do that oh yeah, yeah, right, just picking. All right, dude. I appreciate you coming on, man. Good conversation. I think we covered a whole lot of topics and, yeah, guys, reach out to this guy, follow this guy, we'll put his twitter here, it'll pop up on the screen and we'll be good to go. Thanks, so much, buddy you bet all right thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:Thank you.