#736 The First Bitcoin Baseball Team w/ Steven Nelkovski & Patrick O'Sullivan

Steven Nelkovski is the CEO and Patrick O'Sullivan is the Chief Bitcoin Officer of the Perth Heat, an Australian Baseball Team. They have fully converted their entire organization to a Bitcoin Standard by holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet. They will be paying players in Bitcoin, accepting payments in Bitcoin at their stadium, and placing Bitcoin logos on the team merchandise. In this conversation, we discuss pitching the idea to the organization, creating a Chief Bitcoin Officer role, paying players in Bitcoin, and the future of their team on the Bitcoin Standard. ======================= Mode, UK Fintech app, allows you to buy, earn and grow Bitcoin, all in one app. Not only is it an easy and safe way to buy and hold Bitcoin, with Mode you can shop and receive up to 10% Bitcoin Cashback for FREE from its growing list of online partner brands. Available on the App Store and Google Play. Download Mode at modeapp.com and enjoy 0% trading fees on all buys and sells until Dec 31, 2021. Only available in the UK. ======================= If you haven’t started building your crypto portfolio on Okcoin, there’s no better time. They’re one of the fastest growing global exchanges around and they have some promotions happening right now to help even more people be part of the future of finance. If you have an account already, you can split $100 in BTC with a friend when you invite them to sign up for Okcoin if they buy $100 of crypto in the first month. The more friends who sign up and buy, the more BTC you get. And I always recommend dollar-cost averaging as a way for investors to have more control over their average price when building their portfolio. Now you can automate dollar-cost averaging with completely fee-free daily, weekly, or monthly recurring buys on Okcoin until November 1. That’s no fees at all on your purchases until the holidays. Get started on the web or on their new super easy-to-use app at okcoin.com/pomp ======================= My friends at Coin Cloud will give you $50 in FREE Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any of their 4,000+ machines. Use promo code POMP to get your free Bitcoin. For details or to find your nearest Coin Cloud machine, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp Coin Cloud has been serving customers since 2014 and has established itself as the world's leading digital currency machine (DCM) operator. More than just a Bitcoin ATM, Coin Cloud machines make it easy to buy and sell Bitcoin and 30+ other digital assets with cash. To find your local ATM and get $50 in free Bitcoin, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Stephen Nelkowsky and Patrick O'Sullivan. One is the CEO and the other is the Chief Bitcoin Officer of the Perth Heat. It's an Australian professional baseball team. They have fully converted their entire organization over to a Bitcoin standard. They're holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet. They're going to be paying players in Bitcoin, accepting Bitcoin from fans and attendees to their stadium, and they are also putting Bitcoin on their jerseys. Fascinating conversation with two men who are trying to lead professional sports down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin. I hope you enjoy it. I definitely did. But before we get into

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Mode. Listen up. If you're a UK Bitcoin investor, this is for you. It's a brand new sponsor, so I want you guys to pay attention. This episode is brought to you by UK fintech app Mode. Mode is an app that allows you to buy, earn, and grow Bitcoin effortlessly. Not only is it an easy and safe way to buy and hold Bitcoin, Mode also allows you to pay and receive up to 10% Bitcoin cash back for free from its growing list of online partner brands. That's right, they've got cash back for free from a growing list of online partner brands. For a limited period of time, Mode is offering 0% trading fees on all Bitcoin buys and sells. That's right, you can buy and sell Bitcoin and pay no trading fees. The offer ends at the end of the year, December 31st,

• 1:32Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:16Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Get $50 free Bitcoin. Buy $200 or more at any machine, use promo code POMP. You can find your local ATM at coin.clohead/pomp, coin.clohead/pomp, and use promo code POMP to get that free $50 worth of Bitcoin when you purchase $200 or more at the machine. Last but not least is OKCoin. If you haven't started building your crypto portfolio on OKCoin, there's no better time. They're one of the fastest-growing global exchanges around, and they have some promotions happening right now to help even more people be part of the future of finance. If you have an amount already, excuse me, an account, account, account, not an amount. If you have an account already, you can split $100 in Bitcoin with a friend when you invite them to sign up for OKCoin if they buy $100 of crypto in the first month.

• 3:42Anthony Pompliano?

  The more friends who sign up and buy, the more Bitcoin you get. And I always recommend dollar-cost averaging is a way for investors to have more control over their average price when building their portfolio. Dollar-cost averaging, superpower. Now you can automate dollar-cost averaging with completely fee-free daily, weekly, or monthly recurring buys on OKCoin. That's no fees at all on purchases until the holidays. Get started on the web or on their new, super easy-to-use app, okcoin.com/pomp. OKcoin.com/pomp. Go check it out.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:35Anthony Pompliano?

  First, let's start with Australia.

• 4:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Baseball. How big is the league? How many teams are there? Just walk us through the the kind of league structure and the teams.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, cool. Well, there's eight teams in the league and it's an international competition. So we've got a side also from New Zealand and also from Korea. Perth Heat are the largest organization in the Australian Baseball League. We've won 15 Claxton Shields and we've had 11 players from the Perth Heat who have gone on to play Major League Baseball. There's one currently going around by the name of Liam Hendricks, who's with the Chicago White Sox, and he's just won reliever of the year for the last two seasons, which is the first time that's happened in Major League Baseball history. We also had Graham Lloyd, who won two championships or two World Series with the New York Yankees in 96 and also 1998. So baseball is big here in Australia. We're ranked number six in the world with Team Australia. And yeah, the Perth Heat are pretty proud to be the first

• 5:30Speaker 02

  team in world sport now who are operating on a Bitcoin standard.

• 5:34Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So you guys are basically the New York Yankees of Australia baseball. Is that a fair way to think about it?

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Essentially.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  It depends who you want to upset, but yeah, we'll take that.

• 5:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, I said it. You didn't say it. So if they get mad, they gotta get mad at me. You're the only team I talked to and the Yankees are the best. So you must be the best. Perfect.

• 5:52Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So Patrick, the, uh, the, the thing that I got told is you're the chief Bitcoin officer. And when I said to my brothers, they said, Hey, we need one of those. What the hell is a chief Bitcoin officer?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. And you probably do need one of those. Only organization that doesn't need one, right? You guys, you guys, you guys have already got it. You guys have been orange pill. Really, the chief Bitcoin officer is someone, you know, we've seen so beautifully what Michael Saylor did with MicroStrategy, what he was able to do with the company, what he was able to do with the resources with that company. When he decided to go into the space, he had all these options of lawyers and accountants and the whole thing that comes along with a company of that size. The reality is there's a large number of small companies that have identified the space as something that they'd like to be involved in. They, they recognize, maybe some of the people involved in leadership team recognize some of the benefits that might come from operating in the Bitcoin world, but they just don't know how to navigate it, right? It's, it's an ever-changing landscape, both from the infrastructure side of things to just keeping up with what Bitcoin is and the way that it's being explained and the

• 6:47Speaker 03

  way that people are learning about it. And basically, the job that we have sort of invented here with the CBO is I take care of the educational side of things. Like when we decided to make the move, you know, Steve and I had early discussions in sort of 2019, early 2020 about this being a possibility. And from there, it was about educating the board, educating the leadership team at the Perth Heat, and then making sure that when we actually decided, yeah, this was a reality, we could actually make this work with what had been done inside the Bitcoin community and the infrastructure that had been built up behind it, we could actually do it. Then it was about coming on and consulting with the partners in the space to make sure that we were putting ourselves in the best possible position to leverage the most out of not only Bitcoin and the number go up technology, but also the network side of things and how

• 7:30Speaker 03

  that was going to make the organization more efficient. So really, it's about education. And it's also about can you orange pill somebody? If you can orange pill somebody and you're halfway decent at it, it's probably, you're probably in line to be a CBO.

• 7:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so I want to talk about specifically what you guys have done. I talk all the time about Michael Saylor taking his balance sheet, he's plugging it into the Bitcoin network. The country of El Salvador is taking their entire country, they're plugging it into the Bitcoin network in a multitude of ways. What I apparently is happening here is you guys are taking a professional baseball team and you're plugging it into the Bitcoin network, which when people first hear that, they're like, that sounds insane. Like, who are these guys? Are they just like religious zealots, right? And they've got no clue what they're doing and they're like speculating? Or do they actually have a plan behind it? So Steve, maybe talk a little bit about, from a tactical standpoint, what exactly are you guys doing along the lines of plugging the baseball team into the Bitcoin network?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, we think the sports revolution has begun. And unlike other sports deals that we've seen in the crypto space, this is not a piecemeal announcement. Perth Heat are all in, and this is from the top down. So we'll now hodl Bitcoin on our balance sheet. We have Bitcoin payments for merchandise, tickets, and memberships. Our payments to players and staff are now in Bitcoin. From this weekend, inside the ballpark, you'll be able to come in and buy a hot dog with Bitcoin. You know, we could have easily gone for the cash and grab, sell fan tokens, EFTs, and made a stack of cash pretty quickly, but we'll just become another shitcoin. Now, this is where we are different. We are the Bitcoin baseball team, and we're not a shitcoin sports team.

• 9:09Anthony Pompliano?

  That is amazing. Like, literally, we didn't cut that. That was great. All right. And so when you think about this, what has been the hardest part for you guys? Is it convincing leadership to do it? Is it actually technically implementing the solutions needed to be able to process and kind of support this idea? Or is it something to do with the players and getting their heads wrapped around it?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Probably some of the issues we faced and the trepidation we had was, why is nobody else doing this? And why are we going to become the first team? And once we were able to overcome those hurdles, I guess the next question Patrick and I faced was, how are we now going to fund the team? Because by taking this position of the Bitcoin baseball team, how is mainstream media going to frame us? And was this going to upset members, fans, and even some of our commercial partners? So when we thought about, you know, what Jack did with Strike and the Indy 500, that was quite phenomenal. But Patrick and I had to ask ourselves a question continually. Is the Bitcoin community ready to support or fund a baseball team? Now, Patrick and I feel with, you know, by partnering with like-minded companies moving

• 10:15Speaker 02

  forward, that is the best approach. The greatest part that we've got, you know, with the Perth Heat is that we are actually controlling the levers and the network will guide us. So in terms of an organization, we're pretty small. You know, we're less than 100 employees. Our operating costs would be like 50 Bitcoin. So now, we would like to partner with the like-minded companies, for example, Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin miners, hardware, software companies, who support the same values as we have and who would like to pay partnerships in Bitcoin only. Why? Because that's how the community and the network wins. Yeah, say we hodl 50 Bitcoin this season. Next season, we only need 30 Bitcoin.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  And then the year after, in 2024, we only need 10 Bitcoin. Again, why? Because of perpetuity of those sponsorships. Will support Perth Heat forever. And again, Perth Heat will win, but more importantly, the Bitcoin community will win, and this will be the future of sport.

• 11:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Patrick, when you think about what you guys are doing, what's so fascinating to me is MicroStrategy kind of broached the topic of public companies putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet. We saw a couple of companies, not a ton, but a couple more, Tesla Square, a bunch of kind of Bitcoin miners, et cetera, put Bitcoin on the balance sheet, hold it there, and be proud of it, talk about it as a strategy. El Salvador, obviously, being kind of the first country to really put a flag in the ground, say, we're going to plug our country in. We anticipate there will be others that follow here shortly throughout Central and South America. Is this idea that like you guys are the first to do this, and there will be more teams that will follow? Have you gotten other phone calls from people saying, hey, look, you know, we want to do this, how'd you do it? Well, what's been the reaction?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Absolutely. That has probably been the biggest thing that Steve and I were not anticipating getting into this is, yeah, it's a big deal for the for the Perth Heat, but for the Bitcoin Network, like, again, we're just plugging in. Like, we're not coding any of this stuff. As you say, we, Steve, once he made the decision to say, okay, this is what we're going to do, we're going to go down this line of action, he hired everyone that works for the Bitcoin Network to improve the Perth Heat, right there, out there, making these things happen, yourself, Michael Saylor, all of these individuals that are doing it. And in that process of figuring out, okay, well, how is this actually going to work from an operational standpoint? You get into contact with different partners in the space, and you start to hear whispers. And we have, since the announcement, we have been inundated, basically, with the playbook. Like, okay, Michael Saylor had the playbook on this is how you do it at the corporate level. But like I say, at the small business level, at the organizations under 100 employees, like,

• 12:38Speaker 03

  what does this actually look like? And we've just been completely surprised about how many people are interested in doing this? How many people where this is sort of, even in the people that we've spoken to in person, like, the sponsors that were already with the team? It's almost like you see the relief on their face when you say, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, this is why it's going to make us more efficient and better today, you know, not some time in the future, this works right now. And you see that relief on their face, and you see that interest and that intrigue of like, I didn't even know this was possible, let alone going all in on this thing. You know, people hear certain things, and the media frames Bitcoin still in a certain light. But it has been amazing to see just the tsunami of activity behind the scenes of people reaching out going, okay, Partner with, how did you do it? Because like, you know, the infrastructure is changing all the

• 13:20Speaker 03

  time where we could have gone our own. And we talked about this during, you know, the lead up to the announcement is like, what was, what were we going to do from an operational standpoint? Were we going to try and be a completely self sovereign company where we did all of the backend, all of that kind of stuff? Or were we going to try and partner up with someone like an open note or someone like that to be able to immediately jump on this, right? And get the benefits of being first and trying to lead the way. And ultimately, we decided to, that would probably be the best course of action is to jump in, you know, start by walking and then run as soon as we can. And you can do that from the front. We've seen lots and lots of just education on our own part since we started to see how far this is coming, to see what works and what doesn't work and see the little trips. And already we are leaps and bounds ahead of anyone who is trying

• 14:03Speaker 03

  to come behind us. But we, but we have been encouraged by the amount of responses of people that are interested in doing it, that have thought about doing it. And, you know, people look to sports, just like, you know, we've seen announcement from players like Aaron Rodgers, Saquon Barkley, Russell, those guys. People look to sports for inspiration. They're used to looking up to athletes. They're used to looking to see what they're doing and taking inspiration from them. And, you know, hopefully, we've been able to provide that at the Perth heat. And I know from a fact, you're just looking at my sort of Twitter DMs, the people are interested in it and and they want to reach out and they want to know more.

• 14:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Not only is this cool, but do you hear what Patrick just said to me? He said, I work for them now.

• 14:41Anthony Pompliano?

  He's a, you work for us now. Thank you. What questions you guys got? Yeah, what questions you guys got?

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know which one of you is better suited to answer this. So I'll leave it up to you. But I just want, I'm curious what the reaction of the players was. Were they excited about this? Were they confused? Did it take some explaining or convincing?

• 14:59Speaker 03

  That's been really cool.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  This is basically a test of my, of my job, right? This is, this is the test question of how good I've done my job up until this point. So thank you for the, for the on air interview.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  They've been incredibly supportive like yeah, yeah, from top down. So when you get owners

• 15:16Speaker 02

  that effectively run the team buying so quickly, there's a great level of trust there between the organization. We've got an incredibly sound clubhouse where the leaders of the team educate the younger players coming through. And yeah, they've been nothing but supportive. Our athletes are intelligent players. They understand what's going on in world sport. They see all the announcements with what's happening. And already, we've had one player that's come to us and said, I want in. Can I have five years of salary upfront paid in Bitcoin? So that immediately tells me the way we've educated and the job Patrick has done has been first class in getting to this point. We can't thank our players enough for buying in so quickly.

• 15:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, wait. A player wants five years of salary paid upfront today in Bitcoin only?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And did you guys do that or no?

• 16:08Speaker 02

  We're discussing it with the owners. It's an intriguing sort of proposal that he's brought to us. And obviously, there's so many conditions that we need to consider in terms of playing out those years, injuries, etc., etc. How does all that look? But we love the fact that his mindset now is one of the thinking in Bitcoin and long term. That's exactly what we'd like to do.

• 16:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys would get a discount in what you pay him? Like he'd take some kind of haircut on the amount today to get it upfront?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  And that's exactly what he's thinking. He's thinking, well, if I accept a discount in five years' time, I'm going to be much further in front.

• 16:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  Are you guys pricing the contracts in Bitcoin or are they still in dollars or the Australian currency?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're still in AU at the moment because we've got that agreement in place. So we need to honor those contracts. But moving forward, will that change? We think it will.

• 16:58Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're going to literally price the player contracts in Bitcoin, which, again, if the players want to get paid upfront, let's use an easy example, right? If I get paid, I don't know, let's, I'm gonna say that you guys pay your players really well. So let's say you pay them 10 Bitcoin a year.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Well, we are the Yankees, aren't we, as you said?

• 17:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Yankees, of course. Hey, you gotta have the biggest checkbook. Let's go. Come on. If you're a player for the Perth Heat, just send me a little bit of my management fee for getting better salaries here. No, so if you pay them 10 Bitcoin per year and you write that into the contract, if Bitcoin ends up being, you know, where I think most of us here think it's gonna go in terms of much higher from a US dollar or AUD exchange rate, you actually come out on the other end of this. Whereas if the players say upfront, hey, give it to me for a discount today upfront, then they come out in front and you pay them less because it's in today's dollars terms. So how do you guys think about the balance between if you start to price the contracts in Bitcoin, like, the team could actually come out on the, on the short end of that stick rather than, uh, kind of the better end?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is, this is the ongoing thing, right? At the moment, uh, you know, everybody probably listening to this show knows it's not the best unit of account at the moment, just because of, uh, the volatility that we've seen, the volatility being up into the right. Um, so at the moment, yeah, it doesn't make sense to use as a unit of account, but in the future, you know, it's just a matter of blocks before this thing takes over, right? And as I said to Steve early on in our talks about what, how this was going to look, this isn't a negotiation anymore, right? Uh, this is taking over. Uh, it's just a matter of blocks. Uh, that time will come. Um, how long it's gonna be, you know, it could be, uh, 10, 20 years off into the future, but that is the future. And we're, we're able to see it now on the frontline because we've done this. Like, we're having those conversations that weren't happening before, um, that aren't happening at other organizations. Um, and hopefully that will allow us to be nimble on our feet and to be quick and to recognize, okay, where are the strengths, where are the weaknesses, where

• 18:46Speaker 03

  are the efficiencies that we can capitalize on to be a better organization? So, like you say, at the moment, uh, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to price those things, um, on either side of the conversation. But, you know, it's good that you see people asking for it. It's good that you see people interested in it. Um, it means I've done my job that, uh, that the players are starting to recognize that they, it actually improves their performance, right? This changes sports. Uh, we've talked about it, uh, on a bunch of, um, other media. It's like this changes sports for the better. This is not just an announcement about the baseball team, right? Like Steve said, we could have done something, uh, NFT related fan token. We could have just done a cash grab for ourselves. This is really, uh, changing sports and that's what excites me about it, right? Um, not so much the baseball stuff, but it's the excitement of changing sports forever, uh, by adopting a Bitcoin standard. We hope a lot of teams follow up, uh, in our footsteps and we know that that's the case, right? It's, it's gonna happen eventually. Um, we've-

• 19:32Speaker 03

  You know, the game has sort of been settled. Now it's just a matter of time before Bitcoin takes over.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  John, what other questions you got?

• 19:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, first of all, congratulations on doing this. It's a big step. Obviously, the first pro team to do something like this. So now that you guys are the first person, how are you looking at the balance sheet of your team? Is it all in Bitcoin? Like, what is the allocation that you guys have used?

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, of course, there are going to be fiat bills. Like, there still are providers to the team that operate in fiat. They're going to want to get paid. But it's basically from the financial side of the things. It's stuff as much of the excess capital that we can into Bitcoin. Ride that up from an organizational point of view to take advantage of it. Like Steve said, the way that it's going to change sports is that we now have this number go up technology that to be able to fund the team in perpetuity, depending on the amount of Bitcoin that we huddle on the balance sheet. Like, that changes the way that the entire organization acts from the top down. That also affects, you know, Bitcoin trickles into the players' lives. They understand very well, you know, professional athletes are probably the easiest people to orange pill, right? They understand low time preference. They understand that if they want to become better, they themselves have to put the energy in. No one else can do it for them.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  They understand that's how Bitcoin works. They understand sacrifice and, you know, delaying gratification and holding those things out. So it's just a matter of time to get it through the system. And on that balance sheet side of things, it's huddle as much as you can. It's sell as much stuff as you can in Bitcoin to people that want to support the network. You know, there's not a whole big incentive to go out there and buy things in Bitcoin, but we've seen an amazing response from around the world of people that did want to support the team and did realize, okay, this is good because we can now, like I said before, sports operates as an example to those around us. That's why professional sports has utility in the first place. That's the value that it brings to the community is it shows you all the things that Bitcoin can bring to your life and make it better, right? All those things that we know and talk about all the time. That's exactly what sports are supposed to reinforce in the community. That's why they exist in the first place.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  That's why you go to the game is to see those things and it acts as a teaching and inspirational moment. And doing, having Bitcoin on the balance sheet, operating with the Bitcoin standard, paying players in Bitcoin, it is going from that world where everything is marginally degrading to a world where everything is marginally increasing and that one switch can change. We've seen it around the organization, just the smiles on people's faces, the level of interest, the level of intrigue from the top down. The organization has completely pivoted with this announcement and it's been a really exciting time and we're looking forward to the future.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Greg, what questions you have?

• 21:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, first and foremost, a pretty kudos to you guys for taking a leap of faith and getting into involved into doing something like this and obviously making a name for yourselves and you're obviously very articulate about the space. So great educators about it. But my, my question for you, though, is when I, when I talk with institutions, organizations and leagues here in the United States about utilizing Bitcoin and NFTs into it, I'm not trying to chill a shitcoin here or Ethereum or Solana or anything like that. So please don't get me wrong here. But one of the, one of the things I really see with NFTs for organizations and brands and leagues like what you're doing there with the Heat is what NFTs could do for e-ticketing and ticketing and then community building. So just really curious, have you've looked at that at all in order to utilize

• 22:37Speaker 06

  that kind of tech for your sports league and for your brand?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Not so much at the moment. You know, this is, this is a sort of a walk before you run scenario. It's like, what can we do right now to get the most leverage out of the Bitcoin network? Again, like from just the plugging in. Well, we immediately get so many wins from an organizational point of view, get so many wins from a team point of view of like making the players happier, healthier, wealthier, all by adopting the standard that that has become sort of first order of this is what we need to take care of these things we need to look after. And these are the, that's the easy win, right? The plugin, receive all the benefits. You know, pretty much if we didn't announce it, we could have just done it. And it's, it's as easy as signing up for an email, basically. That's all we had to do as an organization, which is one of the things we thought in the lead up to that. Well, this is going to be the really hard part. Like this is going to be the difficult part is how do we integrate with all the systems, accounts, the payroll. This is going

• 23:25Speaker 03

  to be complicated. And lo and behold, that was the easiest part. Like the hardest part was coming up with a decision of doing the due diligence on the backend. It's like, again, like Steve said, how are, is this, why hasn't anyone else done this? This seems like the perfect play. If it makes sense for the individual, it makes sense for the organization. Why, why are we the ones coming up with this? And lo and behold, well, it just takes somebody to be the first one. And like with Micro Strategy, you're going to see that in 12 months' time, you should see the success pay off and you'll see a host of other teams follow behind. And again, it's not so much that the NFT for the ticket thing is completely out the window. But at the moment, it's focusing on how can we get the most bang for the amount of energy we're putting in? And what's the, what's the return look like on that? And at the moment, it's Bitcoin.

• 24:07Anthony Pompliano?

  The piece to me also that we didn't talk about is like, what has been the response from fans or people who are already attendees of games, etc. Like, if you're saying, hey, we're gonna accept Bitcoin, I'm assuming that in the beginning, you're not gonna say only Bitcoin, you're gonna say that you'll kind of accept multiple currencies, and then maybe over time, you'll go to only Bitcoin, or maybe you won't. But what has been the fan response, and kind of how do you guys look at attendees, and how this may impact either positively or negatively their experience inside of the stadium?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Across the whole organization, it's been positive. So, we'll get a great test of how it will work inside the ballpark this Saturday night. So, we're hosting a movie night at the ballpark, and that'd be the first time that concession stands will be able to accept Bitcoin. So, we appreciate that it's a gradual rollout over a period of time, and our fans have been really intelligent and understanding that as well. So, we certainly have had inquiries and questions and emails, and people come to the ballpark asking, can they still purchase in fiat? How will that work? What will it look like? When you explain to them the process and how simple it is, and that initially it will be an option, you can see that they're comfortable with it. But overall, as Patrick said, it's been the look of relief on everyone's face that's probably surprised us the most when we've

• 25:22Speaker 02

  taken this position. It's almost like everyone has been circling around Bitcoin, investigating it, researching it, thinking, do we get involved? And I know you had Nat Brunel a couple of days ago on the show, and she said that she's finding our people wanting to purchase $100, $200. It's like we're almost targeting that market in terms of the fan space. There's been so many people investigating Bitcoin, and should they take that step? But now that the sports organization, the Perth Heat, have taken the approach of operating on a Bitcoin standard, it's that relief of, yes, what we've been reading makes sense, we would now like to dip our toe in the water. We're so thankful that Perth Heat, as an organization, has taken that first step in showing the way forward. So, so far, so good. I'm really excited

• 26:04Speaker 02

  about what's gonna happen at the ballpark this Saturday night, and then moving into our games in the early part of 2022.

• 26:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, before I let you guys go, I got a pitch for you. My brother John throws a nasty slider. What are the odds that we get him on the mound for a game?

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Well, we know, we know he's the most athletic pomp brother of all. So he claims to be so. Look, this is the great thing about what we can do now. Probably we're so different to the NBA or the NFL. We don't really have any rules and we are like, you know, the wild, wild west over here. So if Mayor Suarez wants to bring the team over to Miami, how about we get the pomp brothers out there to throw the ceremonial first pitch and then we'll actually test who has the best arm out of the three of you.

• 26:48Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no. See, what would happen is we would have John go on the mound for the opposing team. I'd step up to the plate and I hit a bomb off of them. We get it on camera. So then I could play that on repeat forever.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  John might hit me with a knuckleball.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  And you can, and you can just see that, can't you? Pomp to pomp. He hits, he scores. And as you're running the bases, this is the great thing about what we're doing now. The Twitter world and the Bitcoin world will be able to tip you pomp. So as you're getting the first base, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, second base, ding, ding, more, more, more, more, more. By the time you get to home plate, who knows what's in your Twitter account through the tipping system.

• 27:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Dingers and satoshis.

• 27:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  We've got so many things that we can do. So which is cool.

• 27:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Where, where can we send people to find out more about this or maybe even more importantly, how can people help you guys? Like what, what do you guys need help with that folks who are watching this can, can kind of pitch in?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  I certainly look, the biggest help is yeah, in terms of partnerships. So we, we would love to speak to more Bitcoin minded companies and moving forward with those in accepting payments in Bitcoin. Obviously the fan can purchase our merchandise, bitcoinperthheat.com. And then obviously we've got tipping as well, which so as you can see now on screen, we've got the black jersey, we've got the white jersey, we've got, you know, different caps across the range. And already the, the response we've had worldwide has been, has been quite overwhelming. So any, any, any support across all, all the platforms would be great. We've got a couple of jerseys coming your, your way. So we look forward to seeing, you know, the three of you are wearing them on the, on the best business show and, and promoting the Perth Heat and this becoming your baseball team in Australia.

• 28:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I'm dropping the link to the merchandise store in the chat, bitcoinperthheat.com. I'm shocked nobody had that URL already. So you guys, you guys had a little advantage there.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  I'm gonna be wearing my jersey for sure.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  When does the season start?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  We'll start playing games in late January, early February. So really looking forward to the start of

• 28:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it cold there then?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  No, it's perfect. It's summer. It's gonna be thirty five degrees.

• 28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  It's always summer in Miami, so I gotta ask other people about the the seasons, but maybe we'll go to a game. Looking for a reason to visit. To go to Australia? Yeah, one of our brothers went to Australia one time and he came back with, what's the aborigine, like the tube that they blow in for the music?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Didgeridoo.

• 29:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, didgeridoo. Yeah, he came back and he was hitting a didgeridoo. We were like, what is that? He was like fifteen. He came back with that thing and he wouldn't stop blowing it and running. What was he eating? It was like not Nutella, but it was like. What's the food?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Oh, Vegemite.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Vegemite.

• 29:26Anthony Pompliano?

  We thought we were gonna lose him to Down Under for a little bit there.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Make your way to Perth and you're on the mound.

• 29:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Find an Aussie wife down there.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  We'll have the pump brothers on the mound. So ceremonial first pitch, all three of you lined up at the same time.

• 29:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's do it. Bring the speed gun out for me.

• 29:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Boy might hit ninety, sign a contract on the spot if you're paying Bitcoin.

• 29:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Five years up front. I don't know why you guys try to be pitchers. I'm trying to just be the designated hitter. They got the best job on the whole squad. You only play once every few days. You get paid a lot of money. Yeah, your arm hurts though. Your arm hurts. You got all the pressure. If you're the designated hitter, you just go up and swing. You could strike out seven out of ten times. As long as you hit three home runs, you're in the Hall of Fame. You enjoy playing every day, man. I'm gonna I'm gonna go every four to five.

• 30:16Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Listen, thank you guys so much for for coming on. Where what are your guys Twitter accounts? So we can send people to to follow you guys.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Okay, so in terms of Twitter, it's at Perth Heat. Yeah, for the the club account, my personal one is at at Steve Nelkovski and and Patrick has, I think it's at, is it pleb twenty one, Patrick?

• 30:35Speaker 03

  And it's CBO underscore twenty one, right? Just created just for the questions about.

• 30:39Anthony Pompliano?

  CBO?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, CBO underscore twenty one.

• 30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  New title in there. I like it. Listen, the I still I still can't get over the chief Bitcoin officer. If that becomes a thing, Patrick, you get the.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Always gonna be a thing. Don't worry about that.

• 30:55Anthony Pompliano?

  He said that's definitely a thing. All right, fellas. Listen, thank you guys so much. This is super cool. So I appreciate you guys taking the time to to come on here and and hopefully more people will will follow your lead, but we'll definitely have to bring you back to to get an update how it goes once you guys get into the season.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  Awesome. Thanks for having us.

• 31:09Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, bye, guys.