Is our first time really officially meeting and i'm super excited to have this this conversation because i think you have unique input on various things as i was of doing a little bit of my homework on you i think we're going to be able to touch on very interesting things that you've already kind of done in your early career right now so for those of you who don't know about aubry here. Very well known in the world of crypto. Particularly bitcoin. Recently just dropped a podcast uh observation and is the first episode officially live the first episode is going live.

Today. We have our vlog out. But um yeah so we're doing a few vlogs in the background before we start dropping some of the guest podcasts. Which will be coming in the subsequent weeks.

But yeah all right so congratulations on that i will make sure when we clip. This interview and everything just for the people who are interested i will get your twitter and also the link to your podcast just so everyone who wants to check it out um. But before we get into the deep crypto thing. Which is really currently your career's passion and a personal passion of yours when i was doing some research.

I was very very intrigued of and i saw the pathway of how you got there. And it sounds like you kind of got going in your early life actually on a reservation. A navajo reservation. So could you kind of run us through the connections you saw there and then you had a career as like literally a professionally trained journalist and then that led into crypto could you kind of give us a brief overview of how that all connected from the start.

All the way to the podcast that you're having now yeah totally. I mean i think as a journalist you go into journalism well most people i mean. There's some people that are just going to journalism. Because they're you know they have big egos or whatever.

But i really loved the idea of cracking into broken systems and journalism and crypto though we can't we'll go into it later. Crypto is broken in its own ways. It it felt like we were solving and kind of uh defending like current systems that were failing people and so like as a journalist as a journalist. You're sort of a watchdog of these you know businesses.

The government. The fed all of this stuff and i just felt like going into crypto um sort of on the calm side helped tell the story in a different way. But growing up on the navajo reservation. I mean that's probably one of the most broken systems right and in our country.

That people forget about and it's so easy not to to think about the all the indian reservations that we have in this country. There's so many um and they're kind of pushed off their land and subsidized by the government and not a lot of innovation happens there there's not a lot of great businesses. You basically have to leave the reservation to do any actual shopping and e commerce. You're so you're not funneling it back into your local jurisdiction.

So the whole thing is kind of just if i'm being honest and you don't. But you don't know that until you leave that's the whole thing when you grow up somewhere you only know what you know and so i think that that actually applies to a lot of areas. You know you kind of only know what you know and then and then you see the whole world and you see how things actually work um. So that was sort of my upbringing and uh it exposed me to a sort of a unique perspective of the world early on with that is that actually what drove you into not only being a journalist.

But a journalist particularly with an interest in politics is that like your experience on the reservation. And seeing how things and your words were broken is that kind of what drove you of like attempting to share that story with the rest of the world of what's actually going on was that the driving force there yeah. It feels like you can shine a spotlight basically on this area that no one else is really doing and until you leave and you can tell other people about it people do forget about the reservations. They don't think about these groups of people who are the true americans of this country and they totally forget about it entirely so crypto um and moving into journalism and crypto at the same time was something that i felt like i could talk about specifically.

Bitcoin. Though you know obviously. There's been a lot of um. You know might you see miami coin.

You see like different cities try out their own local currency. But the problem with that is is that there is an unlimited supply cap on some of these coins. Just like a lot of the early icos. I don't know if you remember the ico days.

But you know they would do like these raises on these uncapped supplies and and all of those were trash all of that was there's not really anything left over from that and so setting people up with some sort of digital currency. That's not going to work for them isn't the answer um for me you know obviously bitcoin is down. But bitcoin offers at least. You know a capped supply offered some sort of hard money that people can deal with and understand um and i think that you know people who first of all when i see people get into crypto.

I say check out bitcoin first like just check that out first before you get into anything else. Because people are like should i buy so. And so coin. The grimace coin.

Eight point like all these just random like coins that they're gonna get wrecked and i don't i wouldn't give that advice to people if they actually wanted to opt out of a system like it is crypto is a casino. I would argue that's kind of when the going jokes when i started my show is just it's all a casino. Because and and we could totally get into this. But even the craziness of how much power.

The fed has on the equities market of like we're getting crazy. Inflationary reports. And like no way are we doing 50. Bips we get a 50 no way we're.

Doing 785. And now they're like no way we're doing 100. I'm like all right we're totally getting 100. But like you know how accurate that is too okay yeah.

It's just absolutely ridiculous. And then it's funny because like we get commentary from the sec of like it's not gambling. You should be investor and have faith in the system. It's like well how can we have faith and it sounds like and i don't mean to put words in your mouth.

But like that's almost what's attractive to you about bitcoin is like finally you have something agnostic that no one is messing with it it's finite. We have 21 million. And that is what it is and in terms of regulation. And i know this is getting into the nitty gritty to be completely.

Frank. I own a lot of various crypto uh. But i am the least concerned with bitcoin because gary gensler himself that's the only one that he says. It's fine.

He's like it is a commodity. We're not looking to that at all and literally every other one so even though i'm invested in it it's the one i'm the least worried about just in terms of like regulation coming down and crushing. It yeah. Well gensler is obviously a huge proponent of bitcoin.

And he's taught a lot of courses up at mit. And he's i mean in that in that sense that's why he's saying. What he's saying. But um.

The regulation. Everyone says regulation's going to come regulation's going to come when is it going to come. Honestly like how many people have to get really hurt and wrecked um for people to step in i i just it's it's really hard to as everything is evolving so quickly and um. I just don't think our regulators are apps to really provide guidance a lot of the times especially with this last bull market.

We saw a lot of interesting projects pop up and different structures and i don't think that they can regulate quick enough as the market expands and so i think that's what they've been grappling with for a long time. But i mean at some point like the chaos needs to be i would welcome regulation. Honestly i've seen a lot of go down in this space. And i would i would like to see a little bit of regulation um.

But back to your point about bitcoin and you know not having to worry about it. Yeah. You don't have to worry about it. But there are a lot of people that are just not self custing.

And so you see these centralized exchanges like a celsius go down um. Like a voyager and even you're like usdc is not safe and so i think people just don't retail doesn't really understand what they're getting themselves into because crypto uses a lot of words like decentralization right. And people think they're okay they feel like that things work differently somehow in crypto and it's actually not quite. The case and so it's really hard to see people's life savings evaporate.

Because people went all in and that's that's a scary thing for me. You know as someone who's been talking about this for so long you have so many people that are just put off now entirely. They're just totally like will not enter. And maybe.

If they didn't um enter. They they were hearing about it and then they saw it in the news and now they're definitely not going to get involved and so that's kind of where we're sitting at i mean what do you what do you think about that do you feel like you that's the sentiment. You get yeah. I you hit it spot on so uh just very quickly.

I got involved with bitcoin back in college uh. Because it was the only way i could gamble like i was like oh so i never thought of it as an investment. I was like i just need to go through this intermediary that there's no rules about so i can gamble and it sucks. My buddy and i at one point had like around 50 bitcoin and like we.

But it was at 200 a bitcoin and then we tried to get it to 75. So we could go to vegas and like we blew it all gambling. We never made it to vegas. I was like i think about i'm like if i just understood what was going so that was my first idea of it and then i came up the reason.

Even we're here now is more of the whole ape thing in terms of gme and amc in between jamie's movement and amc's movement was doge's movement. I was like oh that's exciting because i saw similarities there was this community support there was a ravenous push. I was like how do i get it and someone said just download voyager one day. I was on a stream and i downloaded it not knowing anything about the concept of your keys your coin or anything like that and i just got it and then all of a sudden.

I was like well. It's easy they made a nice interface similar to the way. Robin hood did and it's one of those painful lessons and i think even this is when really it's all intertwined of your conversations about regulation and all that of like there was a generic trust you're like okay you went out of your way to get a brokerage. Some sort of approval you're managing money you just assume.

There's some built in failsafe. There and now the painful lesson for me i'm in voyage or not celsius like not all of my stuff. But it's locked up it's painful and a lot of people listening to this right now they're like they're just basically sitting there without feeling in their gut just saying and then i think that's the sentiment of regulation to fix that type of stuff. But even on a general level you need the regulation for i suppose the highway on ramps for the 12 trillion dollars worth of 401ks and iras to be able to invest into a bitcoin spot etf that yet exists.

But one of these days. I hope it will but regardless like we clearly need it because voyager going down celsius going down three ac. Blowing up tara luna. Blowing up it's so bad and then you hit the nail on the head by saying some people are like nope.

I'm done when in reality. The other option and i just don't know if people want to digest. This is the fact that the dollar. The thing they're sitting in is so incredibly manipulated.

If i explained to you usd. And just said. It was a crypt. I'm like hey a crypto that we're gonna just add another 9 trillion.

And then we're going to like kind of with it interest rates and all that you'd be like oh. That's crazy like the way you were saying a coin you'd be like oh that's like the worst coin. I've ever heard of and yet that's the other form of currency that people are choosing to put their money in and for me. It's been a while process as of a year ago.

I was like oh like voyager. I think it works and then near the end of the year. I was listening to podcasts that like are in the league that yours is about to be in and like the importance of the keys your coin. I mean now i have the ledger nano access like i just need to be off the system.

The api is just not worth it it's just that's the answer the api is not worth it. But i i do think there's an interesting argument too about let's be realistic on like self custody. Here do we think every american every. We'll just we'll start with america do we think every american can successfully self custody and feels comfortable doing so there's people that like centralization they like having that and crypto is so you know bullish on fixing these systems in quotes that they're like you know opt out of exchanges get off get off do all this stuff.

And i just don't know if every american feels comfortable doing that or feels like they can or feel safe. It's a big leap to go into self custody. I think um for people to actually to do it to sit down and do it um and i don't know how far that's gonna be like people are still using the same passwords on like you know password one two three on their gmail and their their brokerage accounts like i don't do you know what i mean like the leap. There is a big leap to be made you know and like that's that whole web.

Three like connect your wallet feel safe doing this people. And like a lot of people. I had friends in this last cycle. Um massive like crypto whales that like were in nft space.

That they got like some sort of um ping and they and you know just just the way the ux and the ui works on opencv. There was someone sending in like an offer for something it was a it was a scam and she's my friend she's like very very much like an nft whale. She signed it you signed the signature and she sold two of her most like favorite nfts. And it wasn't really about the money for her she actually just loved these so much and they were gone because she had signed it twice and just the way that the um.

The experience is built out like you should be able to see like you shouldn't have to scroll to the end of this contract and then sign it and like not even really know what you're doing because she was kind of in the middle of it. But like you really have to be paying attention all the time and that's like can people have their backs. All the time and feel like you slip up one time you're done. It's like a lot of people are done yeah.

I you know that's a really tough question and it's a tough barrier that i hope one day surmounted. I guess not the best analogy. But maybe something similar is like even if we look at equities at now you can sit on your couch and buy it through your phone. But years ago.

You had to call your broker and the steps were more painful so it's one of these things where i do feel like there's a delineation between people who are really into crypto and are super aware about the tech and know how to do it. And then there's people who are new who their question might just be what is a ledger and there's a big big gap between it and like i think that can be daunting. But i think someday i hope capitalism prevails and someone steps in and can bridge that more easily. I'm hoping that capitalism and business takes care of it of just hey.

There's a value that could be provided by making the process easier. But it is i mean uh. I was reading the story about seth green. The famed actor who he lost two of his and like there's so many scams.

The other day when i'm doing the crypto news. There's a lot of scams. They're serious serious scams and it kind of comes back to like don't share your password with anyone save your seed phrase get it off exchange and do what you can but you bring up a super valid point of the more steps you add you're going to have big percentage drops offs and people who are even willing to go through those steps. The one thing that i'm actually even experiencing too that's not and this is the one thing.

I hate about uh social media. Right now is like people who follow me on instagram basically get hit with like about 10 bot accounts. They're asking like how your trade is going or whatever. And i know that i have people in in like in an actual really sad way like i know people have fallen for it because there's no real way.

There's these scammers are so good. And if there's money to be made people are going to scam this like anything that they can try they will do and so it's really sad and i actually had someone dm. Me the other day that said like unfortunately. I was like a victim of this scam that happened like that i thought it was your instagram account and i it's just i also am always shocked when that happens because i'm shocked that people think that i would dm on this program.

It's just kind of interesting like behavioral changes for people of what they who they trust. And what they're willing to put their money in and it's actually shocking to me to see like people do that i don't know i thought about that quite a bit myself because like i'm sure you see it like in my name with coors. There's an o and then they'll make it a zero. So like they'll try to make the name as close as they can and i think some people they don't want to look into it because it's hope in a way bitcoin stocks all of this stuff.

Represents financial hope. It's a form of faith and they don't want it to be wrong. Everyone hopes that they just got hit with like the miracle lightning bolt. And this is the thing.

That's going to work. And that's why no one looked into the fact that voyager put way too much money with 3ac. No one looked into potentially the algorithmic downfalls of luna. Everyone wants it to work the dows that had millions and millions of percent of apy.

Everyone just wanted it to work so they don't want to ask the hard questions like no one wants to be the party pooper. So even like that when you've had it i've had it of like hey i got this dm did i send money it's like did you check the name and i think. It's that same thing of people just want it to be real they like they hope you are reaching out to them. And it's it's the unwillingness to look at the red flags because they don't want to take away their own hope.

And it is a deeply psychological thing and it's sad because the fact that they're still doing it shows that they're still scamming people these scams would not exist. If they did not work. And it just is proof that they are working and it's just the newest iteration on even the scam callers who in my opinion are like abusing the elderly of like hey we locked your computer. When really they just like they're like fake.

Microsoft support. It's just a new twist on the same like scam whenever. There's money at play people are gonna try to figure out like how to it up and take advantage of other people. I i what you said about like the red flags and the hope is so accurate it's so accurate and i've you know lived through a few crypto bull markets and it's funny you really have to check yourself.

So much when you're in one because everything starts to feel so weird and being in this space. One of the things i want to do with the show is give people sort of this like behind the scenes of what it's like to work number one in this industry. But what's really happening with some of the like the top players. Because i think we're living in such an interesting time right.

I mean a story for example like some bull market that i did and me. And my friend we like flipped. A board ape one day and like blew a ton of money at sacks. We're like accidentally there was like a trade and it went and we woke up we like went out partying one night and flipped and we woke up and and she goes.

Oh our friend had gifted apes to like everyone who who gives apes to anyone. And then also we wake up and she's like i accidentally sold they accidentally sold them so we're like what do we do she's like do you want to go to sax and just blow a bunch of money and i was like i guess so like you know there's just these crazy stories. But like when you're in it you know it's crazy and you know all these red flags are happening and this isn't real life. But that that's that feeling like there's also that hope angle like everyone hopes they're investing in some pfp that's going to 10x and that's you know if everyone made money off of the last cycle.

Which is a lot of it. D5. A lot of it was nf the nft market you know you sometimes lucked in just like how you would have done with bitcoin a lot of it's just pure luck. You know a lot of people who got into some random nft project that did become a top performer.

It they didn't know they just lucked out and people are trying to figure that out half the time. There is no strategy. It's you're just throwing darts you know and so goes back to the casino argument. It really.

It's just another form it's a unique way i supposed to play roulette. But with that obviously you're a big supporter of bitcoin um. But it seems like we're having quite a bit of dialogue about nfts are you in support of nfts not against nfts do you just want the technology to change and obviously i want to talk about your podcast. But maybe.

This is the final thing before you really give us the rundown on that yeah um. So it's funny because there's a really interesting argument happening online. Right now about bitcoin maximalism. And there's a lot of like tribalism and culture around different chains.

So you have like bitcoin maxis. Who are like purists. And you have like east and salon and all these other chains that people really rally behind behind as like an identity. Which is interesting.

But the bitcoin maximalism crowd really doesn't like any other protocols um. And so it's interesting because a lot of the nfts that exist are on ethereum. Barcelona and so bitcoiners get very upset about it. But a lot of bitcoiners.

Don't remember that how finney um. One of the biggest. You know or first users of bitcoin um. And then a lot of people think.

Hal is satoshi that's a whole other argument. But whatever um. But he he talked about this on an online forum in 1993 about digital training cards and ownership and i think that's important because digital ownership already exists and i don't get why a lot of the bitcoin crowd is i understand that there is there was a lot of hype over nfts. But that doesn't mean that nfts themselves don't have value or the idea of nfts of digital ownership and sovereignty and having this you already have a digital wallet you know you pull up your wallet right now.

And you have like you can pay like apple pay. And like you have all these cards your tickets to things. It's just gonna take probably a different um. I guess like just a different way it's used with web3.

It'll be all integrated in through an address opposed to like multiple different inputs on your phone. So i do believe in nfts. I think there's a path forward there i think it won't just be like art or collectibles it'll expand to everything just as your digital wallet on your phone does so that will go through like tickets if you're going to you know or membership or or a lot of other things. And it won't feel like an nft and i hope we don't use words like nft in the future.

Because i think also that is just there's so many words that we use in crypto and people are just like what the yeah nft like no one knows what it means. It's like all these barriers to entry number one on like the user experience. But number two on the language that we use in crypto. It's so bad like people just don't understand what we're saying.

We make all this stuff up all the time. And we don't make it simple for people to understand that are just entering the space. So i mean. That's what i'm trying to hopefully do with my show is add some taste and understanding for people who are entering um and and they don't feel like so put off by this industry after everything we've been through.

I think that's a super valid point. So is your podcast which just so everyone knows it's called the observation about to be dropping um is that your whole goal with it uh. You alluded a little bit too of like what life is like as a career within the crypto community. But is your goal to make that more of the social bridge of people who don't know about crypto to kind of more of a closer to an expertise level of crypto is that the overall goal.

It's funny because i was pitching this out to a few you know the idea for a while for the observation to like coinbase and ftx and all these different exchanges and um coinbase was like so is this going to be educational and i was like absolutely not but not not in the sense of i don't think people come to a youtube podcast show necessarily and always and are looking for like key search terms. I think they go into google and they google like how to create a meta mask wallet for example you know they're not and give me the step by step they're not going to go 15 minutes into a podcast and try to find it i think what's interesting to people is it's the same way you learn a language you know you're you're you get exposed to it. And then you can kind of introduce you then you can kind of apply it to your life and understand. But i think the human element to crypto has been lacking for so long and i don't think people do content right in the space.

I think everyone's really bad about it. It's like a circle jerk with the same like 10 people they all interview each other and it's like okay. How many times. We have the same 10 people on the podcast.

So i'm interviewing a lot of people outside of space um. We did like jordan belfort um. We're doing one with michelle fan like people who are intersect in in different capacities. But they're not full blown crypto people.

If that makes sense so you're getting you're getting more outside of this space. Which hopefully brings people in and i think that's how you do it. Yeah. No i really like that and like you said just put a new twist on it because i think there are a lot of people who maybe willingly or unwillingly.

Admit like that they want to learn. It's just there there is a big social bridge of like oh i kind of missed it and i didn't learn about it when it was becoming popular and now it's too late so i think people like yourself who are putting in the effort to like no like this is still a great time to learn what's going on because it's your money our money. It's a global economy. You got to learn about this stuff uh.

I think that's definitely value and effort. So with that where can people listen to it when is it coming out what's the best way to reach out to you what are all the details of what's going on yes. So right now you should subscribe um. I can send you the links.

If we haven't already. But yeah subscribe we're going to be dropping a few episodes a week so all different types of content. Too which you think is important some man on the street. Some interviews in the studio.

This is actually the studio that we film in here that i'm filming from and we're going to be doing some just weekly podcasts um and some some really really cool interviews so it'll be on youtube it'll be on spotify and apple uh podcast. So you know follow us on all social. Too we'll be putting clips up on tick tock um instagram and twitter so we have i can send you all the links and so subscribe follow all those good things awesome. I'll make sure to get those in the description below and as a final question before i let you go to everyone who's looking at their crypto portfolio and the one you're particularly supportive of bitcoin and they're saying man.

This is a large percentage drop off from 69 000. Right now trading in the range of 20 uh. We're looking crazy inflation in the face who knows what's going on with the dollar compared to all these other fiat currencies what would you say to him like i guess what's your reasoning you're like nope. I have my bitcoin.

I'm holding it and i get that it's down. But like where's your mindset at like what's the advice you would give to someone who's like they're just seeing the pain and they're peeing out first of all i'd say i feel you uh because i'm down tremendously. I'm down bad. But um.

It's all relative right so the thing is i i try to remember is when i when we go back up and we will go back up people will be kicking themselves again because they just did not have the conviction to to try to put money in and right now and when we were at close to 69 or we were at 69. It was near impossible for a lot of people to basically become a whole pointer for bitcoin that is now possible for a lot of people and so if you do want to opt in to this future. If you want to opt in to this global economy. I would say get in now if you can obviously not a lot of people have a lot of liquidity to get in and there's not cash isn't flowing like you see.

But um. If you can if you can put that money aside. And do it um short term pain for a long term. You know i think bitcoin will go back up if we just look at the charts.

And i know every bitcoiner says that but if you really do look at the 10 year charts you can tell where it's going. It's just gonna take a little bit longer to get there so um and then of course get get all of your crypto off exchanges asap because it's like lehman brothers out there you know the crypto lehman brothers. Yeah uh definitely some crazy times hopefully in the future a couple years from now things are way better. And the conversation will be a bit more jolly.

I truly appreciate your time i'll make sure everyone gets all of your socials. If they're interested in the brand new podcast uh. The observation. I'm excited to listen to it myself uh thank you once again and we'll be talking soon.

Thanks matt have a good one bye.