Ladies and gentlemen, it's your host, Matt they have. And today for the first time ever on the crypto news pod, we have our first back to back guest. We have Nick Saponaro who joined us back in I want to say May of this year six months ago. It's been a long time since we had Nick on Nick's episode was one of the best and one of the most downloaded. Very excited to have you back. Nick. Welcome back to the show,
Matt. It's my pleasure. Thanks.
Now normally I'd give the intro about what you do, and a little bit about your past. But I'm pretty sure most of our listeners are familiar with you if they aren't all go the quick intro. Nick is an entrepreneur crypto enthusiast and keynote speaker who's passionate about helping crypto achieve its vision to deliver a truly decentralized financial services paradigm that benefits
everyone. Nick is currently the CEO of Divi project which was established back in 2017 to accelerate Kryptos mainstream adoption. Divi has done tons since then. And we have I believe we have some crazy news where the crypto news part is going to get first at bat at this news. But before we get into that, Nick, whereabouts are you waiting now on this beautiful planet of ours?
Yes. So this is a this is kind of a mystery that I know our community has been trying to figure out for the past week or so. But yeah, kind of stealthily flew over to Madrid a couple days ago, to close in on this partnership. And yeah, you're the first guy I'm actually speaking with about it. So I'm excited to to announce probably the most major partnership we've ever entered into, which is with the Spanish
sports league La Liga. If you don't know what it is, they're the second largest sports league, or I should say football league in the world, the fifth largest sports league on Earth. And we're not just sponsoring a team. We are sponsoring the league. We are the official regional crypto wallet partner in 48 countries as of yesterday,
that is world class news. Congrats on that. Wow, that's, that's amazing. And for those at home, La Liga is home to Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico severe, and all of the other beautiful Spanish cities and towns that are fortunate enough to have a team and like Nick said, you know, probably behind the Premier League, the second best football league in the world and one of the best sport leagues on our universe. That is absolutely insane. If you don't mind walk me through
this deal. How did you sort of make this happen?
This was the culmination of a lot of hard work from the team. In a very, very short timeline, we met with some of the La Liga leadership during a conference in Dubai that we were at, actually. And they came up to us, their head of partnerships, or global Global Partnerships came up to us and said, hey, you know, we're looking for a crypto wallet partner. And we were looking at some of the big
exchanges. But we're also looking at potentially a challenger partner, they had already had a relationship with three NFT companies, including dapper Labs, which is, you know, a huge, probably one of the biggest NFT companies out there. And so, you know, we did have to fight for it a bit. And we had to submit a proposal that our team our marketing department
worked really hard on. And basically, they were looking for a partner who was willing to not just put their logo on the screen or on the on the pitch, but actually activate with them and partner with them. So that it's not really like a traditional sponsorship, you know, we'll actually do activations in person all around the world, where, you know, fans and, and crypto users to like will come out and actually engage with LaLiga, and with Divi wallet and a variety of
different ways. So that was a very interesting aspect to this partnership that I hadn't seen before in a company or organization this large. So yeah, that was that was like the big first hurdle. We of course, had to get through a bunch of compliance steps and things like that, which our team had to work really hard to get through. You know, everything's on the up and up with Divi, but this is a large organization, they're
going to dig deep. Right. So, you know, getting through that was was part of the challenge, which we successfully did. And then that was pretty much it. You know, we flew here to Madrid, I signed the paperwork yesterday. And now we have access to three major regions so China, the Middle East, North African region, as well as
Southeast Asia. We even get into Japan some of the Indian subcontinent as a result of this partnership, it's over a billion people viewing their their games each and every season and grow.
It's it's crazy what a global sport like football or soccer, I call it soccer, but football will do to you like, you know, my favorite sport. And the one I grew up playing is ice hockey. Whereas what there's, I'd say maximum 100 million ice hockey fans on the planet in a with 8 billion people. Whereas I would say at least half the planet has seen a football game for on TV. It's it's no comparison.
It literally is the largest sport on Earth. And I actually got to go to the Real Madrid game against the via the other night with some of the Liga staff. And I've never been to a soccer football game before. And I got to say, I can understand why it's a global sport. Like why it's the most watched and most participated in sport because the energy in that stadium was
it's an electric factory. It's like I've seen a couple of games in Europe as well. And it's like nothing. It's like no one fell game. The only thing I'd say it's maybe comparable to on our side of the pond is a college football game. Maybe that's it?
Yeah, that's a good comparison. Yeah, the energy. I mean, I was jumping up out of my seat, you know, like cheering and stuff. And I, you know, I didn't know everything about the players or the teams. I'm definitely a fan now a little
happy for you in the team. Now, on the wallet front, I'm curious when you were, you know, talking to the big wigs at La Liga, where they like, I'm sure, you know, they vetted you guys as well as far as they could have. But on the wallet side, can you talk about some of the sort of the value props of Divi and why I'm sure they wanted to partner with us or some of your competition.
The biggest thing I think that attracted them was the fact that we are building, you know, a wallet ecosystem that is very, very accessible and easy to use. They actually are pretty familiar with crypto, I'm assuming, you know, getting involved with dapper labs and some and software and stuff like that, you know, open their eyes
to what crypto is. So a lot of the a lot of the leadership that we were in contact with, and are in contact with, you know, they've tried out by Nance and COO coin and some of the big exchanges, and they found a lot of the friction difficult to, to overcome. So when they downloaded the Divi wall, it was
so straightforward. You have a username and an avatar and things like that, the feeling of familiarity, I think was attractive to them, and they could see how that would adhere to the demographics that that will end up being exposed to. And then of course, just being a trustworthy company that's been around for over four years. Now, that was a big part of it. You know, there's a lot of wallets out there. And there's a lot of
Kryptos out there. But not all of them have has been around for as long as us or survived, you know, crypto winter and things like that. So you know, it was partially technical. And it's partially fundamental. I think, ultimately, one
of my favorite parts about Divi is the fact that again, you can choose your I guess you'd call it a dress slash username kind of thing. Now, again, I could be completely wrong here. But I'm a firm believer in usernames and wallet addresses being one of the biggest catalysts for mass adoption in crypto because right now like, again, if I want to, you know, fun want to send you some Bitcoin or some ether or whatever. It's just it's
absolute nightmare. If you're trying to find your, you know, 26 digit address with numbers and letters that don't make sense. It's a nightmare fuel it, it makes sense from a you know, from a security standpoint, but otherwise, it's just not easy. It's not sexy, it's not clean. And if it's not those three, the masses will never jump in. And when you say that statement is accurate in any sense, is that part of the reason why you guys were early adopters of the whole username thing?
Absolutely. It seemed like such an obvious step to me. Like when we were first building out our roadmap and thinking about how the technology would ultimately be deployed. It just seemed obvious to me and you know, I still don't see a ton of wallets actually implementing even the big wallets, implementing usernames in any in any, like, regard. And to me, yeah, and to anyone you speak to who's not affiliated with crypto, the way that we are. You have to adapt to the person that you're trying
to engage with, right? We talked about mass adoption, but it's really about mass adaptation. You can't teach people new behaviors, they just won't, you know, they just won't learn them. But you can familiarize things and that will ultimately bring a lot more people into your products. And really the goal is bringing more people into the space at large.
Nick, before we get into a little bit more about Divi. We just sort of talked about mass adoption. I'd love to stick on this topic for a couple more minutes. You have been on the record. And again, I completely agree with you. And I'm not going to get into by any
means here. But you have some very strong opinions in regards to the Bitcoin ETFs, which, you know, did on the feature side the past and did not on the spot side yet past and on crypto regulation and the US government and how they can realistically have the keys to the castle when it comes to mass adoption, they could really either speed that up or slow that down. If they choose to. Let's start with regulation as a whole. Why do you think it's working or isn't
working right now? And what should we as consumers look forward to in regards to the US government and crypto moving forward?
They, they being the US government are predictably trailing behind the innovations that cryptocurrency companies and projects have developed. This happens with every technology though, right? Like, it's always innovation first regulation second. So that's not surprising. The sad part is that they are still really not taking the time to learn what crypto is how it fundamentally and functionally
operates. You know, how full nodes interact with these blockchain ecosystems, even just, you know, the basic layer one level 1101 stuff. So that's disappointing, because the regulations that they're trying to implement, like taxation on basically every transaction no matter how it was ordinated. That that's just not going to be enforceable. So obviously, there will be revisions to these
things. But when you talk about the ETF, and some of the some of the regulations around that, they, you know, that they claim that they're trying to protect the consumer, that's, that's their new narrative. You know, it's consumer protection, it's giving opportunities for a fair and open market. But it's really not, it's really just a way to bet against Bitcoin. And, in my opinion, it's kind of the same
thing that happened. When CME futures launched, when backed futures launched, you know, it's just, it's just another way for them to to bet against the asset. A spot ETF, in tandem with with a futures ETF would create a more fair and open market on the traditional exchanges. But to me that the whole thing is, I don't know, if you want to be exposed to Bitcoin, like, why not just buy bitcoin? I understand that it's
also the boomers who have more purchasing power than anyone else on the planet right now who it's nightmare fuel for them going into, you know, a centralized exchange and getting their coins and then having to buy a cold wallet and sending, you know, and owning their actual private keys. Like that's a nightmare fuel for them. Yes, my argument would be just go to a centralized exchange and keep
it on there. But so many of them and I'm speaking literally on experience here talking to parents and parents, friends, whatnot. They just rather call it to broker and have their broker buy an ETF, right? They have such a, they still have ETF boners, all of them, they friggin love them. I don't know why it seems that traditional stocks, not traditional but like picking and choosing the winners seems to outperform the masses. Mind you, the s&p is a bit of an outlier. But that's a story for
another day. But my argument to that is, it's just so much easier for them to call it the broker or go on their brokerage account and buy the ETF right then and there.
Absolutely. And I definitely understand that perspective. And I agree. But we need both options, right? If you can only bet on the future of the asset, you know, that's still not really being exposed to the direct asset, which is really the, the opportunity. And we all know that if, if a spot ETF is approved, Bitcoin will explode. And, you know, I've heard like, oh, well, you know, that'll that'll price people out, but you're never priced
out. You're never priced out of Bitcoin, you can buy 100 Millions of one Bitcoin, right. So I think, in my opinion, a true protection of the consumer would be both the spot and the futures ETF, but it's just clear that they're trying to manipulate things. They again being, you know, the federal government and, and the SEC and the Treasury and all those powers that be that control our money, and our markets. They don't, they still don't really
want crypto to succeed. You know, we've seen Hillary Clinton come out and say that it's destabilizing the economy. But then you turn around and say, Oh,
dog, you gotta love her hell doc doesn't understand email but understands crypto.
It's It's absurd because she's saying that on one end of the spectrum, and then you turn around and Jerome Powell, just today is like, oh, we need to we need to call inflation. You know, we need to, we need to stop saying that. It's transitory and it's like, are you just waking up to this? Are you just are you just like having to admit it now? Because we've all seen this ending buddy who's orange pilled, so to speak, you know anybody's in crypto for a long time, we've
been saying this. We have known this for a long time. And you know, at some point, at some point the debt comes due, you know, the House of Cards falls. And I don't know if we're witnessing that. I don't know if we're about to witness that. But I don't know.
I'm just curious to get your point on just because me personally and again, you know, what, what do I know, but I think I don't think it's gonna happen in the next one to two
years. I think we're at least a couple more years out because like, Who's to say they won't just keep firing up the money printer, it's so easy for them, you know, turn the button on remind you turning the button, it's just sending numbers and decimals to account across the you know, the states now but let's just call it the money printer. And they turn it on the the Benjamin Franklin buzz out of the money printer. And that's it. Like, there's there's no repercussion. So why would they
stop? You know what I mean?
Yeah, they have really sophisticated ways of, essentially, you know, manipulating inflation and the economy at large in order to, you know, basically what they do is they try to print as much money as they can competent to the equities markets to keep people's 401k Smoking, like their crumbling. So people, like, ignore the facts up until around this time of year, when we get the inflation reports, and we see that, you know, your Thanksgiving dinner cost 25% more than it should than it did
last year. And then, you know, January comes around, people get their gym memberships, and they kind of forget about it, because the numbers keep going up. And as long as they do that, you know, they'll, they'll get away with it. And yeah, I don't think it's gonna be, you know, around the corner, as a lot of people think I think, you know, they could continue this absurdity for, you know, half a decade.
So when an i, it makes me I'm not a, I don't try to be a negative guy. But this is a very negative subject. But when it happens, like, is this going to be to await bad? Is it going to be, you know, to one bad how? Or is it gonna be the mini little 2017? By like, how bad is this going to be when shit does hit the fan,
you mean, like for the traditional markets, or crypto or everything,
everything because everything is bound to take a hit, I think crypto will take less of a hit than the others, especially with the you know, billions of dollars that are going into the industry every single day, that's inevitable. And as the industry keeps getting stronger, I think the wall keeps getting higher, but I'm even talking traditional, you know, stock markets, crypto as a whole housing, everything, all different types of asset classes and economies how bad you think it's gonna be,
we've just never seen, honestly, anything like this in America. Like, it's to a degree that we're beating records all the time, and the reverse repo market consistently is hitting all time highs, you know, yields were inverted for a long time, like, inflation is higher than it's been since before I was born. You know, it's almost, it's too hard to say exactly how bad it could get, you know, if if stuff hits the fan, but I think it has the potential to be much worse than
2008. It just depends how much they're able to continue to prop things up. But they're going down a path that, you know, a few other governments have gone down in the past, maybe not to the degree they have, but they could be bad for the dollar. But there's there's a lot of incentive globally to keep the dollar strong as well. Where that that's not necessarily true of like, you know, the Turkish lira or something like that, being that it is a global
reserve currency. I think that it's not like oh, the I don't know if I believe in like the whole great reset thing, necessarily. But I do think that it could get pretty ugly in the short term, when it happens.
So on, we're big solutions, people at a team crypto news, and they're the crypto news podcast. I know you are as well, Nick. So with that being said, besides Bitcoin, which is a pretty obvious hedge for inflation right now, if we were to sort of go into this massive economy reset that you and I are talking about, besides having a lot of Bitcoin and maybe some stable coins while you're earning that yield? Are there any other place that that maybe aren't so obvious that you would jump into
I think diverse diversification is still really important? I mean, obviously, you want to have cryptocurrencies that earn yield, that's a no brainer. Bitcoins, a great store of value. That's obvious. But then, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing to look at the stable assets outside of the crypto space, right? Gold historically will take a hit in times of turmoil in a recession, but it always goes up before, like equities, for example, at least
historically. Now, obviously, that's not necessarily, you know, history. rhymes it doesn't repeat necessarily, right? So gold, silver, you know, those hard assets are always helpful to have outside that maybe art, you know, another hard asset that has sort of intrinsic and objective, but also subjective value. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely not be an equities real estate usually goes back up
very slowly. And I would love to get a discount on some some real estate because it's just been absurdly going up ridiculously for like the past 12 years.
No, it's, it's tough, especially someone like me, I'm 26. And if I want to buy a home in Toronto, it's realistically at least like 1.25 mil,
it's the same in San Diego, it's like you can you really can't get into anything.
It's absurd. So I'm waiting for that hit. And on the flip side, like yeah, do I do I enjoy? You know, shelling out a couple grand a month for rent? No, not even close. But I do wholeheartedly believe that I can make more via crypto than I can buy a house. So again, that's a discussion for debate. But when that's when that's when that's tricky question on the Bitcoin side. Besides the Bitcoin spot ETF, which I also agree with just make it go
parabolic. A lot of people are, you know, getting their panties and briefs in in a bunch in regards to the bitcoin price sort of just staying at this resistance level we've seen can't really break through that 65. And hopefully it doesn't go below what I think the key sports 52 or something like that. But what are the catalysts for growth? What are the catalysts in general? Do we need to see in order to really rip through that sort of key top level to go to the next zone?
Well, you know, it's always I know, this is somewhat cliche to say, but we got to zoom out like March 2020, when the first COVID scares were like coming out. And the first cases were being reported. Bitcoin was like $3,500, you know, and it's like, six, D $1,000. Right now, I think it's 59 or 58. Last time I checked for this call. So I mean, that's like unheard of in basically any market that kind of growth in
such a short time. So you have a lot of people, especially like, oh, geez, in the space, that are innumerable wealthy at this point. So of course, there's going to be resistance because people could sell for, you know, 1000s of percent profit. Obviously, having futures exchanges is also creating speculation. We have a lot of leverage exchanges now to, you know, you have your FTX and your buy Nance and things like that, that allowed people to short take short positions on Bitcoin.
So there's a lot of market dynamics, like micro market dynamics, but then there's the macro economic scale as well. We saw Bitcoin take a little bit of a hit when the Omicron variant was reported. And of course, it's recovered from that already. But then you have like El Salvador just buying up hundreds of Bitcoin every time it dips sailor just bought another 7000 Bitcoin
because puppy of him all he is a purebred, sick puppy. My goodness, sorry, keep going there. I just I love him. He's, he's an animal
he's in. I mean, imagine this guy ends up with like, 1% of the supply, which I feel like he's, he's after. So I mean, okay, so what's the catalyst? I don't think there is just one thing anymore. It's too big. Like, it's, it's a trillion dollar market, you know, at this point, crypto so multi, sometimes some days. It's just going to take more, I think global adoption, we need to see like another El Salvador moment. We need to see economies that are benefiting from accessing
and using this technology. And there's a lot of wasted energy in South and Central America. You know, El Salvador is not the only one with infinite basically energy supply. This could happen again. And in several countries in South America so and Central. Those types of things are what needs to move the needle at this point. It's not just going to be like, like even sailors not moving the needle that much right. And buying 7000 Bitcoins. So yeah, we need global adoption.
I also think part of it might be the classic sort of greed and fear index where I just even meet like, I don't, rarely, rarely rarely unless I absolutely need to dip into the Bitcoin Reserve and the only time I really did that was in August when I wanted to buy some NF tees and I'm glad I did it. You know, it was a decent return, but I was scared shitless because that's, you know, one of my principles is don't ever touch the Bitcoin
reserves. And I feel like a lot of people that would normally put the money in Bitcoin are finding these returns in salona, or a box or one of the other ones or even all twos. One of the metaverse coins like sand, or you know, or Manna decentraland that have ripped up, I feel like they're putting their money that they would have normally put into bitcoin into those for those higher returns,
the narrative has definitely shifted, you're absolutely right, you know, there's obviously a vocal minority of like Bitcoin maximalists, who only are claimed to only invest in Bitcoin and only hold Bitcoin which is fine. Like, it doesn't it doesn't really make much sense to me, but I get that and I'm definitely a proponent of Bitcoin, like you kind of use, you know, your profits from your alt and shift them into BTC.
That makes sense. But if you're a newcomer to the space, which we're seeing more retail adoption of Bitcoin than ever before, this past bull run this past cycle, you want those 10x 100x returns that, that we've all seen in the past, if you've been around for long enough, you probably not going to see that with Bitcoin. Right? So they are going after? Yeah, very strong projects. Like, it's not like they're, I mean, yeah, people are throwing money at
shibe and stuff like that. But it's not like avalanche is a bad project. It's not like Solanas, inherently a bad project. These things are well funded. Interesting technologies. Sure, there's improvements to be made. But you know, polka dot same, you know, even coins like Divi are interesting because they have a huge growth potential. And, and that's what people ultimately are speculating on right now. We haven't seen the market turn into like a fundamentals focused market yet. So
I think we're years away from that there's, there's too much fun to be had, until that's sort of happened, in my opinion.
100% And that's kind of what makes it fun. Anyway, you know, it's life changing, generational wealth creation happening here in this industry, and people want to participate in that. And they're going to go after the things that give them the best odds of that. And right now, Bitcoin is is a workhorse, it clearly works, it's battle tested, but you're probably not going to see 100x on Bitcoin, at least not the short term, not like as fast as you will with some of the you know, the mid cap balls
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Again, crypto news five zero through some 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Now back to the show. Nick gone diving into Divi here now I'm still in shock in regards to the League of partnership so proud of you and the team, especially you know, there's incredible having you on is one of my earlier guests that really helped, you know pick the show up so I'm forever indebted to you and the Divi team, and thank you for that. I need not need I'd like to know if any.
And I'm sure this was in the books. You know, you were working on this on the back burner well before the crypto.com/staples Center now the crypto.com Center announcement, but how big of a play was that? And was that any inspiration for you guys?
Yeah, I am super. And thank you, by the way for your kind words. It means a lot to me and the team. So the crypto.com arena thing is awesome. I mean, a lot of people will probably find this strange because I guess they could be considered like a competitor of ours. To some extent, but I think it's amazing. You know, it's first of all, it's a 20 year partnership, which solidifies crypto in a Nikon ik stadium where you know, some of my favorite players from back in the day, you know, Kobe and Shaq
were playing. It just puts so many eyes on this technology that we obviously are incredibly supportive of. It also shows a lot of strength around this kind of partnership. I mean, they saw like a $9 billion increase in their market cap and it's come back down a little bit but they'll find a new, a new low obviously.
He paid for it and one day they I think it was 20 minutes paid for
it. It's a beautiful thing, you know, because it is impactful, you know, it's, it shows a that this crypto currency technology is here to stay. And it validates it in a way that we were not we haven't seen this before. But you know, crypto.com arena now, you know, we're seeing, you know, guys like Matt Damon doing ads for I think they're doing for crypto.com as well. Yeah, it's true. Tom Brady, I think he's doing for FTX. There's a lot of money pouring into sports
partnerships from crypto. And it clearly has the effect that's intended. So I think it's a great step I'm really excited for for CDC on that. And I know some of the guys that helped broker that deal as well. And, and they worked really hard to get that across the line, just like just like we did with all the legal stuff. I know how hard this stuff is now. So yeah, it's
a client's perspective, that's got to be
insane. That the one reason and again, obviously, I'm beyond bias on this because I'm a die hard sports fan, pretty much of all sports, but like, when you ask someone, tell me about yourself, whether it's, you know, maybe not a first date, but just you know, to the boys talking, or whatever the case may be, you would probably tell them your name, you know, where you're from, maybe your age, and a lot of the time, like, who you support people, it's it's beyond love with sports. Like, if you
It's hard because not a lot of the entertainment ask me, you know, tell me about yourself. 100%. And I tell you that I'm a diehard John Maple Leafs fan, which is the hockey team in Toronto that hasn't won a cup in 50 years. It's a sad, sad story. You know, the the leafs are worth what I think $3 billion most highest valued NHL team in the world, I could care less about that. But it's just I
absolutely love this team. I try to watch the games when they're on one of my best friends playing on the team now, and I believe blue and white. And when people really have this connection with sports, and then you have these crypto organizations pouring billions of dollars into it, I think it's one of the easiest ways most efficient ways is the correct
term. To really get that mass adoption you're seeing crypto.com also dominate the UFC FTX is literally investing in every friggin sports league in the world up in Canada, you have you know, bit by getting in with a couple NHL teams. So yeah, I'm just I'm, I really think it's one of the best ways to get in. And I'm sure that's why you guys did it. But on the alternative route, were there any other sort of, you know, entertainment avenues that you've looked up? Besides this massive sponsorship?
venues which are channels are even open to crypto yet sports is one of the few that is accepting and maybe it's because of the pandemic, you know, when a lot of these leagues and stadiums and even players and teams took a hit. Maybe that opened their mind to a new revenue stream. I don't know what you know, allow this to happen. But you're right. A sports is one of the few things in life that people are, you know, adhere to and are diehard
about. I mean, it's like maybe politics is the only other thing I can think of that is as incendiary when it when it goes.
Right. Dodge. It's true. Yeah.
So yeah, and honestly, this this partnership, I don't want to say it fell into our lap, like they did seek us out at the conference. But, you know, honestly, man, when when we had our first meeting with was La Liga, I had no idea we'd be able to get this partnership across the line. I even turned on my cmo and I was like, there's no way they're gonna choose us, right? It's gonna be
FTX it's gonna be crypto.com. So I think now that we have gotten this across the line, now we'll start looking at at bigger opportunities and other large opportunities because my mind's been opened, and my my confidence is definitely a lot stronger that we can that we can have this kind of outreach.
No, I totally feel like there so on the Divi side I know how to get a Divi wallet up and running. But I'm sure tons of our listeners do not I'd love if you could just sort of walk me through the most efficient and simple way to get set up with Divi
yeah so right now you know we're still working on the the Fiat on ramp I expect that to be out soon. Probably go into beta at some point this quarter. So right now the easiest way is to probably go on coo coin or send X whatever's available in your region and just you know, swap USD T or Bitcoin for for Divi and then send it over to our Divi wallet. You can start staking at the click of a button. It's super easy once you get the actual
Divi in the wallet. And of course, you can get Divi wallet on your app stores or just visit to the wallet calm.
And what's that? What's the API again? Isn't it like some bananas like 20%?
Yeah, I think it's between 20 and 21, depending right now, of course, there's a lot of dynamics that change that. But yeah, it's it's around that.
So if I'm like if I'm a C suite exec at a traditional bank, and I find out that I'm not going to guys are a small firm, but you know, you're not an FTX or crypto.com. Yet no doubt in my mind that you will be but for now, if I'm one of these C suite execs at a bank, and I'm seeing Debbie give out 20% of their clients, like, am I not just shitting? Bricks left,
right and center? What's what's going on through their heads right now they must be so scared, I would I probably pay, I pay a couple grand to be a fly on the wall in a couple of these big bank crypto meetings just to see what what they have planned. Guys, I'm flabbergasted. I wouldn't even know where to start or how to think. And right now,
I think a lot of them are, you know, at least opening their, their minds to the potential opportunity. Because, you know, we have some hedge funds, which of course, are a lot more flexible than than banks who have invested in Divi for their clients. And you know, they're earning a yield for them. Because it's a guaranteed yield. For the most part, you're just waiting. So and of course, if the price goes up, that's great. That's even better. So obviously, sophisticated investors
understand it. I think a lot of the issue with bankers, and I've talked to many of them is that regulation stopped them from investing in a lot of this stuff. But that's changing, which is great. And I think we'll probably start to see like investment banks, maybe not traditional banks, like your, you know, your Wells Fargo and such, necessarily first, but investment banks will probably start to invest more so and expose themselves to these
coins. The tides are shifting, I talked to a lot of these people all the time. And there is a there is a desire, you do have your old guard that are just like not understanding it at all. But that that herd is thinning?
And what's what would theoretically happen when one of the big dogs, the JP Morgan's or Goldman Sachs, I know they're opening up product lines in different verticals for their clients who want to get into crypto. But what would happen if they pulled a Tesla? Or for that matter? What if Apple or Google came out with a big boom and was like, hey, over the last couple months, we've been accumulating X amount of bitcoin or eath? Or maybe a box
or solar whatever? Would that not just kick off the parade and the dominoes would fall? Or do you think it would take a little more not,
I think it would definitely be a huge catalyst, because each of these little steps, I mean, they're not little, they're huge, actually, you know, each of these steps serves to validate and solidify, you know, the future of cryptocurrency. But I think even though there's a lot of OnRamps now, it's still somewhat daunting, as we talked about in the beginning, for a certain demographic of person to
actually onboard. And even the more tech savvy individuals or the, you know, technical natives, I should say, hesitate on a lot of these things, even the easiest ones like Coinbase and such, or your bank locks you out. Which I was just talking to a buddy before this call and he was like, yeah, he's like, Dude, I've been trying to buy Bitcoin for like the past three weeks, and like three of my bank accounts have locked me out from from engaging with these
platforms. So that's a problem like the onboarding is still a problem. So as much as these big announcements may catalyze interest, there's the this roadblock still. But that's just that's just a fire hose waiting to unleash. Yeah,
no, I completely agree there. Nick, this has been incredible Always a pleasure chatting with you a couple more questions before we wrap up we have a new segment on the show called the hot take factory. And I'd love for you and I to jump in get our shake kick and boots on and and get a couple hot takes out. Yes. So with that being said, Give me something that you believe in that no one
else does. Or just a general hot take in life doesn't just have to be about crypto can be about anything regular finance, crypto, sports, life, philosophy, you name it, but give me something that only Nick thinks or believes in where the general public does not.
And that is a really tough question. I don't think that there's much that I'm super contrarian on what I guess I will say is, you know, I think that I think that there's a lot of room in this space to grow. I think that the adherence to like a single coin and, and maximizing your opinion on it is a huge mistake. I've actually fallen victim to this myself. There will be more than one solution to a single problem. That's just the fact some of
them will work differently. Some of them will work better than others but you have to expose yourself to as many of those things as possible. And I'm sure other people believe this but you like being just behind one asset is going to ultimately lose you money. Bottom line. And the people that are like shouting from the rooftops like the big influencers and stuff that you know only talk about one thing that's their brand. That's not even necessarily
their opinion. That's just like But they talk about online, make your own decision
there. That's one thing that that I'm not a big fan of is how much power the crypto influencers have how they can not really move markets, but at least go along with the ebbs
and flows in the market. So they can really, I guess, they can sort of move markets and just all the shit they're pushing out, it's, it's getting to be a bit much I can't wait for there to be like, you know, almost like a mix between crypto and Reddit where, you know, the community can vote on your legitimacy, and how real your posts are. And the level of bias again, that's a very far
fetched, lofty goal. But I'd love to see something like that happen, where you could just sort of sift through a lot of the fluff, because even with a really nicely curated Twitter feed, it's there's just so much promotion going on right now. You know,
yeah, everybody has a, you know, an underlying motive, ultimately, and it's easy to get lost and wrapped up in that and these newer participants in the space, it's easy to, you know, basically be spoon fed information and take it at face value, but that's just not a good way a good strategy for investment.
Yeah. Nick, always a pleasure. Thank you so much for jumping on I guess it's getting late for you. And I know that I have I have a couple friends in Madrid and well when I was there three or four years ago I ate dinner at I want to say like 1030 Every night usually, you know dinner at six kind of guy. I'll usually fast and eat from around noon to eight or you know two to six two to 630 So eating that late was absolutely absurd.
Otherwise a lot of the topics love the food people sports everything incredible place, but really appreciate you coming on and before I let you go, can you please tell our listeners where they can find you and Debbie online and on socials?
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely check out Divi wallet.com We just opened some new social media accounts as well at Divi wallet, on Twitter. And of course you can look up and find us across all the social medias at Divi project if you want to join our telegram and such like that. Yeah, come ask questions, join the community. We are always online and ready to chat.
Oh, I got one more for you. When are you going to be on some maybe not Canadian as a whole but some North American friendly changes.
It is definitely a goal for the coming year. I'm actually working on some stuff right now. Nothing's solidified yet but it is 100% on my radar and on the team's radar so yeah, just stay tuned.
You know many hoops I have to jump through to get a ticket to snag a COO coin account well I had one but they you know they blocked you out I got the want to see in July I got the email being like we will not allow you to withdraw any funds post December 31 2021. Like all great. So the word we'd love to have you on a Canadian friendly account. That'd be lovely. But Nick really appreciate it as always, congrats on the La Liga deal that is absolutely incredible.
I'm looking forward to seeing a couple of bicycle kicks and then in the highlights he in the lovely red DiBello row on the on the sidelines that'll be a treat but as always really appreciate you coming on and looking forward to round three.
Thanks a lot, Matt.
Folks, this was Nick Saponaro from Divi project, great episode and very fortunate to have received some breaking news. Absolutely love it. What a treat another great one with neck if you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you did please do subscribe. It would mean the world to my team and I and speaking of my team love you guys appreciate y'all I could not do this without you. And to the listeners. You guys are the best. Keep on doing your thing.
Keep growing those bags and keep staying healthy, wealthy and happy bye for now.