People say Bitcoin is hope. I mean, it really is because it gives them something. It gives them a way to opt out.
And, you know, that's like that's the option I took, you know, back in the day as well when I realized, you know, how broken things were during COVID.
I was like, you know what? I'm out. I'm you're not freezing my bank account. You're not taking my assets.
You are going to come physically to my house to enforce your will on me.
You're not going to look. I will not be at the whim of like a button pusher.
Yeah.
And, you know, this gives these people, these kids, these adults, an option and an opt-out for them, essentially, that they're able to do.
Like, you know what? I'm going to go in this path.
Bitcoin is a currency on the internet.
If you don't trust any other currency, this is where you go.
It's going to outperform everything.
Bitcoin can eventually be worthless.
Every day is a good day to buy Bitcoin.
Bitcoin reached its highest price to date.
Bitcoin hitting a new high.
It really has reached escape velocity.
Who cares about Bitcoin?
It's the only secure database that's ever been invented.
Antisocial.
Bitcoin is the real deal.
Stupid.
Everything is bullish for Bitcoin.
Immoral.
It's going up forever, Laura.
Fix the money.
Fix the world.
White Rock is a registered investment advisor, and the opinions expressed on the show are
their own and do not reflect the opinions of the Silk LLC.
Joining us as a CPA, and the opinions expressed on the show are their own and do not reflect
the opinions of trusted CPA or other affiliated firms.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer
or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment
strategies. Investments involve risk and on what's otherwise stated or not guaranteed. Information
expressed is not taken into account your specific situation or objectives is not intended as a
recommendation appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a
qualified tax legal or investment advisor to determine whether any information presented may
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performance. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.
Welcome to the Bitcoin for Financial Services podcast, the podcast where sound money meets
professional services. On this show, we explore how to build the financial services industry
within the principles, ethos, and values of Bitcoin. Today, we are joined by Wesley Schlemmer.
Wesley is the president of the Bitcoin Bay Foundation and executive director of the Florida
Blockchain Business Association. He has been on the front lines of Bitcoin education,
community building, and business adoption across Florida, helping business owners,
students, and policymakers understand Bitcoin in practical, real-world terms.
In this episode, we talk about Bitcoin for businesses, custody trade-offs,
Square's Bitcoin rollout, self-custody versus custodial models, and why local in-person Bitcoin communities matter more than ever.
All right, let's get started.
All righty, welcome back. We are on episode four of the Bitcoin for Financial Services podcast.
Today, we've got a special treat. We've got Wesley Schlemmer from the Bitcoin Bay Foundation, among other things.
But I guess that's your main thing.
And I wanted to bring Wesley on because he just hosted a really cool event down in Tampa where he's based out of this past weekend.
It was a Bitcoin for Business workshop.
And gave a really great presentation.
And I thought, man, I know you guys recorded the event and you're going to get it out, I'm sure, at some point for people to watch.
but I wanted to make sure that we kind of talked through some of the content that you shared with
that audience. I think it'd be extremely helpful for our audience. So maybe Wes, give us your
background. How'd you get into Bitcoin? And what do you do on a daily basis right now in Bitcoin
world? Yeah. So, you know, I appreciate you having me on and for joining us, you know, for that
event. I know it's a hard sell to get out of the snow and into the sun, but, you know, we still
appreciate nonetheless. Yeah. So, you know, I'm a born and raised, you know, Florida man. I went
to school for chemical and biological engineering. I worked in biotech for a couple of years and did
some materials engineering for a while. I found Bitcoin in school during, during college.
Unfortunately, not high school, otherwise I'll be able to afford it more. But, you know,
it was just when I was investing and, you know, just doing my DCAs into whatever I could at the
time, you know, just kind of building, building the stack early and often. Um, I found Bitcoin,
uh, it was, it was right after the block size wars. I remember cause I was upset. I missed my
airdrop or, you know, like, you know, once the, the, the chain forked, I was like, Oh,
I could have gotten free, free Bitcoin cash. That's great. So, I mean, back on Coinbase,
I think it had Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Litecoin, Ethereum were the only things you could get on
Coinbase. So I just, I just grabbed all four, you know, this wasn't like a ideological thing
for me at the time. This was just another thing to invest in. Fast forward a couple of years into
COVID, you know, we're shut down, nothing really to do. I'm day trading, you know, GameStop,
that thing's going crazy. You know, making good money there. I'm trading like all the different
coins. I was really into privacy coins at the time and you couldn't lose money if you just
bought and hold for a couple months. Things would pop off and you would just, you know,
you just harvest.
But when the Canadian truckers protest happened
and bank accounts are being shut down
and the only money these people are getting
is in Bitcoin,
whether or not that whole distribution
was handled well
or these people were even educated enough
to know what they're doing with it
is a whole different story.
But the only money they got was Bitcoin
at the end of the day.
That's when I realized
this wasn't going to be like this peaceful
kind of like,
oh, there's the crypto world
and we're going to have all these alts
and all these coins doing their things
and everyone's going to be allowed to compete
and free market.
I was like, okay, this is a financial war that we're in.
And Bitcoin is the one that actually can stand to that.
And so that's when I went all in on Bitcoin.
I took all of the coins I'd made.
I made a couple of Bitcoin at the time.
And I dumped it all into Bitcoin at the top of the market and just rode that down.
That's your deal.
Yeah.
So that's why you don't YOLO.
when the froth is at all-time highs,
but I didn't know what I was doing.
But that's how I ended up meeting
the Tampa Bay Bitcoin community
was through mining
because I was building my own mine at the time
and I was in the telegrams
and one guy was like,
hey, I think we're in the same area
with the same electricity prices.
So we connected and he's like,
well, there's this meetup I'm going to.
So I went to that
and met one of our original founders
who was running BitDevs.
And this was back when things were pumping like crazy
and inflation was ripping, gas was up four or five bucks a gallon.
So there were 60 people at BitDevs, not because they were developers,
but because they were looking Bitcoin near me and going to it
and being like, what the heck is going on here?
So that's kind of where the seeds of Bitcoin Bay started.
You know, we realized that there's a lot of groundwork on 101
that needs to be laid.
So we started hosting wallet workshops.
What even are wallets?
What is Bitcoin?
What is money?
We started getting really basic with the stuff.
And, you know, about a year later, we incorporated the foundation
became the first Bitcoin meetup to incorporate as a nonprofit.
Got our 5.1c3 stats a couple months later.
And since then, we've helped consult about a dozen other groups
across the country on getting set up as a nonprofit.
We run three to five meetups a month
between Tampa, St. Pete, and Sarasota.
And now we've turned into the brain for Bitcoin in Tampa Bay Area.
I love it, man.
And honestly, Florida is kind of the hotbed for a lot of just Bitcoin activity, right?
I guess if you had to dumb it down, it's like it's Tennessee, it's Texas and Florida, right?
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, Colorado is definitely catching up with the guys at the space over there.
And I think you were out there, but I would say those are definitely the hotspots.
That's true.
If Y was on here, he'd be very upset with me.
so tell me more i guess about how you're seeing things especially even like obviously politics
change things you guys had de santis come in uh what was that five six years ago i can't remember
the exact election he's probably getting close on this term right i believe it was 2019 2020
okay he was a fresh governor when covet hit okay so i i guess it was 2020 maybe it was 2018 because
he's going to be out in 2026 since eight years yeah so it's 2018 okay so you guys have been in
this world of you know florida's been leading the way on kind of the bellwether of like hey the
country's or at least florida's moving this direction politically and even the friendly
nature towards bitcoin i think you all experienced that uh quite a while before the rest of the
country got to experience it earlier this year, right? I guess, talk me through, did that make
any real changes with having DeSantis at the top who was much more friendly to Bitcoin? Or
has it not really changed too much on the ground from your perspective?
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's been great not to have to run through walls to get things done.
you know and it hasn't really been that he's like pro or friendly Bitcoin it the the stance has been
no new crypto regulations so like where we would like to see you know like I also you know I also
work as you know the executive director of the Florida Blockchain Business Association so that's
the chamber of commerce that works with the politicians to educate them on local and state
level on you know bitcoin matters and we got uh an anti-central bank digital currency bill
passed through um but that was you know that was easy that was red meat you know those cbdcs were
kind of getting in the news this was during the great reset era you know like this was kind of an
easy win for desantis to be like nope we're not doing this here um and and but then afterwards it
was no new regulations which i'm largely pro you know less regulations i'm large you know um
but you know like when we're trying to get a a right a right to mine a right to self-custody
you know like we're trying to like get proactive um you know enshrining your rights it's a little
because it's a lot it's a lot harder to have to repeal a law and then pass a new one that isn't
just pass one. You know, like if, you know, if we get a crappy governor legislator and they're like,
it's actually illegal to do this here, it'd be a lot harder if you had to, you know, repeal the
law that says you are explicitly allowed to do this here. So it's been, it's been good for,
you know, the free market grassroots people to just go out and do what we want, which is really,
it's just onboarding businesses and using Bitcoin as commerce. It's nothing crazy.
but we would like to see more like the the state you like being like yes like bitcoin is you know
maybe like we do a lot of sales tax holidays down here you know right now for all 2026 there's a
sales tax holiday on guns and ammo um we would like to see like a sales tax holiday on bitcoin
transactions um or you know we have uh there's a there's legislation coming down the pipe of
a gold and silver estate depository institute.
So we'd like to see Bitcoin in there
because you're able to deposit your gold and silver,
get a debit card, swipe against your balance
at the state bank.
We'd like to have Bitcoin in that.
We'd like to have Bitcoin in the Florida
Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.
We'd like to have these proactive things going,
but I will certainly take a government
that's just saying,
hey, we're going to keep our hands off here.
As long as you don't hit these bars,
you guys are able to free, you're free and clear to experiment and innovate and build in Florida.
It's a very pro-business state. So that definitely has been good.
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consultation. All right. Well, I think for our audience, the best thing that we could do with
our time today is really get a little bit in the weeds, but not too deep because I know you can go
pretty deep. But I really enjoyed your presentation on talking about custody. We're in this really
interesting moment in time where one of the largest point of sales companies just released
Bitcoin support inside of their POS systems And so I think a lot of business owners are thinking hey maybe I turned this on I don exactly know what that means I think the default you can correct me if I wrong but the default is it kind of auto converts to dollars anyways
But, you know, Bitcoiners, they kind of move in droves and they see people or businesses that are adopting their, you know, asset of choice for a good reason.
And they're like, hey, I'm going to go actually do business with this business that I wouldn't have done, you know, gone to prior to.
So maybe talk through your thoughts, a high level on how you think Square getting that rollout out, you know, how that changes the game.
And then I'd love to kind of move the conversation to, okay, you're a business owner, you're an advisor to a business owner.
Let's talk about custody, you know, and all the different, you know, trade-offs as you laid out in your presentation.
So wherever you want to take that.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, you know, I guess we'll start with Square. So we use Square for our fiat processing.
We love ZapRite, of course, in case Parker or Will or John's listening to this.
And what Square turned on for all business owners today is, well, I mean, it's been a couple weeks
now, but as a business owner right now, you are able to go into your banking tab on Square
and click the Bitcoin button
and you can set up accepting Bitcoin directly
and auto converting your fiat digital purchases
into Bitcoin.
So you are able to, if you, like for example,
we have monthly donors.
It's very hard to do on an automated basis with Bitcoin.
So they use their credit cards.
We are able to set anywhere from zero to 50%
from someone who's donating a hundred bucks a month to us,
auto convert that at the end of the day into Bitcoin.
All sales, you know, so if we sell tickets to our next charity gala on, you know, February 28th
Someone's buying with a card and we have a donation come in and somebody's buying a seed signer
All at the end of the day all of your digital transactions can get batched and converted into bitcoin from 0 to 50%
Naturally, we're at 50% I do 100 if I could
um
But maybe maybe someone can talk to Jack and ask him to let me do that, but so you can do that today
You don't have to have people paying you in Bitcoin to start accumulating Bitcoin as a business owner.
Now, of course, we are a Bitcoin-based company.
We offer Bitcoin standard.
We pay our employees or our interns and stuff.
We pay them in Bitcoin.
You get a million sats a month or whatever it is, and that's your rate.
So we love having a Bitcoin treasury.
If you are a business owner of fiat denominated terms, you might only want to be at the 5%, 10% conversion.
You know, like what's your margin?
What's your free cash flow that you're going to be sitting and parking in the bank?
Maybe you're putting in a CD or something that you're waiting until you need that to make an expansion.
Park 5%, 10%, 20%, you know, it depends on how much of Bitcoin you are.
You can start auto converting and parking some of that free cash flow into Bitcoin.
Seamless, no hassle.
And you can sell it right back into Square.
You know, we love peer-to-peer sales.
Square, I'm sure, makes it a little bit easier to track your cost basis and all of that.
And you can withdraw that Bitcoin at any time.
So it's great.
We have a river account.
We have a multi-sig, which we can kind of step into once we get off the Square topic.
And then we self-custody as much as possible.
Now, you also can accept Bitcoin directly.
If you turn the Bitcoin option on, a customer goes to your portal, your point of sale at
your food truck, wherever.
And, you know, how do you want to pay cash app, card, Bitcoin?
It's right there.
So it's great.
Four million merchants now have the ability to accept Bitcoin.
Now, if you have multi locations, like there's a coffee shop down here called Blind Tiger,
where the owner is a Bitcoiner and turned it on.
The managers don't know it's on or that, you know, so make sure you tell your employees
that it's on
because when the Bitcoiners
show up
because they will.
Yeah.
You know,
and find your local meetup.
You know,
like,
hey guys,
I'm a business owner.
I see this thing on my Square.
Help me out.
Bitcoiners will help you.
And Bitcoiners will show up
at your door
being like,
why don't you take Bitcoin?
And actually,
I have them right here
conveniently enough.
If,
you know,
you do use Square,
they will send you
these little things
that have
pay with,
I mean,
I guess it's inverted,
but it says pay with Bitcoin.
It adds,
you know,
it adds the little B down there.
it comes with stickers i don't have the stickers handy you can put on your door it says square
accepted here and it says cash app you know amex diners club bitcoin so it's just right there with
your stickers and your stuff already and square will send these to you for free um i think that's
all i think that's all squares do we want to yeah yeah any no i think it was just funny when we're
i think when jason keel and i were leaving it was just this moment of like just take a step back
right like it's crazy that that is rolling out to that many merchants and then it really i think
fast tracks how how quickly um businesses and their consumers can interact together via bitcoin
so all i'd say it's a really cool deal and to wesley's point if you have questions on it
it's like when you go to the gym and you're new to the gym right you go around and you ask some
people most everyone's very nice uh bitcoiners are the same way they're going to show you the way
um i would say you know try to stick with just bitcoiners because otherwise you get a little
you know you don't know who you're dealing with but i i can vouch for probably 95 of all the
bitcoiners i've met as like just extremely upstanding people happy to jump in and some
people you know some do it for free some charge a fee and obviously those both of those models work
well. So yeah. And if you have questions, obviously you can reach out to Wesley, reach out to myself.
So, all right, let's get into, okay, say a business owner says, Hey, I've seen what Steak
and Shake has done. I want to either add this to my treasury, sweep profits into it, or I want to
turn this on inside of my SquarePoS or get set up a ZapRite or BTC pay server. Like I'm going to go
down the rabbit hole and they're collecting, they've got Bitcoin. Either they earned it or
they bought it. Now what? Well, now you need to decide how much control do you want over your
finances? You know, there's a bit, Bitcoiners have a lot of little kind of glib sayings,
be your own bank, not your keys, not your coins. Um, and those, those make for great bumper stickers,
but whenever you kind of actually, you know, bump up against those in real life, like, okay,
what does being my own bank mean? Uh, that's great. I have Bitcoin on my phone because my,
you know, nephew sent it to me, you know, four Christmases ago. And now he's asking me about it.
You know, he's like, Oh, hey, did you check it out? You checked it out recently? Look how much
Bitcoin you have. And you pull it up. And you open the app. And you're like, Oh, it says create
new wallet. And you're like, Oh, well, I traded my phone in two years ago. Like, I don't know.
What do you mean? It's not here anymore. He's like, Well, you trade your wallet, you traded your
leather wallet with your cash into the store, didn't take the cash out. You know, so that like
But that's what this means.
If you are in control of your keys, if you are your own bank, that is a responsibility that largely we as a society are not used to having.
So, you know, there's a full spectrum of ways to store your coin.
And, you know, I use that story because something similar has happened to me several times.
I've put people on Bitcoin on Moonwater or whatever, and they go to get it back.
And they go, oh, I turn my phone in.
I'm like, did you back it up?
Like, no.
That just happened to me.
Literally a dinner on Saturday night, uh, or not Saturday night, sorry, middle of this
week felt like a weekend.
It was in Nashville.
The old friend of mine paid him in Bitcoin to drive me.
My truck had a flat tire, like maybe a year and a half ago, drove me from Lexington to
Louisville.
I paid him in Bitcoin to do it.
And he did the exact same thing.
Went and got the new iPhone.
And I was like, dude, cause we had checked it.
The a hundred bucks I sent him at the time had gone, you know, all the way up to like
200 bucks.
and anyways so i'm glad you point that and you pointed that out in your presentations like you
really have to take responsibility or no one is coming to hold your i mean people around you can
hold your hand to help you at the beginning but you need to start changing how you think about
the world just generally and and say i'm going to take responsibility for everything in my life and
money is a big part of that right yeah and you like i totally need to think of this as cash and
your wallet. If you take your wallet out of your pocket and you throw it away or you leave it in
the taxi or you forget it on the airplane, it's gone. You know, like there's no, I forgot my
password for that. And luckily with Bitcoin, there is in a way. So, you know, I'm sitting there on
the couch talking to my sister. We're asking what our plans are. I'm looking at my calendar,
my phone bricked in my hand. It just died. Motherboard died, took it to a, you know,
one of the data extraction places. They're like, sorry, dude. I had just purchased for my parents,
like a solid chunk of coin from someone in my community, but I went from there to their house
for Easter and I hadn't had a chance to offload the coin onto my cold storage. So I'm sitting
there like sweating and I'm like, you know what? It's fine. You know, I have everything written
down. I go home, I get my book out with my back, with my backup phrase, with my seed phrase.
I get a new wallet. I put the phrase in. There's the coin. So you will not lose your Bitcoin
if you back it up properly. And that's the most important thing that people need to understand
is that the stakes are high whenever you are taking custody of your coin.
It is like, there is no, when you are your own bank, like there's nobody to go talk to if you
need help if you're doing full self-custody. Now, I guess we'll kind of get onto the custody models
as opposed to, you know, lecturing about the dangers of it because it always does scare people.
It shouldn't scare you any more than driving on the highway should scare you. You have full
responsibility for your actions in that car, 80 miles an hour on the highway with everyone around
do you do it every day so you can start with the wallet on your phone you know
lightning this is this is the cash in your pocket you move to your desktop
your single signature that's your checking account you move down a layer
you do your multi signature cold storage that's your savings as maybe your
retirement account and for those who don't know you have hot and you have
cold storage.
Connected to the internet, not connected to the internet.
Never type your seed phrase into a computer.
Never screenshot it.
Never put it in a Google Doc.
Never email it to somebody.
Never tell it to somebody over the phone.
If anybody's calling you asking for your seed phrase,
they are trying to scam you.
Coinbase will never call you.
Kraken will never call you.
They will never send you a letter.
They will never do anything like that.
You have your own keys.
If anyone has those keys, they have access to your coin.
That's where things like multi-signature custody comes in.
So if you're nuclear football, you need two keys to make the thing happen at the same time.
You've got to turn those two keys to open the case.
So that's good if you are maybe a medium-sized business.
you have a board, your CEO, CFO, bookkeeper, vice president, whomever. That's where you don't,
that's where you have a situation where one person can't unilaterally send the funds.
You need to come together to send money around. That's what we do. We have a board of free people.
We have our, I'm the president, we have the vice president, we have the treasurer.
We all have one key. If any, if we need anything more than it's in our square account
that I have access to.
And if it's under a thousand bucks,
I can just spend and do things.
I don't have to get board approval for everything.
But if we need to go and dig out of our reserves,
two of us have to come together to send that money.
And what that also provides is security.
I can't just get mugged and lose all my company's money.
I can't just log into my bank account
and drain it with my Bitcoin.
You have to have somebody else there for you.
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Take a little bit of a step back. So, so you, you, you're throwing around keys, right? I think
talk through the words and then the hardware device as well as the phone, right? Because you
can have it where you can just easily spend on your phone for small amounts. You've got the
physical, and this was something that I really, uh, I remember getting hung up on, like,
what is the difference between the words and the actual physical little calculator-looking
signing device, right?
Yep.
Yeah, so you can...
Okay, so your private key is what gives you access to your Bitcoin on-chain.
Your public key is what people see to know what your address balance is and where to
send your Bitcoin to.
You can think of it like your home address and your house key.
because I know where you live doesn't mean I can get in unless I have your key and then you have
your seed phrase which can help generate your key and it's basically a human readable format
of about 12 words uh that is sent that essentially equals the randomness that is your private key
and that would kind of have to get into the weeds to describe more but you you write down your 12
words and you create a wallet you write that down twice you don't screenshot it
you don't email it you don't take a picture of it you write it down you
cannot hack pen and paper you write it down twice put them in two separate
locations you now have two backups in case something happens to your device so
that's what we mean when we say keys and backup phrase and all of that and then
when you have your hardware wallet like I've got our Bitcoin based seed signer
so this is a DIY hardware wallet. I like it because you can build these
yourself. Now of course there are other devices that are nicer and more expensive
and maybe feel better in your hand but at the end of the day they all do the
same thing. All these devices do is keep your key material offline. So
whenever I want to send a transaction of course I have to go I have to touch the
internet to broadcast that information. So if you have something like a cold card, the
Kalko Oaken device, you said, your keys are actually stored on that device. They have a
secure element like your phone does that is resistant to hacking and breaching. But ultimately,
those devices have your keys on that device. And they're not connected to the internet.
Correct. And so like, for example, the seed signer, you communicate with via QR codes.
You create your transaction on your computer, on your monitoring wallet.
That way you put your public key into that wallet.
That way you can see all of your transactions.
You can label them.
You can do your bookkeeping.
You can receive.
But once you send, you have to get that key to sign that transaction.
You know, just like if I have your home address, I can look you up on the property records.
I can check your flood zone.
I can send mail.
I can see if people are walking into your door, but I can't get in without that key.
And so what these devices do is cold storage, keep your key offline.
And, you know, this uses QR codes.
Cold card uses SD cards.
You know, each device kind of has their own layout.
It's called air-gapped communication.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I was just going to, because I think I want to make sure we cover this.
I want to make sure we cover, you know, kind of that trade-off model that I think a lot of business owners, right, would like rely upon maybe a strike or a river.
But then I think the real, like, I just want to tee it up is like the real reason why we would go through any of this, right, as a business owner is so that, and we can get into this towards the end of the conversation probably, but so that you actually have control over your money.
You know, we've seen the bank failures.
We can get into some of that.
But I think that would be helpful for this audience.
Again, you know, we're not technical, but it is helpful to know, like, these are the options that we've got.
But then the big thing is, like, why are we even talking about this in the first place?
So, yeah.
No, I think maybe we would go from there to, like, more of the tradeoff models with maybe a reverse strike.
That might be a good place for us to go next.
Yeah, if you haven't checked out by now and you're like, why would I go through all this?
This sounds like a huge pain in the ass.
I could just have it be custodied on Coinbase.
And you can.
And for some people, that might be the best for you.
I'm not Coinbase.
I hate Coinbase.
They're going to date or greet you within like six months.
It's ridiculous.
The fact that you're even still a solvent company.
Never respond to a text message from Coinbase.
I mean, most people have been a Coinbase user at some point, I guess.
And yeah, I get so many emails, so many texts that are like,
uh, oh, you changed your password. You know, did you mean to do that? It's like,
I haven't logged into my Coinbase account forever. There's like five bucks in there.
If you want to steal it, go for it. Um, so all that's say, yeah, if you can avoid
ever even getting into Coinbase as a new user, that's, that'd be amazing.
Yeah. And you know, if you're, if you're, if you're looking for handheld, um, simple Bitcoin
KYC exchange. I mean, we, we, we recommend river. We use river, you know, they're a trusted people.
They've never gotten breached. As far as I know, they do proof of reserves. They have like layered
security. So if you're going to go with the custody model, um, you're going to have to scan
your face. You're gonna have to upload a bunch of documents. You're, it's a very permissioned
and, you know, non, no privacy system. Some people don't care about that. So, you know,
that's fine. But that kind of gets to what I always call, it's the privacy and security
versus convenience trade-off. Money in your pocket is conveniently accessed. Money in your safe,
a safety deposit box buried in the backyard, is inherently inconvenient to access because it is
more secure. The more secure something is, the less convenient it is to get to. That's just how
it works. But with that extra security and lower convenience, you have more control. You know,
I have full control over the funds on my phone wallet. And so why you as a business owner want
control over your coins? Your bank's been frozen because, you know, you had a large purchase order
come in that was out of your typical range. You were banking with Silicon Valley Bank because you
were a startup. You were banking with First Republic. You were banking with Silvergate.
You know, your banks just go under, apparently, just randomly these days. And if you have payroll
to make today, tomorrow, and your bank is being brought into receivership and your employees are
living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans, you need optionality. Are you going to keep
$30,000 in cash in a safe in your office and tell your employees to come in and you start
just handing it out? Or are you going to keep that in an asset that typically grows over,
you know, four year spans? Because it's not likely your bank's going to fail in six months.
over four years. We've gone from 5,000 banks in the United States before 08. We're at like
1,800 now. So that's not a good survivor rate. So banks are failing and becoming more restrictive
on the activity they're allowing. So I mean, we were using Square for, I was using Square for a
separate business last year, we had a large invoice come in, larger than any we've had,
froze our account. We had contractors getting pissed off because they weren't able to be paid.
They don't want Bitcoin. I was like, well, you're going to have to wait then. I'll have to tell you.
We're frozen. I'm on the phone with their customer service. So that's a why. Why do you want control
of this? Why do you want that to happen? Now, there's models that kind of help reduce
the responsibility and liability on yourself.
Like there's collaborative custody,
which you guys offer,
where you have that two of three multi-signature key setup
where I hold two keys and we give one to a custodian
like Jordan or Unchained or whomever.
And I'm able to do everything I need with my two keys.
but if I screw up and my phone breaks, I didn't back it up correctly, I lose one.
Jordan comes in with that third key. We're able to reset the quorum, move the Bitcoin back around
and return to the keys. So that kind of gives you a backup to yourself. It removes you kind
of as a single point of failure. So there's definitely a whole spectrum of the convenience
versus security line. And really, it's just going to all come down to, you know, how much control
do you want over your funds? How much privacy do you want? And do you want to pay somebody to help
you? And for some people, they're like, I don't need control over this. I'm fine putting this in
my fidelity and losing 1% a year. I don't care about my privacy. It came to me through the bank
anyways. My face is already in a scandal over the internet. And, you know, I'm not going to worry
about needing this in an emergency. This is just an investment and blah, blah, blah. Whatever.
That's up to you.
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satoshipacioli.com. Well, and it's important too to point out, you know, we've been speaking about
business owners, but also, you know, every business owner is also just a individual and
probably has a family. And so the other really cool part about the multi-sig is that in the case
that you die or you and your spouse die, you know, immediately, um, for whatever reason,
God forbid, like then there are ways to recover that Bitcoin. If you didn't, well, hopefully you
document it all. You probably need to document it all correctly, but especially if other people have
keys, for example, if you had, you know, I guess maybe a three of five, right. And you gave two of
keys out to trusted partners, whether it was your attorney, your CPA, someone in the family that
knows what they're doing. That would be really helpful for the next generation, right? To make
sure that you're not, you know, just another person on the news with, you know, they're talking about,
oh, they lost their, they lost their keys because they didn't do the correct backup or they didn't
tell anybody about it, that kind of thing. So multi-sig is very customizable and it's,
it's a very interesting tool. We've come a long way, I would say, right in the last like
seven or eight years.
Oh, yeah.
So.
Yeah, I mean,
we didn't have seed phrases
until 2015.
Yeah.
That's why everyone
was losing so much Bitcoin
back in the day
was it was difficult to store.
Paper wallets
were the standard.
You didn't have seed phrases
and it wasn't really worth much.
So people were like,
I've got 500 Bitcoin
that's worth like 200 bucks
on this hard drive.
Eh.
Yeah.
You know, oh well.
I don't know where it is,
but it doesn't really matter.
It's somewhere over there.
Yeah.
That doesn't happen anymore.
People are like I don want to be the next pizza guy or the guy who throws his Bitcoin away into a landfill I like you won be That doesn happen You not going to have 5 Bitcoin anyways And maybe you are And if you
are, you can donate to Bitcoin Bay to lower your tax burden. But that's a separate issue.
Okay. So I think we should talk about, I'm glad you brought up Bitcoin Bay. I think what you do
and your local community and probably more broadly to the, you know, to your internet
audience as well is like you educate people, which is extremely important.
It's crazy.
If you're in this world, you figure everyone knows exactly what I know, right?
And then you start talking to people and you're like, no, they've, I guess they've not listened
to as many podcasts as I've listened to about Bitcoin and read as many books.
So I guess, talk to me about how that experience has been.
And, you know, I know when we were just down in Tampa, you had a professor from the local university that was there, University of Tampa.
And he even brought along, I think it was like seven or eight different students from his class, which was awesome, by the way.
I was like going up to him like any of you all studying accounting and want an internship?
Because if you're at this event on a Saturday morning, that tells me something about your character and work ethic.
So anyways, yeah. Tell us about what you've been doing with the education piece.
Yeah.
Well, if you need interns, I got them.
There's a lot of accounting majors over there.
They've helped us with our books before I finally acquiesced.
I went to Joe and was like, please help.
Okay.
Sounds good.
We'll talk about that off air.
But yeah, that's been, you know, so our whole shtick is education.
You know, we're a 501c3.
We're a community education-based nonprofit.
And we did that because we want to be able to go to schools and businesses and individuals
and be like, look, we're not here to sell you Bitcoin.
We are here to educate and help build this community.
Because so many, you know, there's an ocean of information out there.
I mean, you already mentioned the podcast and the books.
You know, not to mention just like Googling and what is Bitcoin.
You know, like it is like drinking from a fire hose
while you're going down a water slide.
Like it is insane.
And so, you know, that was our goal of being an in-person community hub where you can come in and speak to a human or several people at one of our meetups and realize like, okay, I'm not alone.
I'm not going into some back alley to trade Bitcoin for cash, like coming into an office building that's well lit and, you know, has other offices and businesses and things being done inside of it.
and I can go and speak to a human about these issues
and look them in the eye.
So that was a big reason why we've done this.
And I'm a private guy.
I don't like being the face of Bitcoin Bay,
but, you know, oh well.
Someone had to do it.
Yeah, here we are.
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, I should have done that
before I went on all these podcasts, but oh well.
And the relationship with the University of Tampa
has been one of my favorite parts about this.
The community that we've built here
and the relationships we have over there
are a blessing.
We have a course being taught
at the University of Tampa now,
the Economics of Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Club there
is the second largest non-Greek club on campus.
I'll go and speak there once or twice a semester
and the kids are standing.
There's 50 plus people.
That club puts most meetups I've seen to shame,
mine included.
and the kind of first crop is graduating now and you know then now they're coming to the actual
meetup is because they can't really go to their own any other old one anymore and seeing these
students that you know are understand a lot of the things that we understand because that professor
is you know he's he's based he is he's crazier than I am which is saying something and so you
You know, he attracts a certain student.
And so I love going and talking to that class.
Half of them are there for the extra credit.
But, you know, a solid chunk of them have their heads up and their eyes are actually open and they're actually looking at you.
And like listening to the words that we're saying.
Because they're looking for like hope and like options for the future.
You know, I mean, everyone can feel the squeeze we've been under for our whole lives, you know.
And kids especially, I mean, full adults in their early 20s especially are like,
okay, I'm going to graduate.
I'm leaving my little bubble, you know, and I have to get a job
and then hopefully buy a house and start a family.
How the heck am I supposed to do that in the median age of a home buyer is above 40, you know.
and so they're looking for alternatives. And so that's, you know, that's why, you know,
like people say Bitcoin is hope. I mean, it really is because it gives them something,
it gives them a way to opt out. And, you know, that's like, that's the option I took,
you know, back in the day as well, when I realized, you know, how broken things were
during COVID. I was like, you know what, I'm out. I'm, you're not freezing my bank account.
You're not taking my assets. You are going to have to come physically to my house
to enforce your will on me.
You're not gonna be able to,
I will not be at the whim of like a button pusher.
Yeah.
And, you know, so this gives these people,
these kids, these adults,
an option and an opt out for them,
essentially that they're able to do.
I'm like, you know what?
I'm gonna go in this path.
And it's been great.
It's been a real honor to work with the students over there.
No, that's, I mean, it's awesome
because even, you know, my youngest sibling, Emma,
she's in college right now.
I think she's a junior, hard to keep up with everyone.
But yeah, it's like we have conversations
and I'm like, Emma, what are you majoring in?
And she'll tell me, I'm like, man,
are you thinking through like how AI
is gonna change the landscape?
And it's one thing for us, you know,
I think we're about the same age, you know,
late 20s for you, I just turned 30.
And it's like, okay, well,
we've been able to establish ourselves
and there's experience or, you know,
once you're a Bitcoiner for long enough,
if you normally just go start your own business, right?
And so don't answer to at least one employer,
maybe a lot of clients or something like that.
So, or a lot of donors.
And so all that to say, I think these students are,
if they're smart, right, they're looking around
and they're like, where are things headed, right?
And it's really fun in the Bitcoin space, at least.
I mean, we get a fun view of like,
here are all the businesses that are getting built,
that are raising money, that have closed this round.
and being able to say, okay, that's where the wind's headed.
And one of the things, at least in my seat,
is like I think financial services is going to change a lot,
but you will always, to your point about being in person
and shaking people's hands, I think people miss that lost art.
And so that is always going to be around.
It's all that to say, like trying to hold the hand of a younger person
and say, look, based on your skill set,
your passion for different things, like maybe come along this journey, this is how you fit into the
Bitcoin ecosystem from an employment standpoint is very, very interesting to me.
Yeah, that's been a goal of ours is to, you know, we have relationships with people all across the
Bitcoin space. And these are qualified students that we've known for years. Some of them have
intern directly for us and now we're getting employees in the jobs um you know like i'd rather
you know like i don't know if you ever played the dice game left right center like you want the
dollars close to you you know so so i want to go i want to get my friends at the employers
qualified candidates and hires and i want my students and you know friends nearby to be getting
paid you know so it's i selfishly i want more bitcoin in tampa bay of course you know but um
You know, because it is tough.
I mean, I'm always sending people Bitcoin or jobs.com.
You know, I'm always trying to find places to plug people in, you know, because it's just it's tough out there, especially if you're young and just starting.
You know, I think you've done employment is hitting like 10 percent.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Well, this has been great.
I want to probably just close out with how, you know, if someone's listening, they're an advisor, they are a business owner.
Where would you point them to go next?
Uh, is it just their local meetup? Is it specific? Any, any book recommendations, podcast recommendations?
Well, nobody reads, uh, so I don't recommend books anymore. Um, and if you're a business owner with a family, you probably don't have much time to read through the Bitcoin and fiat standard and gradually then suddenly.
Um, you know, so I, I would, I tell everybody this, find your local meetup, go to your local meetup, meet the people in your area, especially if you're a business owner.
because those will be customers
and they will go,
they might host,
if you run a restaurant
or whatever,
they might host meetups
at your facility.
You know,
like if you're a business owner
or an advisor
and you want to get involved
in the Bitcoin space
and figure out where to do that,
go into your local community
and figure out where they are.
If you don't have one,
you know,
you're listening to the podcast
so you must already like Jordan,
you know,
talk to them.
We love the work they do.
Jordan and Joe, I've been friends with Joe for a couple of years now.
If you're having trouble finding your local Bitcoin community,
you can reach out to us.
We help place people all the time.
You can find us at bitcoinbay.foundation.
My email is wesley at bitcoinbay.foundation.
We can help put you in touch with whoever you want.
If you want to mine Bitcoin, we just plenty of people want to do that too.
So there's a whole wide world of Bitcoin out there.
And this is not the first Bitcoin you heard of back in 2017.
It is a very different scene.
And there is something for you in there.
And just get started today.
I guess if you needed a podcast or a thing to listen to, what is the problem?
I think it's about a 15-minute short video.
And it just, what's the problem?
We've talked a lot about technical stuff with custody and storage and accepting.
Okay, yeah, I might control my money, but why?
What problem is Bitcoin solving?
I think understanding that will really help galvanize you and encourage you to actually put the work in if required to take responsibility for this kind of stuff.
It can get very complicated.
It can get as complicated as you want it to be, but it can be simple.
But it's just the most important thing is that you start as soon as you're comfortable.
I'd say start yesterday, start now.
But don't let perfect be the enemy of the good here.
Get on River or Strike and buy $10 and then send it somewhere.
It's just scanning a QR code.
It's really nothing crazy.
But yeah, that would be my recommendation.
Okay.
That sounds great.
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Wesley. This is amazing. Yeah. If anyone has
any questions, of course, reach out to Wesley. And where can people find you on like X or are
you on LinkedIn if they're on there? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I'm at LinkedIn, Wesley Schlemmer. If you
search Bitcoin Bay, I should bring me up too. We're on Twitter at Bitcoin Bay TPA, as well as
Instagram. I don't have personal Instagrams and Twitters anymore, but I do read those DMs. So you
can follow us on there and hit us up if you have questions. We're happy to help.
Beautiful. Alrighty. That sounds great. Well, thanks so much for listening today,
and we will be back next week. Bye.
becomes and the better our clients are served. Stay sharp, stay sovereign, and keep leading from the front.
Thank you.