Swig Says Business is Best Done in the Office

president at Swig Equities. It's a real estate development and investment firm based in New York City. He is with us via Zoom in New York City. Ken's Wig, how are you good. Nice to hear your voice, Carol, Well, nice to hear your voice. Um, what's top of mind for you? Though? When you look at today's investment environment? I feel like we talked about so many big macro fet issues, inflation issues, supply chain issues. But I'm curious from your perspective and your world, what's really top of

mind and top priority? You know? Um? Well, from an investment side, I think you hit it all, um, you know. I think one of the big things is which we've talked about before is just getting back and cre cranking up the American economy again and and and the business of doing business. So we're and it's getting their America's plus or minus forty three percent occupying their office space today. Um. New York City is a tad under that at about

thirty nine and a half percent UM. And in my opinion, one of the things that that is missing and is really critical to to really performing business on a on a on a very very efficient and productive way is being in the office and attending business in person. Uh. And I think that's one of the issues. And are

they back hint, are people really coming back? You know, not enough in my opinion, where As they say New York City is about thirty nine point five percent actual occupancy of people in the office, UM, the rest of the nation's forty two to forty three percent. So we're lacking a little bit. But business does not perform ultimately, l and efficiently and creatively unless people are interfacing back

and forth. And that goes back to tribal days. You know, the thing that separated us from from other animals on earth is our ability to communicate with each other and work with each other and perform tasks with each other in person, and from then going on, that's what our success has been. So, um, I understand sort of a split schedule, but I believe that's one of the biggest

challenges that we're facing. Right. I know my course is a Christian, but I do feel like there's gonna be people saying, say, oh, look, it's the real estate guy talking about getting people back to real estate. No offense, but of course it is. But but I'm saying, first of all, the people that are that have space are still paying their rent and then and they're still performing. So I'm talking about real business productivity, creativity and opportunity

and and and and it just doesn't happen. And it will, It'll work for a little while. But the networking that goes on in the elevator going to work, we're exiting work or the or or meeting in a coffee room or bumping into people does not happen anymore. Um. But people are still going to movies, right, They're still going to UH shows, they're going to sporting events, they're going to concerts. So it's not that they're not going out, it's just they're not going to the office. Um, So

that that's a whole another piece. And I don't think it's just COVID related. Because you pack yourself into a bar, you pack yourself in a music festival, you're you're more at risk at cold getting COVID than you are sitting in an office, you know, distance with people. So I think that's one of the big concerns ken when you

when you plan for the future. Um, is it realistic to expect those occupancy rates to get back to a sort of the pre pandemic level or you you sort of counting on it being something still below still room for recovery, but but maybe not back to where we were. Well, I think that that clearly what's happened is that we've got First of all, we've got it. We've got a

shortage of workers in America right now. Um and and on a whole another level, you know, as a as a wilder thought, but I think actually economically prudent was that we need about thirty million UH immigrants in this country over the next ten to fifteen years. We have an aging population, we have we have uh, you know, a lack of workforce, and we need people to come

in and do that. So that's not a whole another level. Um, But do I believe that people working are going should be partly at home and partly at work right now? I think that there's a good case for that. Um. You know, it's it's interesting to note that the home time that people want to work are always on a

Monday and Friday, and they're gonna work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Um. Frankly, I believe that Monday is one of the more important days to be in the office because that's when people set the schedule, set the agenda for what's going to happen in the week. If you do a Tuesday, you score to lose the day. So I mean, I think Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday working is much more important than and and if you work from home on a Thursday, Friday, or take

a Wednesday Friday or something. But I think Monday's very important. But I think we're going to be in a hybrid situation for a little while. There's no doubt. Does does it make sense for a guy like you to think about converting some of the office real estate into residential in a city like New York, Well, we do lack residential um. Um, you know, apartments and housing. Uh. And that's all a degree of price right now. Um, but no, I haven't. In New York City is on about a

twenty percent Downtown is about twenty percent vacancy rate. The overall Manhattan vacancy rates about sevent So certainly there are buildings that are are older, older buildings and can't compete with the new buildings that are there. And and that is something that would be you know, a prime candidate for conversion to residential. Uh. And you look at the city right now, there is no residential commercial you know, single areas alone. Everything is mixed together. So yeah, that

that's certainly an option for some. Um. Yeah, hang on for a second, Kent. We're gonna do a little bit of news, but we'll come right back to you. We're gonna get back to Kent Swig. He is president of Swig Equities. He's joining us via zoom from New York City, and our conversation will continue. We are still here with Kent Swig, president of Swig Equity, still with us via zoom from New York City. So I am curious, Kent, in this environment, there could be some opportunities to stress

properties Are you doing any buying? Are you doing any selling in this environment? I'm not doing any selling, but we are doing some buying. Yes, we're looking at the development project on the Jersey coast, which we're close to getting. We have another project up in Yonkers that we're looking at right now and negotiating and sporadically starting looking at Manhattan. Ken.

I know you have a side hustle, as they say, as the kids saying in crypto, Can you talk to us a little bit about that, how you got involved in that and sort of what the state state of the project is. Well, I got involved about three years ago, and um we ended up buying some cryptocurrency uh and and found that there was problems with the company um and we ended up um starting our own token, if you will. The company is called Dignity Gold. We've got

three billion tokens out outstanding. Very uniquely uh and quickly is one. We've got gold backing from minds that we own and control that are in Nevada. So we're all US based. Our gold as US based, our company as US based, our attorneys or accounts, everything is US based, all transparent. Also uniquely, we voluntarily filed last year with the sec UM, and then very uniquely we UM all the people that lost money uh in in the crypto

that we got involved with, including ourselves. We then went out and issued free tokens UM you know, put out three billion tokens, including to ourselves, UM for all those who lost money that could show that they actually had a legitimate token owned before any impropriety in trading which was uh IN on some non you know, the non central decentralized trading platform in Ukraine. We issued all free tokens to anybody who could show us that. So we

made everybody whole, including ourselves, and went forward. So we're now in the process with the sec UM. We are trading overseas for foreigners on CRYPTOESX and the Philippines and bit uh Global which is in Singapore, UH and going very well. We're six billion dollars of gold backing our token. It's about two dollars per token. If gold goes up, we put up more gold ore ore ore to UH minds that we own, and we've got seven that we've

got rights to. Is over half a billion dollars half a trillion dollars of of precious metals gold, silver, rare earth minerals, platinum, etcetera. So it's an exciting project, very new for the for the industry. Though, so when when he talks about crypto mining, it's a whole different, whole, different different definitions. You're talking about the real Yeah, and it's interesting because the gold is an inflation hedge. Crypto is obviously, um, you know, a very up and coming

type of business. It's you know, multi trillion dollar business at this point. But what we believed is taking business practices of transparency, good you know, procedures, policies and filing with the sec um uh, and take those and applied into the crypto market. So with with real backing of provable gold reserves. All right, you know, I'm going to jump in here because stable coins, i mean have certainly been on everybody's radar in terms of what happened to

terror U s d um. You know we are not a stable coin, okay, but but it has sent shivers through the whole crypto market. Kent, you know this, it's brought everything down. It should. So how do you distinguish what you are doing or differentiate and how it is a longer term way? Well, first of all, we've we've filed with the SEC because we want to be regulated,

which is a very unique thing. So we spent a lot of money because we believe that we should we should be regulated as a digital security which we are too. We have proven proven assets of gold backing our token. So they're in the United States and Nevada in two minds, they're they're they're shown. We've got forty three one on

one engineering reports. We are doing due diligence also to file publicly on ourselves as part of our SEC filing, so we have you know, and the unique thing is that if you lose your password, unlike every other crypto, uh you we replace your password, just like if you own stock and ibm uh. They don't burn, they don't say, oh I'm sorry, you don't get your stock. They you know,

cancel the stock certificate issue and your one. That's the same as us because everybody has to go through no your cent KYC and Anti Money Laundering m L processing, so we know who people are and we go forward. In addition to which we're also creating a fund right will throw off dividends and those dividends will be also issued to token holders, so we're very much running the company as a publicly, as a public company that is in a Wall Street world. But volatility is going to

be part of this environment, right, Kent. I mean it's not going to go I mean, I've talked to a lot of folks who are you know, so called you know experts in this world too, and they're saying, you've got to think about it like the early days of the internet, and so think about that when you're either making an investment bank or I mean investment decision. I mean right, I mean we're in the early stages of this.

We still don't really know how this all plays out. Well, yes, um, but if I if I were to tell you to Carroll uh and and um, I've got a great Mike, and I've got a great stock for you, and you go, okay, can't tell me about it? Okay, what would you like to know? Well, where's its base? Well, I'm not really sure. And who owns it? Well, I'm really not sure. And what does it do? I'm really not sure. How does

it make money? Well it really doesn't. Well why will it go up because somebody else will pay more money from it? Well, that's describing a lot of the cryptocurrency companies. This is this and that that is why people say they don't understand it. Well in that respect, there's not much to understand this, but the technology, the blockchain, operation, upside and and usage of a cryptocurrency in the world more and more is is good any as a as

an industry. Applying business applying business practices that aren't good doesn't work. So what we've done is applied good, solid business practices into that world. And I think that makes sense. All right, we have to leave it on that note. I know we will talk more about this, says we always like to touch on it with you. Um, good to hear your voice, glad to hear your well, and uh, of course that's Kent Swig joining us via zoom from New York City. He's president of Swig Equities.