Adam Torres and Nicholas Black discuss Monetize Talks.
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Show Notes:
Listen to the Monetize Talks coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Nicholas Black, Cryptocurrency & AI Expert. Explore cryptocurrency, AI and the Monetize Talks event.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So today I am at monetized talks. I am at the, I am at the 13th annual, or I should say annual.
He’s doing it monthly. David Rivera has been hosting this event in Beverly Hills. And my guest today is Nicholas black, Nicholas. Welcome to the show. How’s it going? All right. So when David sends me a guest, he’s like, all right, you got to have this guy in the show. I understand you’re a cryptocurrency and AI expert.
I want to get into cryptocurrency. Definitely get some of your views on it. But before we do, have you been to one of these events before? This is a first time for me to talk about your experience, man. I liked it. I think it’s cool when you have a diverse range of people and you hear how. People are trying to make it or have made it, you know, the pitfalls and the little peaks and valleys along the way.
I think it’s really good. Yeah. So I wasn’t speaking today, so I’m okay in saying this. What was one of your favorite moments from the speakers? Favorite moments? I did like, there was a dentist. You got out. It was amazing. I had her on the tray. Yes. Yes. I liked that she fought against her. Early desire to partner up with the guy that she was a partner.
And she just finally diverted, did her own thing. And that ended up making her ultimately much more successful. So David told me that you’re the guy for cryptocurrency. Like, like talk to me, how’d you get involved in the industry originally? So I come from a background in gold. I was a gold miner. I, well, in, in a sense, we have a refinery in Texas and we do about three or 400 million a year in gold refining.
So cash for gold, pawn shops, all these kinds of stuff. They send us their jewelry. We melt it. We final refine it. So we bring it all the way back to pure metal. And then we sell those bars like to China or to the Saudis or to the LBMA bars, the 400 ounce bars. So this is a wash, rinse, and repeat business.
It’s like God money, old school, like, yeah, salt of the earth type stuff, right? Alchemy. Yeah. My brother was at the same time one of the early Bitcoin miners in 2009. And so he was doing it out of the house, like where we grew up. Yeah, you’re right. Big, big 2009. That’s early. That is the beginning. That is January 3rd.
Yeah. Well, I got a one, I got a story for you on that one. I just got to get out, man. I’ll be holding it in. So around that time I’m starting it. And some of my list and my longterm list is no this one, but I don’t tell it often. So I’m got my first brokerage firm job. I have my series six.
Six and all that other good stuff. And I worked a late shift and I remember working a late shift like in Japan. So Japan’s calling in whatever. And so we’d get these people that would call sometimes that would be, let’s just say, not your typical investor. And the problem is, and they always want to talk about cryptocurrency.
So I missed that early boat for a very specific reason. It’s no longer like this, but that same time, you probably don’t remember this. If you do, you I’ll laugh, but the Iraqi dinar and all that was going on. It’s that exact, they’re going to reprice it. The Iraqi dinar and cryptocurrency people that would call in at my particular office at my particular thing were the same people.
And I was so, so I missed them. I never, I linked them and I was like, Oh no, that, this is nothing like the people that like, Are into this, like they’re the, the, the Iraqi DNR people. Like I’m like, they’re all psychos, like fringe conspiracy ever since then. And as it got further and further, once I read about it, once I learned what it is, I’m like, Oh my gosh.
Like if I would have like, did my research, if I would have made a decision for myself, like I’d done on every other investment in the past, whole different scenario, what stuck out to you in those early days to where you thought, like, if you can recall, not so long ago, but like to where you’re like. This might have legs, like maybe you didn’t know what it’s going to be today, but at least it’s worth your attention.
My brother was bringing it up to me and it wasn’t interesting to me. I was like, it’s, it’s not real money. You can’t hold it. You’d had a brother that was like, no, I’m not lucky. I think 2000 Bitcoin. Oh my God. Yeah. So whatever. Right. He kept saying like, well, you can’t hold the money in your bank account until you cash out.
And I was like, well, that is a good point, but it still didn’t make sense to me until. 2014, my buddies and I, we went to a hackathon and we built we thought crypto was interesting, at least technically, not enough to invest, but technically that’s interesting. So we thesis, the paper, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So at the hackathon, we created an ETF that had the top 50. And you could and we converted that into an ethereum based token where you could anyway long story short That was our idea. This was before a lot of things that happened and ethereum wasn’t flushed out It wasn’t really solidity. There wasn’t we couldn’t really do anything, but it was this cool idea of this et Anyway, the next the next week the mt.
Gox hack happened where you know, 850 000 bitcoin went away and that magic you know, that exchange went down and when, and Bitcoin crashed and immediately came back. And that’s when my buddy and I thought, you know, if that can’t beat Bitcoin, nothing’s going to beat it. Wow. And so now fast forward to today, like, is it being represented right?
Are the conversations happening today? Like, like talk to me about your opinion on it today and what’s going on in the industry. I think there’s a bunch of arguments that kind of tell the story and I think it’s much simpler Then, then all of these weird, you have the Michael Saylors that are like, but spend all your money, take your kidneys and sell it, live by any coin.
And that’s one way of doing life. Yeah. And then there’s people that are like, it’s one way of doing life. I’ll take that. That’s one way. And then you have the people that are like, I’m only buying Bitcoin. I’m a Bitcoin maximalist. I was, I believe in it. Anti government, that’s another way. And I think Bitcoin is a hedge against stupidity.
And I mean that governments, typically bureaucracies, the bigger they get, the kind of slower and less smart they become, and governments print money. And they print it through lending, through credit creation, through free cash, through stimulus, through, you know, there’s a bunch of ways governments create money out of thin air, by stealing from next year to finance the right now.
And they don’t They don’t ever solve it. Like currencies always crash because they always do this. If everybody’s an eventual Venezuela, Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe in the making, right, it’s just how fast do you get there? And so, because I think that that stupidity, that bureaucratic stupidity when managing money, We’ll continue forever, or at least until AI takes over.
So maybe only in five or six more years. But in, but in this time, that will not change. Governments will print and make into existence money. And if they do that, then a currency like Bitcoin with a belief system around it, Because it’s, it’s partly tech and partly religion. Religions are hard to, to stomp out.
As, as we’ve learned. We have. And. Thousands of years worth. In a financial religion that actually pays a reward. Like for those who, who stick it out. Like imagine if, if you were a little kid and you learned about Christianity. And oh, by the way, if you stick it out for five years, you’re a millionaire. God gives you a million bucks.
You’d be like, oh my God, this is the best religion ever. This is the Bitcoin religion. It is that. The world is using it as a kind of savings account. And when the black rocks them and, and the, you know, the larger asset managers in the world, when they gave it the stamp of approval, which they’ve done through these ETFs, pretty stupid to get no, it’s like, why would you fight that force?
Yeah. It’s a product, by the way, when you think about an ETFs, you think about like mutual funds, you think about the size. Stock drip plant, like all those, I like to talk about that pretty often. It’s like, those were all packaged products, a stock, a stock, like an option contract goes back to like olive, like pressing, like, I mean, there’s their products at the end of the day.
It’s a product exactly. And as a product that these big facilities can sell to Joe six pack to the retail investors that are, that have really had no exposure to these kinds of things before, and you know, BlackRock doesn’t invest in products. That they’re going to sell to lose money. Yes. They, they kind of are kingmakers.
And so when you see these big companies lining up to, to propagate, you know, Bitcoin and to, to an extent, Ethereum, it’s pretty dumb to get in the way of that. So you just, just ride the wave. Man, well, I’ll tell you, this has been great. I want, I want you to, how do our viewers follow up? How do they follow your journey?
How do they follow your content? How do they connect? Why don’t you look at the camera for that one? Sure. So we do a show six days a week called digital investor. And you can, you can go to nickblacknext. com and just check it out. And it’s financial education in and around crypto assets and artificial intelligence and where they all kind of merge.
We have a belief that, that that’s where most of the money in the future will be made is in that intersection between decentralized technology. Systems that are really good at moving data and artificial intelligent agent networks. And in the middle, there’s a lot of very investable stuff. And so that’s really what we focus on.
Fantastic. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll put up, we’ll put all the, all that information in the show notes. So the links, so you could just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time, First time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet.
Hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Nick, thanks again, man. Appreciate you so much.