AI Meets Blockchain: Jake Tullis on the Next Wave of Technological Integration (Episode 2)

Frank Hereda (00:01.47) All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Focused Free and Fit. We've got a special guest today, Jake Tullis. And, uh, Jake, if you wouldn't mind, let's get started for everybody who doesn't know who you are. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you? And, uh, I did some research on you and what you're doing, but why don't you tell the listeners basically about your company and what you're doing right now before we get started. JTKnowsThings (00:27.546) Sure, yeah. One, thank you for having me. I really appreciate getting on here and talking to people about things that I'm passionate about. I can talk to a brick wall, you know, so it's nice to be given a platform where people actually want to listen to me. That's nice. No, I am a software development expert. I've spent 10 years of my life, probably longer than that really. I was interested in tech since I was a little kid. You know, I built my first PC when I was... 13 or 14 and taught myself how to build websites, phone apps. I started a software development company in college, had multiple startups after that, have been consulting small to large sized businesses in the past five years or so. And then more recently, I launched a hedge fund that specializes in digital assets. And it's a broad spectrum fund specific to... Crypto, 100%. And it really is the evolution of my understanding of technology and where I do believe the future of the internet is going. And it's all just kind of been married really well with how I invest and how I underwrite these assets to yield the most returns for my investors. Frank Hereda (01:47.478) That's great. Um, I'm really excited about today because first of all, we appreciate you being on, but I'm really excited about today because I feel like there's so much confusion out there. There is so much happening in the tech space and I'm dealing with it from my industry, I'm a business coach and I'm in real estate and I see it in so many different ways and so I'm really excited to have this conversation and JTKnowsThings (01:56.73) There's so many different things. Oh yeah. Frank Hereda (02:13.878) We'll hopefully cover it all, but I'd love to get into, you know, today we talk about blockchain. I would like to talk about crypto. I'd like to talk about Web3, NFTs, maybe some AI. We can kind of, just kind of, you know, that's a lot to talk about, so we won't be able to go deep on everything, but it's really interesting to me, and I want everyone to understand a little better. You know, you and I probably know more than most. I know nothing is close to what you know, but I do my research as far as all those subjects. JTKnowsThings (02:25.677) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (02:29.358) Yeah. Frank Hereda (02:42.802) as much as I can without getting too deep. So I'm really excited to have you here to answer some questions. So first question though, you look like you're 17. How did you do all that stuff already, man? How old are you? What the heck? JTKnowsThings (02:45.562) That's good. JTKnowsThings (02:56.206) I know, I know. I'm 29. I, you know, text this industry where results are all you need. I would honestly say it's closer to a blue collar career and path than a white collar. Although, you know, you can get a degree and everything else, but, you know, I don't even have a degree in technology. And I have, like, I have a finance degree that I... Frank Hereda (02:58.444) Okay. JTKnowsThings (03:22.594) rarely, I didn't even use it till I started this hedge fund. Because I taught myself everything that I know. And there are eight year olds that are 10 times faster than me at what I do. So it really is kind of an equalizing career field. If anyone's interested in tech, like you don't need more than $500 and an internet connection to learn how to do what I've done because that's the total amount I've spent on my education in 10 years. You can literally Google, YouTube and... Frank Hereda (03:25.226) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (03:52.202) Codecademy is a free resource. So, you know, you can teach yourself if you're inclined or interested. And basically I'm just a hustler. I got tired of flipping $200 websites back in 2011, 2012. So I was like, how do I make more money building software? That's why I started a software development company. I found a partner who had, this is when I was 18. I had a partner that was 31. He had 10. you know, off-shore developers. He didn't have any American clients. I was good at selling and, you know, we grew that. I exited it when I was 21 and rolled whatever I could into a bunch of different startups after that. And I've never really looked back. I guess it's just like me personally, whatever it is, I have a very hard time listening to other people. Like, don't, you know, don't let the... The cloud ceiling fool you. Like I'm very stern and I'm very sure of who I am and what I want. And I've yet to meet a company or individual that can pay me what I believe I'm worth. And having that mindset makes it very difficult to integrate into society. I'm not much of a conformist. So I kind of had to figure it out. Like if my mom was on this podcast, she'd be like, he was awful. I had nine jobs fired from them all inside of like a month. Frank Hereda (05:16.156) Yeah, yeah. JTKnowsThings (05:19.886) for things that, you know, most people wouldn't take personally. I would. Seemingly innocuous stuff like how I swept the floor would be enough to make me be like, you know what? F you. You know, I'll break that broom. Uh, and then that stuff, stuff like that. I don't know what that is, but that's how you get started young. You can't get a job. And then it's like, I want money, you know? Frank Hereda (05:31.609) Yeah. Frank Hereda (05:35.747) Yeah, I find that. Frank Hereda (05:41.334) Well, I think it's that and I think some of it is that you just are, like you said, you have the confidence and if you're willing to do the work, good for you. So you go out and do your thing. So let me ask you a question because on the entrepreneurial part of this is you did have the guts and you did have the drive and the confidence. So what made you, after you had that exit, when you say exit, I'm not sure if you sold it or you just sold your piece, but when you left it, did you, how did you decide where you were gonna put that money and what startups did you put it in and did they all work or did one work or did all of them work? What, what, because I have some background in that, in that situation, in that space. So how did that work for you and how have you evolved from then to where you are right JTKnowsThings (06:24.27) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (06:28.354) Well, one, I don't have the Midas touch. And you'll be shocked to hear that from a lot of entrepreneurs. I have many wealthy, successful people in my network. And I don't know one with less than 10 LLCs under their belt in their 40s. Like, they just found something that worked. And they, you know, but they kept trying until they did. So that's some hope to all of you out there. The I exited the business by selling my shares back to the individual I was partnered with at the time. I did not like what he was doing and what was going on. I had profit, so I just wanted to leave. And I then started a dating app, which I've always been way too early, brother. I had a dating app called Seen. C-E-N. It was, and I'm not kidding. It was a full screen video like TikTok. The profile was just a 30, 60 or 90 second video that had to be updated every 90 days. And it was just them talking about themselves. And then you scrolled through videos until you liked someone and then you would match and talk. I had that back in 2015. So way too early. We had the trademark for video dating for iPhone. And the investor I had. Frank Hereda (07:43.542) Wow. Yeah. Visionary. JTKnowsThings (07:53.73) Um, he did not understand what we were doing, man. I spent 50 bucks on advertising in the Apple store and we got 3000 downloads. And he thought that was really bad because we made, we cost that cost us 80 bucks a month in server fees. I was like, do you not know, you know, like, do you know how good this is? Right? I'm like, come on, man. Like I can't do any better. Like that's as good as it gets. Frank Hereda (08:10.039) Wow. Yeah, scratching your head. Frank Hereda (08:21.762) That's just a mismatch of understanding there, yeah. JTKnowsThings (08:21.866) If we got 50 grand, yeah, it's just a gap, you know? And I come from a place in Cincinnati, small town. The investors are very conservative and, you know, they just wanted to play Silicon Valley and I shouldn't have made the decisions I made with the money I took and who I took it from. But that was a cool venture. It just didn't work out because I spent all the money. I spent the last bit getting that ad out. and it crushed and he didn't want to, he just pulled the plug. He didn't want to put any more money into it. And, um, I lost the vigor for it. I'm more of a creator. I really like building. I like, I like creating something from just up here and bring it into reality. It's hard for me to do the repetition of a business if it's not growing, or if I feel like I've kind of milked all of the juice out of it in my mind, my creative energy. It's hard for me to keep going. So I just moved on to the next thing, which was a fitness on-demand app, but it was a B2B play. So we licensed on-demand technology to gyms, yoga studios, didn't really matter. And within about five minutes, you could turn on your personalized services as remote and meet users anywhere to offer any service really, it was very composable that way. So it could be like a user requesting yoga in the park. Frank Hereda (09:47.094) Gotcha. JTKnowsThings (09:47.126) with two friends and then a business, a gym could pick that up and send their best person or it could be on the other end. The gym could be offering, you know, 50 bucks for half an hour at home session. Equipment is brought to your home or meeting the park and we'll do this or meet in any general area. Maybe there's another gym that is closer to the client's residence. That was all kind of baked in. That was doing really well. And then COVID happened. So, right. And we didn't know how long. uh, that would go on for at the time. And I just thought it was smarter to not burn what runway we had left and just get money back to whoever we could and move on from there. When I was raising money, I never really liked paying myself at all. I never touched a dollar personally. So I would consult just small to medium to large size businesses that, um, I knew through my networking for all my other ventures. You know, hey, I do this, but also I'm quite talented at this, you know, and that's how I've always just kept the lights on. And then after my fitness company, I went full fledged into consulting and have made a killing. And, um, I really, really liked that work. That led me into the hedge fund. Um, you, when you start consulting medium sized businesses, you start getting close with the stakeholders, which are business owners that are in the eight to nine figure range and. They, I've been passionate about crypto since 2017. I showed them my wallets, what I was doing, my strategy, and they were like, you can make a lot more money than consulting if you just did this for me and people like me. And that was an idea almost two years ago that has kind of snowballed into the best opportunity I've ever been able to generate for myself so far. It's very exciting. That's really interesting. I love this. Thanks for sharing with us. Yeah. Frank Hereda (11:39.266) That's really interesting. Thank you for sharing all that. So we're not giving financial advice today, but we'll probably get into the financial discussion and we'll talk about money. But this is all, you've always got to do your own research, so I'll say that to anybody listening. But I think it's always exciting to talk about all of this that we're going to get into today. Talk to me a little bit more though, before we get into all that, about So you had someone say, hey, you'd make a lot more money doing this for others. So when you say doing this, explaining how people get started, is that anywhere from that to getting very advanced or was it, Hey, here's what crypto is, and here's what crypto you should invest in. And here's how you invest in blockchain. And let me get you into web three. Or was it just like real simple in the beginning? How did that evolve? Like just when you got into this industry. JTKnowsThings (12:12.004) Yes. JTKnowsThings (12:31.87) It was like, uh, are you really doubling your money in a quarter? And then they were, and then they were like, why can you do that for me? Frank Hereda (12:36.916) Okay, gotcha. proof of concept, just like, hey, I can do this for you. And then, yeah. JTKnowsThings (12:43.998) Yeah, you know, like right now, you know, our funds fully up. You can go find us on Edgar. It's the SEC's filing. We have all of our exemptions filed. So I genuinely cannot give financial advice. That's part of the exemptions we have. But the user experience now is, you know, I send you a DocuSign. You click four buttons and you can write a check. And then I will invest your money in crypto. I have full autonomy. It's a five-year lockup. And Last quarter we did 73.36%. That's audited or attested to. And this quarter, I haven't done it in AV yet, but we probably pulled 50, 50 to 60, somewhere in there. And I believe. Frank Hereda (13:28.182) So just to make sure I'm clear. So instead of me going and buying my own crypto and getting a wallet and going on to Coinbase, I would basically say, hey, I'm gonna give you my money. I might tell you what I want or you decide for me, but either way, here's my money. You invest it the best way you think, or do I get to also have the option to say, here's what I wanna buy, will you do it for me? And you hold my wallet for at least five years. JTKnowsThings (13:52.854) Um, it would be like when you subscribe to my fund, you are giving me whatever the amount is. And I have full autonomy over that money for the next five years. And my goal. Yeah. You're joining a hedge fund, you know, like that. Yeah. It's my hedge fund. It'd be like you writing a check to, uh, Bridgewater Capital for Ray Dalio, right? Frank Hereda (14:01.054) Okay. Frank Hereda (14:04.69) I gotcha. So I'm not telling you you're saying here's what I'm gonna do. Okay. Okay, gotcha. JTKnowsThings (14:19.306) My personal brand is JT knows things. It's why I'm on this podcast. It's why I post regularly. If someone wanted to invest with me, they would write a check to bleeding edge capital, my fund. It's the same kind of concept. Frank Hereda (14:21.78) Yeah. Frank Hereda (14:30.166) So either one, is there, I'm just getting straight to the chase so that people that are listening to this understand how this works, because most, maybe a lot of them don't. So would they, is there a minimum? And then if they give you this, how does that play out over the five years and that kind of thing? Do they get updates? Do they get, you know, because a lot of the people that follow will be like, oh, I understand real estate and I understand syndications. And is it like that or? JTKnowsThings (14:46.084) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (14:52.49) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frank Hereda (14:58.414) If they have a financial planner, that kind of thing. JTKnowsThings (14:58.998) Okay. If you make that kind of content, people that listen to this know about real estate syndication, I would literally just think of it as exactly the same. But instead of limited partners pulling their funds and buying an apartment or a hotel, we're buying my spread of tokens or crypto assets that I actively manage. So that spread will, you know, change throughout the markets in my research. Frank Hereda (15:09.43) Okay. Frank Hereda (15:20.023) Gotcha. JTKnowsThings (15:24.354) But in general, it's like, hey, we're all pulling our money and we're buying a bunch of crypto. There will be side pocket opportunities where like maybe I want to set up a Bitcoin mining facility that you would get preferred interest in and all this other stuff. I have a lot of little levers I can pull to optimize investors returns. And then the minimum is 50,000 and you have to be accredited. One of the exemptions we hold, and if you're familiar with syndicating, is you have to have accredited investors. We were 506C. We cannot market to the public at all. So if anyone would be interested, you have to fill out a form, clarify that you are accredited, and I'll get into that definition in a second. And then we will also have to have zero shredded out if you would like to participate. And the definition of accredited is an individual who has 200,000 of gross annual income or a combined or household income of 300,000 if you are married, or not an and, or... million dollars of net worth outside of your primary residence. If you meet that criteria, you can engage in any private offering, which honestly is a much better way to invest if you are in that category. If you're putting all of your excess capital in a 401k IRA, you are really, really hurting yourself because you can compound passively 20-30 percent in real estate syndication. with crazy retirement benefits like cash flow and an occasional massive check or in other myriad of things. Like I know people that do it with private jets, helicopters, yachts with charters. There's a lot of private placements or private market opportunities where the shittiest yield is probably 20%, 30%. I've seen equity multipliers like mine. You asked what would happen in five years. I believe we could get nine to 11. um equity multiplier in five years. So if you put in 100 that would be a million dollars or more. Um and that's because I've you know I've seen and done similar things for myself personally and that's kind of why they uh they were like hey you should start a fund if you actually know this much about this and you're that good at it and that's why we uh we're growing this thing. Frank Hereda (17:41.082) That's great. What are you sitting at right now? Assets under management. JTKnowsThings (17:46.538) We have close to 30 committed. We are partnered with. JTKnowsThings (17:57.239) I don't know if I can say it's hard with the podcast. I don't know if I can say their names. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah. Current money clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're good, you're good. Yeah, we got 30 mil committed. That'll all be collected by the end of the year. We're in the process of, there's a lot of stuff regulatorially that we have to get done. We got to get a QCIP. We have to have a registered investment advisor be our sponsor so we can get that. There's a lot of stuff that Frank Hereda (18:00.612) No, that's okay. If it, yeah, if that's okay. Sorry. Yeah. I would just kind of giving people an idea. Sorry. Yeah. Frank Hereda (18:12.61) Gotcha. JTKnowsThings (18:24.846) I am surprised as a tech guy, even though I have a finance degree, I promise you they don't tell you about hedge funds in college. There's a lot that I did not expect that we're working through. But by the end of the year, we should have 30 million under management. We're an emerging fund. I'm an emerging manager. And this is an emerging industry. Yeah. Frank Hereda (18:43.998) Oh my gosh. Speaking of, so, and I understand all the regulatory stuff you gotta go through. It's, you know, my brother-in-law is a financial planner and I used to have some of my licenses in that space. But that was a long time ago. Let's talk. Oh, it's, well, and rightfully so, rightfully so, but it's still, it's still a lot. JTKnowsThings (19:01.662) Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. It's just as shitty as you left it. No. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Thanks, Bernie. And Sam Bankman for reading. No. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Frank Hereda (19:14.574) Yeah, yeah. Well, that was way before him. It was way before him. But yeah. So, okay. You know, let's start simple here for anybody who so for someone like myself, I watch like I had one of my most interesting podcasts I watched recently was between Peter Schiff and Raoul Paul. Do you know those two? Okay. Oh, it, it was great. JTKnowsThings (19:38.554) Of course, man, that's gotta be a fire. That's gotta be a banger. I don't know where Peter sits on the crypto, though. I really don't. Ralph Hall's a very aggressive adversary if they were on opposite ends. He's a very nice guy. Frank Hereda (19:47.44) So it's really in. Frank Hereda (19:52.258) So they were, they were, and they were clearly opposite on the podcast. I would encourage you to watch it, very interesting. I was like salivating, I couldn't wait to watch it because I like them both for different reasons. But you know, you got people out there like a Peter Schiff who are all about gold. And then you got a person out there like Raul who's like crypto, right? So, but before we get to that, because that's a question I have and I want to get your take on it. But starting from the beginning. JTKnowsThings (20:02.891) Good. Yup. JTKnowsThings (20:13.891) Yeah. Frank Hereda (20:21.79) I think it'd be fair to walk people through. Let's just do a basic on crypto in general, because I just really find that people are having a tough time wrapping their minds around what is taking place if they even know it all. So you hear about digital currency, and I think that's probably a good place to start. So can you just, at a basic level, explain crypto for people who aren't really, they think they understand, but they don't, or they just don't. What would you, how would you explain it? JTKnowsThings (20:28.108) Okay. JTKnowsThings (20:48.506) Yeah, I'm gonna have to pull a Ray Dalio and say that we need to go back in history to better understand the present and future. So what you're, I guess, observing or hearing about, listening to, is a bunch of people like me that really are passionate about technology and are well-versed in this stuff and we like talking about it. And the reason is we understand things that, you know, the listener may not. For example, the internet wasn't always the way it is now. Uh, it started off in 1954 as DARPA net and it was essentially a government. Black ops, like, you know, black budget, no one really talked about it. They were building this thing called a computer that could do math, which was like crazy, uh, back in the fifties. Right. So, and they would have, they was as big as a two story building. And this is what everyone would call one web 1.0. It was the building out of the internet that we use today. From 1954 to 1989, IBM, Oracle, all these companies were spun up, Microsoft, Apple, and it was in the process of building what we use today and probably take for granted, databases, servers, everything that needs to exist for us to be able to do what we're doing right now. And in 1989, normal people could come on and build websites. That is the transition from being able to only read to now internet can read and write. You could get a domain, you could type something and then anyone in the world could look at it. That was crazy. And what we're describing is the internet went from being able to only read to now it can write and read, which means that even this right here, all we're doing is writing and reading. This camera is reading, view, right, and it's writing it to a server and then you're reading, you know, your computer is reading it and it's literally just that exchange. And all of this is for the management of what? Information. Files with data. We all can understand that, you know, a picture you take with your phone, whatever it is. Crypto, Web3, blockchain is the next evolution of the internet. So read, write, and now own. JTKnowsThings (23:16.394) All of the protocols that were built are built in the right era. SMTP, HTTP, DNS, those were all built by open source developers. People in their basement like this that have a lot of pride in their work that we all are using right now. If you're listening, you're using RSS. That's an open source protocol. We are using SMTP to send these files to and from each other's servers. We are using DNS to access all of the websites that we're using right now to record this live, right? Or record this, not maybe live, but in general record it. We're using all of these protocols that have $0 actually captured at the protocol layer, but have generated trillions of dollars of value. Like, what do you think the value is of being able to send messages from servers? Every email, every text, every photo. Frank Hereda (23:52.051) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (24:09.562) Tens of trillions of dollars of value was generated from one protocol. In this own era, this is crypto blockchain, the advent of Bitcoin brought in this next era of the internet. Blockchain is a method of data or database management. Okay. And different crypto projects are different protocols like S and T P SMS, DNS, there's so many protocols, but they are just protocols that are for owning things online. So the internet will eventually be able to read, write, and now own. I know that's a very difficult thing to understand, but it's the natural evolution of the internet. And a protocol, for those who may not know, is just an instruction manual for computers. It's a, it's... It's like a step one, do this step, two, do that step three, do this step four, do that. It's literally just an instruction manual that you can code right into the internet. And, you know, it just does a specific function when someone interacts with it. Right. And yeah, we'll start, we'll pause there. I can talk, I can labor for a whole. Frank Hereda (25:19.995) What? Yeah, so okay. Yeah, sure. Well, I love it because you're really going deeper than even what, you know, most would even explain crypto. So I think what can tell me if I'm right or wrong, for me, it's not it doesn't really overwhelm me at the crypto level, meaning it's a little bit, I think for some people, though, they say, Okay, right now we have one currency, we have the US, for the most part in the United States, it's the US dollar, right. And in a lot of other countries, it's the it's the World Reserve. JTKnowsThings (25:51.364) See. Frank Hereda (25:53.118) So go ahead, what are we going to say? You're going to say. JTKnowsThings (25:55.314) I was going to say that's why I said what I said, brother. They're not currencies. They're technology. They're protocols. And owning or the byproduct of these protocols is ownership. If you own something, you have inherent value and people associate value to just money. But that's not the situation we're talking about. That's not the actual invention of blockchain. Frank Hereda (26:08.407) Okay. Frank Hereda (26:12.791) That's true. Frank Hereda (26:16.95) That's true, yes, for sure. Frank Hereda (26:22.354) Agreed. Yeah. And I'm not and I'm not saying the money is. Yes, you're I agree with you there. We're in agreement. But I think where people get confused is whatever that medium of exchange is the dollar, right? They they look at crypto and they go, well, I have this plethora of options. And bitcoins, obviously the most popular. I think that's is media, you know, before they even get to that it's digital, and all this other complication, they're like, well, Bitcoin, Ethereum and or whatever, you know, I'm just throwing a name out there, whatever the names are, there's so many. And so do you think that confuses people? I mean, I think that's where a lot of people do get confused. So why don't you explain why there's so many and why there is, you know, there's so many and how would you start to decipher how you would pick one? Like Bitcoin's the most popular. Ethereum is probably, I think, just from my limited research, would be the next one I would even think about going to. But after that, I'm like, it's the Wild West. It's already Wild West, but it gets really Wild West after those two. JTKnowsThings (27:29.439) One, I would say stop even thinking of these as currencies. Just stop right there. You need to understand that these things are projects. The token, not the currency or the coin, the token that you're looking at on coin market cap like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the token of the Bitcoin network. Ether is the token of the Ethereum network. SOL or SOL is the token of the Solana network. The reason why there are so many, these are public permissionless networks. Anyone in the world can copy and paste them. Anyone in the world, they're public, right? The code bases are public. So like Dogecoin is a direct copy of Bitcoin. It has a halving cycle. It has everything. It's literally someone forked Bitcoin. That's what it's called forking. It's a copy and paste. Frank Hereda (28:07.726) Okay. Gotcha. JTKnowsThings (28:21.23) but they forged Bitcoin and put a picture of a dog on it and said, hey, we're Dogecoin. And it's ridiculous. And I know it's ridiculous, but really, like it is, but what we're seeing is what humans will always do. You know, like there's no permissions. It's completely public. You're going to see every wonderful shade of the rainbow of people, personalities, ambitions, and desires. Frank Hereda (28:29.998) Hahaha JTKnowsThings (28:49.242) in this industry that is completely unregulated. You're going to have the Sandbakeman freeze, the very dark psychopathic flavor of human. And then you're also going to have companies that are projects really that facilitate providing, let's just say, data to underprivileged people. And the data on that network is the, that's what the token represents. and it's used to purchase data for minimal fees. People can sponsor fees. There's literally so many different ways, I guess, that you could use this technology. I just want people to stop even thinking that these things are currencies. Bitcoin is a protocol or a network that is designed and built and coded to behave as a store of value. It being used as a medium of exchange is a pipe dream. That is not a good one. If you are betting on Bitcoin because you think we're all going to trade Satoshis, you're also betting that the world will go to shit and no state nation currency is welcome. The reason why Bitcoin will do very well is because state nations will do very poorly. Fiat systems are a failed system and Bitcoin is something entirely out of government control. Doesn't matter where you live, you can buy Bitcoin. It's the first asset in the world like that. It really is its own thing. But Ethereum is a protocol that is completely different. It does a completely different thing than Bitcoin. And Ether and Bitcoin are thrown into the same category and considered currencies. Yeah, and they're not even the same thing. That'd be like me saying my domain name's the same as my email. Frank Hereda (30:26.626) Yeah. Frank Hereda (30:33.342) all the time. Frank Hereda (30:41.922) Hehehehe JTKnowsThings (30:43.85) Like, what do you mean? Like, try sending an email to blee with no Jake at. Tell me how that goes, you know? Like, it makes no sense. So, I'm very passionate about this. Like, stop thinking they're currencies, guys. They're not. They're just not. Frank Hereda (30:52.128) Yeah. Frank Hereda (30:59.852) Yeah. Frank Hereda (31:05.958) How do you rationalize with, I shouldn't say rationalize, but it's rightfully so. I understand where people are coming from. They see these major swings in crypto and it makes them seem like, and this goes back to the Peter Schiff, Raoul Paul conversation, that crypto has these major swings. And so it's really not, it's not backed by anything. And that's, I think, where people start to, which we could go straight to the dollar and have that conversation, but it's not backed by anything. So JTKnowsThings (31:06.658) you rascal. Frank Hereda (31:34.514) in crypto world, it makes it seem like the fact that people are just buying it and trying to make it as more people just want to get in and buy is the only reason they're making money. And how do you have that conversation with people and say, that's not the case? I mean, I feel like with how much is going on, not know how, you know, it takes so much for someone to learn what you know. Okay. And just no one's going to do that. So the only option they really have is to go to someone like you with a track record. That's where track record comes in this game, in my opinion, to say, OK, I need somebody who is doing this all the time. So I trust them because for me to go and take the time to do learn what you know, because it's the only thing you do, it's just so overwhelming. And we're just talking crypto right now. So I was kind of a loaded question, but, you know, the big swings and the. JTKnowsThings (32:28.547) I would say it's going to look volatile if you're on a short timeframe. But I have a saying in my fund that everyone says religiously, when in doubt, zoom out. If you were to zoom out on the Bitcoin graph and put a logarithmic curve on it, you would see that it never leaves its lower bound, ever, has never done it, where the S&P has done it four times. Meaning it's standard deviation of change or okay. I'll basically it is never dropped at it as significant Relative to its average price. So let's say the S&P is at 5k all day S&P has had a correction greater than like their moving average Then Bitcoin has that sounds crazy But if I just overlay those two charts you would see that Bitcoin has held its bounds when S&P is not four different times Now, S&P has been around through different cycles and we can make arguments there. But in general, if you just zoom out, you're not finding a better performing asset class. I don't care. If you're worried about a month-to-month price movement on anything in crypto, you're just wrong. And it's hard for people to understand because people are used to equities and bonds. And then the second thing is... Frank Hereda (33:28.201) Mm-hmm. JTKnowsThings (33:55.85) It's really hard to rationalize with someone that is committed to not understanding. But if someone's mind's open to Bitcoin, blockchain, the network, everything else, the device that you're recording on, right? It's a computer of some kind. It has a GPU. It has a hard drive. Is that valuable? Like, what did you pay for it? Let's just start there. You know, like you. And it has, it has a function, right? Like you had to. Frank Hereda (34:17.802) Yeah. I mean, I see value in it. It's a Mac. So yeah, I see value. I like Mac. So yeah. JTKnowsThings (34:25.934) take your garbage dollars, trade it in to get this thing that you then plugged into the wall. So there's some value there, right? Bitcoin doesn't exist without that transaction. Bitcoin is a network that is ran by volunteers for profit that went out of their own pocket and invested in it. They went out and got 10, 20, 50 or one GPU. It doesn't matter. That's real American dollars or Yuan or Ruble. It doesn't matter anywhere in the world. It's a global network. Frank Hereda (34:45.75) Mm-hmm. JTKnowsThings (34:56.674) So one, it's not backed by anything. You simply don't understand Linux. And like how that runs on more devices than Microsoft, has a billion installs, and is open sourced. Like go ahead and Google Linux headquarters, you'll laugh. Like it's one guy's laptop. Like you guys don't understand how the infrastructure of open source development works. So you thinking that there's nothing backing it. is completely false. There's probably $600 billion of hardware plugged into the wall right now, consuming an entire grid of value just to support the network. So, yeah, you're just wrong, you know? And then I would say it is more secure. Like, as a software professional, I'm telling everyone here that it is far more secure than anything you're using right now. If I wanted to hack Amazon, it would have to be a region, but let's just say I pick North America. There's a single point of failure. If I get on one of those servers, I could access a lot. For you to access even one iota of byte data on Bitcoin, you would have to compromise 51% of the entire network all inside of a block time, which changes every 15 seconds. Frank Hereda (35:56.139) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (36:21.154) So you would have to access over $300 billion of equipment across the globe, millions of devices, all at the same time, inside of 15 seconds. The percent chance of that is like one, and it's like orders of magnitude. We're talking 10 to the 5,000th power that anyone can do it. If a super computer was working on that, it would take almost 4,000 years for it to get to it right now. So it's much, much safer. It's incredibly safe. Um, so I, you know, most of the time, my answer is going to be chalked up to just ignorance, you know, um, which can be resolved with public information. That's why I post content, you know, it's not like I have some, there's something magical up in this noggin. You know, I've just spent time, you know, Frank Hereda (37:00.668) Yeah, yeah. Frank Hereda (37:06.002) Yeah, yeah. Well, you got to think about how many people look, the average person doesn't have $1,000 in their account. So for them to go and understand, you know, Bitcoin, it's just that's what I mean. So, you know, there's got to be and there is none of that yet. I mean, they have to go research it, but for it to be commonplace. So that leads me to my next question before we move on from crypto, which is, where do you see you're not a fortune teller, but JTKnowsThings (37:21.24) Yeah. Frank Hereda (37:35.978) You know, it took, based on your explanation and what limited research I've done on the internet, you know, 25 years for the for us to be at 97% adoption of the internet. Right. I think that's where we sit today. 97 of the world's population. 97% or maybe something like that. That could be wrong, but close to that. It took 25 years. So knowing, would you say that we're in stage one of 10 for crypto? And what does it look like? at the end here, we had 10 year situation and what does that look like as far as adoption? I mean, I know they just started legitimizing it with a fund and that kind of stuff and people are talking about that, but how do you see this playing out with crypto? JTKnowsThings (38:23.598) I think AI has dramatically improved this timeline, but 10 years, I believe, I think we're basically in the mid to late 90s of internet adoption. If I were to compare, just based on market cap, number of companies, number of users, number of activity, just in general, I feel like we're right around there. 96, 97, I don't know. I don't think we're gonna have a... Frank Hereda (38:37.364) Okay. JTKnowsThings (38:52.462) blow off top like the dot com crash. Like we might have that kind of crash coming up. I don't know. I'm a cyclical long-term trader. I just pull profits when my price targets hit. Otherwise I accumulate. And so I'm not that worried in general about any of that stuff. Just means I'm getting great stuff cheaper. But 10 years from now, I could see us going very fast. I could see us, JTKnowsThings (39:23.546) I could see the majority of things being on a ledger inside of 10 years. You have BlackRock already tokenizing a fund. You have Ernst & Young creating private enterprise level blockchains. That's another thing people don't understand. Blockchain is an idea. It's very much like the combustion engine. Whoever thought of the combustion engine very likely was just tired of stepping in horse shit every day and did not think. 50 years later, there'd be planes, mowers, AC, like combustion engine is everywhere. And only more and more is being built on top of combustion engines. They're as small or as large as you can think, right? They do everything. You use them to do anything in your day-to-day life if you're in a first world country. So it's the same thing with blockchain. It will eat the world because it is a better way to manage data. And that's what I want people to understand. If nothing else, blockchain is a method of data management and it could be used anywhere data isn't relevant, which is only getting increasingly more important. Like I'm starting to see social issues around data, cancel culture and everything else, like people are starting to wake up and be like, that's kind of bad that they own all this data. They know so much about me. you know. Frank Hereda (40:51.278) Well, that's too late now. I mean, you know, yeah, yeah. But I that's where we agree. Well, agree again on some things. But I definitely think blockchain. That's that to me is where the real the real play is, in my opinion. It's all you can first for at least the average person, I feel like blockchain is here to stay. No matter what. JTKnowsThings (40:53.846) Way too late. Yeah. JTKnowsThings (41:15.062) Yes. Yeah, and there are some protocols that exist today that I think will be here for the next 50 years, you know, pending force majeure. Yeah, I mean, like, I don't think Bitcoin is going anywhere. I don't think Ethereum is going anywhere. I don't think Solana is going there. There are some that are so early to the game that have so much adoption, so much intrigue that have survived multiple cycles now, like Tell me an equity outside of like Amazon and Apple and imagine that tech companies that can take an 80% 90% Dive on their stock and still pull out You know we've seen 98 percent pullbacks on some of these assets in their history and They stick around because software is sticky and it has staying power You even switching your email server after five years would probably want to eat a bullet You don't want to do that, you know, like software sticky in a lot of ways Frank Hereda (41:51.831) Yeah. Frank Hereda (42:06.442) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (42:10.19) Developers like working with a specific stack, you know, people like interacting with an interface a very specific way. If someone changed the home button on Facebook, I bet there'd be a million tweets about it, you know, like. Frank Hereda (42:25.163) Do you think that, I always think adoption, this is so new and how most people fight change. What's it going to take for blockchain and crypto to be adopted by the average person? I mean, is it just time? Is it another sector or a sector after sector? And finally we get to so many sectors, it just starts to become like... JTKnowsThings (42:33.18) Mm-hmm. Change. Yes. Frank Hereda (42:49.218) You're always going to have the early adopters like we have now in crypto or the, the people that already are funding your fund, right? But, but past that, how do we get it to be adopted by everybody where that's just not such as this crazy far out situation for them. JTKnowsThings (43:05.454) What do you think drove the adoption of the internet? Frank Hereda (43:10.958) That's a good question. Probably the fact that someone could do it faster, someone could do it better. They didn't have it, you know, partially what others had that they didn't have. But I think mostly about the dollar, you know, how much money they could make with the productivity and that kind of a thing is where I would start with. JTKnowsThings (43:28.118) It's not a bad idea. Time. It was Steve Jobs, brother. Frank Hereda (43:28.662) Time, saving time. Frank Hereda (43:35.047) Okay. JTKnowsThings (43:35.734) We need an iPhone moment. We need someone to create a product that fundamentally changes how we understand blockchain. Right now, the reason why there's only early adopters is because it's a technical subject. Do you know which database Facebook chooses to use? No, because you don't care. We don't need to know, we don't need to care, right? That's what we're talking about. Like, people don't understand we're so high up in the stack. Frank Hereda (43:37.747) Okay. Frank Hereda (43:56.673) No. Frank Hereda (44:01.086) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (44:05.634) that every token you're speculating on, well, not every, but the majority of the tokens out there are at that level. There, we're not talking about an app or an interface that users can download and it blows their mind, usually. Like, Solana is infrastructure, Ethereum is infrastructure. There are four to five layers before you even get an app like OpenSea that lets you buy NFTs, as an example. So... Frank Hereda (44:33.528) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (44:34.75) It's understanding where we're at and what you're even investing in. So, you know, the majority of the stuff out there is all infra. What we need is someone to take everything this market has produced, be a visionary and build something that is just so remarkable that people are using it without realizing it's blockchain and they're exchanging tokens. I personally, yeah, I personally believe it'll be in gaming. That's my bet. Frank Hereda (44:38.798) Sure. Frank Hereda (44:56.822) Gotcha. I think that's a good point. That's a good point. JTKnowsThings (45:03.51) I think a game will come out that the average Joe will, cause there's, you know, there's over a billion, there's actually 3 billion monthly active gamers in the world, which is crazy. It's more than, it's almost half the population plays video games. I don't know that he's great. Frank Hereda (45:17.834) What's the age breakdown though? The only way I would push back on that, the only way I'd push back on that is that the demographics too young and that wouldn't speed up the process. You'd have to, there's a lot of adults too, but I feel like you'd have to have something that was more tailored to the middle market at least, or you think no. JTKnowsThings (45:32.09) I don't know. JTKnowsThings (45:38.739) I mean, I've watched so many TikToks of them stealing their parents' cards just to buy Fortnite skins. You know how many V-Bucks that Fortnite moved at its peak? I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars a month. If just digital currency that just existed on their little siloed database, they just moved that shit. So like... Frank Hereda (45:41.465) I have an eight year old, I get it. Frank Hereda (45:50.089) and Frank Hereda (45:53.259) Yeah, I know. Frank Hereda (46:00.608) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (46:01.646) I agree with you, but video games have a way of just pulling money out of users. And the difference is if V bucks were tokens, that could have been an iPhone moment, like imagine you get Fortnite, you do really well, you start season two. I don't know if you played, I'm a big gamer. It's how you get into all this shit. Anyways, um, you know, season two, I had a black skin, like a black night. So I've been, I was an OG, you know, Frank Hereda (46:20.723) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (46:29.01) And those were going on Craigslist for 500 to 1000 bucks at the time. I don't know if they are now, but I would have to sell my entire account, which had awesome stats, a great KD. I'm very competitive. So like, I didn't want to do that. But if it was, if Fortnite was the exact same game, but built with Ethereum as the base infrastructure, that skin could have been an NFT that I sold on a secondary marketplace to anyone in the world. I could have converted whatever. V bucks I had left after a transaction into dollars back. I Could have just done that naturally if the interface was as clean as it was when it came out I'm saying when you go to the store to buy V bucks You're not having to worry about exchange rates and token swaps and all the shit we deal with right now I'm saying you just go in swipe mommy and daddy's card and now you have a skin and then when you go back to the Store it has a sell button and you're like, oh my god, I can sell it for how many V bucks? Frank Hereda (47:08.331) Yeah. Mm-hmm. JTKnowsThings (47:26.194) Oh, I can get 4,000 V bucks for the skin I paid 200 V bucks for. That's crazy. And then they'll get that exchange. And when they want to cash out of the game, they get awarded in V bucks for winning tournaments. They get a, you know, when they're all said and done, those are ERC 20 tokens they can exchange for us dollar or any currency. Frank Hereda (47:26.284) Yeah. Frank Hereda (47:33.579) Yeah. Frank Hereda (47:45.014) So essentially, yeah, so essentially you're just thinking, okay, someone charismatic, a good salesperson that can apply this to a large percentage of the population to where they create a need that the people didn't know that they actually needed. And so they're actually in it and using it to get what they want at scale. JTKnowsThings (48:04.854) I would say a little bit more specifically, I think it is someone creative enough that makes a user experience so intuitive. The user does not understand its blockchain, but they get to see the benefits of blockchain without knowing it. So I mean, the user experience I just... Frank Hereda (48:18.498) Gotcha. You just said the key word, the benefits of blockchain without knowing it's blockchain. That's a great way to say it. JTKnowsThings (48:25.622) Yes, when we have full adoption, no one will know what is doing it. And what I mean by that is no one's going to argue with me if IMX is better than Ronin for a, a layer two gaming. Infraplay. No one will even know what those are, but they will be massive things that game developers like Ubisoft build on top of as an example. So, I mean, it's like, do you know what? Frank Hereda (48:31.394) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (48:54.17) coding language and what stack Unreal Engine 5 is? No. Right. But we still play the game. People don't understand, someone like me, that's what we're talking about. When I'm talking about the differences between IMX and Ronin, we're talking about something that minimal to your life. You've never even thought those questions that I'm pondering all day, because that's where I'm trying to invest my investors' money. It's my job. But like, Frank Hereda (48:58.414) Check now. Frank Hereda (49:06.179) Mm-hmm. JTKnowsThings (49:21.858) When we have full adoption, none of these tokens will matter outside of financial speculation, no different than like stocks and equities right now. If you're in that game, you know about it. But if I were walking down the street and someone was to talk about IBM, I don't know if more than 10 out of 100 would know what they even did. When they use IBM all day every day and they don't know. Frank Hereda (49:44.396) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (49:49.346) Because they're the ones building the servers that Amazon buys and stores all your shit in anyways, but they don't know that they don't even know what a server rack is yet alone, you know what IBM is. So. Frank Hereda (49:59.838) Well, you can't expect them to either. I mean, this is moving so fast, which actually makes me think about the next question I have, which is, so I'm not sure if people understand. Why don't we explain it in layman's terms, blockchain real quick, before we move on. So crypto, we talked about blockchain. How would you explain it to the layman who doesn't understand blockchain? JTKnowsThings (50:04.223) Yeah. Frank Hereda (50:27.574) like in a simple way. JTKnowsThings (50:33.51) tough one. That's a tough one. How would I mean... Yeah, I mean, blockchain specifically, the way you said layman made me think like a sixth grader, so I'm trying to think of a really good analogy. Yeah. Frank Hereda (50:34.814) Yeah. That's why I'm not doing it. Frank Hereda (50:46.582) Well, yeah, because, yeah, because that's most people, they don't, not because they're not smart, but because this is not their skill set and they're like blockchain, what are we talking about? I just know it as a secure, go ahead, you tell me. JTKnowsThings (50:58.262) Okay, I think I found it. All right, you got blocks. And let's say, you know, when you're building a structure with these blocks, you got a flat table. That flat table is the internet, okay? That's public, the government made it public and they support it since 1989. That's our playing ground. And basically the internet has been built like this. Frank Hereda (51:00.278) All right. JTKnowsThings (51:25.19) one block on top of the other. Silos, yeah. What I mean by that is, if I log on to Amazon, right, who has my login credentials? Amazon. No, Amazon. Well, if they don't like me, I don't have them, right? Right, they're not mine. I mean, I know them, but they're not mine, right? Yeah, so that on the database layer. Frank Hereda (51:27.508) Okay. Okay. Frank Hereda (51:38.558) You do. Amazon. And you. Well, sure. Yeah. Yeah, well. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. JTKnowsThings (51:54.386) Amazon owns everything from my login now think about all the data that Amazon has after that login Your orders placed Where you've moved all of your addresses all the people you've added in contact Right, right, and then when you buy a product, where's your money go? Amazon right? Where's the profit go all the net proceeds of your purchase Amazon? Who has to buy more infrastructure and more servers to hold all your data Amazon? Frank Hereda (52:02.51) Okay. Yeah. Frank Hereda (52:07.17) credit card numbers. JTKnowsThings (52:24.418) Who owns all the servers? Amazon. You get the idea. The internet has been built. This is, this structure is called monolithic meaning one owner for the entire stack that is that website Amazon. So if you think about Amazon, the interface, there's like 50 blocks below the website that you click on. That is the entirety of the Amazon stack. When I say stack, I'm literally talking about all the technical decisions they made and where all the data is stored and who owns it and manages it and all that stuff. Blockchain is the exact inverse of that. So it is owned by the community in its entirety. Like instead of Jeff Bezos raising money and buying all the equipment to store your data, everyone around the world invests individually. plugs it into the wall and then fractionally stores all of the data, manages all the data, saves all the data and process all the data. So it's like a community ran app instead of a monolithic app like Amazon in that way. So the blocks would then be like Frank over here buys a $2,000 computer setup, plugs it in, gets paid in Bitcoin to store 1% of my transaction. Frank Hereda (53:34.446) Okay, all right. JTKnowsThings (53:46.37) but so does Bob, Jill, Jeff, Jen, James, blah, blah. Then a hundred percent of my data is stored across all these devices. And then all the value is then all the profit and value is then spread across all of the tokens and we all get to reap in those benefits for all of us contributing to the net. Frank Hereda (54:07.874) Gotcha. Okay. It does. I just wanted to have one, at least one solid explanation for people that are curious and don't understand. So, okay. Now we're gonna get a little bit off the reservation with some things that are taking place that most people probably haven't even heard about. And I would say that the two topics, everybody's heard of AI, so we can talk about that, I guess, if it pertains to these two topics, but most haven't heard about JTKnowsThings (54:09.155) Does that make sense? Frank Hereda (54:36.59) Probably if they have, it's been NFTs, but they don't know what they are. And then we have Web3. Web3 blows my mind. I just, it's, I don't know if it's just because it's just incomprehensible of what we're talking, like I just can't, it's out of my mind, the fact that we're talking about it, but someone got on stage at an event I was at a year ago maybe, maybe even a little longer, and they said, we can help you, license you to sell. real estate in web three. And I was like, what is happening right now? And that was like the beginning of me. And so I went back, I looked, I did a deep dive on web three and I'm like, what is going on right now? So how does that fit in web three? Because I know this is something you specialize in. So how does web three fit in? What is, how do you see that playing a role? What is the update? Cause I haven't heard anything about it since a year ago. What? Talk to me about Web 3. JTKnowsThings (55:38.006) Yeah, so it goes back to my initial explanation on crypto, really. This is the evolution of the internet. The internet is getting an upgrade with new features and functions, which will allow ownership. Before I get into what the definition of that is, like, let's just zoom out to real estate real quick. How does anyone know you own what you claim you own in terms of real estate? Like what is the deed, right? If I told you, or if I told everyone in your audience that I owned your home, how would they be able to verify that? Like, Oh, Frank, you like my house you're staying at this week? Like, how could they validate that? Right. They could go, right. And then the sale is recorded on a database that is public. Right. And every time that property exchanges hands. Right. Frank Hereda (56:08.001) A deed? Frank Hereda (56:23.618) they'd have to look up the public record. Frank Hereda (56:30.166) Yep. JTKnowsThings (56:40.653) you know that's happened so you can call Frank's home, for a picture you took? right now, but let's say I'm a photographer Wilderbeasts and I wanted to hang bucks a frame, Frank Hereda (56:41.026) Mm-hmm. JTKnowsThings (57:06.082) They have a process right now, right? They have to go get it copywritten. They have to then get it registered on a database, right? And then it has to be searchable. Then they can license it to a reseller. You know, they can do whatever they want. In both examples, and a myriad of others we could talk about, you have to understand two main things. One, something was created. Someone built a house, right? And then two, it had to be recorded when it was bought or sold. And it's that simple. Right now, we go back to my definition of the internet and those blocks, right? Frank Hereda (57:37.646) Okay. JTKnowsThings (57:46.21) the county owns your purchase history, right? Because if they went down, no one would be able to confirm if you actually owned that property, not unless you presented a paper in 2000, what, 24, a piece of paper that said, hey, I own this thing, which if I got a hold of that paper could entirely doctor. Right? Frank Hereda (57:52.483) Mm-hmm. JTKnowsThings (58:15.766) Ethereum automates literally every step of that process and it produces a deed on anything generated on its platform till the ends of time supported on that community network without a single point of failure. If your county got hit by a meteor and you lost your deed, I could take your home. Right? I mean, what else would you do? I'm not a... right? I mean, without a record... Frank Hereda (58:47.958) Technically, yeah. Yeah. There's no proof, yeah. JTKnowsThings (58:53.502) No, I bought this back in 2000. Oh, you can't see the database. That's too bad, man. This is my house. Get out of there That's how it works, right? Ethereum Would never go down the liveness of it. You would have to take out again 51 of the network there are hundreds of billions of devices from anywhere from india To brazil to america to russia to anywhere. I mean, it's crazy like Never goes down. It's encrypted entirely and Frank Hereda (58:59.222) Yeah, yeah. JTKnowsThings (59:23.562) Literally everything created on top of it gets a deed and it's recorded on a ledger that is public and accessible called ether scan and Any time that thing that was generated whatever it is an NFT it could be a transaction It could be the deed to your home. It could be a real estate trade could be anything It gets enshrined on the ledger in store to the ends of time completely encrypted and untamperable so When I make a picture of a monkey Frank Hereda (59:42.444) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (59:53.054) and I say there's only 10,000 of them, there is actually only 10,000 of them. That's it. That's all that'll ever be. If someone takes a screenshot of it, there's no deed. That'd be like me taking a picture of your home and saying, I owned it. Frank Hereda (59:55.841) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. JTKnowsThings (01:00:08.97) or taking a picture of that picture that I described the Wilderbeest, I just snap a photo of it, crop it, and say that's my picture. That's not true. Where's the copyright? Frank Hereda (01:00:17.39) Mm-hmm. Frank Hereda (01:00:20.746) I understand the purpose of what you're talking about, and I like it. I like it and I agree with it. where I start to get, and maybe it's just early, but when someone says, hey, because I know people that bought property in web three, and that's where I go and I'm like, holy cow, are they just early and in a hundred years, it might be the most valuable thing out there? Or is it like, I just think about how it's so early, I can't even imagine, like, most people don't even talk, you're, I mean, I don't know, this is your space, so I'm just curious, because people talk, listening to this, don't know that that's happening or happened. People bought property in web three that doesn't, I mean it exists but it doesn't exist in 99% of us. JTKnowsThings (01:01:04.682) It's so hard to conceptualize, I get it, because people think they actually own things they don't own. Frank Hereda (01:01:11.246) Yes. And it's changing the concept of that is the tough part. JTKnowsThings (01:01:16.378) That's the switch you need to make. Like, you think you own the 10,000 photos on your iPhone that are of your family and your kids, treasured moments, the videos, they're not yours. Like, you don't own one byte of that data. I don't care where you put it. Even if you put it in Dropbox, guess what? You don't own it. The only way you own it is if it's in a thumb drive in your pocket, and it's nowhere else. Frank Hereda (01:01:18.592) Yes. Frank Hereda (01:01:29.708) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (01:01:45.43) Yeah, that's the only way you actually own things you think you own. So once you understand that you are in, you have zero control over your data footprint. Two things should happen. One, you're angry. You're like, that's messed up. I would think, you know, like, yeah, it's messed up, man. I don't like it. That's why I'm doing this. That's why I have this fucking basement. I'm obsessed with, I'm very passionate about shitty. It is. Frank Hereda (01:01:45.437) Yeah, yeah. Frank Hereda (01:02:02.348) Yeah, yeah, it's true. It is, it is messed up. It's messed up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. JTKnowsThings (01:02:14.206) And then two, ideally, you start learning about what the heck is Ethereum or Bitcoin or any of this other stuff because really, when you're that angry, you're like, what are some other options? How can I actually own my identity online? You know, because that gets stolen every day. There's no way to verify my identity online. But like, wallets on a blockchain solve all of those problems. Frank Hereda (01:02:33.858) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (01:02:39.786) You know, at a certain point, you just have to trust someone like me if you don't get technology. But like, if you, this information is public, you can go find it. You can go see examples of it. When that gentleman that you're referring to bought that parcel of land, all he did was buy pixels on, in a world that is completely isolated. Frank Hereda (01:02:58.926) Mm-hmm. Yes. JTKnowsThings (01:03:06.786) Like they're not going to make more pixels. Like it's just, it's capped. And he probably bought a two by two, four by four. I don't know. He bought a space and you can build whatever you want on that space. The only way that is worth something is if more users come on and you build something that I know it sounds crazy but that is monetizable. Like, and the hard thing, it's just the ownership part. Like. What's the difference between a metaverse and, you know, I don't know, World of Warcraft. Those are both worlds, right? They're both digital worlds. I can make a creature. I can walk around in both. I can make them look crazy. I can do whatever, right? The difference is ownership. That's it. Like Blizzard owns every pixel on that screen. I could invest a hundred years of my life into World of Warcraft and they could just like delete my account. And I could never log in again if they didn't like what I said online or anything else. And in the metaverse, as long as I don't lose my keys, everything that I generate, like if I log in and chop down trees and make wood and build, excuse me, a little hut, and I progress in this world, I own everything. No one owns that. That's mine. And... If you're just playing a game, it doesn't really matter. But if you're, let's say, building something in a world like the central land where anyone can go around and use their wallet to buy things. Like you go into a store and you buy a skin for your avatar. Instead of using V-Bucks in Fortnite or gold pieces in World of Warcraft, you're using mana, which is a token that can be exchanged for us dollar. Like it has real world value tied to it. and or any state nation currency. I'm in America, so I keep forgetting to be more agnostic. But in general, you can just play the game like you were for months. No one can take away your progress. And when you're done, you could cash out thousands of dollars. There were people in the peak of the bull run when Manor was trading at four or five bucks. People in Bangladesh were making bank. Their job maybe pays 10 bucks a month, like US dollar equivalent a month. JTKnowsThings (01:05:30.67) They were making 12, 15 bucks an hour playing a game. Like it's, if you're in a civilized world, it's hard to imagine the scope of this movement. But I assure you, like if you're in Africa, or if you're aware of what's going on over there, there are so many people plagued by hyperinflation. That Bitcoin is their only answer. They get paid 10,000 Nari. That Nigeria banned crypto. Because of this problem, they want to control their people. They're inflating at 10 to 20 percent a month If you got paid 10 000 nari, you would get paid 15 000 nari next month and it's still the same like it's that crazy like it's They're adjusting wages by the month at the moment and Frank Hereda (01:06:16.418) Sounds like another country where the value of the currency is deflating. JTKnowsThings (01:06:21.354) Yeah, man, and crypto assets are a great place for people in that situation. You're going to preserve your wealth a lot better. But in general, the point to drive home is ownership, ownership. Your wallet will own everything that you accumulate, build, invest in, or just play to earn. And there's a track record. Every tree you farm. Frank Hereda (01:06:43.999) And there's a track record. JTKnowsThings (01:06:48.822) You get wood that can be turned into manna at the auction house. That trade, all of that stuff, every strike, it's all recorded. You know, that person mined that were farmed that would, you know, they put it on the auction house, someone else bought it, built a little house. They got paid in manna. You can see that person then leave the world and sell that manna for dollars. Like it's all, yeah. I mean, it's who owns it and it's all public record. Frank Hereda (01:06:56.77) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (01:07:17.302) No different than the purchase and sale of homes. And I would even argue there's far more data on chain about the activity of a user than someone building a house. Like there is so much real estate fraud because it's not on chain in my opinion, that it's really anyone's game. Like I don't know what material was used to build the house I just bought. I can't rip up the walls without causing damage. But if let's say the entire project was on Ethereum and every order was published, I would know exactly what they used to build that house. I would know exactly who bought it. I would know how much they paid for it. Like, it's just, it's hard to, I just feel like I could labor on forever, but if people don't want to understand it, it's difficult to get them to over time. Frank Hereda (01:07:51.554) Mm-hmm. Frank Hereda (01:08:06.422) Well, I don't think it's that they don't want to know. I just don't think they, I think it's more about the effort. I think it's more about the effort because people go to work all day, they come home, they want to relax a little bit and then go to sleep and get up and do the same thing or spend their weekend doing whatever, the beach or just doing nothing, having some beers. So they're not going to go, very few people will go and be like, okay, I'm going down a rabbit hole on Ethereum, I'm going down a rabbit hole on crypto, because it's work. JTKnowsThings (01:08:26.606) Yeah. Frank Hereda (01:08:36.054) It's all work to understand, to make good decisions. It's not easy. I always say choose your hard to my clients. I'm like, look, being poor is hard and being successful is hard. Choose your hard, right? It's the same thing. So that's what I think it is with people. Okay, so I think we've done a pretty good job of walking through this a little bit, but let's finish up around AI. It's moving rapid pace. I can only talk about it from my view, which is the coaching and real estate and that type of thing. So video editing, you know, that type of aspect. But I see it and I use it and chat GPT, right? Chat GPT for so everyone's coming out with their form of AI. Where do you see this integrating with the crypto and the blockchain? And because it's just moving so fast that I... I don't think anyone can comprehend how fast it's moving. Then you talk about medical and it's just so many breakthroughs and jobs that are being eliminated. I'm just curious how you see AI playing a role with crypto, with blockchain, with Web3 and will that make it go faster or no, it really won't. It's on its own path already and it's just what it is with regards to speed. JTKnowsThings (01:09:59.582) I believe AI was a blessing for my portfolio's worth. So there's a few issues with AI. One of them is transparency. Like, how do you know me right now without touching me that this isn't an avatar that I am typing to? That's a genuine question. Like that could be me. I'm smart enough to figure that out. Like I could be, I could be in Bali right now. Frank Hereda (01:10:20.631) Yeah. Sure. Frank Hereda (01:10:26.55) Whoa. JTKnowsThings (01:10:28.634) and I'm just typing to you because I feel anti-social today. That's what I got. Frank Hereda (01:10:33.098) Well, they got programs like Hey, Jen, that'll do an avatar, right? Or so, so yeah, you're right. That's it. That's absolutely a possibility. And I think that along with the fact that I think 30% of social on Instagram is going to be AI produced this year. So like that's real. JTKnowsThings (01:10:50.166) Yeah, that problem is great for blockchain because there's no other way to, without a shred of doubt, that it is genuine. So, yeah, if my wallet attests or signs automatically when I post, you can verify that I, Jake, am posting this on behalf of this language model. Frank Hereda (01:11:03.402) That's interesting. I didn't look at it from that point. JTKnowsThings (01:11:19.394) that I picked up at this website. And that could all be automated. Like I said, an iPhone moment. It doesn't really matter what infrastructure is used to build that app or that plugin that LinkedIn might use or LinkedIn might buy. I don't know, it doesn't matter is my point. That problem is only solvable, exclusively solvable through blockchain. Because if it was a web two kind of thing where it's that monolithic single point of failure. That means we have to trust a third party and fraud could be very prevalent. And we've seen that throughout history. But if it was a decentralized, no single owner ledger that said, Hey, this photo was posted by this user. They use this language model at this day and time at this website. And it's just a little like a check mark in the top right of our content that we're watching. And we looked for that check mark, if it was there or not there, that would tell us AI or no AI. And if you clicked that check mark, it could zoom into the details of how it was generated and who posted it. Something that simple. All of those problems would be solved with something that simple. You could not do that with a Web2 application. The way monolithic structures are built, the speed of AI, not possible because it could all be tampered with. It could all be modified. Frank Hereda (01:12:28.142) Sure. JTKnowsThings (01:12:42.93) If a hacker got in, you know, they could make anything seem real. If they could put the check mark unknowingly onto something that is fake. Like you just couldn't trust it. Another thing is there's really no way of truly knowing which language model generated that output without a user volunteering that information, where if language models were ran through a blockchain of some kind, you would be able to track everything generated by a language model. You'd be able to track where it was posted, how many times it was shared, which account shared it. You could do things that Web2 cannot do. So all the problems AI will create, the magic pill is blockchain. I don't know which solution will solve those problems and they've not been built yet to my knowledge. They're using AI to do different things, which is there's a lot of exciting projects. with this overlap, but I mean, from a macro sense, there's a lot of problems that blockchain solves with AI. So I think they go hand in hand and they benefit one another greatly. Finally, I would say you could build a model to break into a single point of failure. Eventually there's gonna be inherent security risks due to the power of these computers where blockchain is way too difficult. Frank Hereda (01:13:44.844) Mm-hmm. Frank Hereda (01:13:53.57) That's interesting. JTKnowsThings (01:14:05.314) The only compromise or issue blockchain has is quantum computing. You cannot build an AI that can break it. But when quantum computing comes about, that is different. Um, but we'll also have quantum firewalls. So, I mean, you know, exactly. So that's, you know, those are the three major things that like, you cannot dispute are solved by blockchain. Um, Frank Hereda (01:14:19.85) I was just going to say, yeah, that would probably enhance. That would be, that would evolve too. JTKnowsThings (01:14:34.75) If AI wasn't around, I think adoption would be slower, but inevitable. I just think we're going to see quicker adoption because these problems are going to be real. You know, the first politician that goes to jail wrongfully or something major happens based on deep fakes and China attacking us through that way, or some kind of intermittent, like, you know, they have TikTok, there's over a hundred million users of TikTok in America. There's a Chinese company, which is a communist country that owns TikTok. So the government owns TikTok. Chinese government owns TikTok. They could just release videos of Trump, like doing something. Like they can just push it out on their platform. And if we have no way of knowing it's real or not. Like that, that kind of thing, once we unpack it and discover that it was fake, that could spur so many initiatives to solve this problem or anything close to that. Frank Hereda (01:15:20.439) Yeah. JTKnowsThings (01:15:29.182) All we need is a little black, we need a Brown Swan event about how bad AI is. And we could see real world one example of that in blockchain is going to get, it's going to be gasoline on fire because there's no other solution for that. Outside of trusting a third party, which is who fucked you over in the Brown Swan event to begin with. So it's like, there's no other, no other solution. Yeah. It, you know, and I'm. Yeah. Frank Hereda (01:15:29.76) Yeah. Frank Hereda (01:15:51.139) That's right. Yeah. There's no other way. Yeah. No, it's a good point. It's a good point. JTKnowsThings (01:15:59.318) They're married. Their futures are married. Frank Hereda (01:16:03.342) So, okay, let's wrap it up with, if I was the average person out there and didn't know anything about crypto or wallets, or my advice would be, you know, go watch some YouTube videos on different types of wallets and the difference between cold store, what is it, cold storage and something else? What is it, cold wallet and what's the other one? Cold, hot and warm, that's what I thought. So. JTKnowsThings (01:16:25.318) Old, hot and warm, baby. Like your snake faucet. Frank Hereda (01:16:29.786) Yeah, okay. So I think that would be where I'd tell people to start to understand how they store it. And then what would you tell them? Would you give them different advice? And then how would you tell them what to buy? Would you tell them to invest in crypto and how to start? How would you tell them to start? JTKnowsThings (01:16:43.566) I would say, unless you're a software professional, not a financial professional, software professional, trust me, I've met a lot of financial professionals that have no idea what this stuff is. These are, these are software products and they're in their startup phase. So unless you have a significant skill in underwriting these technologies, like myself, I highly recommend you get minimal exposure. Um, I think five to 10%, 10 being aggressive, five being conservative is a very, uh, Frank Hereda (01:16:53.417) Oh yeah, sure. JTKnowsThings (01:17:13.526) respectable number for your entire portfolio, your entire net worth, because literally that small of an investment could outperform the other stuff you got going on in long enough time horizons. Right, you know, like you're gonna lose, you know, you're gonna lose 5% on a flyer thinking you're the next Warren Buffett. So in general, you know, Frank Hereda (01:17:27.978) And if it doesn't, it's only 5%. Yeah, that's good advice. JTKnowsThings (01:17:42.19) take on that risk, but 10,000 or whatever you're working with, let's say you have a million dollar portfolio in your 50s. You put, was that 50 grand in? That in 10 years could be like $400,000, $500,000. So it could be more, depending on what you bought. And then the so it's worth seriously taking some time and understanding and then secondly I would say unless again you have a serious skill set I would avoid anything that's not in the top hundred on coin market cap go to coin market cap comm Go through the top 100 by market cap projects read every website Google every word You don't understand if you spend 50 to 100 hours this year doing that like casually 30 minutes here an hour there You will be literally ahead of 99% of this market. This is the most ignorant market that exists. It is so easy to get an edge. Like, I'm not special. I'm just playing against a bunch of dumbos, you know? The big boys just started playing three months ago. You know, it's been, like, this is a young, ignorant market, and that's how you make money if no one's told you. You make money in markets by knowing more than the other guy, and it's that simple. So. When the average user of this technology has zero minutes of research outside of tweets that people get paid to post, you're golden. Just do that. Go through the top hundred, top 50, top 25, whatever piece is reasonable for your work schedule. And Google words you don't understand. Reach out to JT knows things on any platform. I will help you understand these things. I. post 30 times a week educating people like yourself on this technology, and find resources you can trust, like Raoul Paul, like Michael Saylor, even Elon Musk. Frank Hereda (01:19:49.44) He just went big time into Bitcoin. Well, he already was big time, but he tripled down. JTKnowsThings (01:19:55.126) He's got over 200,000 bitcoins. So yeah, he's a G man. I love Michael Saylor. And if you really don't want to figure out any of that stuff, you could just go buy a micro strategy through your brokerage account. That's basically like buying Bitcoin now. Or Apple or a myriad of almost 50 companies that use Bitcoin as a method of enhancing their balance sheet because it's... Frank Hereda (01:20:11.35) Yeah, right. JTKnowsThings (01:20:24.334) that much better than dollars, which is a whole nother two hour podcast we could record. Frank Hereda (01:20:31.506) I have a feeling there's gonna be sequels to this podcast right here. We didn't even get into NFTs and we didn't get into some other things, but there's just so much. Yeah, it's so much. JTKnowsThings (01:20:36.12) Yeah mate. JTKnowsThings (01:20:41.354) I go deep. I have a lot of depth. I get paid, you get paid for depth in this world. You know, like a jack of all trades, you're a mile wide, inch deep. No one's gonna pay you. I mean, you might be an interesting character to be around. You're not gonna get money. You get paid on your depth, you know? And I have a lot of depth. So, you can tap this well all day. We won't run out of content. Frank Hereda (01:20:55.094) Yeah. That's right. That's true. Frank Hereda (01:21:04.75) Yeah. Um, well, I appreciate it. And I hope everybody, uh, learned a little bit today and, um, there's going to be a lot to talk about in the future. I think this is going to be an interesting year, you know, where Bitcoin is and where it might be going. And, and a lot of the changes that are taking place, there's going to be a lot to talk about where can people find you? Uh, let's, let's give them any place they can find you or where you'd like them to find you if they want to. JTKnowsThings (01:21:29.727) Yeah, JT knows things, no spaces, any platform. We're out there. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, doesn't matter. My biggest following's on LinkedIn, but in general, I'm active everywhere. I got a team that engages with you guys and I'll reach out personally. Also, I make content with followers, so. Frank Hereda (01:21:33.194) Okay, JT knows things. JTKnowsThings (01:21:51.786) If you're comfortable with the camera, I love getting on camera and educating on a question if I think it could be long enough for a YouTube video. So I'm just very engaged. You know, I'm a small influencer. I only have about 40,000 followers and I try to really develop a relationship with followers. So just reach out there. I love engaging. I'm very passionate about this topic. So Frank Hereda (01:22:16.298) It shows man, you know, glad I'm happy for you for all the success. And I wish you the best in the future here. I know you're going to do great. And, um, I appreciate your time and I know everybody else learned a lot. So thank you. And, uh, I look forward to having part two in the future. So. JTKnowsThings (01:22:34.266) Let's do it. Yeah, all the same right back at you, Frank. I really appreciate your time here today and I've enjoyed it. Steadfast everybody. Frank Hereda (01:22:41.026) Good deal, man. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, well, we'll catch everybody on the next one. And thanks, Jake, I appreciate it, buddy. All right, bye. JTKnowsThings (01:22:50.746) See you guys.