What is going on, everyone?
We are here at Money20/20 in the beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.
I am joined here by none other than Ben Armstrong from BitBoy Crypto,
Seth from MineYourBiz,
and we found a random homeless guy here walking the streets,
and we decided to let him get some camera time.
Just kidding.
That's big Rob from Sin City Crypto.
So we're just here at Money20/20.
The second day is coming to an end.
And I just wanted to, you know, get everyone together,
kind of talk about what your feelings are, how you felt the conference was.
And so I'm going to pass the mic over to Ben.
And, Ben, just kind of share your experience so far,
what you've kind of taken away, what you like, what you don't like, maybe?
Yeah, probably the best thing that I've liked about Money20/20
is that we've gone back in history to 2020 from 2022.
2022 is a bear market.
We're back in the bull market here at Money20/20.
Actually, it's Money20/20 20 like 20/20 vision or looking back in hindsight.
I told him to get rid of the glasses because everybody knows I hate people with glasses.
I'm sorry. I don't really, but that's what they say.
Look.
So here's the thing about this conference.
It's been really interesting to get a lot of perspectives
from people who are money people.
And you know what?
What I've noticed is a lot of the banking industry people,
they're actually on our side,
but they understand that the banking industry is a behemoth
and it's going to try to prevent us in crypto from doing what we want to do.
So it's like,
think about the amount of brainwashing that has to occur
for people to feel like,
"Oh, you know what? This is a great new technology.
I love decentralization.
It's got a way to free the world in a lot of different ways.
But I guess we lost.
I guess the banks are still going to do what they're going to do."
And, you know, I tweeted on
twitter.com earlier
that, you know, I don't like this loser's mentality of,
"You know what?
The banks are going to win.
They're going to win, you know?"
No, no, no.
Every revolution in history was thought to be impossible
when people first started putting it out there.
That's why it's called a revolution.
You think in American Revolution
they thought that we're going to be able to take on the British,
who was the most powerful, you know, military in the world at the time?
But guess what we did.
With a ragtag group of guys, you know,
we came and we did it,
just like the ragtag group of crypto guys.
You want to talk about somebody who's raggy and taggy?
That's Seth.
Yeah. Yeah, he is.
There you go. Yeah.
Speaking of revolutions, as well,
you know what you need?
You need small arms that people can actually manage on their own.
And--
whoa!
You need more arms out of this.
Hey, Mr. Armstrong, I wasn't asking to get mogged here.
This guy's, like, he's been working out.
And you know what?
We'll never live it down.
This guy looks great, by the way.
So, yeah.
But as far as revolutions being fought
with the most powerful small arms that people can carry,
crypto is one of those things that's for the people, right?
It's one of those things that you can actually handle on your own
in the same way that in those other revolutions,
we never think of the power of just small groups of people
using means that they can control very, very well in a very targeted way, very targeted fashion.
It's almost like guerrilla warfare, right?
Very similar with crypto.
It started with remittances.
It started with Bitcoin.
It started with some of the other smaller altcoins.
Litecoin Summit was this weekend too.
Coincidentally.
But some of the early alts, right?
Where people started to use them for micropayments and remittances and stuff.
And then, you know, fast forward to DeFi,
a lot of the people here at Money20/20,
they get it.
They really do.
And even some of the legacy payment systems,
these payment processors,
they're like, "Oh, yeah, we do Bitcoin payments and a lot of the other kinds of payments."
And they're excited to potentially get onboarded into these more exotic financial instruments for DeFi.
That's what I'm finding here as well,
is that there's a lot of these groups that--
I mean, they're not dumb.
They're not ignorant at all.
They know exactly what we're up to,
and they are excited to potentially get started.
But DeFi is so much more complex that they are trying to figure out, like,
what does that look like for their business model to allow for a little bit less control on their part?
Or can they find a way to have a middle ground?
Where the so-called compliance,
the legal issues that they would normally face,
the regulatory issues that these groups would normally face
because they're legacy players,
how could they possibly integrate that with DeFi?
And, I mean, obviously, that's a jillion-dollar question.
Whoever solves it is going to be like the next Apple of finance or whatever.
So it's exciting to actually talk to these people
and measure that same level of interest and excitement from them.
Let me tell you what I'm excited about.
The fact that this is Money20/20.
Money!
Let that sink in.
Everyone has always bashed cryptocurrency for not being a money,
not being a currency,
being something that's a facade.
It's not real.
And this is the end-all be-all for conferences when it comes to banking and fintech.
For traditional finance.
And we're here!
We are representing.
Crypto is representing in full force.
There is no shortage of cryptocurrency booths here.
You have Circle, Paxos.
You have Ripple.
There was 20 or 30 different stands representing cryptocurrency.
And it didn't used to be like that.
We used to be made fun of.
And now we're here.
We have a seat at the table.
And so, for me, that's what I'm most excited about,
is that we're taken seriously when it comes to these suits and other people in their space.
And we've been laughed off the stage for so long.
And you know what?
It's a realization.
It's an absolute realization.
It's an epiphany that we're here to stay
and that at some point, the banks are going to have to work with cryptocurrency.
It's either do that or get left behind.
We've seen the disruptive technologies come in and replace the oldest stagnant technologies.
And you can look at in all industries.
In newspaper, print media,
in your entertainment,
in the form of old VHSs and DVDs, mp3s,
those things are all falling by the wayside by new disruptive technologies.
And this is happening here again.
It's all nothing but apparent at Money20/20,
the place that is supposed to be traditional finance-driven,
banks-driven,
and now we have a seat at the table.
We have a microphone in hand.
We have a voice.
And you know what?
That's what I'm most excited about.
Going up to a booth,
I went up to a booth today.
They have no exposure to crypto, but they wanted to sit back and listen.
They wanted to hear what I had to say.
And it wasn't--
at least for me, it wasn't fake.
They were somebody that was like,
"Okay. Here's the crypto guys. What do they got to say?"
So.
Well, I guess there's only one thing left to be said.
If we're at the table,
- let's eat! - Yeah, yeah.
I am very hungry, actually.