Search Bitcoin Park in your favorite podcast app to listen to other discussions from the Park.
This conversation was recorded at the Tennessee Beef Initiative Micro-Summit, a two-day event at Bitcoin Park in Nashville, TN that brought Bitcoiners, ranchers, and producers together for a mutual exchange of valuable information about supporting local communities.
Recorded: December 9, 2022
Texas Slim and Matt Odell explain what Bitcoin is and how it facilitates peer-to-peer-based circular economies.
Panelists:
Texas Slim: (https://twitter.com/modernTman)
Matt Odell: (https://twitter.com/ODELL)
Resources:
The Beef Initiative: https://beefinitiative.com/
Bitcoin Park is a community supported campus in Nashville, TN focused on grassroots bitcoin adoption and a home for bitcoiners to work, learn, collaborate, and build.
Our aim is to produce and publish conversations from future events, so please like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app to stay up to date.
To learn more, please visit and join: https://bitcoinpark.co and/or join our Discord where we are most active: https://discord.gg/YZ8x7mfFKj
Follow us on Twitter:
Bitcoin Park: https://twitter.com/bitcoinpark_
Matt Odell: https://twitter.com/ODELL
Rod @bitkite: https://twitter.com/bitkite
This conversation was recorded at the Tennessee Beef Initiative Micro-Summit, a two-day event at Bitcoin Park in Nashville, TN that brought Bitcoiners, ranchers, and producers together for a mutual exchange of valuable information about supporting local communities.
Recorded: December 9, 2022
Texas Slim and Matt Odell explain what Bitcoin is and how it facilitates peer-to-peer-based circular economies.
Panelists:
Texas Slim: (https://twitter.com/modernTman)
Matt Odell: (https://twitter.com/ODELL)
Resources:
The Beef Initiative: https://beefinitiative.com/
Bitcoin Park is a community supported campus in Nashville, TN focused on grassroots bitcoin adoption and a home for bitcoiners to work, learn, collaborate, and build.
Our aim is to produce and publish conversations from future events, so please like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app to stay up to date.
To learn more, please visit and join: https://bitcoinpark.co and/or join our Discord where we are most active: https://discord.gg/YZ8x7mfFKj
Follow us on Twitter:
Bitcoin Park: https://twitter.com/bitcoinpark_
Matt Odell: https://twitter.com/ODELL
Rod @bitkite: https://twitter.com/bitkite
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
One thing that happened within Bitcoin is, you know, I got onto some podcast pretty early on, and people started hearing that we were doing beef for Bitcoin and be Bitcoin for beef back and forth in it because it is a two way, you know, transaction. It's peer to peer, but a lot of the ranchers, they don't have enough money to buy Bitcoin. And we're like, oh, well, you know, do you take well, no. They wanna earn the Bitcoin. That's one thing that I did find is, like, they will more than willingly exchange beef for Bitcoin. And so we had to build that basically technology stack. And it's been a year since we've been working on that.
We had, I call him maple syrup guy. Don't know who he is. Never met him, but he's maple syrup guy. And he heard me and Adam Curry on a podcast, and so he looked me up, and he DM'd me on Twitter. And he said, hey. What's this beef and Bitcoin thing? And then so I told him. And within probably less than 15 minutes, I had him connected to Michael with Oshi, Oshi app, and then it's kinda evolved from Oshi to Ibex to people understanding, hey, this isn't as hard as we thought. Well, he basically got these really cool containers, and he's now selling out of maple syrup. He has another revenue stream just because he decided to accept Bitcoin, and so all the Bitcoiners came to him and said, hey. Can we have some maple syrup? And he said, hell yes. He goes, give me some Bitcoin.
So he did that. Well, then, you know, our friend Charles Mayfield of FARO, he does skin products out of lard, Okay. Regenative. Did y'all know how many people know that your skin is your second stomach? Okay. Those that you don't know, your skin is your second stomach. So everything that you put on your skin is basically going to go through your digestive tract of your body, basically. So all those chemicals that you think you're not eating, when you put it on your body, you're putting a lot of things. What we do in regenerative farming and ranching is we utilize the whole animal.
Charles with Farrow, he does getting care products out of hog lard. Lard help us is what he says. If you know Charles, it matches. So he, basically, he started doing lard, and now what? Guess what? He accepts Bitcoin. And he's basically increasing his sales. Now he has another revenue stream that he can live and feed his children and everything. He can raise his hogs, and he can he can say, Lord, help us every day of his life. But then a maple syrup guy came along. He goes, hey. My sister, she likes to make soap. She's a nurse, but she can't sell any soap because nobody knows how to contact her. They don't have market access to the soap that she's making.
Well, now she's accepting Bitcoin for her soap, and now she can't make enough soap because she's opted in to be able to value for value. So people want her soap. She's accepting their Bitcoin. So she sent us some soap. Her name is Sarah. I'll give you all her information later. And then we have Clara and Fritz. They're in, New Jersey, and they left the centralized, basically, corporate world, and now they're making skincare products out of tallow. Now they're accepting Bitcoin, and each one of these people, basically, it was one conversation.
And now we have a plethora of products here that we don't ever have to worry about. We don't have to validate the deception when it comes to soap, when it comes to skincare, when it comes to maybe children eating something that's sweet, but it's actually natural. There's always a roadmap there for us to choose, but we have to choose it as an individual. What we have to do is basically understand, you know, those those roadmaps into Bitcoin create all of these relationships. And there's somebody here that was in Colorado. Everybody knows Matt Odell. Correct? Everybody knows Matt. Well, Matt is he's one thing that he's always said is education is key, and he has dedicated his life. He's driven more around this country than I have the last 10 years, and he has a remarkable story.
Go ahead. What's the story? Oh, man. You're in here. Oh, no. I mean, I don't think I
[00:04:31] Unknown:
I think driven a lot.
[00:04:33] Unknown:
Yeah. But you how how many years did you and your your bride I mean, we we drove around for 2 years. That's a lot of driving. Yeah. But what he's done is he's edging
[00:04:44] Unknown:
what you do too. Like, the we gotta get off gotta get off the interstates. There you go. Gotta do the back roads. You have to.
[00:04:52] Unknown:
And that's that's what's key because if you drive around the interstates, you're just basically looking everything is the same. It's just deja vu, the same hotels, same restaurants, same fast food, same truck stops. And so but what Matt has done is he's pioneered to a form of education that has helped my life. It's helped a lot of people in this room's life because he makes it easy. He he eliminates all that friction when it comes to Bitcoin. And so in Colorado, we were able to onboard a lot of people with Bitcoin in a very short period of time, and everybody was amazed. It's like, oh, I'm not intimidated anymore. And I think that's one of the barriers that we have to cross as far as Bitcoin is not being intimidated by it. The use case of it, it becomes something a little bit more that you yearn to do is like, well, hell, that was easy. So we're going to go through a session with Mr. Odell right now. And he's going to teach us how to take that friction and that intimidation out of our minds.
So we can actually create these relationships that do build the circular economy of energy that we're all searching for. Cheers. Thank you, Son. You bet. Thank you for being here. It's just an honor.
[00:06:05] Unknown:
But first of all, before I get started, I wanna thank everyone for participating. Ultimately, this is a movement of individuals. So couldn't happen without all of you, including our wonderful speakers, Anne Weldon. It was fantastic hearing you guys talk again, your discussions with Jason, with Slim. Hayden was fantastic. I look forward to I think doctor Sean Baker's coming after me. Just a great event. Great food. Gourmet caveman's fantastic. So Bitcoin. Well, first, we have a half an hour running a little bit late. We have a half an hour, so I'm gonna make this really tight, and then we're gonna do q and a because I like q and a the most. And you can just try and stump me with your questions, and I'll do my best at answering them.
First of all, my name is Matt. I've basically focused the last 5 or 6 years of my life on Bitcoin education. And I have trouble saying no to things, so I just keep adding more and more to my plate on the Bitcoin side, including Bitcoin Park Even though I've only been in Nashville for a year, 6 months in, we decided to launch this place, which is a little bit ambitious, but, it's a pleasure to have you all here as our guests. Who here raise your hand if you've used Bitcoin before. That's great. Okay. There's a starting point. In Colorado, when we were at Jason's Ranch, a lot of people hadn't used Bitcoin before. So as Slim said, we actually did an onboarding session where I had them install their first wallet, receive their 1st Bitcoin that was, contributed by Ibex.
Ibex is a payment processor. They make accepting Bitcoin very easy for businesses. They're who we use in the coffee shop over there if you paid on the iPad. And we went through the whole steps of using Bitcoin for the first time in about 15 minutes, a little bit under 15 minutes. I had them time me, and we tried to do it under 15, and I think we had 14 minutes. So that was really, really empowering and fantastic. And why do I say that? I say that because people have a tendency to think Bitcoin is extremely complicated. But the cool part about Bitcoin is it's actually really simple and easy to use.
Now if you decide to dedicate your life to Bitcoin education and trying to use it as powerfully as possible, it can get very complicated. But that's the same with most things. But on the surface, Bitcoin is simply a money. It's a money that is independent of governments and companies, that you can use between 2 people. You can do transactions around the world. You can do transactions in person without any middleman in between. To use Bitcoin is as simple as just installing an app on your phone. The sign up process is very clean. You don't have to provide an email address. You don't have to take a picture of your face. You don't have to provide a driver's license.
You simply install this app. You get presented with this Bitcoin wallet on your phone, and you're able to receive Bitcoin instantly. Once you have Bitcoin, you're able to send Bitcoin instantly. No middleman involved, no company in the middle taking fees, no company that you have to trust with settlement over 30 days like these credit card companies do, no chargeback risk. Some of these online businesses we see you know, people talk about credit card fees. Credit card fees are, like, 3 to 5%. Not great for a business with with low margins. But what really crushes you is the chargebacks. And if you look at online business, it really goes up. Chargebacks account for almost 30%.
So if you if you include chargebacks in taking credit card payments, you're looking at kind of like a 30% margin hit for taking credit cards if you're an online business. Fraud's a little bit less significantly less for in person transactions. So Bitcoin is very interesting in that scenario for accepting payments as a business. But Bitcoin is also extremely empowering for individuals. Bitcoin is a movement of personal responsibility. There's no customer support line you can contact, but at the same time, it means that your money is in your hands and complete control of you.
It's on you to secure it, but as a result, you can spend, you can save without permission, without anybody's permission. Nobody can debase Bitcoin. There's no Jerome Powell that decides how much inflation there's gonna be. It's just a fixed supply. There's only a certain amount of Bitcoin. Most people know there's 21,000,000 Bitcoin. That number is mostly irrelevant except that it doesn't change because Bitcoin is computer code and decimals exist. So as adoption increases, Bitcoin price should increase. Bitcoin I don't like saying Bitcoin price. Bitcoin purchasing power.
And for this crowd, that means how much beef can you buy with your Bitcoin. That should increase with adoption. But as that increases, people will use smaller and smaller units of Bitcoin because we have decimals, because we can infinitely basically infinitely divide Bitcoin. So don't get wrapped up in, oh, Bitcoin's $16,000. I can't afford it. You can transact $5 worth of Bitcoin. You can transact $2 worth of Bitcoin. And when we're done with this movement, hopefully, we won't even be using dollar terms. It'll just be how many how much Bitcoin do you need to to buy that beef? How much Bitcoin do you need to buy that land? How much Bitcoin do you need to buy that milk? So bit Bitcoin is 13 year old project. It's open source code. Why is that important?
Open source code is not owned by anybody. It is inherently viral in nature. No company controls it. No one's got copyrights on it, trademarks. Anyone can take that code, change it, do whatever they want with it. But Bitcoin's also a social movement. And what that means is the majority of Bitcoin users are running this code, and changes are extremely, extremely hard to happen. The the by design, it's very, very difficult to change because you need an overwhelming majority of those users to go along with the change. And people just aren't you know, it's it's it's hard to get millions of people to agree on something. So as a result, Bitcoin's extremely hard to change, but that's a value, not a negative.
Because if you can have changes, then you can have changes that are negative to us. You can have a change that increases the supply of Bitcoin is the most popular one that people like talking about because people like getting rich, and they like talking about it as an investment vehicle. But also changes like people of a certain political spectrum can't use Bitcoin, or people of a certain religion can't use Bitcoin, or certain people of different, races or countries can't use Bitcoin. Those kind of changes are almost they're practically impossible to happen on Bitcoin because it's so hard to change. So that's a key that's a key key value prop there of Bitcoin.
So with all this said, we have this money that you can transfer between individuals, no permission, no company taking fees, no government telling you what you can do with it, has a free floating market purchasing power. And as a result, any individual anywhere and this is key, and I love that Slim always talks about this is it's a it's a movement of consent. I will never tell someone that they should use Bitcoin. I will never, you know, call you an idiot for not using Bitcoin. I love talking about Bitcoin, and if you have questions, I will answer all of your questions. But my belief with Bitcoin is similar to the beef initiative movement, regenerative agriculture in general, these kind of movements that empower individuals is that people will realize the need. And when they realize the need, we need to make sure we have education and tools available for them. And there's millions of people that have a need for better money already, and they're being underserved.
So why focus on trying to convince people that have no desire or no need to discover this thing to use it. It's just a waste of time. It's not it's not a productive exercise, and, ultimately, it's consent. It's opt in. It's an opt in movement. You either want personal responsibility or you don't want personal responsibility. One last thing I wanna touch on before we go to q and a is the narrative around Bitcoin has been perverted to a degree, and it's been perverted by this idea of it as an investment asset. Now I believe that Bitcoin is a fantastic way to store wealth and save wealth.
And why is that important? That's important because this idea that people need to be financial wizards or hire a financial adviser in order to save their wealth and make sure it increases in value over their time just so that they can get that wealth to their children or to their grandchildren is absolutely ridiculous. It's completely insane that that is the status quo. Really, people should be able to focus on on on what they do. They should be able to live their life, enjoy their life. They should be ranchers and plumbers and whatever they wanna do in life, and they should be able to just store their wealth in the money that increases their purchasing power over time. So the fact that that Bitcoin is scarce, the fact that you can hold it yourself without permission, the fact that the purchasing power should increase long term because of adoption is important as a savings vehicle.
But this idea of of of treating it almost like a stock, as an investment where you go on to these brokerage platforms and you trade the ups and downs of the short term movements is a complete perversion of the movement to me. Now because Bitcoin doesn't require permission, people are welcome to do that. They can do that. But when you're thinking about Bitcoin, it's important not to think of it in that lens. And as a result, what we've seen is we've seen a lot of people's first experience with Bitcoin with these large centralized brokerages. You can think of them like stock trading websites or apps, stuff like Robinhood. Most of them now seeking money actually have added Bitcoin even if they do stocks. Like Robinhood, you can buy Bitcoin on now. Venmo, you can buy Bitcoin on. Cash App, you can buy Bitcoin on.
But these are centralized entities, and as a result, they are connected to the traditional financial system. They're connected to the banking system, and they have all of this KYC regulation. They require you to upload your ID. They require permission to use. They have privacy risks involved. They can cut you off from your money at any time. And as a result, people start to think of Bitcoin in that light even though Bitcoin at its core requires zero permission and you can just use it without any of these centralized entities. You also have on top of that, you have all of these penny stocks compared to Bitcoin. You have all these altcoins or alter you know, alternative networks.
We like to call them shit coins. I was getting there, Jason. I was I was dropping them in nice and easy. Bitcoin is open source software, which means people can change it if they want, but it doesn't mean that the rest of the community has consensus with those changes. So any of us like, we can launch a shitcoin in 15 minutes if we wanted to, and then we can build a big narrative around it and try and pump the price up and then sell it on unwitting fools, and make a quick short term profit. That is completely separate from the Bitcoin movement. It looks it might look a little similar. Their promoters might make it seem like it's similar, but it's completely it's completely separate from the Bitcoin movement. Can we make a TV commercial and have a quarterback sell it too for us? Yeah. We can he can he can ask us all if we're in during the Super Bowl, and then it can turn out to be a Ponzi. Yes. That could happen.
We recently found out Kevin O'Leary got paid $15,000,000 to promote the FTX Ponzi. That was one of the examples. And a lot of people trusted FTX with their with their Bitcoin and with the shit coins too, and they lost all their money because, it required trust. It was a centralized platform. A lot of fraud was committed. But Bitcoin on its own, you can actually hold yourself and and hold those keys yourself, and and no no one can take it away from you. But why do I bring that up? I bring that up because we have these products up here. We have the beef initiative where you could buy beef with Bitcoin. Slim mentioned Oshi. Oshi is another app. Michael Atwood is the founder. He's fantastic. He's cofounder, JP, is fantastic.
Oshi is an app that basically is is like a search tool for Bitcoin businesses. You can just if you can get listed on Oshi, you can kinda think of it almost like a Groupon. He would kill me if he heard me say this. I think it's being recorded. But, like, it lists a bunch of Bitcoin businesses, and it also lists discounts, right, to encourage people to spend Bitcoin because a lot of these merchants want Bitcoin. A lot of these businesses want Bitcoin. They prefer to have Bitcoin. And why do I say this? I say this because these centralized entities, I consider them essentially an attack on Bitcoin.
Similar to, I'm sure we have some gold bugs in the room. They rightfully believe that centralized entities are an attack on gold and that there's paper gold trading out there, lots and lots of paper gold trading out there. And so how do we get around these centralized entities? Everyone says it's unavoidable. People are gonna wanna use their bank account to connect into Bitcoin. That comes with regulation. That comes with all this burdensome regulation. Those burdensome regulations result in centralizing factors where you only have 2 or 3 large exchanges in the country, similar to the issues we have with processing centers with beef. How do we get around that? The way we get around that is is something called a circular economy, the idea that you don't buy Bitcoin, you earn Bitcoin.
You don't sell Bitcoin, you spend Bitcoin. And as a result, we we start to start to build a thriving thriving local first circular economy, where it's individuals transacting with individuals rather than individuals interacting with large financial institutions. And that is a key key aspect of both a lot of my work and also the work with the beef initiative, and Maple Guy is is a perfect example of that Maple Guy and Soap Lady. It was really like to call it which I like to call it. Sarah, I found out her name is Sarah yesterday, but I'm just gonna keep calling her soap lady because I haven't met her yet. But she has a global market because we press retweet. Right? And she's able to interact with people and accept payments without any company, without any government in the middle, just consenting individuals deciding to transact with each other. It's a truly special thing.
So with all that said, we have 15 minutes. Let's let's hit some q and a, and I appreciate you all. We got Anne over here with a question. I may have misheard you, but did you just say Oshi is, like, a negative thing for Bitcoin? No. Oshi's great because Oshi doesn't first of all, Anne, I appreciate you asking the question, but I just wanna let you know that you can call me whenever you want to. I'm I'm happy to help you. Oshi is a centralized company, but Oshi doesn't actually hold your Bitcoin. It's Oshi is a matchmaker. Right? So you if you're listed on Oshi, I can pay you I can find you on Oshi. I could either pay you directly or you can use a company like Ibex, which I wouldn't I also wouldn't consider them part of the problem. Ibex does take ownership of your Bitcoin. They hold your Bitcoin when you receive it, but they set up their service so that they distribute that Bitcoin to you as quick as possible.
So for instance, Ibex, we're using Ibex in this coffee shop. We give them a Bitcoin address that we have control over. They accept the payments throughout the day, and then at the end of the day, they settle it to us and automatically send it to us. So at any given time, you know, if there's a $100 worth of payments today, they could rug pull us for a $100 of payments as soon you know, it's it's a mitigated risk. It's it's an accepted risk that we take on. But if you compare it to something like a credit card processor where you're waiting 30 days and and then it gets sent to a bank account, which you actually never have control over that money in the whole process, it's significantly better. Now there is an open source alternative called BTC pay server, which we actually will be running at the park relatively soon.
And BTC pay servers is open source code. So it's a it's a full stack payment processor where you do not have to give up custody to a centralized company, period. But, yeah, Oshi is definitely part of the solution and not part of the problem. Next question.
[00:22:41] Unknown:
This gentleman up here. Do you see anything coming as far as the non KYC Bitcoin? I know there's more peer to peer opportunities, but they're all sort of really clunky for dollar cost averaging, and it seems like an impediment to those of us that wanna be accumulating. Is there anything that you see coming that's gonna help from a liquidity
[00:23:05] Unknown:
and bigger Well, I I think they're very valid question. I think I think what it comes down to is in our life, we always see a trade off between convenience, and privacy and security. Convenience and sovereignty, really. And I don't think the sovereign path will ever be the most convenient path. I think that's I mean, I'm not not a scientist, but it seems like a physics limitation or something like that. Right? Like, it almost seems like a rule of law that the con that the convenient option will always be easier than the self sovereign option.
I think the solution is the circular economy. The question is how long it takes. Right? So to his question, he mentioned no KYC. What he means by that is there are platforms that allow you to basically coordinate trades between people of dollars to Bitcoin, and and they're not centralized. So it's it's almost kinda like Oshi in that regard is like you go you go to the website or you go to the app and it's like, oh, Bob wants to buy Bitcoin, and I'm Matt, and I wanna sell Bitcoin, and we exchange dollars for Bitcoin directly. Now the issue there is the dollar side.
The dollar side is broken and the dollar side is completely captured and controlled, and you have all this burdensome regulation on top of the dollar side. So the only easy solution on the dollar side is really cash, which also is going away, not only because governments are trying to push cash away, but also because young people don't want to use cash. Most of my peers do not use cash. Like when I pull cash out of my pocket, they look like I'm crazy. Like, why do you have so much tipping paper on you? And we see some stores don't even accept cash anymore. Right? So you still have cash trades you can do, but then on top of that, you have issues with government regulation in the name of terrorism and stuff like that. They they use all these excuses. Ultimately, it's to control people. It's really what it's there for. It's not to stop criminals. Criminals use the financial system all the time. Right?
Gangs are using HSBC. They're funneling 1,000,000 of dollars through HSBC, but the average person isn't able to, you know, create a cashier's check at HSBC without having, like, 5 different people, like, look over everything you're doing. Yeah. So so the the the issue is on the dollar side. Oh, but where was I going with that? The other issue is, like, one stop gap is this idea of, like, having community spaces where, you know, where you all trade cash for Bitcoin with each other. But you never know because governments like to really fuck people over that do that. Right? So it creates a chilling effect. So the real solution in my mind, the long term solution is circular economy.
Earn Bitcoin, spend Bitcoin, don't buy Bitcoin, don't sell Bitcoin. And if you think about it, like, you're a shop owner, you have a coffee shop. Right? All your all your transactions don't have to be in Bitcoin for it to be a success. If If you have 10% of your transactions in Bitcoin, all of a sudden you have a steady flow of Bitcoin that goes into savings. And then you can you can hold that long term. And I I think I think that's the key. I think a lot of people say, I love Bitcoin. I wanna work in Bitcoin. How can I help the Bitcoin movement? And I always ask them, I'm like, well, what do you do right now? And they're like, oh, I'm a doctor. I was like, well, be a doctor that accepts Bitcoin.
You know, I'm a plumber. Be a plumber that accepts Bitcoin. Like, you don't know. Not everyone has to learn to code. It's a great meme. Not everyone has to, you know, learn how to use their own nodes and, you know, build their own hardware wallet. By the way, we're having a hardware wallet workshop on Saturday where you can learn how to build your own hardware wallet. But just do what you do and use Bitcoin as money, and you really do help. You really do help this movement, and you do enable other individuals to be able to take advantage of those services, for Bitcoin. I mean, it doesn't take that many businesses in a local community to start accepting Bitcoin to the point where the majority of of your needs can be satisfied with Bitcoin purchases.
Now you might not have as much selection in the beginning. But in general, when when supporting small businesses, you don't have as much selection to begin with. Right? So I I don't think it's that much of a negative, but but it is definitely a bootstrapping issue to a degree. And, I mean, we see it all the time. This is Bitcoin Park. We have ride or die Bitcoiners that are obsessed with Bitcoin come here every month. We always make sure to have a local vendor. I mean, this was great this time because, we had Holy Cow Beef provide the food, but usually, we have, like, a a local burger purveyor outside, selling sliders or something like that or or sausages or I mean, that's exactly what we had this time, but, usually, it actually is sliders and sausages.
And they don't accept Bitcoin. Usually, they're not Bitcoiners. So what we do is we onboard them to Bitcoin. We teach them how to use Bitcoin. We're like, you need to accept Bitcoin. They're like, I'm a little skeptical. We're like, look. If you don't wanna hold the Bitcoin, at the end of the day, we can convert that to dollars for you and give you the dollars. No skin off your back, but we wanted you to see how it works. And And why do I say this? I say this because we'll have 200 ride or die Bitcoiners here, and, like, 10% of them actually spend Bitcoin with the merchant. Most of them pull out their credit cards and and swipe on the little square iPad terminal or whatever.
So it's a two sided street. Right? It's like merchants you know, there needs to be education on the merchant side, but also, it'd be nice if Bitcoiners got a little bit more comfortable with actually using and spending Bitcoin, having you know, you don't have to have that much money on your phone, but, you know, have, like, a $100 worth of Bitcoin on your phone. So when you're out and about, if you see a Bitcoin supporting business, you can actually spend Bitcoin on the spot. And and you think about these merchants, you think about these small businesses, it's it's probably a little bit different for ranchers and producers because it's it's usually larger orders, smaller groups of individuals that are, like, repeat buyers.
And Bitcoin actually works almost better in that situation because the problem you see with the small businesses is they start accepting Bitcoin, and then, like, 4 months later, they've done 5 transactions for, like, a total of $50. And they were like, this is ridiculous. I'm not gonna educate my employees on how to use this thing if I'm not actually doing any kind of transaction. So actually going out there and supporting these businesses means that they're actually gonna they're actually gonna keep accepting it because, you know, businesses don't wanna accept something that that no one's spending with. Yeah. That was a long answer, but it's an important question. Do we have another question?
[00:29:41] Unknown:
Hey, Matt. First time, long time. I I got a question from a nice gentleman outside in terms of, I'm interested to what would you recommend let's say I'm a producer or a rancher and I have, like, an Ibex or an Oshi type setup And at the end of the day, you know, they're sending me the Bitcoin. Right? What would you recommend as as far as, like, a relatively easy to use kind of sovereign wallet stack that could be accessible?
[00:30:07] Unknown:
Well, so when we were at Jason's, Bitcoiners are funny because we we try and we get obsessed with Bitcoin. I know my own experience is I was a young I was a young man, and I was very pessimistic on our world and our institutions and our society. And I didn't really see a path forward, and then I found Bitcoin, and Bitcoin provided a a hopeful path, a a path that, like, maybe it would work out for the best and it, you know, you wouldn't just devolve into some kind of chaotic situation that my kids would grow up into. And a lot of Bitcoiners feel that way, so we get really obsessed with Bitcoin.
And then we end up arguing with each other over, like, the minutiae of different Bitcoin storage strategies, even though the majority of people lose Bitcoin because they either press a link in their email and then give their Bitcoin away, or they, like, put it on FTX or something and and their Bitcoin gets stolen from fraud or government action or KYC policies where they freeze your account. So I actually do think that we over we scare people a little bit on on security practices of Bitcoin. It's it's important that people are prudent about Bitcoin because it is personal responsibility.
But, anyway, long winded answer to say that I think for most people, a phone wallet is where you start. And Jason's how Jason's ranch, Jason's home. We did Moon Wallet, which is m u u n. It's a great Argentinian team, that I know very well. Also, open source code. You download it on your phone. The setup's really easy. It's very easy to use, And then they have a backup method there. There's a built in backup method, and the backup method, is very straightforward for new users because it's an email password. It's something that people are very comfortable with. Most Bitcoin wallets don't use an email password as your backup method. Most good Bitcoin wallets do not. So they actually have gotten a decent amount of flack for that, but I think it's a very good starting point.
And then basically it comes down to risk, right? So it's like you start to hit. I would say like a phone while it is you kind of think about it as you're like a back pocket full of cash plus. Right. Because it's it's more secure than than having cash in your back pocket. So maybe, like, you start to hit, like, 3,000, $5,000 in that wallet, and at that point, you really wanna upgrade and you you upgrade to something that we call cold storage. And cold storage is this idea that which is crazy to think about because Bitcoin is Internet money, is that you can actually hold Bitcoin offline.
And the way Bitcoin works is actually Bitcoin is we have this global ledger. This we call it the blockchain. We got this global ledger, and that's where all the Bitcoin transactions are recorded. But to spend the Bitcoin, everyone can see the Bitcoin on the ledger, but to spend the Bitcoin, you need something called private keys. You can think about it like the key to your house. That private key is the key to the Bitcoin that says you can spend the Bitcoin, and that's what you need to keep secure. The way we look at Bitcoin private keys in person is essentially we call them seed words. They're these secret backup words.
So if you use one of these wallets, pretty much every every wallet except for Moon, which makes it a little bit ironic when I recommend Moon first, which is nice because you have the emails and passwords, you get these 12 words or 24 words, It's random words in English. Those words are the keys to your Bitcoin, and you can generate those offline. So there's a bunch of wallets that are made to be offline wallets. My favorite is called the Coldcard. There's another one by Foundation Devices called the Passport. These wallets go from, like, a $150 to $300. You can kinda think about, like, investing in a safe that you hold your gold in. Right? You buy a couple of gold coins, fine. They go in the drawer.
Right? But once you start having more and more gold that you're stocking up, like, you want to have an actual safe and you don't want to go buy the cheapest safe that is sold from China. You want to buy a really nice, well made safe that's well reviewed. Right? And that's what these hardware wallets are. You basically get the wallet. You go through the setup instructions. It's gonna give you the words. You either write them down on a piece of paper, that's a good way to start, and then probably put them into safe as well. Don't use safe deposit boxes. Those are completely captured. They can get into them very easily.
They being I hate that just the random day. They being, like, governments or the banks themselves or police. We saw that just happened in LA. They just drilled into a bunch of boxes with basically no warrant, no real reason. They just said, oh, there's crimes being committed, so we're just gonna drill into those boxes. So keep it somewhere safe. And then you can also because they're words, right, There's a lot of ways you can store those words. One way that a lot of us like is actually putting them into steel. And that's really nice, especially if if you're someone that likes holding things that are tangible because you have this nice hard piece of steel that's the key to your Bitcoin, and that's waterproof and fireproof by design because it's steel.
So you do that. Those seed words never touch the Internet. They never touch an Internet computer, And, basically, what happens is that hardware wallet allows you to interact with the Internet without the seed words ever leaving the device. So it acts as almost like a like a firewall or like a dam or something between between your secret and the rest of the rest of the Internet. And why is that important? That's important because, you know, we're not all coders, we're not all, you know, Internet ninjas, and we can't secure our devices. And you don't want to get hacked through the Internet.
Right? And and so that makes it so that someone has to actually come in your house, and and rob you the good old fashioned way. Right? And that's where firearms and dogs come in come into play. But, yeah, firearms. Yeah. Yeah. But, they at least have to come in and break your legs to take your Bitcoin, right, which I think is, like, a pretty good trade off balance. But, yeah, that that's what I would say. Phone wallet first. And then once you get comfortable with the phone wallet, you start to hold more Bitcoin. Then you go and you buy you buy a hardware wallet and you and you keep your keys, keep your keys offline. And my favorite is is the cold card, which is Canadian made. I know the guy who makes it.
That's the other reason why I know, like, oh, she's not evil is because, like, Michael's been in my house multiple times. And same with Ibex. The Ibex guys are amazing. They're fantastic, but don't trust verify. Next question. I think we have time for 2 more questions.
[00:36:54] Unknown:
Yeah. So, I'm kinda new to all this Bitcoin stuff, but, I I work with farmers daily as as a salesman, and, I think one thing that's kind of applies to this whole topic is trust. You know, we're we're going out trying to shake their hands, earn their trust. My impression is there should be a lot of skepticism with this type of transaction. And I know you've talked about this some already, but what's, like, the long term goal? Like, I I'm just and I'm I'm just pulling this out of my hat. I haven't really thought about it much. But, like, what you're talking about now is, like, attractive in a lot of ways because of this nongovernment regulated.
There's a lot of cool things about it. But just your average farmer rancher, I'm just wondering if long term, if they if they if they're gonna be enough volume that we're gonna come on board to this, that it can be what we hope it's gonna be. Is that does that make sense? No. That makes sense to me. I think look.
[00:37:51] Unknown:
Once again, I don't think any of us should be going out there trying to convince people for the need for Bitcoin. If they're happy with their credit card payments, if they're I mean, ideally, if they're getting a lot of cash, you know, that that's great. You know, they're getting paid in gold, maybe. Fantastic. If they don't have a need for Bitcoin, so be it. But, personally, I believe that the dollar is broken. I think the dollar is completely broken. I think people do not realize that yet. And I think it's important we have an alternative that is not captured when that reality starts to set in for people. Otherwise, it can get very dark and very messy, and not no one wants that situation.
So I think of I think of Bitcoin as as this better money than the dollar, and I think the dollar is broken. I think all these other currencies are even more broken than the dollar. They're breaking first. So so we live in this little, like, privileged little bubble, as Americans because our dollar is is the number one shitty currency. So all the other shitty currencies are breaking. They're all flooding to dollars. Like, if you talk to people in Argentina, they don't have a need for Bitcoin. They have a need for dollars. They want dollars. So their currencies are breaking first, then the dollar will break. And at that point, it's really important we have an alternative. What I like to do is, like, this this single thing and the simplest thing, which is I support a small business. I'm shaking their hand. I'm buying product from them.
And I don't not the first time I do a transaction with them do it. Like, oh, like, do you know Bitcoin? Have you heard the have you heard about my lord and savior of Bitcoin? Like, I don't I don't approach with that. Like, on the second or third transaction, I might ask them, oh, have you heard of Bitcoin? And they usually say no or they usually say yes, but they haven't really heard of Bitcoin. They've heard of all the perversions around Bitcoin. And I say, have you ever used Bitcoin? And they always say no. Or they sometimes they get nervous and they make up some bullshit about, oh, like, I had Bitcoin, but then I'd lost it or something, like, a couple years ago. Like because they get a little bit nervous about it when you say it. And what I say is, look. Download Moonwallet. And what I'll do is I'll pay I'll pay for my transaction in cash or credit card, whatever we usually pay for our transaction in. And here's a tip. Right? I appreciate you. I appreciate you as an individual. I wanna keep coming back to you for business. Here's $25. Here's $50 worth of Bitcoin to your self sovereign mobile wallet.
And then I'll just keep transacting with them with whatever current method I was using. And, usually, what happens is couple months later, maybe a year later, they come back to me and they're like, Matt, like, this Bitcoin thing, like, I'm really starting to get interested in it. Can you help me with this? Can you help me with this question? Right? And that's the single most powerful thing you can do for someone, is provide them with just a little bit of Bitcoin, no strings attached, and let them kind of run wild with it and think about it on their own, use it their own, and get comfortable with it on their own. And this is literally no skin off their back because you're paying the full transaction anyway and whatever method you're using. And that Bitcoin is just, is just gravy on top.
One more question, and then we have to wrap.
[00:40:53] Unknown:
For someone considering accepting Bitcoin, in a tax compliant way, can you talk about how Rancher might do that, and then what some of the software might be available to help with that? Talk about cost basis and stuff like that. So Bitcoin taxes, if you're accepting as a business, is relatively simple. It's just like if you're running a cash business.
[00:41:14] Unknown:
So you have to report your income. It's income tax. It's self reported just like cash, and you just you're essentially you take your transactions, the time you received them. The current value in US dollars at the time you received it is just treated like you received cash of that dollar amount at the time you received it. And then, you know, you you pay the you pay the you pay the protect you pay the protection money to to your government if if if that's what you choose to do. But it's it's it's actually very simple. Like, this idea that that taxes on Bitcoin are complicated.
It's it's just it's just regular income tax pegged at the time when you when you receive the Bitcoin in in US dollar terms. But that can screw you if you do wanna be fully compliant. It's important to keep in mind that a 100% of your transactions, which that's not the case for anybody, to be quite honest, are coming in in Bitcoin, and then tax time is a year later and Bitcoin's down 80%, you owe taxes on the USD value at the time you received it. Right? So you end up paying them way more Bitcoin at the end. So if you do end up going full Bitcoin and you want to be fully compliant at the same time, make sure you're you're constantly, you know, putting some Bitcoin aside to to pay that that tax bill later in the year. Obviously, it could be the opposite too. Right? You can receive Bitcoin.
It could be, like, $20 worth of Bitcoin, and by the time tax time comes around, it could be a $100. Right? And then you lucked out in that situation. But the reverse is very painful. So just remember that. Okay, guys. Well, it was a pleasure. I am going to continue to be here, and thank you, Slim. Thanks, Matt.
One thing that happened within Bitcoin is, you know, I got onto some podcast pretty early on, and people started hearing that we were doing beef for Bitcoin and be Bitcoin for beef back and forth in it because it is a two way, you know, transaction. It's peer to peer, but a lot of the ranchers, they don't have enough money to buy Bitcoin. And we're like, oh, well, you know, do you take well, no. They wanna earn the Bitcoin. That's one thing that I did find is, like, they will more than willingly exchange beef for Bitcoin. And so we had to build that basically technology stack. And it's been a year since we've been working on that.
We had, I call him maple syrup guy. Don't know who he is. Never met him, but he's maple syrup guy. And he heard me and Adam Curry on a podcast, and so he looked me up, and he DM'd me on Twitter. And he said, hey. What's this beef and Bitcoin thing? And then so I told him. And within probably less than 15 minutes, I had him connected to Michael with Oshi, Oshi app, and then it's kinda evolved from Oshi to Ibex to people understanding, hey, this isn't as hard as we thought. Well, he basically got these really cool containers, and he's now selling out of maple syrup. He has another revenue stream just because he decided to accept Bitcoin, and so all the Bitcoiners came to him and said, hey. Can we have some maple syrup? And he said, hell yes. He goes, give me some Bitcoin.
So he did that. Well, then, you know, our friend Charles Mayfield of FARO, he does skin products out of lard, Okay. Regenative. Did y'all know how many people know that your skin is your second stomach? Okay. Those that you don't know, your skin is your second stomach. So everything that you put on your skin is basically going to go through your digestive tract of your body, basically. So all those chemicals that you think you're not eating, when you put it on your body, you're putting a lot of things. What we do in regenerative farming and ranching is we utilize the whole animal.
Charles with Farrow, he does getting care products out of hog lard. Lard help us is what he says. If you know Charles, it matches. So he, basically, he started doing lard, and now what? Guess what? He accepts Bitcoin. And he's basically increasing his sales. Now he has another revenue stream that he can live and feed his children and everything. He can raise his hogs, and he can he can say, Lord, help us every day of his life. But then a maple syrup guy came along. He goes, hey. My sister, she likes to make soap. She's a nurse, but she can't sell any soap because nobody knows how to contact her. They don't have market access to the soap that she's making.
Well, now she's accepting Bitcoin for her soap, and now she can't make enough soap because she's opted in to be able to value for value. So people want her soap. She's accepting their Bitcoin. So she sent us some soap. Her name is Sarah. I'll give you all her information later. And then we have Clara and Fritz. They're in, New Jersey, and they left the centralized, basically, corporate world, and now they're making skincare products out of tallow. Now they're accepting Bitcoin, and each one of these people, basically, it was one conversation.
And now we have a plethora of products here that we don't ever have to worry about. We don't have to validate the deception when it comes to soap, when it comes to skincare, when it comes to maybe children eating something that's sweet, but it's actually natural. There's always a roadmap there for us to choose, but we have to choose it as an individual. What we have to do is basically understand, you know, those those roadmaps into Bitcoin create all of these relationships. And there's somebody here that was in Colorado. Everybody knows Matt Odell. Correct? Everybody knows Matt. Well, Matt is he's one thing that he's always said is education is key, and he has dedicated his life. He's driven more around this country than I have the last 10 years, and he has a remarkable story.
Go ahead. What's the story? Oh, man. You're in here. Oh, no. I mean, I don't think I
[00:04:31] Unknown:
I think driven a lot.
[00:04:33] Unknown:
Yeah. But you how how many years did you and your your bride I mean, we we drove around for 2 years. That's a lot of driving. Yeah. But what he's done is he's edging
[00:04:44] Unknown:
what you do too. Like, the we gotta get off gotta get off the interstates. There you go. Gotta do the back roads. You have to.
[00:04:52] Unknown:
And that's that's what's key because if you drive around the interstates, you're just basically looking everything is the same. It's just deja vu, the same hotels, same restaurants, same fast food, same truck stops. And so but what Matt has done is he's pioneered to a form of education that has helped my life. It's helped a lot of people in this room's life because he makes it easy. He he eliminates all that friction when it comes to Bitcoin. And so in Colorado, we were able to onboard a lot of people with Bitcoin in a very short period of time, and everybody was amazed. It's like, oh, I'm not intimidated anymore. And I think that's one of the barriers that we have to cross as far as Bitcoin is not being intimidated by it. The use case of it, it becomes something a little bit more that you yearn to do is like, well, hell, that was easy. So we're going to go through a session with Mr. Odell right now. And he's going to teach us how to take that friction and that intimidation out of our minds.
So we can actually create these relationships that do build the circular economy of energy that we're all searching for. Cheers. Thank you, Son. You bet. Thank you for being here. It's just an honor.
[00:06:05] Unknown:
But first of all, before I get started, I wanna thank everyone for participating. Ultimately, this is a movement of individuals. So couldn't happen without all of you, including our wonderful speakers, Anne Weldon. It was fantastic hearing you guys talk again, your discussions with Jason, with Slim. Hayden was fantastic. I look forward to I think doctor Sean Baker's coming after me. Just a great event. Great food. Gourmet caveman's fantastic. So Bitcoin. Well, first, we have a half an hour running a little bit late. We have a half an hour, so I'm gonna make this really tight, and then we're gonna do q and a because I like q and a the most. And you can just try and stump me with your questions, and I'll do my best at answering them.
First of all, my name is Matt. I've basically focused the last 5 or 6 years of my life on Bitcoin education. And I have trouble saying no to things, so I just keep adding more and more to my plate on the Bitcoin side, including Bitcoin Park Even though I've only been in Nashville for a year, 6 months in, we decided to launch this place, which is a little bit ambitious, but, it's a pleasure to have you all here as our guests. Who here raise your hand if you've used Bitcoin before. That's great. Okay. There's a starting point. In Colorado, when we were at Jason's Ranch, a lot of people hadn't used Bitcoin before. So as Slim said, we actually did an onboarding session where I had them install their first wallet, receive their 1st Bitcoin that was, contributed by Ibex.
Ibex is a payment processor. They make accepting Bitcoin very easy for businesses. They're who we use in the coffee shop over there if you paid on the iPad. And we went through the whole steps of using Bitcoin for the first time in about 15 minutes, a little bit under 15 minutes. I had them time me, and we tried to do it under 15, and I think we had 14 minutes. So that was really, really empowering and fantastic. And why do I say that? I say that because people have a tendency to think Bitcoin is extremely complicated. But the cool part about Bitcoin is it's actually really simple and easy to use.
Now if you decide to dedicate your life to Bitcoin education and trying to use it as powerfully as possible, it can get very complicated. But that's the same with most things. But on the surface, Bitcoin is simply a money. It's a money that is independent of governments and companies, that you can use between 2 people. You can do transactions around the world. You can do transactions in person without any middleman in between. To use Bitcoin is as simple as just installing an app on your phone. The sign up process is very clean. You don't have to provide an email address. You don't have to take a picture of your face. You don't have to provide a driver's license.
You simply install this app. You get presented with this Bitcoin wallet on your phone, and you're able to receive Bitcoin instantly. Once you have Bitcoin, you're able to send Bitcoin instantly. No middleman involved, no company in the middle taking fees, no company that you have to trust with settlement over 30 days like these credit card companies do, no chargeback risk. Some of these online businesses we see you know, people talk about credit card fees. Credit card fees are, like, 3 to 5%. Not great for a business with with low margins. But what really crushes you is the chargebacks. And if you look at online business, it really goes up. Chargebacks account for almost 30%.
So if you if you include chargebacks in taking credit card payments, you're looking at kind of like a 30% margin hit for taking credit cards if you're an online business. Fraud's a little bit less significantly less for in person transactions. So Bitcoin is very interesting in that scenario for accepting payments as a business. But Bitcoin is also extremely empowering for individuals. Bitcoin is a movement of personal responsibility. There's no customer support line you can contact, but at the same time, it means that your money is in your hands and complete control of you.
It's on you to secure it, but as a result, you can spend, you can save without permission, without anybody's permission. Nobody can debase Bitcoin. There's no Jerome Powell that decides how much inflation there's gonna be. It's just a fixed supply. There's only a certain amount of Bitcoin. Most people know there's 21,000,000 Bitcoin. That number is mostly irrelevant except that it doesn't change because Bitcoin is computer code and decimals exist. So as adoption increases, Bitcoin price should increase. Bitcoin I don't like saying Bitcoin price. Bitcoin purchasing power.
And for this crowd, that means how much beef can you buy with your Bitcoin. That should increase with adoption. But as that increases, people will use smaller and smaller units of Bitcoin because we have decimals, because we can infinitely basically infinitely divide Bitcoin. So don't get wrapped up in, oh, Bitcoin's $16,000. I can't afford it. You can transact $5 worth of Bitcoin. You can transact $2 worth of Bitcoin. And when we're done with this movement, hopefully, we won't even be using dollar terms. It'll just be how many how much Bitcoin do you need to to buy that beef? How much Bitcoin do you need to buy that land? How much Bitcoin do you need to buy that milk? So bit Bitcoin is 13 year old project. It's open source code. Why is that important?
Open source code is not owned by anybody. It is inherently viral in nature. No company controls it. No one's got copyrights on it, trademarks. Anyone can take that code, change it, do whatever they want with it. But Bitcoin's also a social movement. And what that means is the majority of Bitcoin users are running this code, and changes are extremely, extremely hard to happen. The the by design, it's very, very difficult to change because you need an overwhelming majority of those users to go along with the change. And people just aren't you know, it's it's it's hard to get millions of people to agree on something. So as a result, Bitcoin's extremely hard to change, but that's a value, not a negative.
Because if you can have changes, then you can have changes that are negative to us. You can have a change that increases the supply of Bitcoin is the most popular one that people like talking about because people like getting rich, and they like talking about it as an investment vehicle. But also changes like people of a certain political spectrum can't use Bitcoin, or people of a certain religion can't use Bitcoin, or certain people of different, races or countries can't use Bitcoin. Those kind of changes are almost they're practically impossible to happen on Bitcoin because it's so hard to change. So that's a key that's a key key value prop there of Bitcoin.
So with all this said, we have this money that you can transfer between individuals, no permission, no company taking fees, no government telling you what you can do with it, has a free floating market purchasing power. And as a result, any individual anywhere and this is key, and I love that Slim always talks about this is it's a it's a movement of consent. I will never tell someone that they should use Bitcoin. I will never, you know, call you an idiot for not using Bitcoin. I love talking about Bitcoin, and if you have questions, I will answer all of your questions. But my belief with Bitcoin is similar to the beef initiative movement, regenerative agriculture in general, these kind of movements that empower individuals is that people will realize the need. And when they realize the need, we need to make sure we have education and tools available for them. And there's millions of people that have a need for better money already, and they're being underserved.
So why focus on trying to convince people that have no desire or no need to discover this thing to use it. It's just a waste of time. It's not it's not a productive exercise, and, ultimately, it's consent. It's opt in. It's an opt in movement. You either want personal responsibility or you don't want personal responsibility. One last thing I wanna touch on before we go to q and a is the narrative around Bitcoin has been perverted to a degree, and it's been perverted by this idea of it as an investment asset. Now I believe that Bitcoin is a fantastic way to store wealth and save wealth.
And why is that important? That's important because this idea that people need to be financial wizards or hire a financial adviser in order to save their wealth and make sure it increases in value over their time just so that they can get that wealth to their children or to their grandchildren is absolutely ridiculous. It's completely insane that that is the status quo. Really, people should be able to focus on on on what they do. They should be able to live their life, enjoy their life. They should be ranchers and plumbers and whatever they wanna do in life, and they should be able to just store their wealth in the money that increases their purchasing power over time. So the fact that that Bitcoin is scarce, the fact that you can hold it yourself without permission, the fact that the purchasing power should increase long term because of adoption is important as a savings vehicle.
But this idea of of of treating it almost like a stock, as an investment where you go on to these brokerage platforms and you trade the ups and downs of the short term movements is a complete perversion of the movement to me. Now because Bitcoin doesn't require permission, people are welcome to do that. They can do that. But when you're thinking about Bitcoin, it's important not to think of it in that lens. And as a result, what we've seen is we've seen a lot of people's first experience with Bitcoin with these large centralized brokerages. You can think of them like stock trading websites or apps, stuff like Robinhood. Most of them now seeking money actually have added Bitcoin even if they do stocks. Like Robinhood, you can buy Bitcoin on now. Venmo, you can buy Bitcoin on. Cash App, you can buy Bitcoin on.
But these are centralized entities, and as a result, they are connected to the traditional financial system. They're connected to the banking system, and they have all of this KYC regulation. They require you to upload your ID. They require permission to use. They have privacy risks involved. They can cut you off from your money at any time. And as a result, people start to think of Bitcoin in that light even though Bitcoin at its core requires zero permission and you can just use it without any of these centralized entities. You also have on top of that, you have all of these penny stocks compared to Bitcoin. You have all these altcoins or alter you know, alternative networks.
We like to call them shit coins. I was getting there, Jason. I was I was dropping them in nice and easy. Bitcoin is open source software, which means people can change it if they want, but it doesn't mean that the rest of the community has consensus with those changes. So any of us like, we can launch a shitcoin in 15 minutes if we wanted to, and then we can build a big narrative around it and try and pump the price up and then sell it on unwitting fools, and make a quick short term profit. That is completely separate from the Bitcoin movement. It looks it might look a little similar. Their promoters might make it seem like it's similar, but it's completely it's completely separate from the Bitcoin movement. Can we make a TV commercial and have a quarterback sell it too for us? Yeah. We can he can he can ask us all if we're in during the Super Bowl, and then it can turn out to be a Ponzi. Yes. That could happen.
We recently found out Kevin O'Leary got paid $15,000,000 to promote the FTX Ponzi. That was one of the examples. And a lot of people trusted FTX with their with their Bitcoin and with the shit coins too, and they lost all their money because, it required trust. It was a centralized platform. A lot of fraud was committed. But Bitcoin on its own, you can actually hold yourself and and hold those keys yourself, and and no no one can take it away from you. But why do I bring that up? I bring that up because we have these products up here. We have the beef initiative where you could buy beef with Bitcoin. Slim mentioned Oshi. Oshi is another app. Michael Atwood is the founder. He's fantastic. He's cofounder, JP, is fantastic.
Oshi is an app that basically is is like a search tool for Bitcoin businesses. You can just if you can get listed on Oshi, you can kinda think of it almost like a Groupon. He would kill me if he heard me say this. I think it's being recorded. But, like, it lists a bunch of Bitcoin businesses, and it also lists discounts, right, to encourage people to spend Bitcoin because a lot of these merchants want Bitcoin. A lot of these businesses want Bitcoin. They prefer to have Bitcoin. And why do I say this? I say this because these centralized entities, I consider them essentially an attack on Bitcoin.
Similar to, I'm sure we have some gold bugs in the room. They rightfully believe that centralized entities are an attack on gold and that there's paper gold trading out there, lots and lots of paper gold trading out there. And so how do we get around these centralized entities? Everyone says it's unavoidable. People are gonna wanna use their bank account to connect into Bitcoin. That comes with regulation. That comes with all this burdensome regulation. Those burdensome regulations result in centralizing factors where you only have 2 or 3 large exchanges in the country, similar to the issues we have with processing centers with beef. How do we get around that? The way we get around that is is something called a circular economy, the idea that you don't buy Bitcoin, you earn Bitcoin.
You don't sell Bitcoin, you spend Bitcoin. And as a result, we we start to start to build a thriving thriving local first circular economy, where it's individuals transacting with individuals rather than individuals interacting with large financial institutions. And that is a key key aspect of both a lot of my work and also the work with the beef initiative, and Maple Guy is is a perfect example of that Maple Guy and Soap Lady. It was really like to call it which I like to call it. Sarah, I found out her name is Sarah yesterday, but I'm just gonna keep calling her soap lady because I haven't met her yet. But she has a global market because we press retweet. Right? And she's able to interact with people and accept payments without any company, without any government in the middle, just consenting individuals deciding to transact with each other. It's a truly special thing.
So with all that said, we have 15 minutes. Let's let's hit some q and a, and I appreciate you all. We got Anne over here with a question. I may have misheard you, but did you just say Oshi is, like, a negative thing for Bitcoin? No. Oshi's great because Oshi doesn't first of all, Anne, I appreciate you asking the question, but I just wanna let you know that you can call me whenever you want to. I'm I'm happy to help you. Oshi is a centralized company, but Oshi doesn't actually hold your Bitcoin. It's Oshi is a matchmaker. Right? So you if you're listed on Oshi, I can pay you I can find you on Oshi. I could either pay you directly or you can use a company like Ibex, which I wouldn't I also wouldn't consider them part of the problem. Ibex does take ownership of your Bitcoin. They hold your Bitcoin when you receive it, but they set up their service so that they distribute that Bitcoin to you as quick as possible.
So for instance, Ibex, we're using Ibex in this coffee shop. We give them a Bitcoin address that we have control over. They accept the payments throughout the day, and then at the end of the day, they settle it to us and automatically send it to us. So at any given time, you know, if there's a $100 worth of payments today, they could rug pull us for a $100 of payments as soon you know, it's it's a mitigated risk. It's it's an accepted risk that we take on. But if you compare it to something like a credit card processor where you're waiting 30 days and and then it gets sent to a bank account, which you actually never have control over that money in the whole process, it's significantly better. Now there is an open source alternative called BTC pay server, which we actually will be running at the park relatively soon.
And BTC pay servers is open source code. So it's a it's a full stack payment processor where you do not have to give up custody to a centralized company, period. But, yeah, Oshi is definitely part of the solution and not part of the problem. Next question.
[00:22:41] Unknown:
This gentleman up here. Do you see anything coming as far as the non KYC Bitcoin? I know there's more peer to peer opportunities, but they're all sort of really clunky for dollar cost averaging, and it seems like an impediment to those of us that wanna be accumulating. Is there anything that you see coming that's gonna help from a liquidity
[00:23:05] Unknown:
and bigger Well, I I think they're very valid question. I think I think what it comes down to is in our life, we always see a trade off between convenience, and privacy and security. Convenience and sovereignty, really. And I don't think the sovereign path will ever be the most convenient path. I think that's I mean, I'm not not a scientist, but it seems like a physics limitation or something like that. Right? Like, it almost seems like a rule of law that the con that the convenient option will always be easier than the self sovereign option.
I think the solution is the circular economy. The question is how long it takes. Right? So to his question, he mentioned no KYC. What he means by that is there are platforms that allow you to basically coordinate trades between people of dollars to Bitcoin, and and they're not centralized. So it's it's almost kinda like Oshi in that regard is like you go you go to the website or you go to the app and it's like, oh, Bob wants to buy Bitcoin, and I'm Matt, and I wanna sell Bitcoin, and we exchange dollars for Bitcoin directly. Now the issue there is the dollar side.
The dollar side is broken and the dollar side is completely captured and controlled, and you have all this burdensome regulation on top of the dollar side. So the only easy solution on the dollar side is really cash, which also is going away, not only because governments are trying to push cash away, but also because young people don't want to use cash. Most of my peers do not use cash. Like when I pull cash out of my pocket, they look like I'm crazy. Like, why do you have so much tipping paper on you? And we see some stores don't even accept cash anymore. Right? So you still have cash trades you can do, but then on top of that, you have issues with government regulation in the name of terrorism and stuff like that. They they use all these excuses. Ultimately, it's to control people. It's really what it's there for. It's not to stop criminals. Criminals use the financial system all the time. Right?
Gangs are using HSBC. They're funneling 1,000,000 of dollars through HSBC, but the average person isn't able to, you know, create a cashier's check at HSBC without having, like, 5 different people, like, look over everything you're doing. Yeah. So so the the the issue is on the dollar side. Oh, but where was I going with that? The other issue is, like, one stop gap is this idea of, like, having community spaces where, you know, where you all trade cash for Bitcoin with each other. But you never know because governments like to really fuck people over that do that. Right? So it creates a chilling effect. So the real solution in my mind, the long term solution is circular economy.
Earn Bitcoin, spend Bitcoin, don't buy Bitcoin, don't sell Bitcoin. And if you think about it, like, you're a shop owner, you have a coffee shop. Right? All your all your transactions don't have to be in Bitcoin for it to be a success. If If you have 10% of your transactions in Bitcoin, all of a sudden you have a steady flow of Bitcoin that goes into savings. And then you can you can hold that long term. And I I think I think that's the key. I think a lot of people say, I love Bitcoin. I wanna work in Bitcoin. How can I help the Bitcoin movement? And I always ask them, I'm like, well, what do you do right now? And they're like, oh, I'm a doctor. I was like, well, be a doctor that accepts Bitcoin.
You know, I'm a plumber. Be a plumber that accepts Bitcoin. Like, you don't know. Not everyone has to learn to code. It's a great meme. Not everyone has to, you know, learn how to use their own nodes and, you know, build their own hardware wallet. By the way, we're having a hardware wallet workshop on Saturday where you can learn how to build your own hardware wallet. But just do what you do and use Bitcoin as money, and you really do help. You really do help this movement, and you do enable other individuals to be able to take advantage of those services, for Bitcoin. I mean, it doesn't take that many businesses in a local community to start accepting Bitcoin to the point where the majority of of your needs can be satisfied with Bitcoin purchases.
Now you might not have as much selection in the beginning. But in general, when when supporting small businesses, you don't have as much selection to begin with. Right? So I I don't think it's that much of a negative, but but it is definitely a bootstrapping issue to a degree. And, I mean, we see it all the time. This is Bitcoin Park. We have ride or die Bitcoiners that are obsessed with Bitcoin come here every month. We always make sure to have a local vendor. I mean, this was great this time because, we had Holy Cow Beef provide the food, but usually, we have, like, a a local burger purveyor outside, selling sliders or something like that or or sausages or I mean, that's exactly what we had this time, but, usually, it actually is sliders and sausages.
And they don't accept Bitcoin. Usually, they're not Bitcoiners. So what we do is we onboard them to Bitcoin. We teach them how to use Bitcoin. We're like, you need to accept Bitcoin. They're like, I'm a little skeptical. We're like, look. If you don't wanna hold the Bitcoin, at the end of the day, we can convert that to dollars for you and give you the dollars. No skin off your back, but we wanted you to see how it works. And And why do I say this? I say this because we'll have 200 ride or die Bitcoiners here, and, like, 10% of them actually spend Bitcoin with the merchant. Most of them pull out their credit cards and and swipe on the little square iPad terminal or whatever.
So it's a two sided street. Right? It's like merchants you know, there needs to be education on the merchant side, but also, it'd be nice if Bitcoiners got a little bit more comfortable with actually using and spending Bitcoin, having you know, you don't have to have that much money on your phone, but, you know, have, like, a $100 worth of Bitcoin on your phone. So when you're out and about, if you see a Bitcoin supporting business, you can actually spend Bitcoin on the spot. And and you think about these merchants, you think about these small businesses, it's it's probably a little bit different for ranchers and producers because it's it's usually larger orders, smaller groups of individuals that are, like, repeat buyers.
And Bitcoin actually works almost better in that situation because the problem you see with the small businesses is they start accepting Bitcoin, and then, like, 4 months later, they've done 5 transactions for, like, a total of $50. And they were like, this is ridiculous. I'm not gonna educate my employees on how to use this thing if I'm not actually doing any kind of transaction. So actually going out there and supporting these businesses means that they're actually gonna they're actually gonna keep accepting it because, you know, businesses don't wanna accept something that that no one's spending with. Yeah. That was a long answer, but it's an important question. Do we have another question?
[00:29:41] Unknown:
Hey, Matt. First time, long time. I I got a question from a nice gentleman outside in terms of, I'm interested to what would you recommend let's say I'm a producer or a rancher and I have, like, an Ibex or an Oshi type setup And at the end of the day, you know, they're sending me the Bitcoin. Right? What would you recommend as as far as, like, a relatively easy to use kind of sovereign wallet stack that could be accessible?
[00:30:07] Unknown:
Well, so when we were at Jason's, Bitcoiners are funny because we we try and we get obsessed with Bitcoin. I know my own experience is I was a young I was a young man, and I was very pessimistic on our world and our institutions and our society. And I didn't really see a path forward, and then I found Bitcoin, and Bitcoin provided a a hopeful path, a a path that, like, maybe it would work out for the best and it, you know, you wouldn't just devolve into some kind of chaotic situation that my kids would grow up into. And a lot of Bitcoiners feel that way, so we get really obsessed with Bitcoin.
And then we end up arguing with each other over, like, the minutiae of different Bitcoin storage strategies, even though the majority of people lose Bitcoin because they either press a link in their email and then give their Bitcoin away, or they, like, put it on FTX or something and and their Bitcoin gets stolen from fraud or government action or KYC policies where they freeze your account. So I actually do think that we over we scare people a little bit on on security practices of Bitcoin. It's it's important that people are prudent about Bitcoin because it is personal responsibility.
But, anyway, long winded answer to say that I think for most people, a phone wallet is where you start. And Jason's how Jason's ranch, Jason's home. We did Moon Wallet, which is m u u n. It's a great Argentinian team, that I know very well. Also, open source code. You download it on your phone. The setup's really easy. It's very easy to use, And then they have a backup method there. There's a built in backup method, and the backup method, is very straightforward for new users because it's an email password. It's something that people are very comfortable with. Most Bitcoin wallets don't use an email password as your backup method. Most good Bitcoin wallets do not. So they actually have gotten a decent amount of flack for that, but I think it's a very good starting point.
And then basically it comes down to risk, right? So it's like you start to hit. I would say like a phone while it is you kind of think about it as you're like a back pocket full of cash plus. Right. Because it's it's more secure than than having cash in your back pocket. So maybe, like, you start to hit, like, 3,000, $5,000 in that wallet, and at that point, you really wanna upgrade and you you upgrade to something that we call cold storage. And cold storage is this idea that which is crazy to think about because Bitcoin is Internet money, is that you can actually hold Bitcoin offline.
And the way Bitcoin works is actually Bitcoin is we have this global ledger. This we call it the blockchain. We got this global ledger, and that's where all the Bitcoin transactions are recorded. But to spend the Bitcoin, everyone can see the Bitcoin on the ledger, but to spend the Bitcoin, you need something called private keys. You can think about it like the key to your house. That private key is the key to the Bitcoin that says you can spend the Bitcoin, and that's what you need to keep secure. The way we look at Bitcoin private keys in person is essentially we call them seed words. They're these secret backup words.
So if you use one of these wallets, pretty much every every wallet except for Moon, which makes it a little bit ironic when I recommend Moon first, which is nice because you have the emails and passwords, you get these 12 words or 24 words, It's random words in English. Those words are the keys to your Bitcoin, and you can generate those offline. So there's a bunch of wallets that are made to be offline wallets. My favorite is called the Coldcard. There's another one by Foundation Devices called the Passport. These wallets go from, like, a $150 to $300. You can kinda think about, like, investing in a safe that you hold your gold in. Right? You buy a couple of gold coins, fine. They go in the drawer.
Right? But once you start having more and more gold that you're stocking up, like, you want to have an actual safe and you don't want to go buy the cheapest safe that is sold from China. You want to buy a really nice, well made safe that's well reviewed. Right? And that's what these hardware wallets are. You basically get the wallet. You go through the setup instructions. It's gonna give you the words. You either write them down on a piece of paper, that's a good way to start, and then probably put them into safe as well. Don't use safe deposit boxes. Those are completely captured. They can get into them very easily.
They being I hate that just the random day. They being, like, governments or the banks themselves or police. We saw that just happened in LA. They just drilled into a bunch of boxes with basically no warrant, no real reason. They just said, oh, there's crimes being committed, so we're just gonna drill into those boxes. So keep it somewhere safe. And then you can also because they're words, right, There's a lot of ways you can store those words. One way that a lot of us like is actually putting them into steel. And that's really nice, especially if if you're someone that likes holding things that are tangible because you have this nice hard piece of steel that's the key to your Bitcoin, and that's waterproof and fireproof by design because it's steel.
So you do that. Those seed words never touch the Internet. They never touch an Internet computer, And, basically, what happens is that hardware wallet allows you to interact with the Internet without the seed words ever leaving the device. So it acts as almost like a like a firewall or like a dam or something between between your secret and the rest of the rest of the Internet. And why is that important? That's important because, you know, we're not all coders, we're not all, you know, Internet ninjas, and we can't secure our devices. And you don't want to get hacked through the Internet.
Right? And and so that makes it so that someone has to actually come in your house, and and rob you the good old fashioned way. Right? And that's where firearms and dogs come in come into play. But, yeah, firearms. Yeah. Yeah. But, they at least have to come in and break your legs to take your Bitcoin, right, which I think is, like, a pretty good trade off balance. But, yeah, that that's what I would say. Phone wallet first. And then once you get comfortable with the phone wallet, you start to hold more Bitcoin. Then you go and you buy you buy a hardware wallet and you and you keep your keys, keep your keys offline. And my favorite is is the cold card, which is Canadian made. I know the guy who makes it.
That's the other reason why I know, like, oh, she's not evil is because, like, Michael's been in my house multiple times. And same with Ibex. The Ibex guys are amazing. They're fantastic, but don't trust verify. Next question. I think we have time for 2 more questions.
[00:36:54] Unknown:
Yeah. So, I'm kinda new to all this Bitcoin stuff, but, I I work with farmers daily as as a salesman, and, I think one thing that's kind of applies to this whole topic is trust. You know, we're we're going out trying to shake their hands, earn their trust. My impression is there should be a lot of skepticism with this type of transaction. And I know you've talked about this some already, but what's, like, the long term goal? Like, I I'm just and I'm I'm just pulling this out of my hat. I haven't really thought about it much. But, like, what you're talking about now is, like, attractive in a lot of ways because of this nongovernment regulated.
There's a lot of cool things about it. But just your average farmer rancher, I'm just wondering if long term, if they if they if they're gonna be enough volume that we're gonna come on board to this, that it can be what we hope it's gonna be. Is that does that make sense? No. That makes sense to me. I think look.
[00:37:51] Unknown:
Once again, I don't think any of us should be going out there trying to convince people for the need for Bitcoin. If they're happy with their credit card payments, if they're I mean, ideally, if they're getting a lot of cash, you know, that that's great. You know, they're getting paid in gold, maybe. Fantastic. If they don't have a need for Bitcoin, so be it. But, personally, I believe that the dollar is broken. I think the dollar is completely broken. I think people do not realize that yet. And I think it's important we have an alternative that is not captured when that reality starts to set in for people. Otherwise, it can get very dark and very messy, and not no one wants that situation.
So I think of I think of Bitcoin as as this better money than the dollar, and I think the dollar is broken. I think all these other currencies are even more broken than the dollar. They're breaking first. So so we live in this little, like, privileged little bubble, as Americans because our dollar is is the number one shitty currency. So all the other shitty currencies are breaking. They're all flooding to dollars. Like, if you talk to people in Argentina, they don't have a need for Bitcoin. They have a need for dollars. They want dollars. So their currencies are breaking first, then the dollar will break. And at that point, it's really important we have an alternative. What I like to do is, like, this this single thing and the simplest thing, which is I support a small business. I'm shaking their hand. I'm buying product from them.
And I don't not the first time I do a transaction with them do it. Like, oh, like, do you know Bitcoin? Have you heard the have you heard about my lord and savior of Bitcoin? Like, I don't I don't approach with that. Like, on the second or third transaction, I might ask them, oh, have you heard of Bitcoin? And they usually say no or they usually say yes, but they haven't really heard of Bitcoin. They've heard of all the perversions around Bitcoin. And I say, have you ever used Bitcoin? And they always say no. Or they sometimes they get nervous and they make up some bullshit about, oh, like, I had Bitcoin, but then I'd lost it or something, like, a couple years ago. Like because they get a little bit nervous about it when you say it. And what I say is, look. Download Moonwallet. And what I'll do is I'll pay I'll pay for my transaction in cash or credit card, whatever we usually pay for our transaction in. And here's a tip. Right? I appreciate you. I appreciate you as an individual. I wanna keep coming back to you for business. Here's $25. Here's $50 worth of Bitcoin to your self sovereign mobile wallet.
And then I'll just keep transacting with them with whatever current method I was using. And, usually, what happens is couple months later, maybe a year later, they come back to me and they're like, Matt, like, this Bitcoin thing, like, I'm really starting to get interested in it. Can you help me with this? Can you help me with this question? Right? And that's the single most powerful thing you can do for someone, is provide them with just a little bit of Bitcoin, no strings attached, and let them kind of run wild with it and think about it on their own, use it their own, and get comfortable with it on their own. And this is literally no skin off their back because you're paying the full transaction anyway and whatever method you're using. And that Bitcoin is just, is just gravy on top.
One more question, and then we have to wrap.
[00:40:53] Unknown:
For someone considering accepting Bitcoin, in a tax compliant way, can you talk about how Rancher might do that, and then what some of the software might be available to help with that? Talk about cost basis and stuff like that. So Bitcoin taxes, if you're accepting as a business, is relatively simple. It's just like if you're running a cash business.
[00:41:14] Unknown:
So you have to report your income. It's income tax. It's self reported just like cash, and you just you're essentially you take your transactions, the time you received them. The current value in US dollars at the time you received it is just treated like you received cash of that dollar amount at the time you received it. And then, you know, you you pay the you pay the you pay the protect you pay the protection money to to your government if if if that's what you choose to do. But it's it's it's actually very simple. Like, this idea that that taxes on Bitcoin are complicated.
It's it's just it's just regular income tax pegged at the time when you when you receive the Bitcoin in in US dollar terms. But that can screw you if you do wanna be fully compliant. It's important to keep in mind that a 100% of your transactions, which that's not the case for anybody, to be quite honest, are coming in in Bitcoin, and then tax time is a year later and Bitcoin's down 80%, you owe taxes on the USD value at the time you received it. Right? So you end up paying them way more Bitcoin at the end. So if you do end up going full Bitcoin and you want to be fully compliant at the same time, make sure you're you're constantly, you know, putting some Bitcoin aside to to pay that that tax bill later in the year. Obviously, it could be the opposite too. Right? You can receive Bitcoin.
It could be, like, $20 worth of Bitcoin, and by the time tax time comes around, it could be a $100. Right? And then you lucked out in that situation. But the reverse is very painful. So just remember that. Okay, guys. Well, it was a pleasure. I am going to continue to be here, and thank you, Slim. Thanks, Matt.
Introduction to using beef for Bitcoin and Bitcoin for beef
Maple syrup guy and his experience with accepting Bitcoin
Charles Mayfield and his skin care products made from hog lard
Sarah and her soap business accepting Bitcoin
Introduction to Matt and his focus on Bitcoin education
Explanation of Bitcoin as a money independent of governments and companies
Bitcoin as a savings vehicle and the perversion of treating it as an investment asset
Bitcoin as a movement of personal responsibility and consent
Building a circular economy with Bitcoin to avoid centralized entities
The importance of trust and skepticism in accepting Bitcoin
Tax compliance for accepting Bitcoin as a business
