Balancing Reward and Sacrifice with Adam O'Brien

Balancing Reward and Sacrifice with Adam O'Brien

Kelly Kennedy: ​Welcome to episode 86 of the business development podcast. And if you've ever had questions regarding cryptocurrency, Bitcoin specifically, we have Adam O'Brien, founder and CEO of Bitcoin. Well, right here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, stick with us. Today's show is pretty awesome.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 86 of the business development podcast. And on today's show. I am absolutely excited to have an amazing founder and CEO story, local legend right here in Edmonton, Adam O'Brien. Meet Adam O'Brien, a pioneering force in the world of Bitcoin.

With unwavering dedication, he's on a mission to revolutionize the way that we acquire and utilize Bitcoin. In 2013, Adam laid the cornerstone for what has blossomed into Bitcoin Well, Canada's leading Bitcoin company. With an extensive network of over 180 Bitcoin ATMs spanning the nation at an innovative online portal, Bitcoin Well offers notably the swiftest and also the safest means to buy and sell Bitcoin.

In 2021, history was made when Bitcoin Well became the world's first non-custodial Bitcoin business to go public. A testament to Adam's forward-thinking leadership as the CEO of Bitcoin Well, he is not just an industry leader. He is the true visionary, dedicated to empowering individuals with financial independence through the transformative potential of cryptocurrency.

Join Adam O'Brien on a remarkable journey into the ever evolving landscape of Bitcoin. Discover innovation, embrace financial independence, and embark on the path to reimagined, future of finance. Adam, it's a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Adam O'Brien: Wow, man. I need you to follow me around and just like whisper sweet nothings into my ear like that.

Holy smokes.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, I say it all the time. We have amazing guests on this show. And yeah, you're not disappointing.

Adam O'Brien: Thank you so much. Yeah. Hey, it's an honor to be here. A couple of Couple of Edmonton boys just just hanging out. It's yeah, man, it's a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, dude.

Edmonton is such a cool place. We're, we're so fortunate to be here. I know some people think of Edmonton like, ah, they get snow like six months a year and the Oilers don't win all the time. And Edmonton from like a business standpoint is truly just a massive, massive powerhouse hub of Canada.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, it punches well above its weight.

It's actually quite fascinating to hear some of the local success stories. I think one of the biggest things that sets Edmonton apart. For everything else is just the humility that exists in this city. It really is a place where you can rub shoulders with, you know, some serious individuals and they're going to give you the time of day.

They're not too good for you. You know, that's been a big part of like me. I've been able to be mentored and, and, and have the opportunity to work with and learn from people that have done it. You know, done it all before. It's been such a blessing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, dude. Me too. Me too. And you know what, even in those like meetings that have been really hard, like for instance I had, I had a local success story entrepreneur who we did a proposal for.

And he's like, and this was like, this is a little bit hurting to my ego a little bit, but he's like, Kelly, we're going for lunch. I'm going to tell you exactly why I did not buy your proposal so that you can do it better. And then pitch me again down the line.

Adam O'Brien: Dude. But, but, but how good is that? Like that level of humility, not just like a ghost, not just a hard no.

Like, no, here's why. Here's how you improve. I feel like Edmontonians, especially, they really care about building up the next generation, so to speak. And it's so cool.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it was one of those like really, really hard and I talk about this in my show all the time that like marketing your own business is one of the hardest things that any entrepreneur does and it's like I literally recommend that like if you can have someone else do it for you, that's better just because we're so invested in our businesses that having that conversation is such a hard one.

But I learned so much from it. We went back to the drawing board, we revamped it. And now we have a much better model than we had before. And I wouldn't have had it without that like hard, hard lesson or that like hard help, but the fact that it wasn't just a no, it was a no. And here's why, and here's how you can do better.

And here's what we would have bought, man, like who does that? And you don't see that very often.

Adam O'Brien: I'm part of a group called I'm Y E G and or I it's called I am Y E G I guess. And the, the premise is exactly that it's, it's, it's pre it's, it's businesses or I guess more so ideas that are pre business, you know, oftentimes like the one that I'm, I'm working with right now.

Not even incorporated, like just an idea and maybe something of a, of a pre business products and they go through this accelerator type of program where, you know, usually four or five people like myself will kind of understand their business. You know, what are your problems? What are you doing? And then at the end of it, it's like, Hey, this is a viable business.

You should quit your job and pursue, or it's like, no, this, this is not going to work like, and, and do what you're going to do, but. But like, we're not an investment club. We're nothing other than just, you know, sometimes a difficult conversation from, from change or from, from success.

Kelly Kennedy: And that truth is so hard to find sometimes.

Adam O'Brien: Like, yeah, we're not really set up to, to get that truth. Like even from a young age and what we teach kids early on, we don't really encourage our teachers. We don't encourage our sports coaches. We don't encourage our peers to give us tough feedback. And we're not prepared early on to accept. The difficult but necessary feedback to make us tough.

One thing like we were talking about about kids earlier, I have a seven year old son and from the time he turned four, if you asked him what do hard times create, he would say strong men and then he'd know that strong men create good times and that good times create weak men and that weak men makes.

Hard times and, and, and we go through the cycle and now my daughter who's, who's a little bit older now, she, you know, she knows it's, it's men and women and, and, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's, it's so important that we ingrain that into our children at her age. Hey. Hard times are not to be ran from.

We have to run towards the hard times, get uncomfortable so that we can grow.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's like in the good times, we're like, Oh, that's good. We don't need to look at that. You don't learn that you don't learn the big lessons in the good times. You know,

Adam O'Brien: good times make weak men. Like, yeah, you learn them in the heart.

That's just how it works. It's it's physics the same way. If you drop a rock from, you know, the top of a building is going to hurt someone like. Hard times make strong men and good times make weak men.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. Oh, man. Like, you know, I've enjoyed every conversation we've had, especially even coming into this, you know, in our initial kind of introduction meeting and everything.

I was really looking forward to this meeting, Adam. I, you know, I mean, the reality is I've been hearing you on the radio in Edmonton since. Like in some levels, the beginning of my BD career, it's crazy to think that Bitcoin Well, is actually that old.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, man, 10 years. We've been around for 10 years. I've been the crazy guy talking about Bitcoin at family dinner and and, and social events for a decade.

Yeah. And it's true what they say, you know, first they call you crazy. And then you become correct. And, and I was crazy for a lot of years.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, it is, it is nuts. And you were so young. You were so young. Like, yeah, I think that's in 2013.

Adam O'Brien: I was 20. Like I was, yeah, I was, I was 20 years old. When I found Bitcoin and started, which is like.

Which is obscene. And of course, when you're, when you're 20, you know, you're the smartest guy in the world and, and, and you're never going to get smarter. And now looking back, I'm like, oh, wow, I was a complete idiot back then. And you know what? I'm sure in 10 years, I'll look back on today and think I was a complete idiot today.

That's kind of just how the progression of life works. Yeah, man, I think part of part of what gave me the, you know, the audacity to jump into Bitcoin the way that I did was the fact that I was so young and I and I didn't I wasn't and to this day, I'm still not, I suppose, because of the confidence I gained 10 years ago, but I didn't have the jaded look of Well, no, that can't be the case, right?

I didn't have that pessimistic. Door shut mentality. I, I, I'm, I've been a, an inquisitive guy from, from the beginning of my life. And I've been, you know, always drove my parents crazy. All the, all the why questions. I'm sure you experienced that as well. And and lucky for me, my parents kind of lent into it and started explaining why and, and, and not just explaining why X, Y, Z, but explaining here's how you figure out why X, Y, and Z.

And as a result. Found Bitcoin, started asking why, went down the rabbit hole and realized like, this is the future there is, there's no question in my mind that Bitcoin is 100 percent the future of finance, not just for our country, but for our world.

Kelly Kennedy: That's, that's crazy. And I want to get into that with you, but I also want your story because every single good CEO and founder I've had on the show has an equally awesome story.

Take us back to the beginning. You know, what was your, what was the beginning of your career? Like, were you always this entrepreneurial driven?

Adam O'Brien: Yeah. Yeah, like from an early age, I, I always understood the value of adding value to others in order to gain value myself. You know, starting back from like, I my first job I was too young to work there like by a few months.

So I had to lie about my age. And by the time they figured it out, I was, I was old enough. So it was all fine. You know, just kind of always, always found ways to. To make things work the way that I needed to, I remember early, early on maybe I was 13 or 14. I I was playing, playing golf with my buddies at a golf course here in Sher, or in Sherwood Park, which is where I grew up called Broadmoor.

And I just went into the kitchen. His name was Dave Chan. I just said, Mr. Chan. Like, can I come work for you? And he looked at me and went, well, Adam, what can you do? And I was like, I don't know. I can do anything, I guess. And he's like, sure. Come back at four o'clock and we'll get you washing dishes and windows.

And so I went home, had lunch, went back to the golf course and washed dishes and clean windows and did that for a couple summers. And then, you know, just kind of progressed through there. I worked at sports shack selling shoes and, and, and, and jackets. I worked at a car dealership washing cars. I worked a little bit of hard labor for 10 bucks an hour, which is, you know, felt like a million bucks at the time.

And, and now it's not even, you know, it's not two thirds minimum wage. And, uh, and, and yeah, I've always been kind of eager and hungry to work. I just love working, love adding value. And obviously benefiting from the value myself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, like what I'm always excited about and interested is that you went from that you went from like, okay, you know, I have these like sales jobs or these various jobs.

I always love to know what was the catalyst like right before you started Bitcoin Well? You were working at what was it? Franklin's Inn doing distribution and sales, right?

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, yeah. So that was so that was my foray into, like, real world. And I went when I turned 18. I were I worked two jobs for 14 hours a day, saved as much as I could.

And I went to Australia, went to Australia for little bit less than six months, I guess came home and then sort of working at Earl's and I worked at Earl's for about two years and I learned a ton. Like that was, that was, that was my first real job. I had part time jobs or full time jobs working as like, you know, Clump them all into just like labor jobs.

Just go for basically go do this and, and don't ask questions. Just make sure the job gets done and then, and then be good. But then at Earl's it was, it was my first, you know, big boy job, I guess you could say, where I had some responsibility had to make some decisions. I was there at a good time. I got promoted to being the bar leader very quickly, which means I was in charge of inventory behind the bar and managing, you know, a small group of bartenders, making sure that the schedules all worked.

And I was the fall guy for everything that happened behind the bar. And I loved it. I love the responsibility. But it also got me into the meetings. It got me into the weekly kind of leadership meetings where we're talking about budgets, talking about sales, talking about, you know, ideas. How do we make things?

Grow. Why is Wednesday night suddenly so slow when last year it was so busy and just being around that. I like I kept my mouth shut for the most part. I reported on my, you know, inventory was good and we ran out of lines last week. Sorry about that. But I was just a sponge learning and listening. At that time or a few years later, sort of dating my now wife and her folks owned the hotel and restaurant in the hotel.

And so I'd left Earl's went to do like a sales job and oil and gas. Absolutely hated. It was not for me too slow. Like just, just didn't really find the passion that I wanted. So I went and worked for my, for my, my soon to be, or my now in laws at the restaurant. And and it was at that time that I kind of found, found Bitcoin, but took lots of that experience that I had from Earl's, brought it to the restaurant over at at Franklin's Inn, and then, and then found Bitcoin and, and kind of just went two feet, two hands in my head first.

Kelly Kennedy: It's one thing to find Bitcoin. I think everybody's found crypto. But, you know, I mean, it's a whole nother thing to be like, I'm going to create Canada's largest crypto company.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah. How did that happen? Yeah, I mean, overnight, after 10 years, I guess, like, it was, it wasn't the plan, the plan, like, it started as a side hustle, I, I suppose, I I found Bitcoin in early March.

And of 2013, and I was like, ah, this, you know, fake internet money, like this is hilarious. I'm going to just rip on this. Like, there's no way this is real. And then sort of learning a little bit more about it made a ton of sense. And I mean, like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a technical guy. I don't have a comp sci background or anything like that.

So I had to really learn about it. And learned a ton. And the more that I learned, the more that I realized, like, oh, that actually makes sense. Oh, this is how money should work. And then, you know, you learn about Bitcoin, but you learn about economics, the history of money, fiat, you know, even our political system.

Like you just learned so much throughout that journey. We call it the orange pill journey. And and before I knew it, I was ready to buy some some Bitcoin. So Yeah. Yeah. To buy some Bitcoin and and in 2013, obviously there was not a lot of options to go out and, and, and buy Bitcoin. It was like, send money to Russia or eat some guy in a back alley.

Like there was like, there was just no, no good options. And so opted for the back alley experience, got what you'd expect buying. Fake internet money in a back alley, which was a horrible experience. You know, gave the guy my a hundred bucks. He like scanned a sketchy QR code on my phone from an app that I downloaded an hour before and then left.

And I was like, well, that was a rip off. Like that sucked, but then went home, you know, looked at, looked at, looked at this app and was like, okay, well I see Bitcoin, I see confirmations, like. That seems legit. Yeah. But something my dad always said was nothing's worth anything unless someone else will buy it.

Yeah. So immediately tried to sell the Bitcoin that I just bought, uh, within a few days, I'd sold 0. 9 of the Bitcoin and had my a hundred bucks back. And I was like, Hey, that kind of worked. I have 0. 1 Bitcoin. Yeah. It didn't cost me anything. I made my a hundred bucks back. I wonder if that scales. And so rather than doing things in back alleys, I opted for like McDonald's and Starbucks.

So I'd rip around. If you ask some of the OGs here in Edmonton, they've like, chances are, they've met with me at a McDonald's or a Starbucks. I used to drive around in my Volkswagen Golf and when it started and I would, would, would meet them and we'd talk about Bitcoin and then I'd sell them or, or, or buy Bitcoin from them.

I kind of just became this, this Bitcoin, you know, broker, I suppose, for the city of Edmonton. And then. 2013 in October the world's first Bitcoin ATM was launched in Vancouver. And I was like, Oh, it's way more scalable than me going to McDonald's and Starbucks, you know, a few times a week. And so I bought a Bitcoin ATM and then deployed the first one in Alberta.

And the rest is kind of history.

Kelly Kennedy: So it was really sketchy in the beginning?

Adam O'Brien: Super sketchy, man. I'll tell you like the first ATM that I bought, I still do not have to this day. Like I bought it 10 years ago and it hasn't been delivered. Bought and paid for it. It never came. Like it was super sketchy. It's it's one of those things that.

The whole industry started from nothing and it was so decentralized. We were all just kind of making it up as we went. And I think that's part of why it works. The free market was at play. We were all empowered and, and, and forced really to find the best solutions for all of our problems. There was no nanny, no, no predecessor, no one telling us what we could or should do, or what the market said or blah, blah, blah.

It was just like. Figure it out and make it happen. And if you fail, try again, do it better. And that's what happened. And I failed a ton. Then I figured it out, tried again, did it better, until I stopped failing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, and like, I remember it being a really big deal when you put one in West Edmonton Mall.

And for those people around the world listening, West Edmonton Mall is one of the largest malls in the world. At one time it was the largest mall in the world, I don't think it is anymore. But it's right here in Edmonton, and I remember that being like, a huge, huge deal, that there was a Bitcoin ATM in West Edmonton Mall.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, and funny, that actually wasn't us, that, that, That did that, that was a different a different ATM crew and and it was funny. So they, so like the Garmisians are the ones that own the mall. And, and we looked at that property. The Garmisians are sharks. And, and I was like, Petrified of them. So I didn't, but what, what we opted to do was, was we partnered with a local cafe owner called remedy cafe.

Okay. And they've been tremendous partners. They were kind of homes. So some of the first Bitcoin ATMs in the city of them and, and, and Sherlock Holmes pub some of the first, you know, kind of hosts to these, to these ATMs, because like in the beginning, like I said, that first ATM that I ordered, it never came.

So I would like, I rented the ATM that I went to a local business and said, Hey. Bitcoin is this I got a machine that's coming that will sell Bitcoin. Can I put it in here? And then, you know, they were like, okay, sure. And then a month, two months, three months go by and no machine comes and they're like, nah, you know what?

This is too sketchy. This is too weird. This is not going to smooth experience so far. You're done. That happened like multiple times. And so it was, it was a scramble to. The second machine we placed, this is actually a pretty good story. So that was in, in February, 2014, finally a different ATM that I ordered from a different company came and when I say ATM, I mean, Bitcoin ATM.

Yeah. We put it downtown Edmonton in what was then the Rosen crown pub owned by the Sherlock Holmes group of, of pubs. We put that right downtown Edmonton in February. In April, I went to a conference, a Bitcoin conference, believe it or not, in, in Toronto. And I sat, I was just at a table for dinner and this group of three guys was like, Hey, you're Adam.

You're from you're the guy that just launched the Bitcoin ATM in, in Edmonton. And I was like, Oh yeah. Hey, what's up? And they're like, we're making Bitcoin ATMs. We're from Ottawa. Would you like one of ours? And I was like, Oh, I'd love one, but I can't afford it. Cause I, I ordered this other one.

It's supposed to come. I spent all my money on the second one. I just, I just have no money. And they were like, ah, no problem. We'll give you one. And then you can pay us back out of the profits. And I was like, Oh, Oh yeah, then I'll definitely take one. Yeah. So we arranged it all up. This is an April. They're like, okay, let me be ready in, in May.

So I was like, great. So may like fourth or may 5th or something, I jump in my truck and I drive to Saskatoon. On my drive, I have a list of a hundred businesses that I'm going to call to get, cause this, this machine's being shipped to Saskatoon that week. So I'm like, I got to get this thing placed.

Yeah. So I, my like call number 48 or something like that is this bakery in Saskatoon, this French, like This French guy. And I was like, Hey, my name's Adam. I'm from a company called, but at that time it was called Bitcoin Solutions. I want to place this Bitcoin machine here. He's like, Bitcoin's a scam. And I was like, no, it's not.

It's the real deal. Let's meet for coffee. Like, I want to talk to you for 20 minutes and then tell me, get out. He's like, sure. So we met. I convinced them, we delivered the machine, we placed the machine and then, and then I went back. So like, that's just like, that's the origin. It's not like, like I, you know, it wasn't some well premeditated thought process.

It was purely like just grit and hustle.

Kelly Kennedy: It is, it is persistence and consistency, right? And you know, I talk about this on the show all the time because so many people are like, well, what's the fast track? How do I do this faster? How do I get more effective at business development? I always say like, You there's no replacement for the time and effort required.

Adam O'Brien: So honestly, it's, it's swinging so big that you fail, the faster you fail, the faster you will be successful. And you just have to take massive swings. Yeah, all the time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, like the biggest problem that I see everywhere for most people in business development that are struggling is they don't follow a consistent process, right?

It's like, Oh, I called like four people on Tuesday, and maybe one person on Friday. And then Sent like eight emails on Wednesday, right? It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to follow a consistent process. But if you follow a process and you do it every single week, bar none, you don't miss your calls, you don't miss your emails, you don't miss your digital connections, and you ask for the meetings, you have no choice but to succeed because the consistency will lead to success.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah. It's math. I mean, there's just conversion rates that exist in, in whatever you're doing. Yeah. And it's just math and occasionally the math, you know, rewards you with some better. Then expected math, but at the end of the day, it's like rounded out over a long enough period. It's, it's a lot of averages.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you look at your story where it's like, okay, I have an ATM coming into Saskatoon. I have to sell this thing. Like it cannot sit here and wait. No options. I need an option. And yeah, like. You know, I'm sure that your first phone pitch sucked horribly. Oh, yeah, but it gets better and better and better.

By the time you've made 60, 100, 200, 1000 different phone pitches, it's so automatic and you know what value propositions to hit to that your ability to turn that into a meeting conversion probably got better and better and better and better and better.

Adam O'Brien: Absolutely. It's all it's it's all about just exercising that that muscle.

And and also, like, frankly. Not really taking no for an answer, like, one of my I think, I think it was right after we went public you know, we had a bunch of, like, publicity, whatever, people were texting, and, and, and my parents, like, born and raised, or, I was born and raised here, my parents have been here, 40, 50 years.

So there's like, they got some, some, some roots in the city. And, and so people are texting my parents and some of their close friends were like, Oh man, good for Adam. You know, he got so lucky getting into Bitcoin so early. And my dad was like, I'm not sure that was luck. Like he was like, Adam has heard the word no more times than everyone in this room combined.

He just doesn't stop and doesn't quit. I'm just tenacious. And I think that is what it is. It's just. Having the, you know, the stupidity or the audacity, whichever one you want to call it, it's audacious because it worked, I guess, for me, and it would be stupid if it wasn't, but to just stop, never stop.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and like, what made you decide to go public? Was it that you ultimately just wanted, like, because... It's, it's, it's publicly traded like Bitcoin and crypto tends to be seen that way. Was it more like, okay, I think I have to do this in order to have long term success. What, like, what was the choice?

Because I know that's not an easy process.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, it wasn't easy. It was very expensive. So there was, there's two reasons to go public for us. The first was access to capital, which I think. Didn't work as good as, as I hoped at that, like when we started going public, time was perfect when we actually went public, the market had turned, you know, the, the, the, the bulls had kind of soured and we were entering into what we're just, you know, kind of coming out of right now, which is a big soft crypto market.

The other reason though, is the notoriety and the, the, like. Before we went public, we didn't have a bank. We didn't, we couldn't get an auditor until we, like, showcased lots of our plans to go public. We didn't have an armored car service. Even getting, like, a lease on a building was difficult. The second, the second you have a ticker, people know that someone else has done due diligence.

And that you're probably a safer bet than someone that's not. And that, that to be said, it's all, it's all just perception. But the perception of being a publicly traded company comes with a certain degree of security for third parties. And, and that was a, that was a huge piece. Cause like I said, like the opportunities for us at that time, I think it's different now.

I think the industry has matured. I think that. The same is not true of companies today, but being publicly traded is definitely opened a lot more doors for us. Like we were, we were able to pilot, you know, brand new Bitcoin accounts with banks. Yeah. And they chose us simply because we were publicly traded.

Kelly Kennedy: It actually blows my mind. Like I had no idea that it was such like almost a taboo subject because You know, when you're talking about that, like saying like, you know, we couldn't get a bank account. Like we were struggling even as a registered company to like just operate. It's so reminiscent of the cannabis industry here in Canada.

Adam O'Brien: Oh yeah, it's very, very similar. The difference is Bitcoin's never been illegal,

right? Like, like Drug dealers have never paid taxes. You know, we've always paid taxes. Like, like it's, it's, it's absolutely shocking. And actually, me personally, I am still personally like, I don't have a bank. Like, I'm, I'm not allowed to have a bank at like ATB, TD, BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank. They have all completely debanked me.

Just because of what I've, The who I am in the industry.

Kelly Kennedy: Holy cow. That is absolutely bonkers. Is it because that you, you may be competition to them?

Adam O'Brien: At some point? I mean, they'd never say that, but the line that I always get is. For compliance reasons, and then I ask, what are the reasons? Can I help remedy them?

And then they say, no, so it's like, it's like, we're debunking you for secret reasons that we're not going to tell you that you can't fix like. Well, I don't think that's legit. Oh, wow. And then the crazier thing is so, so get this mind trip. I am not eligible for a bank account which means I'm, I'm, I'm cash based for the most part, and you can't pay taxes in cash.

Since 2018, the government's made it illegal to pay your taxes in cash. So, I'm in this weird predicament where I have to pay taxes but I don't have a means in which to pay taxes, and it's a very, very weird system.

Kelly Kennedy: Like, you know, like, you know, like, Lend your money to someone else and have someone else pay your taxes for you?

Adam O'Brien: Well, like we had to negotiate with the Alberta government to take cash. I was the only person in the province to pay, to pay their taxes in cash. This is a few years ago. Yeah. And it was a huge ordeal, a huge process. We had to have like, Like a bunch of like security and like it was an absolute gong show.

Simply because like, you know, the war on cash exists. But then also just how outrageous our banking system is.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it seems kind of nuts because, you know, obviously, the popularity of crypto has gone through the roof. You know, I mean, it's like, You can't look, I think it's something that people don't know a lot about, but you're very aware that it's becoming incredibly popular, right?

It's like, they talk about it, they talk about the investments in it, you hear it on the radio, you know that there's crypto, you know, there's, there's trading companies now that only specialize in crypto, there's companies like you, and yet, it's still kind of treated with this, like, and I get it, it's like, It has the value of what we put on it for the most part, but so does money, right?

Like that's no real different at this point. But it still seems like there's a negative perception or a reluctance to support it. And I, and I understand maybe from a banking standpoint or a fiat currency standpoint of like our current money system, that there's, there's a fear there of like, what does this even mean?

And I know that there's probably a lot of people who stand to not benefit. From a switch in that way. So there's probably. Some level of, you know, resistance or, or, or, or ways to hold it back. But, you know, like you said, it's like, it's pretty obvious too. There's, there's a lot of people spending a lot of money on crypto.

There's a lot of people making a lot of money on crypto.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah. I think like a lot of what you're talking about comes down to like the majority of cryptocurrency is a scam. And, and I would like, I'm of the belief that. Everything other than Bitcoin goes to zero against Bitcoin on a long enough time frame, including ETH, including, like, Cardano, including Ripple, like, including whatever the flavor of the year is, the flavor of the cycle.

Everything goes to zero against Bitcoin. And I think we're starting to see a little bit of a decoupling between, like, when I started... Bitcoin, blockchain and crypto were all the same. You could say any one of those things and what you meant was Bitcoin. There was one. Yeah. And then in 2017, crypto and Bitcoin and blockchain kind of found their own little avenues.

Bitcoin and blockchain were still kind of heavily together. But crypto kind of created this like Dgen, like penny stock, ICO, illegal security type of ecosystem with the launch. Of like of Ethan and the ETH network and the Ethereum network and I think today we're starting to see people truly understand that like blockchain is mostly just fluff like the blockchain is just a database Bitcoin and crypto are completely different things.

Bitcoin itself has the properties of sound money is truly decentralized and it is. actually a better place to store value than, you know, gold or, or your savings account. Crypto is a lot like a casino and crypto is largely projects that are very, very centralized. And they look a lot like really unregulated penny stocks.

Yeah. And so I think that, that You know that Bitcoin and crypto decoupling. Frankly, I think it can't come soon enough so that the good actors like us who, you know, believe in the future of Bitcoin, but caution really against crypto will be able to be outside of the. The conversation of, oh, well, my cousin lost their shirt buying you know, some random coin.

That was a scam. It's like, well, yeah, that was an obvious scam. Like, you know, it's a completely different conversation. Bitcoin versus crypto.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. And, and. You know, can you clarify that for us? What is it about Bitcoin, other than being, you know, the original, the OG, that makes it different from the rest?

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, there's two main things. One is that it doesn't, like it, it has someone that created it, but that someone hasn't been involved for, for almost 12 years now. There is no real founder. Every single project or token that you hear about has someone running it. Has a foundation, has a marketing department, right, has, has a leader and, and Bitcoin is truly decentralized, meaning there's no one to call the shots, which makes it ultimately safer.

If Vitalik from Ethereum Foundation wanted to, he can change the supply, he can change the rules of the ETH token, he can make it so that every time you send ETH, 99 percent of that transaction goes to him. If he wants to, he can do that the same way your bank can decide. Oh yeah, this money is ours now.

And we're going to put a three month hold on it. Right. When someone's in charge, you're exposed to the decisions and the rules that that person sets and the majority, if not all cryptocurrency, with the exception of Bitcoin, I actually don't even consider Bitcoin to be cryptocurrency, but the, like the majority of cryptocurrency exists in a single centralized.

ecosystem where there is a leader, there is a centralized individual that holds the rules. The secondary thing that makes Bitcoin so different is the initial token supply. The majority of crypto products that you heard of issued free or cheap tokens to the founding team. Bitcoin didn't. Bitcoin has 100 percent always been proof of work.

You need to put energy into the algorithm in order to take Bitcoin out. Now, granted, in the early days, the Bitcoin algorithm didn't need much energy. So if you got into Bitcoin early, you could spend a lot less energy and get a lot more Bitcoin. But you always had to do that work. There was no presale.

There was no initial token issuance. It was just straight proof of work. And those two things make Bitcoin so drastically different from anything else that we've ever seen. That, that's truly what sets it apart. It's not that Bitcoin was the first. There's no better technology. This, this is not a technology play.

This is strictly a sound money and a store of value play.

Kelly Kennedy: That's so interesting. So, okay. So what is the work? Like, what is it that gives Bitcoin value? Like what is the tangible sellable product?

Adam O'Brien: So it's energy. Bitcoin is a store of value or a store of energy, right? Let's, let's, let's debase. Like let's, let's completely go down the line of what money is.

Money is a simple representation of the value that we create with our time, right? If you sleep. All day long and you have no business. You've done no prior work. All you do is sleep. Your time is worth 0. You have expended zero energy. You've created zero value. Your time is worth nothing. Yeah, if you go and make a beautiful bench, you, you, you harness the wood, you send it down, you stain it, you cut it up, you measure it, whatever you spend an entire day making a bench.

Your time your efforts are worth whatever someone's going to pay for that bench, right? If you and a billion other people are making the same bench, it will be worth a lot less than if you're the only bench in the world, and everyone's been standing for the last thousand years, right? So we can kind of see how.

Where our efforts go and and how we use our efforts creates value, but you don't want to make benches for your entire life. You don't want to make a bench every single day for your entire life, so you need to sell two benches and then you need to save something. You need to have something in return, because if I say to you, Hey, look, I've got a cow, I'll give you my my cow for your bench.

Then great, but that meat's going to expire. You can't, you can't eat a whole cow in a day. So you got to then, you know, do something else with the cow. Maybe you sell part of that cow for, I don't know, a hairbrush or, or a house or whatever it might be. And we can kind of see why money is needed in the middle of all the transactions.

But the problem is. If I give you like something that we agree upon, which is, which is a token of money and that money is, is not capped, we, we don't ever see how much total money is in circulation. We're always guessing at how much that money is going to be worth. And so you need something in the middle.

Something that is true, pure and sound in the middle to actually play a part of that ecosystem. But how do you give something value to to represent the value that you're creating with your time with with nothing going into it? So you need to spend energy, literal energy, oil or electricity in some capacity to spend that energy to receive that bitcoin.

Then that Bitcoin is effectively harnessed energy, that Bitcoin has the properties of spent efforts and therefore the value of spent efforts.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That was really, really in depth. I never thought about it that way before. What? Okay, so there's tangible, real effort, value in Bitcoin. It is not just. A fiat or like we're calling it worth this today.

What causes the flux of value of Bitcoin then?

Adam O'Brien: It's how much energy goes into the algorithm. So, so the algorithm is designed. There's 21 million Bitcoin ever to exist. That's it. That that's, that's a cap. And people like, well, how can you verify that? Well, like it's written in the code, but so like you can do one of two things.

You can take my word for it, or you can learn how to read the code and just go audit the code. I recommend that one. But like, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty obvious. And so imagine like, like I'm holding a marker right now and, and, and the markers like a log and, and every time we, we get a block, a block comes off the log of, of the 21 million Bitcoin.

That's a reward and that's great. But the, but the, the, the, the log of 21 million Bitcoin is, is protected by an algorithm. And the algorithm says, look, I'm only going to be putting out blocks every 10 minutes. That's it. And so I'm going to be, I'm going to make you solve a problem that is going to be as hard as it needs to be so that a new block comes out every 10 minutes.

And if there's one, you know, minor or one soldier, whatever, one, something, one, it's called a minor, but anything, if there's one unit attacking me, I need to be this hard. If there's two units attacking me, I need to be twice as hard. If there's 10 units attacking me, I need, and the, and the algorithm self governs in order to make sure that there's only 10 or one block every 10 minutes.

And so therefore, if there are 10 units attacking the algorithm, Bitcoin is 10 times more valuable than if there's only one unit attacking the algorithm, because you need 10 times more energy. To get one bitcoin. Yes. Okay. So as bitcoin increases in popularity, as more and more miners come into the network, it requires more and more energy to actually get the bitcoin out of the algorithm.

Kelly Kennedy: So when you're talking about miners, who are these people?

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, well, they're computers. They're not people. Okay. The, the miners are, are Dedicated like well, really anyone can be a minor like you and I on the computers that we're currently podcasting on could could write. You could have a mining script and go through it.

It would be horribly inefficient. You never get any Bitcoin because there's now companies that make dedicated computers. They're called Asic and it stands for a special. I forget what the whole word is, but it's a, it's a special purpose vehicle. Let's say it's very, very specialized only to do one thing and that's mine bitcoin.

So you plug in the machine, you tell the minor like you program the minor. I want to mine bitcoin. Here's the algorithm that I want you to mine and you plug it into the wall and the power dictates. Like you're spending power, that computer is spending the power, sending it to the algorithm, and the algorithm determines whether or not you've solved the problem correctly or not.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, okay. So there are people or companies out there now that are essentially trying to mine as much of this Bitcoin as they can while it's still a lower cost. Is that an accurate way of explaining this? Yeah, I think there's... It's just going to get more and more expensive.

Adam O'Brien: 100 percent Bitcoin like that's like the base base base layer for Bitcoin is how much does it cost you to mine and the miners get the base cost and then as retail like I don't want to set up.

I don't want to go and get a factory and set up a bunch of power plants and get a bunch of a Asic. To get Bitcoin, I want to go to bitcoinworld. com slash join. I want to send an e transfer and get Bitcoin in the fastest and safest way possible. Right? So I'm going to pay a little bit of a premium for that.

So the retail market pays that premium. So it's way cheaper per coin to adjust, to just mine Bitcoin. But like, unless you have a warehouse and a power plant, that's. Pretty tricky to do. So if you're buying 100 bucks every two weeks, like I recommend, then then you're just going to buy Bitcoin retail. Yeah, it's like the retailers are the ones that set the price of of Bitcoin.

So more people are buying the price goes that that premium gets greater and greater. Sure. If more people are selling that premium gets lesser and lesser. And sometimes the premium even goes negative. Sometimes miners are not able to mine Bitcoin, like it takes too much power compared to the price of Bitcoin at that time.

And what happens is, miners turn off, the algorithm has less units attacking it. And guess what happens? It gets cheaper to mine Bitcoin. Because it's a perfectly regulated, self regulating system.

Kelly Kennedy: I was going to say, what this sounds a lot like?

Adam O'Brien: Free money? Or the free market making perfect money? I was going to say the oil and gas sector.

It's, it's similar, except there's no politicians and there's, and there's no big companies manipulating the shit out of the oil and gas.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, so the part that confuses me about the whole thing is you mentioned that, like, the person who created this is no longer involved. How the heck is it operating?

Like, there's got to be a central server stack somewhere owned by someone, right?

Adam O'Brien: That's the beautiful thing. Every so, okay. Man, we're getting the This is like Bitcoin 401 at this point. Yeah, we need to learn. So Bitcoin, like I have a Bitcoin wallet. Okay. And you can set up a wallet whereby you have a node.

Or a cloud based wallet, right? A cloud based wallet is just someone else's wallet that you're basically using. Not as safe, but relatively safe still. We're gonna like ignore that completely. Okay. You can make a node. And a node basically just connects to the blockchain. It's all open source. And it connects to the blockchain.

And it says, it downloads the entire. Blockchain. The entire history of Bitcoin is downloaded. I'm trying to see if I have a note in this office. I don't think I have one in here. I've got one just behind my wall, but like it's on a hard drive. The entire properties of the Bitcoin blockchain live on that hard drive, and then it constantly updates and it constantly checks in with every other node that's in the world.

And if everyone is in consensus, that means that the network is, is strong and is good. So if, if I tra like, let's talk about our banking system. If I send you a transaction at the bank, we are both relying on TD Canada Trust saying that transaction went through. That's one thing, right? One centralized server to say, okay, Adam sent Kelly a transaction.

Very good. If I send you a Bitcoin transaction, every single Bitcoin node in the entire world has to confirm that Adam sent Kelly a transaction. Tens of thousands of copies of the blockchain are updated. That way, if I turn my node off, There's like others that still agree and think that that transaction went through, which is, which is very, very good.

And so the way that it worked, how it was originally set up was Satoshi had the initial node. And every other person that wanted to use Bitcoin in the early days had to set up their own node, their own full copy of the blockchain. And it kind of just bolstered and bolstered from there to today, where there's like, there's literally, I think there's over 10, 000 copies of the blockchain as nodes actively syncing with the network.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That, so it's like, it's actually a physical thing. Like, it sits on your desk.

Adam O'Brien: Well, like it's, I mean it's a physical thing as much as data is physical. Like, is your spreadsheet physical? Well, if you print it... Yes, I suppose, but like, it's, it's, it's code on a computer that is downloaded onto a hard drive.

You're not like, you're not getting a, a physical token or anything like that, but it is, it is like, it's real data. That exists the same way, like our tweets, physical. No, our tweets real. Yes, like this conversation is not even physical, right? This is going through through a dot WAV file into like how many different countries?

It's not a physical conversation. This is a very real conversation because it's all just data.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I was just confused because I was thinking like, okay, is there like, like this, like super little black box that Adam keeps on his desk and he calls it the note and except with all these other notes.

Adam O'Brien: So, like, that is, like, yes, like, there actually is like, a, like, a black box that exists that, like, in my office that is a node. Okay. But it doesn't have to be that way, I guess.

Kelly Kennedy: Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, no, fair enough, fair enough. And so, okay, so now we're gonna get into some, like, theoretical things.

Adam O'Brien: Nice.

Kelly Kennedy: What is the future of Bitcoin? And I know that that's a hard ask, but let's get real. Who better to ask than you? You know, you're competing against A system that has existed for as long as probably money systems for the most part have existed. They've always been different and there's been different versions of them.

They're all relatively the same. And now we're saying like, hey, there's probably a better way. How does that conversation play out? What has to happen for Bitcoin to be like, okay, this is, this is something we're going to be able to utilize or could compete on the same level as cash.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, I mean, that depends on what we mean by compete.

Bitcoin is different things to different people, and I kind of have summed it up into into two different boxes. On one hand, Bitcoin is a speculative investment, the same way someone has a house as a speculative investment or a penny stock or gold or a or a blue chip stock or or a pension plan. Those are all speculative investments.

And generally they have an entry and an exit point. If you bought a stock today for 1. 50 and it went to 1, 000 tomorrow, you're probably going to sell, right? Like, like, but then, but then you're stuck with. 1, 000 that loses money at 8 to 10 percent a year. Yes. What do you do with that thousand bucks?

Where does it go? Oh, I'm going to spend it. I'm going to consume it. Sure. Consume it. Right. Go on a trip, buy a new car, like whatever. But if you're not going to consume it. What do you do with it? Well, this is why we need sound money. This is why we need something that's not an investment, but someplace where we can store the value that we create with our time.

We talked about this like a half hour ago, right? That whole cycle of like, why do we need money to store the value that we create with our time? And then you need to do two things with it. You need to move that value into the future, right? I want to, I want to make value when I'm 31 and I want to spend that value when I'm 61.

Yeah. Right. But we also have to move it across space. I don't want to spend it in Edmonton. I want to spend it in the Bahamas or I want to spend it in Disney world or I want to spend it on the south of Spain, whatever. Right. Yeah. So we need to we need to find a way to to create value, store value and then spend the value.

We want to make sure, though, that value is equal. If I work for four hours today and I can go buy two ribeye steaks, then in five years. I also want those two ribeye steaks to be worth four hours of value. If I have to work six hours to buy two ribeye steaks in the future, that's bad. Anything less than four hours is gravy.

And so Bitcoin has the properties of money that enables us to store value and spend it in the future. And so what, what do you do with it? The future of it is savings. The future of it is living within your means today, less than your means today, storing your value in Bitcoin and spending that value at a later date.

We all know what savings are for. Hardly any of us actually use savings, but I tell you what, if Bitcoin went to a million dollars tomorrow, guess what I would do? I would buy A hundred dollars worth every two weeks. Yeah, that's what I've been doing for 10 years. Yeah, that's what I will do until the day that I die.

There is not a world, there is not a day or not a week that will pass that I'm alive on this earth where I will not be accumulating Bitcoin because that is my savings plan. It's not my investment, right? If housing prices quadruple. Like I'm probably going to look at selling my house because I will be like, Oh, great.

You know, I've got this house. There's some extra money in there. I'm going to sell it. But again, it comes back to what do you do with the money once you've sold it? Sure. You're going to consume some, but if you're setting yourself up for the future, if you're thinking about saving for the future, you need to save in Bitcoin.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Okay. I get that. And I understand, you know, the devaluation of money over time with inflation. Why is that not relevant in Bitcoin or crypto?

Adam O'Brien: Because of the cap. So our money, like if you look at the money supply M zero money supply, this is like you can, you can look it up on the government website.

The M zero money supply from 2020 to here we are almost in 2024 as high as Quinn toppled. That means there was five times more money in what it was actually a year and a half time frame. And now it's down to triple. So the money supply The root base of money over the last four years has tripled. Wow.

That means, imagine there is triple the houses. Imagine there, if you're going after a certain Pokemon card and all of a sudden, there's three times as much. Like, we're not dumb here, right? Your listeners are not idiots. What happens when something triples? When the supply of something triples overnight, the value gets cut into...thirds.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Adam O'Brien: Right. Like, like, it's just so basic, such basic supply and demand economics and the opposite happens with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is predetermined how much comes into circulation every 10 minutes. The algorithm tells us that. And then what we didn't touch on is that number actually goes down. Every four years.

So not only do you have a perfectly balanced effort to value ratio, you've also got a decreasing amount of coins coming into circulation. There is less net new Bitcoin coming into circulation today than there was 10 years ago. Okay, that makes it deflationary rather than inflationary.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. Okay. Is there is there a cap?

Like, is there like, okay, at a hundred years, it hits its limit. Is there a limit of people that can use it? You were saying self regulating, but does that self regulation have limits?

Adam O'Brien: Lots of questions there. There is a cap. The cap is 21 million. Yeah, they're there. The 21 millionth coin is set to be in like mind in in roughly 2169 is kind of the rough year or maybe 2140.

It's like it's about 100 years away for the last get this. There is currently 19 million coins in circulation. So you're like, Whoa, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're 90%. Mind, but it will take another 100 years for the last 10%. That's because of that decreasing money supply or the, or the, or the decreasing Bitcoin that comes in to the market.

There was no cap to the self regulation. Absolutely. None. There is theoretically a cap to how many Bitcoin transactions can be sent at one time. There is technical solutions being proposed and adopted to, to fix that. But when we're talking about a store of value, we're talking about savings.

There is no cap and, and no end to how safe and, and how simple and how good the Bitcoin network is.

Kelly Kennedy: That's very interesting. Yeah, I just like if I'm struggling and you know what I mean, I imagine that a lot of people do to like understand a system that isn't controlled by something, a country or it just it seems hard to believe, doesn't it?

Adam O'Brien: Well, not for me because I've been, I've been believing that for 10 years, but, but yeah, no, it does. And, and, and I would, I would like, I would challenge you to think of another, of another, like, part of your life. And let's go to an extreme example. Like, imagine another part of your life where you want that control.

And not many exist, right? Like, let's talk about, how about raising our kids? Sure. What if, what if the same people that were in charge of the money were also in charge of telling us what we could or couldn't do? With our children. Would that be better or worse than the current system? Probably worse. What about our health?

Right? Would that be better or worse than the current system? Probably worse. What about our free time? Better or worse? Probably worse. What about our education? Better or worse? Probably worse. Like let's go down the line here, man. Why do we want someone in control of our money when every other aspect of our life, we do not want someone else in control of.

Kelly Kennedy: True. You know, I mean, I guess the system currently relies on the fact that people think that while we're, you know, on an individual level, we're not smart enough to manage our lives or our money, right?

Adam O'Brien: Man, I had this conversation with a buddy of mine yesterday. So we have a, we have a brand new Bitcoin savings plan, a recurring byproduct at bitcoinworld.

com. You can sign up. Send an automatic bill payment and it gets sent to you whenever that bill payment comes in. It's the best, the fastest, safest way to save. It's brilliant. And he's telling me, he's like, look, Bitcoin. I like it. I get the theory. I get the concept. It's just confusing. And I was like, no, it's the same as an email.

It's the same as Twitter. It's the same as driving a car. You have to do like a little bit of effort to just. Learn the new system. Then you're empowered with the freedom that Bitcoin gives you it, but like much like setting up your first iPhone, like, is it confusing? Yeah, there's buttons everywhere.

There's settings. You have to set up, you have to decide if you want your camera at a 24 frames per second or a 30 frames per second, setting up this podcast. I'm like, I got a microphone. Where does this plug in? Do I want it at level four or level five? Like, you know, there's just things that you have to do in order to, to, to level up in order to grow, but.

We're so captured in this, like, don't even think about the money. You're too dumb. We're taught that from such an early age that anytime we hear money, we're like, we have like like battered wife syndrome of like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't possibly you know, daddy government's told me I'm too stupid to even look at the glass box.

I, I, I, I dare not touch it. And, and here we are in a broken system where the money is. Three x less valuable, where, you know, housing costs and energy costs and food costs and everything's up. People are like, it's corporate greed. Everything's going up because of corporate greed. Like, you idiot. It's not corporate greed.

The money you're using sucks. The money you're using is manipulated to no end. That's why everything is increasing in value.

Kelly Kennedy: It's been, it's been a really hard couple years in Canada. I, I don't think, you know, I mean, me and you both have. Quite a few kids and you know, like the cost of groceries, the cost of living over the past, like three years has, yeah, it's been like tripled, you know, like it really is cost of energy cost of everything in Canada has gone through the roof.

And I know, like, you know, I was, I was having this conversation, you know, with Shelby the other day and I'm like, you know, like we do pretty okay and yet we're still struggling. To to do excellent or to do great, you know, it's like, I can't imagine how so many other people are doing that, you know, just have a Monday to Friday and making, you know, like 20 bucks an hour or whatever.

Like, I can't imagine how their life is going. It must be an absolute nightmare.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, it's impossible, man. And and and the government comes in with short sighted solutions like raising minimum wage, which just devalues the money further. Yeah. We need to stop looking at the surface and dive into where the problems are.

And the problems lie in the fiat ecosystem that exists. And when the money that you trade your time for has no cap and no sound principles and the value you store, the value create with your time and subsequently storing that money will be stripped from you, it will be stolen. And and that's the reality that we're in now.

I mean, yeah, you're right. Groceries are about three times more expensive than they were four years ago. And guess what? The money is three times more more in circulation. Like, like, is that a coincidence? Hmm. I don't think so.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, that's it. Like, if the idea was that people were going to do be better off, it definitely didn't do that.

Adam O'Brien: That was never the idea. Yeah. Right. Like, like, That's that's it's never the idea is that people will be better off when we print money. The idea is people are in pain. We better short term this right? It's it's the mindset. It's that short term time preference mindset that we've always had the government's always had because the government's don't live like you and I are living for 100 years.

Right? The government lives for four. The government needs to get elected in four years. You and I have to survive for a hundred. And so the government's looking at the next Like, that's the time frame. It's four years down the road, and that's it. That's it. That's all they care about. That's it, man.

Kelly Kennedy: That's all they care about.

Adam O'Brien: That's it, man. That's all they care about. That's it, man. That's all they care about. You and I are like, how do we raise a family? How do we make sure that our brand new son works? Is going to have a great adulthood, right? In 20 years. Like that's where that that's where our heads are at. The government cares about the next four.

And so they make short sighted, short term decisions that do not benefit us 20 years down the road.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, totally. Totally, man. We talked a lot about crypto. I appreciate that because we have not actually had any, any, well, first off, I'm, I'm dumb to it. So you were educating me just as much as anyone else.

And it's something that we haven't really been able to chat about on the show. So I really appreciate having you on, you know, there's so much that I still want to talk to you about. Do you still have like 15, 20 minutes, Adam? Let's let's hit it, man. Let's do awesome. I want to take us into, you know, ghost lab.

What is ghost lab? You're also the founder and CEO of that.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah. Ghost lab is a company that originally was created to design Bitcoin ATM software. So when we started going public as Bitcoin, well, I wanted Bitcoin well to be. A Bitcoin ATM company only that just printed money. Bitcoin ATMs are very profitable and I wanted a very simple business that would be you know, a cash cow, for lack of a better term.

And I knew though that our, our cash would be limited, or our, our creativity would be limited to whatever someone else could develop for software. And I was experiencing some pain points. At that time, we operated about 50 machines. And I was like, Oh, man, I wish machines could do this or I wish machines could do that.

And the response that I would get from manufacturers were no. And so I co founded Ghost Lab with Dave Bradley. And we set out to make Bitcoin ATM software that we would license to Bitcoin well, but also license to other people as other companies. As though we went public, our board of directors at the time didn't like the conflict of interest that I owned this company on the side and you know, forced or voted or whatever you want to say, us, like Bitcoin Well had to effectively buy Ghost Lab from me And roll it into the company.

And so ghost lab is now a subsidiary of Bitcoin Well wholly owned subsidiary, meaning the public company owns ghost lab. And now Bitcoin Well benefits greatly from the ghost lab acquisition because we've got all the software and we develop exactly what we need out of that software. And it's also helped us greatly in like, you know, Bitcoin Well licenses that software.

From ghost lab still. And that's what employs like our partner program and other strong initiatives that we have on the on the Bitcoin ATMs. But that's the story behind ghost lab. So it was a quick, a quick founding and then a quick like exit, but not really an exit.

Kelly Kennedy: That's okay. That's still really cool.

So essentially. All of your ATMs now are running your proprietary software, you also license that software out to other companies and you're empowering them to also, you know, start their own their own ATM style business. That's right. That's so cool, man. With the ATMs, what is that experience like?

Adam O'Brien: So when you walk up to a Bitcoin ATM you push like Bitcoin, you scan your Bitcoin address and that's key. It's very, very important to me that everyone scans their Bitcoin address before they insert money or before they give us money, because that way we know where to send the Bitcoin before we even have the money.

This is the safest way. If you are able to buy Bitcoin without giving someone a Bitcoin address, they're going to scam you or steal from you. That's just the way it works. And so whatever exchange you're using, whatever platform you're using, if you're buying Bitcoin and they don't ask you for an address.

Stop. Stop buying Bitcoin there and buy Bitcoin somewhere else. So you scan your Bitcoin address, then you insert cash dollar bills, you push send Bitcoin, and then the Bitcoin comes or gets sent from the machine to your Bitcoin wallet that you scanned in step one.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. And, like, if people want to cash out, do these machines also dispense cash?

Like, do you buy Bitcoin through them as well?

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, so we do both. Lots of the machines are not used that way, frankly, I think because like, because our like the online portal is kind of our second business unit and it's it's Like it's so efficient and so good that buying Bitcoin from and selling Bitcoin to the online portal is kind of the, like the best experience, especially selling it's as simple as sending Bitcoin to the address we give you and then you get an e transfer.

We've also developed a platform where you can pay your bills. So if you. Want to pay your EPCOR bill or your whatever, your, your credit card bill, your property tax bill, whatever it may be, you enter the bill into our system. We tell you how much Bitcoin to send us and then we pay that bill on your behalf.

So there is like, there is real tangible ways to use Bitcoin at Bitcoinworld. com. And it's yeah, it's, it's, it's becoming more and more useful, which is pretty cool.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, that's starting to sound a little bit like a bank, Adam.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, I like people ask me, when people ask me who our competitors are, and they assume it's Coinbase or one of the other Bitcoin exchanges in Canada.

And frankly, our competitor is Scotiabank. Our competitor is, is ATB and Service Credit Union. And I, and I do think in 10 to 20 years, Uh, we'll be looking at acquiring those banks because their business models don't work. Their business models are archaic and are reliant on you giving them money for free and then them renting it out.

They're reliant on a on an unlimited supply money system and the world is changing the same way information. Went from being locked and difficult to access before the internet, the internet came around and boom, business models were completely exposed to free information, business models that at one point where, where information heavy are now, you know, completely disrupted that's happening in the finance world.

And I think. The more and more that the more steam that Bitcoin gets, the more people that opt out of holding their money at the bank, the more the bank's business model will be at risk. And I think that's going to happen in, like I said, 10 to 20 years.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, that's, that's a hell of a prediction.

Adam O'Brien: I've been called crazy before.

I don't plan on stopping now.

Kelly Kennedy: I don't call people crazy, but yeah, that's, that's crazy. You know what I mean? We'll have to revisit this down the line and see where we're sitting.

Adam O'Brien: Do it, man. Let's do it. That sounds great.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, I wanted to talk about the way that you market as well, because obviously we're a business development show and you know I love your videos.

Like you really. Make amazing videos. What was that is, you know, tell me about some of the strategies you've used to market Bitcoin Well, and yourself, what has been effective and what hasn't. And, you know, how did you learn to do such great videos? You know, the video work you do is awesome.

Adam O'Brien: Thanks, man. Yeah, I actually fell down like a daily vlogging regimen in like 2016 2017 era, not about Bitcoin, just About whatever I was doing at the time.

And so that kind of gave me my initial like video chops my comfort in front of a camera. And then I think that the new, like marketing is all well and good. We have not seen very good success with ads. Especially at the Bitcoin ATMs, the ads have been atrocious. We've ran ads for, for many, many years and the results are just atrocious.

I think that what. ads, like Like I said, I've always been a value first kind of guy and what adds value in our industry is education. And so we developed like the Bitcoin Academy in partnership with Athabasca University and it's a, it's a free six curriculum course that you can take to just learn about Bitcoin and those types of initiatives, you know, blog posts and how to videos have been.

So rewarding. I think like I made a video two or three years ago, just explaining the difference between a minor and a node. It's like five minutes took me like an afternoon to make. It's got tens of thousands of, of people that have watched it. And I did a bad job of being like, I'm from Bitcoin.

Well, you should use our platform, blah, blah, blah. But that is the future of, of marketing. It's like, Hey, let me give you as much value as I possibly can. And by the way. This is what I do in relation to that value. If you trust me, if you like what I'm talking about, check out our service. I'd rather spend money educating people than, you know, Google and Google ads or, or whatever.

And I think building that relationship with our users and building that relationship with our customers is going to continue to pay dividends. Well into the future.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. You know, I, I, I agree. You know what I mean? Being able to educate people always has a great effect, you know, like that's, that was a big reason behind starting the business development podcast is I recognize that, you know, if I work for people directly, I can help a handful of people.

If I educate people through a podcast, I can help millions.

Adam O'Brien: Like, that's Jesus's mantra, man, where you feed a man a fish or teach a man to fish, right?

Kelly Kennedy: The reality is, is that doing business development, doing effective business development costs money, takes time, there's no replacement for that time.

Teaching people how to do their own business development also takes time, but has that infinite payoff that will help people for a lifetime as opposed to for a minute.

Adam O'Brien: Absolutely. No, I think, and I think that's the way like, like I said, like bare bones philosophy and bare bones structure doesn't really change.

Like the difference between a minor and a node don't change from year to year. And you can, you can really scale your efforts by. By creating value, long term, long lasting value, if I'm sat here saying like, excuse me, if I'm sat here saying like, yo, yeah, you know, this crypto coin, this NFT, this is the one, this is the way, like, that's just that's disingenuous.

It's just not true. It's not proven. This podcast, everything I've said on this podcast is going to be relevant in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years, the numbers are going to be a little bit different. But at the end of the day, everything we talked about today is going to remain relevant for like decades. And I think creating relevant educational content, especially timeless, relevant educational content is, is the only way to, to add value.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And you know, I mean, you're very knowledgeable on the subject. I would say you're probably the most knowledgeable person in Canada on this subject at this moment in time. And I appreciate that immensely. You know, Adam, I had one question that I wanted to ask you before we wrapped up today's show.

And that was, if you could go back to the beginning and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that be? You know, right at the very beginning that you've learned in all this time.

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, it's the concept of time preference. You know, early on, I was young went from like an honest living, but nothing extravagant to like, holy smokes, I'm rich very quickly.

And that was because of the rise of Bitcoin. Sure. And I spent a lot of unnecessary money. That I probably didn't need to, and I think that concept of time preference can bleed into other areas of our life as well. So, I wouldn't necessarily change the decisions I've made because I think, you know, the decisions I've made have in large part gotten me to, to where we are.

But probably... Yeah, probably like that concept of time preference and understanding, like, a little bit of sacrifice early for, for, for better results later, finding, finding the balance, honestly, between, between reward and sacrifice is probably one of the greatest struggles that, you know, humans encounter.

And I think that's that's just an important thing to remember for everybody.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I mean, as humans, we always love the reward as quickly and often as we can have it. But most of the time we don't get that without a pretty significant amount of sacrifice in the beginning, right?

Adam O'Brien: The sacrifice usually comes before or after and when it comes after it's always a lot more painful.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man, this has been amazing, Adam. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it greatly. This has been episode 86 of the business development podcast. If people want to buy from your ATMs or get a hold of Bitcoin well, or get a hold of you, what's the best way to go about doing those things?

Adam O'Brien: Yeah, BitcoinWorld.com has everything you need. It can get you an account tell you where the ATMs are, whatever they may be. Follow me on Twitter, X Adam O'Brien underscore on there and check out my YouTube channel, same, Adam O'Brien underscore. Yeah, just love educating, talking about Bitcoin.

You can go to adamobrien. ca. You can kind of reach me anywhere on those, on those channels. And I'm yeah, kicking around and eager to engage.

Kelly Kennedy: And your videos are awesome. And if nothing else, they're very entertaining to, to watch. You put a lot of effort into them and they're well done. So I think either way, definitely go check out Adam.

This has been episode 86 of the business development podcast. We had founder and CEO of Bitcoin Well, Adam O'Brien with us. We'll catch you on. The flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020, his passion and his specialization.

Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.