Latest / Bitcoin for Financial Services Podcast / The $4,000 Rug Pull: Why Fiat Payments Break Small Businesses

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The $4,000 Rug Pull: Why Fiat Payments Break Small Businesses · Bitcoin for Financial Services Podcast

• 0:00
  It's incredibly easy to save in Bitcoin.
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  I literally slept better at night by holding Bitcoin than dollars.
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  What made me not sleep better at night is not doing something about onboarding the millions
• 0:20
  of merchants that are still currently completely clueless about how money works.
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  and the brokenness of our current financial situation
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  if you want to have an enduring, durable company,
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  Thank you.
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  to Bitcoin for Financial Services Media, the podcast where sound money meets professional
• 2:01
  services. We explore how to build a financial service industry within the principles, values,
• 2:06
  and ethos of Bitcoin. Today, we're joined by Jason Keel, CEO and founder of Polaris Payments.
• 2:12
  You're not going to want to miss it. Let's get started.
• 2:18
  Alrighty, welcome back to another episode of the Bitcoin for Financial Services podcast. Man,
• 2:25
  we're doing some podcasts this week. I know we're having to take next week off.
• 2:29
  One of us is taking next week off. Say again? One of us is taking next week off.
• 2:33
  One of us. Yeah. Is it Jason? Is it Wyatt? Or is it Jordan?
• 2:38
  Speaking of Jason, today we have the treat of Jason Keel is on the podcast from Polaris Payments.
• 2:46
  And Jason has just a deep background in kind of payments processing, which is a hot topic in
• 2:54
  the Bitcoin space because I think everyone agrees that store value, but now everyone's
• 2:59
  trying to figure out, Hey, is there medium of exchange here? What's that story look like?
• 3:04
  Our AI agents going to be paying each other in Bitcoin over lightning. So,
• 3:09
  Jason, thank you for being here. You're a good friend. We've known each other for about a year
• 3:14
  now and welcome to the podcast, man. Excited to be here. Excited to dive in with you guys.
• 3:19
  yeah why don't you guys you guys had a little bit more time to kind of catch up and game plan
• 3:26
  maybe some things we might talk about um why where do you want to take the conversation first
• 3:31
  yeah i do kind of want to just start you know high level here so i think it's been pretty well
• 3:36
  popularized this idea of currency maturation cycle of store value medium exchange you know
• 3:43
  account jason you're obviously really in depth in this field why don't you kind of give us an
• 3:49
  overview of where you think Bitcoin is at today, how it's matured to date, and then just kind of
• 3:56
  your thoughts on where we're moving in the near future. Yeah. I mean, I obviously, despite being
• 4:04
  in a bear market, the store value use case is pretty proven. And we've got, you know, nation
• 4:11
  states and publicly traded companies and everybody's buying Bitcoin. But the medium of exchange era is
• 4:16
  We're early to that.
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  And so that is part of my efforts.
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  I spent the last 16 years in payments and helping small, medium-sized businesses.
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  I found it really frustrating when I started in the business because so many of them are
• 4:34
  overpaying.
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  They have bad tech, they have bad customer service.
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  The list goes on.
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  And I spent all of these years doing as much work as I could helping them improve that.
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  And I'm very proud. We've saved millions of dollars for small and medium-sized businesses, and we've helped them in so many ways.
• 4:52
  But part of why I got into Bitcoin is I just got so tired of shrugging my shoulders and saying, that's just the way it is.
• 5:02
  And when they would call me on a Monday and say, why didn't I get my money?
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  And I say, it's a banking holiday. I know you need to pay your employees, but you're not going to get paid today.
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  It's just the way it is.
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  The banks are closed.
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  I know you're paying excessive fees, but it's just the way it is that the card brands charge
• 5:21
  all of these fees.
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  I know that you got rug pulled by this customer and they got the issue to charge back and
• 5:27
  the card brand cited on the customer and you're not ever going to get your money and you already
• 5:32
  paid your vendors and your employees, but it's just the way it is.
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  And the crazy thing about Bitcoin is it flips all of that upside down.
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  It literally solves like almost every pain point.
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  But we're very early, you know, not a lot of merchants yet except Bitcoin.
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  And that's obviously changing each and every day.
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  So, yeah, that's what I'm excited about.
• 5:55
  That's awesome.
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  That's awesome.
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  I appreciate the background there.
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  And you're just curious in your opinion on this, you know, because I've just been, you know, an observer on X.
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  But when Block rolled out, their point of sale, merchants being able to natively accept Bitcoin, to you being more in the payment space, how big of a deal was that?
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  I mean, it's massive because the friction right now, I've talked to so many business owners who want to accept Bitcoin and it's just too hard.
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  The tools just aren't there.
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  If you're a solopreneur, it's much easier.
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  But if you've got staff, you have to train, you've got turnover with staff, you've got inventory and integration issues and the menu isn't there.
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  It's not pre-populated under point of sale and the reporting isn't there and everything is fragmented.
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  You have to pull out a separate iPhone in order to accept Bitcoin.
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  It's just too much friction.
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  It's just not possible.
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  Even for hardcore Bitcoiners, it's just not.
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  So the cool thing is that we now have a friction-free way to accept Bitcoin in a retail environment.
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  Now, online, there's a lot of great tools, but retail, basically, nothing existed before Square.
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  And now it's really easy, which is really cool.
• 7:14
  Yeah.
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  And maybe talk about, you know, you mentioned that we're early on this side of things.
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  I know you kind of went down a journey in 2025 of potentially trying to bring on more Bitcoin, you know, payments and just running into headwinds.
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  I think maybe just give us like the like no holds barred, just like state of play of where we stand today with the Bitcoin payments versus the store value.
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  And we're not even close to the unit of account at this point.
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  I'm just curious how you have a very unique experience from last year.
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  Yeah.
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  So I've run this fiat payments company.
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  We do credit card and ACH payments for the last 16 years.
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  And then I had this aha moment.
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  I sort of had this vision of my grandkids.
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  It was like this hyperinflation world.
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  My grandkids were like, Grandpa, why did you do something?
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  Like you knew about Bitcoin.
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  Why didn't you do something?
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  And so I was like, well, I'm not a developer.
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  I'm not techie.
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  I don't know how to, you know, a lot of this Bitcoin stuff's over my head.
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  And so I had to work with what I got, which is I know I know a lot about payments.
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  I know a lot about merchants and how to help them.
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  And so I just decided I was going to single handedly, you know, pull us into this medium of exchange here.
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  All of Bitcoin all around the world.
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  I was just going to do it.
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  And so I built this website, BitcoinPaymentsAdvisor.com.
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  And we helped a lot of merchants.
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  But it's there's a lot of education to happen still. And so many merchants just didn't.
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  It just takes some time. It takes a lot of time to understand the fundamentals.
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  And the thing about a business owner, you know, if you're a wealth advisor, it's one thing to say, hey, here's the chart over the last 15 years of Bitcoin.
• 9:10
  If you look at a log chart, it's basically always up and to the right if you zoom out.
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  Right. But for a business owner. You're just like in the weeds, you're in the trenches, you're just trying to like run your business and keep your employees happy and serve your customers.
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  And so efficiency and and it just working is super important.
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  And and a lot of them just don't have the time or bandwidth to really read books and listen to podcasts and really get into the depths of what is Bitcoin and how does it work?
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  I've been excited to see some of these kind of as a transition from just accepting Bitcoin platforms to automated treasury management platforms for businesses.
• 9:56
  And that's been really cool to see because I think that it ties in the store value and the medium of exchange together.
• 10:03
  So Castle, for example, you can keep accepting your fiat regular, whatever preferred method the customer wants to pay with.
• 10:11
  Right. And then a portion of that transaction automatically gets converted into Bitcoin.
• 10:16
  Flash is another one where we're working on an integration with them where you can send an invoice out.
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  The customer can pay in Lightning or in credit cards or ACH.
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  And then you, regardless of how the customer pays, it doesn't matter.
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  A portion of every transaction is going into Bitcoin.
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  So that's a really fun tool.
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  And I think kind of like repositioning instead of just accept Bitcoin as powerful as that is, we kind of have to meet the market with where we're at right now.
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  And so I'm still pumped about onboarding tens of thousands of merchants.
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  But so far, I think Jack Dorsey's got me beat right now.
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  All good.
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  That's a heavy hitter to have to go up against.
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  I remember when we were in Tampa together, you just told some stories. I think it'd be helpful for our audience who they work with business owners day in and day out, or at least a lot of them do. Maybe tell us some of the stories that I think from our seat, at least in the CPA world, I don't necessarily hear the story of a chargeback or something that happened.
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  Um, or even, you know, it's so, it's so easy for me to just look at the P and L and, and
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  actually a lot of the times the top line revenue that we see is after, uh, credit card processing
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  fees.
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  Right.
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  So we're not even fully aware cause we don't, I mean, we can make the journal entry to kind
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  of gross up the figures, but, um, it's kind of like that example of, you know, you don't
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  know how much taxes you pay cause you never check your pay stub.
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  I think that's how a lot of business owners are.
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  They're like, how much am I paying in credit card processing fees?
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  I don't really know.
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  And they like Visa and MasterCard and Amex.
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  They want to keep it that way.
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  So maybe go down that path and pull back the veil for everyone to really understand how big of a problem it is with credit card processing fees, chargebacks, and this hidden cost that can be crippling a business.
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  Yeah, no, for sure.
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  I mean, last year, their survey came out.
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  The number one concern for merchants right now is inflation.
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  And credit card processing, that is literally almost every day I get a phone call or I get an email, some kind of question about someone looking to reduce their credit card processing fees.
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  Because the problem is that to accept money, it's really expensive just to accept money.
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  we live in this digital money world and you know paper is out like that if you look at a chart
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  adoption of credit card usage it's just up and to the right and covet accelerated that and it's a
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  very digital payments world um and so if you have three percent margins you have zero percent margins
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  like you're you're you have no margin um yeah and so it's it's very expensive for a cpa
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  you know let's say we fund the merchant ten thousand dollars today and we pull out a thousand
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  dollars because the customer gets a charge back because the merchant gets a charge back
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  um well then we're going to deposit nine thousand and that's what the bookkeeper is going to see
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  it's just going to be a nine thousand dollar deposit right so it it's not really going to
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  be um unless a cpa or bookkeeper is really looking at a merchant statement um they're
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  I'm not necessarily going to see those, but they do happen in certain industries.
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  Some, it's pretty rare.
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  And others, it happens, I mean, probably most of my clients, certainly not every day, but
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  weekly or monthly.
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  And it's a huge source of contention.
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  In some cases they have to fax I not joking They have to fax a response in a fax machine Wait so like a card company
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  Yes.
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  Visa and MasterCard require...
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, it's wild.
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  Yeah.
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  What is that, like the IRS standard for crying out loud?
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  Yeah, it's one of the value propositions that I like pitch sometimes is like,
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  we allow you to have an online portal where you can submit your chargeback response.
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  And, you know, I know it's crazy.
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  I.
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  I'll give you one story about my client, Vicky.
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  Vicky calls me one day.
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  And it was like it was a tough conversation because she was.
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  I could I could almost hear or see the tears in her eyes.
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  and she said, Jason, it happened again.
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  We did a, she owns a truck repair,
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  like a trucking repair company, like semi-truck.
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  Her team repairs those.
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  And $4,000 and change dollar transaction
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  got pulled right out of her bank account.
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  Now she had already paid her employees.
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  She had already paid for all the parts.
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  She already paid for everything.
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  And the customer knew, I think, what they were doing.
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  They paid over the phone.
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  They didn't have the physical card.
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  And it's so much harder to dispute chargeback when you don't have documentation.
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  Because Visa and MasterCard, they don't know who to side with.
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  They have two customers.
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  And they don't necessarily know, is it the cardholder?
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  Is it the merchant?
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  What do we do?
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  So instead of having this he said, she said, it's just purely based on documentation.
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  So it's a lot of work, but you have to show like signed receipts and signed invoices and, you know, card present transactions, much easier to win that dispute.
• 15:58
  And the customer knew they were defrauding the business.
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  But how do you know that you're working with a fraudster when you're a merchant and you're just trying to provide legitimate service and fair, you know, jobs for your employees and do your work?
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  And so she calls me one day and, I mean, she's just distraught because for her,
• 16:24
  you know, if you're a big business, $4,000, whatever.
• 16:27
  But if you're a small business owner, you're trying to keep the lights on.
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  It's a tough competitive market for a lot of small business owners.
• 16:35
  You know, you wear all the hats.
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  There's not a lot of delegation happening.
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  You're probably the CFO and the CEO and the head of HR and all the things.
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  And so you can get pretty overwhelmed as a small business.
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  And so when you provide a legitimate service and you pay your team members for that and
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  then you accept that money and then a few weeks or months go down, go by and then down
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  the road, you get rug pulled.
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  and then there's this large intermediary
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  that you have no control over.
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  Like, what are you going to sue Visa
• 17:18
  if you're a small business owner?
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  You know, once they decide who gets to keep the money,
• 17:25
  that's it.
• 17:27
  And that's part of the value that we provide to our clients.
• 17:30
  But at the end of the day,
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  there's a lot that we can do,
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  But not every merchant has, you know, a relationship with their credit card processor and has someone to call.
• 17:45
  And in some cases, the cardholder still wins.
• 17:51
  And then you don't get to keep the money that you already accepted, right?
• 17:57
  So that, I mean, I started out the conversation at the very beginning of the pod with, I'm just so tired of shrugging my shoulders and saying that's just the way it is.
• 18:05
  But the reality is that I've gone years having these tough conversations and having to say, like, I'm so sorry.
• 18:17
  But that's just the way it is.
• 18:18
  Like, it's just Visa has decided, MasterCard, American Express, that they've made their decision.
• 18:25
  And there's really nothing that we can do at this point.
• 18:27
  And it's a really tough thing for a small business owner to hear at times.
• 18:34
  And they feel a lot of times they feel this.
• 18:38
  Like a victim, a victim, like I've been defrauded.
• 18:43
  Someone has to stand up like who is going to advocate for me?
• 18:46
  Do I call an attorney?
• 18:48
  Do I do I file some kind of suit?
• 18:50
  What happens next?
• 18:52
  And I mean, I'm just encouraged by.
• 18:56
  The beautiful magic of Bitcoin and in the in the coming years where you've got transaction finality.
• 19:03
  and you've got this certainty
• 19:07
  that no one's going to come
• 19:09
  rug pull you from your money.
• 19:10
  The currency is not going to get debased overnight
• 19:13
  and they're not going to come
• 19:14
  and take the transaction value
• 19:16
  after you've already done a good job
• 19:19
  providing the service.
• 19:23
  Your wealth deserves intention.
• 19:26
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  Visit our website at basilic.io to schedule free consultation.
• 19:51
  It's interesting because like it's never even crossed my mind, honestly.
• 19:55
  I've had one chargeback in my entire, you know, firm's history.
• 20:00
  And it was a, and it was a guy who just, he made a mistake.
• 20:04
  Like he didn't under, he didn't recognize the thing.
• 20:07
  And, um, and he basically was just like, I'm just going to dispute this on Amex.
• 20:11
  And I texted him.
• 20:12
  I was like, Hey, what, what, you know, what's going on?
• 20:15
  I just saw this Levi guy.
• 20:16
  He's like, Oh, I'm sorry.
• 20:17
  Just re-invoiced me.
• 20:18
  And I did.
• 20:18
  and so it's just it's interesting to hear that story just because if you don't see it very often
• 20:26
  you just are fully unaware and again we just I would say I don't know about why but I don't
• 20:32
  have a ton of the conversations about the credit card processing maybe also tell the story that we
• 20:37
  talked about while we were in Tampa together about just the pure like savings and how folks on
• 20:44
  certain platforms are just getting rugged on how much they're actually paying. It might not be just
• 20:50
  a pure 2.7%. Like I think everyone kind of thinks it is. It creeps above that, right?
• 20:57
  Yeah, no, for sure. That's one of the big value ads that I work really hard to provide
• 21:03
  to my merchants is just saving money. We're typically shooting for like 10 to 40% in savings,
• 21:10
  which as the volume goes up, the savings grows because it's percentage based.
• 21:16
  And for low average ticket merchants, we focus more on the per transaction fee because you really get hit with a few different fees.
• 21:24
  You have a per transaction fee of maybe 10 cents or 30 cents.
• 21:28
  You have a percentage fee of maybe two, three, 4%.
• 21:31
  And then in some cases, there's other monthly fees and different things.
• 21:35
  and a lot of uh i think a lot of consumers don't realize this because when you go to a business
• 21:44
  you pull out your credit card you're just like which one gives me the most points right like
• 21:48
  give me the the biggest rewards possible i want i want all the points right
• 21:53
  but for a business the there's a huge range there's over 100 different types of credit
• 22:01
  cards in circulation it's called interchange that's the wholesale rate and some of those
• 22:05
  cards are like regulated debit cards and maybe like 1% or less. But a lot of those cards are
• 22:11
  two and change or three and change percent. American Express charges more. And all of these
• 22:17
  fees get passed down to the merchant, ultimately. It's the merchant that pays. Now, we've seen in
• 22:23
  this kind of growth in what they call dual pricing or surcharge, where they're passing
• 22:29
  the fees on to the consumer. Hey, if you want to pay in credit card, that's fine. But you're the
• 22:33
  one who's going to pay the fees, not me, right? But the, you know, corporate reward cards,
• 22:39
  international cards, a lot of these reward cards are increasingly expensive to accept.
• 22:47
  And again, I mean, it's tough for a merchant when you're living in an inflationary environment,
• 22:54
  and your QuickBooks software is going up and your vendors and your, it's all very expensive.
• 23:03
  And then on top of that, you also have intermediaries that say you're in an industry that we don't approve of or that we consider high risk, right?
• 23:14
  So there's loads of industries.
• 23:16
  And it's not just ammunition and guns and adults and these industries that you would think more obvious, a gambling that are high risk.
• 23:26
  all kinds of everyday industries that are very legitimate sounding.
• 23:35
  They may be tacking on an additional 40 basis points or 80 basis points,
• 23:41
  1-2% on top of the...
• 23:43
  I mean, I know Bitcoin miners that are paying 5% in credit card processing fees
• 23:48
  just to accept money, right?
• 23:52
  And so it gets very expensive.
• 23:54
  And I'm excited about Lightning, which it's like basically free.
• 23:59
  But that's where it's at right now with credit cards.
• 24:03
  And ACH is better, but it's also still not free.
• 24:07
  And it takes forever.
• 24:10
  Yes.
• 24:11
  Yeah, it's so fascinating.
• 24:13
  Thank you for sharing that story, Vicky.
• 24:15
  I think that's just really eye-opening.
• 24:18
  Fortunately, I haven't had to really deal with that,
• 24:21
  but I can imagine the pain it causes
• 24:23
  and just the unclarity,
• 24:25
  you know, it just all seems so rent-seeking to me
• 24:28
  and kind of nefarious and not very transparent.
• 24:31
  You know, all the things, you know,
• 24:32
  we push back against in Bitcoin land.
• 24:35
  So would you say then,
• 24:36
  you know, maybe kind of put a bow on that,
• 24:38
  you know, with the Bitcoin,
• 24:40
  you know, payment advisor,
• 24:42
  you're getting a lot of interest
• 24:43
  or having success converting merchants
• 24:45
  because they're feeling the pain of fees
• 24:48
  or, you know, they've done their 40 hours
• 24:51
  of Bitcoin podcasts a week homework
• 24:54
  and they're just like,
• 24:55
  well, I'm a Bitcoiner.
• 24:56
  I want to accept Bitcoin.
• 25:00
  Well, I think for merchants
• 25:03
  that are accepting Bitcoin,
• 25:05
  it's a range.
• 25:08
  I know merchants,
• 25:09
  I've onboarded merchants that
• 25:10
  they just,
• 25:12
  they don't necessarily understand Bitcoin.
• 25:14
  They just have a feeling
• 25:15
  that it's the future
• 25:16
  and they have enough intuition
• 25:18
  to kind of separate
• 25:20
  the crypto from the Bitcoin and recognize like I should probably be getting on this.
• 25:26
  Like there's a lot of merchants that don't understand AI.
• 25:29
  They don't get it or how it works, but they can recognize like it's probably not going
• 25:34
  away and it's probably something that we should start keeping an eye on, right?
• 25:40
  And then, of course, you've got the hardcore Bitcoiners that they've wrote all the books
• 25:45
  and it's a no brainer.
• 25:47
  they want to accept the best form of money.
• 25:51
  And then it's sometimes just a tools issue, right?
• 25:55
  Like, do the tools exist?
• 25:57
  Are they able to accept Bitcoin
• 26:01
  and it also update their inventory
• 26:05
  and their employees?
• 26:08
  Are they able to do it and send out the invoice
• 26:10
  or whatever it is?
• 26:13
  I forgot what your question was.
• 26:15
  are you seeing a lot of adoption because they're trying to reduce fees or is it more of their
• 26:21
  hardcore big market well on the fiat side i think that probably eight times out of ten when a merchant
• 26:28
  comes to us they're they're looking to save money because we know the fees are excessive
• 26:34
  in the credit card world and there's a lot of margins and there's a lot of um
• 26:39
  is a lot of processors that are just overcharging you know because square for example stripe these
• 26:47
  guys are are blending all these different interchange rates into one and they don't
• 26:51
  usually customize it for each merchant and so i was talking to a dentist well dentists have
• 26:57
  exceedingly low risk um the number of chargebacks that dentist gets are are it's like it's like
• 27:05
  you know jordan it's like maybe one time 20 years ago someone didn't recognize a charge and they got
• 27:12
  a charge back right uh the fraud is super low and so the interchange rates are very low well square
• 27:20
  is going to pass on that blended risk to you and charge you way more than what the wholesale rate
• 27:28
  is and they're going to have fat margins. But they're not going to disclose all of that. They
• 27:36
  just say, it's easy. Here's our one easy, simple rate. And so that's why I think it's important to,
• 27:45
  if you run a business, particularly if you're starting to accept some more volume and you are
• 27:51
  accepting credit cards and in some cases ACH it makes a lot of sense to dig into it and kind of it like Bitcoin it like I don know what money I mean I just money is dollars right
• 28:05
  Money is like US dollars, I've got some in my wallet, and then someone says, well, what really is, is that really what money is?
• 28:14
  Like fiat, do you understand behind the scenes and central banking and debt-based money versus hard sound money?
• 28:20
  And they're like, I don't know, and then you get no conversation potentially.
• 28:23
  But similarly, with accepting money, there's a lot of opportunity to save money in a lot of cases.
• 28:32
  And that's increasingly important because, again, last year, the number one concern cited by merchants is inflation.
• 28:38
  The cost of everything is going up, including the ability to accept money for your goods and services.
• 28:46
  yeah jason i want you to go back a little bit maybe and talk about how you got into bitcoin
• 28:53
  i think it's always helpful for you know folks in our audience to just get a good flavor of
• 29:01
  just where's this guy coming from the angle because and i've always seen you as so like
• 29:07
  if i just met you and we didn't meet at the park down in nashville like i would have never like
• 29:12
  really pinged you as a Bitcoin guy. Cause you're just like, you're just a normal guy. Right. Whereas
• 29:17
  you meet a lot of Bitcoiners, like, like Wyatt, you know, and you're just like, I can, I can,
• 29:22
  I get it. I know why he's a Bitcoin or like, you know, but there is, yeah, I'm just joking a little
• 29:27
  bit, but you know what I'm saying? Like there's kind of like, there's normie world, right?
• 29:32
  Bitcoiners kind of speak in this, in these terms, there's normie world and there's Bitcoiners. And
• 29:37
  we all look like the crazy guy with all the charts up and like pointing all these different places.
• 29:41
  And then there's a lot of normal people that are like, I don't know, I just, I guess, I don't think about it, right? I haven't had enough time to really like dig into all the conspiracy stuff that you're talking about. So maybe give everyone a background of like, where are you approaching all of this stuff from? How did you get into Bitcoin? Who orange-pilled you? All those things.
• 30:01
  Yeah, yeah.
• 30:02
  I mean, it's been a long winding journey,
• 30:04
  but I had this moment when I,
• 30:11
  2017, I bought Bitcoin and Ethereum
• 30:15
  and I was like, you know,
• 30:18
  I don't understand it,
• 30:20
  but I feel like it probably is going to go up.
• 30:23
  And then we had the bear market
• 30:24
  and I forgot about it.
• 30:26
  And then we spent seven months during COVID
• 30:29
  away from our house. And then at some point, we're like, maybe we should go get our stuff
• 30:35
  and get our cars and move out of our house. And so, the very first thing that I wanted to do going
• 30:42
  back was during the bull run is dig through all my drawers and find this USB stick. And I was like,
• 30:49
  I really want to see what's on it. And sure enough, I had six figures. And I was like,
• 30:55
  Maybe I should figure out what this is, right?
• 30:59
  At the time, though, I understood Bitcoin as crypto.
• 31:02
  And I thought that there were lots of different digital assets out there.
• 31:07
  And I should probably learn about diversification.
• 31:11
  And I should try and assess which one is going to be the winner.
• 31:15
  How do we know that one will win over the other?
• 31:20
  And so I started listening to a bunch of podcasts and trying to understand this stuff.
• 31:24
  And then I went to a Bitcoin conference and I went to a crypto conference.
• 31:30
  Night and day.
• 31:33
  Long term time horizons, short term time horizons.
• 31:37
  Partiers, healthy people.
• 31:41
  Moral conviction versus get rich quick vibes.
• 31:45
  Like it just the whole the vibes that people are so different.
• 31:49
  And I was like, okay, like these people, like Bitcoiners are thinking in like 100 plus year timeframes. And like, like genuinely, they're like, not, they're not thinking in like, day trading terms and, and, and, you know, get rich quick terms.
• 32:07
  they're just like thinking such long term, but there was this deep sense of conviction
• 32:12
  and almost like a morality, almost like an understanding that there is an injustice.
• 32:20
  And I mean, I've spent years working on homelessness and working on broken parts of society.
• 32:28
  I mean, it's part of my passion for small business owners is they're kind of getting
• 32:31
  left behind.
• 32:32
  Like the vast majority of businesses in existence are small businesses.
• 32:35
  but the majority of profits are going to the top 1% largest corporations.
• 32:40
  And it's, you know, these small businesses are like the backbone of our economy.
• 32:44
  And then you've got all these intermediaries, extractive intermediaries,
• 32:48
  like taking their fees and everything.
• 32:51
  And so that's when I realized, okay, I should probably dig into Bitcoin specifically.
• 32:58
  And when I began to read books and understand monetary policy and the history of money
• 33:05
  and central banking and Austrian economics.
• 33:10
  I mean, it took me a while.
• 33:11
  I'm not that smart of a guy.
• 33:12
  It took me a while.
• 33:13
  It was hard, but I was fascinated.
• 33:18
  And it got to the point where, I mean, I was making the largest decisions,
• 33:26
  financial decisions in my life and selling real estate to buy Bitcoin.
• 33:30
  And it started out as a ratio and then it just put the whole thing in Bitcoin.
• 33:34
  I bought an espresso machine.
• 33:35
  I did buy an espresso machine.
• 33:37
  It was a $400 espresso machine.
• 33:38
  But other than that, it was 100% Bitcoin.
• 33:40
  Wow.
• 33:41
  Short Bitcoin.
• 33:43
  Huh?
• 33:45
  You're short Bitcoin, it sounds like.
• 33:47
  Yeah.
• 33:48
  I mean, you are, and you're sitting in a chair, it looks like.
• 33:51
  Yeah, I am.
• 33:52
  I know.
• 33:52
  I know.
• 33:55
  One day I'm going to sell it.
• 33:56
  For the professionals that don't know that meme,
• 33:57
  it's you should sell everything,
• 33:59
  including the chair you're sitting in to buy Bitcoin.
• 34:02
  Yeah.
• 34:02
  Not financial advice, but it's a funny meme.
• 34:05
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• 34:13
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• 34:19
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• 34:24
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• 34:29
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• 34:34
  no crypto talk no workarounds just proper accounting for the hardest money on earth
• 34:39
  create a free account or book a demo at bitment.co today hey well and since we're on the topic of
• 34:46
  memes one you brought up there jason that's one of my favorite in bitcoin is like this idea of like
• 34:50
  retiring your bloodline yeah which i think is awesome but it really plays into this you know
• 34:56
  low time preference uh you know frame of mind that the bitcoiners do you have and i love you
• 35:02
  sharing the anecdotal experience yeah because i've been to one crypto conference actually just
• 35:10
  recently a couple months ago and i was just in town for a bitcoin conference and this was going
• 35:14
  on so i had a couple days and figure i stopped by and you know you just feel yucky you know walking
• 35:20
  in and walking out and you take a shower but it's so clear to me and i would say you know this is
• 35:26
  something you people are really actually interested in integrating bitcoin in their their lives and
• 35:31
  their breakfast is to understand like the culture and it's distinctly different you know obviously
• 35:36
  in denver we have eat denver i just even hate their marketing you know it's just like their
• 35:42
  marketing how they like portray themselves is like so much different than what you would see
• 35:45
  in bitcoin land and um i think it is something important to actually tune into even though it
• 35:51
  may seem like you know noise a lot of time but important to understand that but jason when you
• 35:57
  going down this rabbit hole, obviously you have a payments company at this point and you're
• 36:02
  learning about Bitcoin and clearly making like some big decisions in your life on allocating
• 36:07
  to Bitcoin and getting Bitcoin exposure. What kind of pressure did you feel to integrate Bitcoin in
• 36:13
  your business or did you, you know, at all? Because when I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole,
• 36:18
  I had a different startup and we were doing, you know, EOR services for restaurants and stuff.
• 36:25
  I was like, oh, we should try to, you know, integrate Bitcoin into your payroll and stuff.
• 36:29
  And I felt obligated to try to do so as a loyal Bitcoiner.
• 36:34
  But I copped out and was like, you know, I had partners in that.
• 36:37
  They'll never go for it.
• 36:38
  Yada, yada.
• 36:39
  So when I started, you know, Basilic, that was really, you know, I wanted to do something
• 36:43
  specifically in Bitcoin.
• 36:44
  So did you have some pressures?
• 36:45
  Did you try to figure out how to like integrate it?
• 36:48
  Did you think it was just better to keep, you know, players, start Bitcoin, you know,
• 36:51
  payment advisors?
• 36:52
  How were you kind of, you know, assessing that landscape?
• 36:55
  Yeah, I mean, it's really easy to save in Bitcoin and run your business on a Bitcoin standard, whether you accept Bitcoin or fiat or whatever it is, you just convert it all into Bitcoin and then boom.
• 37:06
  But so I started doing that. But the the real conviction, like I just felt I felt conviction around.
• 37:18
  getting out of my comfort zone and helping other businesses. It's incredibly easy to
• 37:28
  save in Bitcoin. Once you have a conviction, it's not hard. I slept better at night.
• 37:33
  I literally slept better at night by holding Bitcoin than dollars.
• 37:39
  What made me not sleep better at night is not doing something about onboarding the millions
• 37:46
  of merchants that are still currently completely clueless about how money works and
• 37:54
  the brokenness of our current financial situation and the importance of if you want to have an
• 38:07
  enduring durable company the importance of understanding hard money and saving some
• 38:16
  in that form of money uh and and ideally uh just in part because i think it's
• 38:26
  super i mean people way smarter than me um have really in my opinion very strong arguments uh like
• 38:32
  jeff booth and jack dorsey and many others that you know bitcoin has failed if we never get to
• 38:37
  medium of exchange, right? And so I'm like, well, I can at least play my part in that. I don't know
• 38:42
  what that fully looks like. So I built a website and started a podcast and I started trying to
• 38:46
  onboard as many merchants as I possibly could. And now I'm fortunate enough to be able to help
• 38:52
  a bunch of Bitcoin companies as well, accepting fiat. Many of those already accept Bitcoin.
• 38:57
  I'm sorry. Yeah. Many Bitcoin companies already accept Bitcoin, but not all of them have the best
• 39:03
  fiat payments set up because many of them are still using Stripe and Square and the traditional
• 39:06
  players that pumping out marketing dollars and have created a lot of brand recognition,
• 39:12
  but don't necessarily have a consultative approach. There's no relationship. You can't
• 39:16
  call Square and call Jack and have him give his best insights on your small business.
• 39:22
  And so that's what I'm passionate about right now is just trying to help both Bitcoiners as well as
• 39:29
  everyday mom and pop businesses be able to accept all forms of money, really, right? Because Bitcoin
• 39:35
  is money. So all forms of money, whatever form of money your customers want to pay in
• 39:40
  and whatever form you want to accept. Yeah. I wanted to bring up what you've
• 39:46
  seen out there. I know there's a lot of hubbub on, okay, merchants are turning on Bitcoin
• 39:51
  payments, maybe via Square or ZapRite. But you still hear these stories of like,
• 39:59
  yeah, no one pays in Bitcoin. I give them the option to pay in Bitcoin and they don't.
• 40:04
  And so I think there's a couple paths we could go down, maybe speak to if we don't ever do this medium of exchange thing, then it fails. It doesn't live up to Satoshi's original vision. We could go down that path. We could go down a path of like spend to replace. You could call some things out there.
• 40:25
  and then the last thing I think it is nice for maybe to go a little bit deeper on the breeze
• 40:31
  and castle examples just to it's just giving all these options of ways to get exposure but
• 40:41
  I don't know big you know bitcoiners it's just such a weird thing where they're like well I don't
• 40:46
  want to spend my bitcoin because it's going to be worth more and I guess probably the biggest
• 40:50
  the one that makes the most sense to me the argument countering that is just the spend and
• 40:54
  replace kind of method although i wish there was a better tool that i could spend bitcoin and
• 41:00
  immediately you know buys that right back basically and you know resets cost basis does a lot of fun
• 41:06
  things for me yeah um so i don't know yeah i i think it's ridiculous to to not i think it's
• 41:15
  ridiculous to not buy goods and services with bitcoin if you understand bitcoin like if if you
• 41:21
  If you've read a book or two and identify as a Bitcoiner in any way, shape or form, I think it's a ridiculous argument to not spend Bitcoin because you think it's going to go up because of the spend and replay.
• 41:36
  Okay, open up Strike and buy your Bitcoin and then spend your Bitcoin and then rebuy it or DCA or whatever.
• 41:43
  Like you can be buying Bitcoin each and every day while you sleep.
• 41:46
  It just doesn't matter, right?
• 41:48
  And so if you understand the brokenness of our current money situation then I think that you should do something about it
• 42:05
  And part of that is choosing to spend the best form of money there is.
• 42:12
  Because merchants are never going to accept Bitcoin without you actually spending it, right?
• 42:19
  it's a two-way street and um it's a chicken and the egg problem and i think the where we start as
• 42:26
  merchants like we have to build the roads before the cars can run you know uh parker lewis talks
• 42:32
  about this uh he spoke on that uh at bit block boom last year the transition from horse and buggy
• 42:37
  to cars well we had to build roads as a prerequisite you can't just go straight from
• 42:43
  horses to cars with no roads. And I think merchants are where we have to start, but it's super
• 42:50
  important that merchants, because they're just going to turn it off. They're just going to
• 42:55
  stop paying their monthly ZapRite fee or tell their employees like, ah, you don't even have to
• 43:04
  learn this system. You don't even need to learn where to swipe down on the square terminal to
• 43:09
  click the Bitcoin button for it to generate the QR code for the customer to pay because no one
• 43:13
  ever pays in Bitcoin. Right. And then we're back in the same problem of like Bitcoin, not really,
• 43:19
  you know, number go up. Sure. But, but the, the real like revolutionary aspects, we need more
• 43:27
  than just saving a Bitcoin, I think. Yeah. I mean, even something I've thought about,
• 43:34
  and I wish I needed, I need to do a better job at this, um, is just really any time you're spending
• 43:40
  money and i know it sounds so silly and you actually feel silly asking the question but
• 43:46
  asking the merchant do you accept bitcoin you're like out at a restaurant right yeah and yeah you
• 43:52
  run the risk of like oh this person's crazy them thinking oh this is a crazy person but i think if
• 43:57
  you got enough bitcoiners to start asking that question and including it in their regular cadence
• 44:04
  before they swipe their Amex,
• 44:06
  like, well, at least more people are like,
• 44:10
  why are these people asking about this?
• 44:12
  And if it's a Square, you know,
• 44:14
  if it's a Square company,
• 44:15
  then our Square POS company,
• 44:16
  it's like, okay, that's already set up.
• 44:18
  You can get them onboarded today.
• 44:21
  So I don't know.
• 44:22
  What are your thoughts on that?
• 44:23
  I mean, honestly,
• 44:25
  here I am talking about how important it is,
• 44:28
  but I'm kind of bad about it
• 44:30
  when in a retail environment.
• 44:31
  I am incredibly disciplined when it's obvious for me.
• 44:38
  So when I'm paying a ZapRite invoice, when I am buying something online, whatever it is, and I have the option to pay in Bitcoin, I will always scan a QR code.
• 44:49
  I will always pay in Bitcoin.
• 44:50
  But in a retail environment, I have so much muscle memory of just like, because it's hard for me to like stop and think, is this a square?
• 44:57
  Like what terminal are they using?
• 44:59
  Do they accept Bitcoin?
• 45:00
  Like have they enabled it?
• 45:01
  Have they talked to the owner about what it is and how it is like freedom money and it's revolutionary and it's going to help their business?
• 45:08
  And it's just such a, you know, challenge in retail.
• 45:13
  And a lot of merchants, including Square merchants, don't yet accept it.
• 45:17
  And so I think probably the best thing you could do if you're in a retail environment is just stop and see if they're using Square, because that's the most obvious thing.
• 45:25
  There's four million merchants that are using Square and a percentage of those, 100% of those can accept Bitcoin.
• 45:31
  Right. A hundred percent of them have the ability to in the in the from a technology standpoint in the terminal.
• 45:37
  It's just a matter of whether they turn it on or not.
• 45:40
  And and merchants listen like I mean, they they they will they will change their business habits because of their customer.
• 45:46
  You are the ones that are keeping them alive.
• 45:48
  You are the ones that are keeping them in business.
• 45:51
  And so I think it matters for sure.
• 45:54
  You know, Bitcoin Park is a lot of folks that still pay in fiat.
• 45:59
  right and and i'm sure there's all kinds of other uh shame shame right out of the space
• 46:06
  yeah because yeah the space it's only bitcoin right only bitcoin man we're
• 46:10
  but yeah i like that that's cool i mean bitcoin it's yeah there's pros and cons but
• 46:15
  you guys doing something different down south or
• 46:22
  this episode is brought to you by satoshi paccioli a full service accounting and tax
• 46:26
  It does bring up the subscription conversation.
• 46:53
  We could go there for a little bit.
• 46:55
  Like that is probably one of the bigger gaps right now in the Bitcoin space for payments, right?
• 47:00
  Yeah, I think they're working on it with Bolt 12.
• 47:04
  This is where the builders come in.
• 47:06
  Like I'm not a developer, but this is where the, you know, it is coming.
• 47:11
  But with Lightning specifically, but we're not there yet.
• 47:16
  And so that, you know, I flipped the merchant, one of my merchants, I flipped her over ZapRite.
• 47:21
  And then we integrated in for the fiat side.
• 47:25
  Um, and then we ended up having to bail because of the subscription.
• 47:29
  I didn't, I didn't do my due diligence and that was my fault, but, um, I just had completely
• 47:35
  spaced on the fact that she does so many recurring transactions, not all of them, but many of
• 47:40
  her transactions are recurring.
• 47:41
  Well, think about how much attrition she's going to have.
• 47:44
  If now, instead of saying, we will take your credit card and just automate your life for
• 47:50
  you.
• 47:50
  And instead we're going to send you an invoice and require you out of the thousands of emails
• 47:54
  that you get every day or every week
• 47:57
  to sort through them,
• 47:59
  find the one from ZapRite,
• 48:00
  make sure you pay in your preferred payment method.
• 48:03
  And we're doing all of this
• 48:04
  just so we can accept Bitcoin.
• 48:06
  You're better off just buying Bitcoin on the backend
• 48:09
  or using an automated treasury platform or something
• 48:12
  because we're just too early, frankly,
• 48:16
  for transactions that are subscription recurring.
• 48:21
  It's a good point.
• 48:22
  We've actually talked to ZapRite at the space
• 48:24
  because I think we're actually one of the larger users on volume
• 48:27
  just because we're spending all these invoices every month
• 48:31
  and we've talked to them about subscription features and stuff.
• 48:34
  But Jason, I haven't actually heard this horse and buggy to car analogy before.
• 48:41
  And I'm curious, if you're putting on your entrepreneur, your advisor,
• 48:45
  your investor hat, and you're asking or advising an entrepreneur,
• 48:49
  it's a little bit of this chicken and egg problem, right?
• 48:51
  Or it's like, well, in order to get merchants to accept Bitcoin,
• 48:54
  we have to have the tools so you go out and build the tools and you know they will come
• 48:58
  but in the roads example you know those are subsidized by you know the the federal government
• 49:03
  so that you know you can add like this third party that's willing to come in here and like
• 49:07
  front the cost where you know free market capital you know bitcoin land what's like the risk or
• 49:14
  reward or how are you identifying like certain opportunities within the you know payment tool
• 49:19
  space, you know, at large to, you know, identify those total addressable markets and like have
• 49:26
  confidence, like, well, the merchant will overcome. I think you need, you need something way more than
• 49:32
  just a tool that accepts Bitcoin. So ZapRite is cool because it allows the customer that they were
• 49:37
  really innovative in allowing the customer to choose their preferred payment method, right?
• 49:42
  And so a lot of the friction, you know, I've onboarded merchants to Bitcoin payments. It's
• 49:47
  It's like, well, you have to use this different tool to send an invoice out and you have to ask the customer if they want to pay in Bitcoin.
• 49:54
  And then you create the invoice in this other system and then back and forth.
• 49:58
  It's just too much friction.
• 49:59
  It's just not practical for a fast-paced business environment.
• 50:03
  And so if you can send all of your invoices out without asking, it doesn't matter.
• 50:07
  Just pay however you want to pay.
• 50:08
  You want to pay in credit card?
• 50:09
  Great.
• 50:09
  You want to pay in ACH or Bitcoin, whatever it is.
• 50:12
  That's a really helpful tool.
• 50:15
  Um, and then, uh, and then flash who we're working with right now, um, similar to castle
• 50:21
  is an automated treasury platform, right?
• 50:23
  And, and that's really powerful.
• 50:25
  And you need these, these kinds of innovations for it to be practical for a business.
• 50:29
  I think, uh, you know, you send an invoice out, they can pay in lightning, they can pay
• 50:34
  in Bitcoin, um, or they can pay in fiat and it doesn't matter.
• 50:38
  It's, we're automatically a portion of that transaction or maybe a hundred percent of that
• 50:42
  transaction is going to be going into Bitcoin.
• 50:44
  That's a powerful tool.
• 50:46
  And then they've got the calculators and they build out the models.
• 50:48
  And you can see based on past performance, you know, if you convert 50% or 10%, 1% of your transaction into Bitcoin, you know, what that's going to map out on based on certain, you know, time horizons.
• 51:02
  This is a really powerful tool.
• 51:05
  And yeah, I think you need a lot more than something just these ideas of like just accept Bitcoin.
• 51:14
  It's just not practical.
• 51:15
  You need something else.
• 51:16
  You need some kind of additional technological breakthrough, I think.
• 51:21
  Yum.
• 51:22
  All right.
• 51:22
  Well, we're getting close to time.
• 51:24
  Jason, tell people where they can find you.
• 51:28
  Are you still doing the podcast, the Bitcoin Payments podcast?
• 51:31
  Yeah.
• 51:32
  Medium of Exchange.
• 51:33
  Check us out on YouTube, Spotify, whatever your preferred fountain.
• 51:37
  Yeah.
• 51:37
  What was your best performing episode?
• 51:39
  I'm just curious last year.
• 51:41
  I was going to tee it up.
• 51:43
  Yeah.
• 51:44
  I got this notice from Spotify.
• 51:48
  It had confetti on it, and it said,
• 51:49
  your best performing episode, the number one most listened to episode,
• 51:54
  was this gentleman right here, Jordan Guess.
• 51:56
  So thank you for joining me on my pod.
• 52:00
  But yeah, a lot of fun conversations on Medium of Exchange.
• 52:02
  I just interviewed yesterday this guy David from Musket.
• 52:05
  He's based out of London, and he's got this credit card terminal
• 52:08
  that is both credit card and Lightning, all in one.
• 52:12
  Really cool little device there.
• 52:14
  and uh and then i've got the the payments company polaris payments i'm kind of fusing everything
• 52:19
  under that brand i'm going to add a bitcoin tab to that so just be everything is just one simple
• 52:23
  like we accept money we help you accept money uh and that's called polaris payments you can go to
• 52:28
  the website polaris payments.com you can click on the chat widget and i'll or you can message us
• 52:33
  whatever it is my email is jason at polaris payments.com if you just want to message me
• 52:36
  directly no that's amazing um yeah i'm sorry i i meant to ask this earlier but i forgot but yes
• 52:43
  I know this has been a lot of hubbub on Twitter.
• 52:45
  Just like, I don't know if you've gone deep down this or just have any surface level thoughts.
• 52:48
  But what do you what do you think about AI agents paying in Bitcoin?
• 52:52
  Yeah, you know, it's so funny is yesterday on our podcast.
• 52:55
  That's literally what we ended like the whole last 10 minutes was that topic.
• 53:00
  So here's what we kind of like concluded yesterday is, well, my question to David was, OK, AI agents cannot go through KYC.
• 53:09
  they like it doesn't make any sense for them to use fiat dollars um but are they going to choose
• 53:17
  stable coins or lightning right like which one would they choose because they need programmable
• 53:23
  money but do they understand like what's their time horizon that that's kind of like a fundamental
• 53:28
  question um and do they believe in you know to have they studied austrian economics or
• 53:34
  keynesian economics they're there there's different models in in your economic thought um and do you
• 53:40
  understand like you know debt debt-based money versus hard sound money it's i think the time
• 53:45
  horizon is an interesting question we should ask an ai what's your what's your time horizon
• 53:49
  yeah you know we've got roughly 80 years ish uh maybe 160 if you if you're rod um but uh you know
• 53:58
  we have a specific amount of time on earth right um and the ai agents i don't know i don't know
• 54:07
  what their time horizon is yeah uh i gotta jump for this next call but i did want to just share
• 54:13
  the screen real quick because cali put this in our ai bitcoin chat uh or someone dropped it in
• 54:19
  but it was cali on on twitter just saying that us dc on base is uh more common for these payments
• 54:26
  uh so essentially it was a call out like the scam coins are marching on and even fiat is evolving
• 54:33
  and it was called action of like make sure you're out there doing your part and i think that that's
• 54:39
  where i wanted to kind of leave it today is jason you're out there you're doing your part we're
• 54:45
  trying to do our part i think it's a it's just um you know everyone something to consider right like
• 54:51
  how can I contribute with whatever it looks like within my career, my life.
• 54:57
  So that's it.
• 55:00
  Thank you so much for coming on, Jason.
• 55:02
  Thank you guys for having me.
• 55:03
  This is fun.
• 55:04
  Yeah, it's fun.
• 55:04
  Yeah.
• 55:04
  Thanks, Jason.
• 55:06
  Okay.
• 55:06
  See you guys.
• 55:07
  Talk to y'all soon.
• 55:13
  We appreciate you joining us.
• 55:15
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• 55:18
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• 55:21
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• 55:23
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• 55:26
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• 55:27
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• 55:29
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• 55:31
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• 55:33
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• 55:51
  you