#500: Jonathan Chester on Being Paid in Bitcoin

Jonathan Chester is the cofounder and CEO of Bitwage, one of the oldest bitcoin businesses helping employers pay their employees in bitcoin. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin payroll, dollar cost averaging, remote work, stablecoins, and why employees are so excited to receive bitcoin as compensation. ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.io/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today. ======================= With over 5 Million users, Crypto.com is the easiest way to buy, and sell over 90 cryptocurrencies. Download the app at Crypto.com and get $25 with my code: POMP. When it’s time to spend your crypto, nothing beats the Crypto.com Visa Card, which pays you up to 8% back instantly, with no annual, or monthly fees to worry about! Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App today using the code “POMP” ======================= Did you know only 1% of day traders actually turn a profit? So why are so many of us mistaking picking stocks for serious investing? You can’t control the markets, but you can control your risks. So how do billionaire investors control their risk? They invest in blue-chip art. If that sounds unusual to you, you’re not alone. But the ultra-wealthy have been investing in art for centuries. And since 2000, art has outperformed the S&P by an incredible 180%. Just a few years ago, a single work sold for $450 million! Imagine... Being able to invest in the very same paintings as millionaires and billionaires, at a fraction of the cost. Masterworks.io is an exclusive platform that makes it as easy as trading stocks online. And the best part is: you don’t need to know anything about art. Their experts will create a custom portfolio to meet your investment needs. With Masterworks.io you don’t have to choose between big risks and big returns. Sign up today, select POMP and you can skip the 70,000 waitlist to get first dibs. Just go to www.masterworks.io and use code POMP. =======================

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

• 0:00Anthony 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. Let's kick this thing off. Jonathan Chester is the co-founder and CEO of Bitwage, one of the oldest Bitcoin businesses, helping employers pay their employees in Bitcoin. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin payroll, dollar cost averaging, remote work, stable coins, and why employees are so excited to receive Bitcoin as compensation. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jonathan, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Exodus. Exodus is the leading, the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It's supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices, so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive Charts lets you view an asset's price history and your portfolio's performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Treasure Hardware Wallet, making advanced security easy for everyone. You can visit exodus.com for your free download, or search Exodus on the App Store or the Play Store. Again, Exodus, leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. Go use their new wallet at exodus.com, or search Exodus on the App

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Store or the Play Store. Next up is crypto.com. With over 5 million users, crypto.com is the easiest way to buy and sell over 90 cryptocurrencies. You can download their crypto.com app and get $25 with my code Pomp. When it's time to spend your crypto, nothing beats the crypto.com Visa Card, which pays you up to 8% back instantly, and comes with perks like rebates on Netflix, Spotify, or Amazon Prime. And along with airport lounge access for you and a guest at hundreds of airports around the world, of course, the crypto.com Visa Card gives you all of this with no annual or monthly fees to worry about. Get 25 bucks when you download the crypto.com app today using the code Pomp, and the link is in the description. Again, crypto.com, use code POMP.

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Lastly is Masterworks. Monetary and fiscal measures by governments globally are inflating asset prices. Sophisticated investors are putting a portion of their portfolio in real assets to hedge against future inflation. Preserving your net worth is as hard as it's ever been, but that's where masterworks.io comes in. Masterworks.io lets you invest in multimillion dollar paintings by artists like Banksy and Basque. Not only does art hedge against the markets, it can also outperform them. According to Citi, contemporary art returned 13.6% per year over the last 25 years compared to 9% for the S and P 500. The problem is that most investment grade paintings cost upwards of $1 million, making the asset class reserved for the top 1%. But no longer.

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Masterworks.io is making art investing accessible to everyone, regardless of your accreditation status. If you're looking to diversify outside of the stock market, contemporary art has the lowest correlation to all 10 major asset classes. The best part, you don't need to know anything about art to invest. Masterworks has experts on hand that will create a custom portfolio to meet your investment needs. To learn more, go to masterworks.io and use promo code POMP. That's masterworks.io promo code POMP. You can see important information at masterworks.io/discclaimer as well. Go check them out, masterworks.io and use promo code POMP. All right, let's get into this episode with Jonathan. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by POMP or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by POMP as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:03Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Jonathan here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, happy to be here.

• 4:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's jump right into your background. Kind of how did you get started in the technology world and what did you do before BitWage?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So I started my work life in working sales at Oracle. And, you know, it was not really that interesting of an experience. I would say it was more of a soul-draining experience being there. So I spent a lot of my time learning about new technologies. And this is, uh, this is back in 2013. And I came across a TED Talk about the future of money. And Bitcoin was maybe half to a third of that, of that piece. And I found it very fascinating. You know, concepts like being your own bank and self-sovereignty, concepts like more efficient international transfers

• 4:58Speaker 02

  and banking the unbanked, right? These, these were the, the points that I talked about and I was excited. So I went deep down the rabbit hole. About a month later, I came out this obsessed Bitcoin guy, right? And in 2013, an obsessed Bitcoin guy is kind of a weird awkward thing to be, right? So being known as this guy, someone connected me to another obsessed Bitcoin guy who's at the tech side, uh, who's working on the tech side at Oracle. And we got together and we started BitWedge. So, so how we came up with the concept is we were looking at what existed in 2013. And, and what you gotta remember

• 5:38Speaker 02

  is Ethereum didn't exist when we were first thinking about this. The white paper came out a little bit after. And so the main thing to think about is what can we do with Bitcoin? Bitcoin is gonna be the future of money. What doesn't exist, that will have to exist. And what existed back then were exchanges, merchant processors, wallets. But there was really no system for getting money from merchants back to their employees or freelancers or even vendors. Basically merchants doing their dispersments. And so we decided, let's be the first to do this.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  And that if this didn't exist, there would actually be no way for Bitcoin to exist within its own financial loop. Right? Because there would have to be a cash out. So this, this was our way to close the financial loop and have Bitcoin essentially be able to live with, in its own ecosystem. So we did that. We launched in 2014.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  In July of 2014. My partner John and I quit our jobs about a month before that. And our first product was a company product. Companies would sign up and invite their workers and pay their employees through us. And you might realize that 2014 wasn't really a great time to go after companies for this. This was just after a bubble crash, right? I think it crashed from like a thousand dollars to $400 during this time period. Trying to convince any company that this is a good idea, that Bitcoin is not just for hackers and drug dealers was a pretty big challenge. And that caused us to create our second product,

• 7:27Speaker 02

  which is essentially a way to get a direct deposit account in the US, in the EU, or the UK. And then you can get paid from any company that's paying you, essentially globally into those bank accounts, and then you get paid in crypto. So now we have both of those two products, which actually are each now worth about 50% of our business, both of them. And there's two different use cases that are going on. One is the person who wants to get a percentage of their wage in Bitcoin, 5, 10, 15%, essentially dollar cost averaging. And then there are the people who are actually using this to get their wages across borders.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  So we have a lot of people who are getting paid in like East Asia, in South America, in India, these sort of places, who sign up with us and then they actually get their entire wage through our system and they'll get it in Bitcoin or as a local deposit into their bank account or something like that. And that's the way it should be.

• 8:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about those two different products, obviously, the companies is pretty well understood. Go a little bit deeper on why an individual would want to get paid in Bitcoin, other than just price speculation, right? In terms of, there's plenty of people who say, hey, this is cool. I'm going to hold, you know, 1% of my assets in Bitcoin, maybe it goes up a lot, or maybe it goes to zero. That's just pure speculation. But then it seems like there's people who actually are doing this from a store of value standpoint, or a efficiency standpoint, or censorship resistance standpoint. So talk a little bit about some of those use cases as to why people want to do this.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. And I think in the US, that particular use case of the store of value is like, I want, I'm actually thinking about this as my savings account, right? The cash supply of dollars increased 25% last year, but my dollars didn't increase 25% last year, which means they're worth less. So I need to now have something else to store my value, right? So that is one use case for this. Another, another big use case is not just looking at it from the perspective of dollars, but from other local currencies, right? So you can, you can be in like Brazil, or Argentina, or, you know, some other country in Latin America,

• 9:47Speaker 02

  and you realize that your inflation is, you know, been skyrocketing since the beginning of COVID, or even beforehand, right? Or maybe there is a terrible local economic situation. Your president got caught for corruption. You just don't believe in your government, and you don't believe that your currency can, can hold its value. And these people are actually opting to get their, their salaries completely outside of the local, their local currencies. So these people will get Bitcoin, especially if they're comfortable with it. I mean, these people know about Bitcoin. You're not getting a newcomer to get their entire wage in Bitcoin. But then you also get people who are getting their wages in stablecoins as well.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  And this is kind of like a stepping stone for these people because they're learning about private, private-public key cryptography, but they're not dealing with the volatility of Bitcoin. So it's sort of their stepping stone, they're doing it, they're getting away from the local volatility on their own currencies as well. And then finally, you have the people in these countries where basically what happens in these countries is because people don't believe in their local currency, the price of Bitcoin gets a premium when you're trading to the, to the local currency. And that premium doesn't get arbitrage out because these countries will often have capital controls that restrict your ability to transfer your local currency

• 11:12Speaker 02

  into dollars. So this premium exists because people understand the value of Bitcoin. But, but what this does is for our customers is they actually get to sell against that premium because they will, for instance, export services to a US company, they'll get the US price in Bitcoin, and then they'll, they'll, they'll sell it in the other country, they'll get that premium. And we can handle that for them so that they don't, they don't have to, to, to deal with any of that stuff. And in that case, the reason why they're doing this is so they can get, you know, a, a same-day transfer instead of a multi-day transfer from, from the US into their bank account, and they can get access to better rates because of the, the Bitcoin premium that exists in those countries.

• 11:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep, it makes a, a ton of sense. When you think through the company side, talk about some of the companies that are starting to adopt this and kind of how it's going for them.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. So I'd say that in the beginning of 2020, what we really saw were more use cases either for cryptocurrency companies coming on or companies that are doing the cross-border. And, and actually, you know, it's interesting because even during the bear market, there were companies doing the cross-border, coming onto our platform, maybe paying like Filipinos and Indians or things like that. But now what we're seeing in bull Market is that companies are are realizing what I was saying before, which is employees should have an ability

• 12:44Speaker 02

  to get paid in a way where they're saving their wealth instead of losing their wealth slowly over time by holding dollars. So companies are coming in and they're saying, we need a, we need a solution to help us do that. We are seeing companies, mostly like startup tech companies, um, like for instance, recently we had Sequoia come up, there was Big Nose, um, that were, that were doing this. This Sequoia was actually, um, a cloud management company with hundreds of employees coming on. So we have a lot of interesting clients from this side, but then we're also seeing really big names coming in, looking for Bitcoin payroll as a solution.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  You have Twitter, you have the Miami government that are both publicly talking about this, uh, about offering it as a solution and it, and it's really coming down to the idea that people should have a way, uh, and an option to get paid in a deflationary currency where they can store their wealth forever and companies want to.

• 13:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when these companies are talking about this, are they talking about, uh, whether they're using your platform or not, uh, paying a hundred percent of the employee's salary in Bitcoin? Is it a percentage? Is it the employee's choice? How, how do you see them kind of adopting it?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the ability to get a hundred percent of your, your wage in Bitcoin, I think that not very many people want to do that. It's pretty scary. I mean, even I, I don't get a hundred percent of my wage in, in Bitcoin. I, I, I still do dollars, but um, I think that it's the option to do, you know, five, 10, 15, 20%. And usually it's the employee's option. So on our system, the way that it works is you can go in and you can change your percentage between any payroll at any point that you want, between dollars, uh, Bitcoin, or maybe stable coins or some other cryptocurrency, right? So you can choose that percentage and this, that's what's being offered for the company. They don't want to actually.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Touch Bitcoin at all. Usually they they they uh they there there can sometimes be, you know, tax issues uh involved in like buying a Bitcoin and then sending it off almost immediately. And so we we handle that process for them. They are funding us in dollars and then we are paying uh their employees in Bitcoin. There are cases where they do fund it in in Bitcoin. But the majority cases, I'm a company, my admin doesn't know anything about Bitcoin. I don't want them to like accidentally lose Bitcoin. Uh so let's have a service where we just send dollars and then the employees choose how they want to get their their paycheck.

• 15:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so when we think through uh kind of the employer receiving Bitcoin, it's essentially dollar cost averaging. Right? They they're just kind of over time receiving it. Talk a little bit about how much, are you guys educating people on that? Is that just something that people naturally understand? Is that a selling point to people to take their part of their salary in Bitcoin? Like, how does dollar cost averaging play into this?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so dollar cost averaging is a very important concept. We we actually created a dollar cost averaging calculator called BitcoinDollarCostAverage.com to to help edu- educate people about this, right? And and the and the general concept is that uh as long as what you're investing in is going to trend upwards, um you don't have to worry about the short term volatility cycles that are occurring when you make the investment. Because instead of doing one bulk purchase, you do small ones over time. So a great example I'd like to think about, uh about a month ago, I was using this calculator. And I wanted to see what would happen if I put $250 every paycheck, which was twice a month, starting from the height of the 2017 bubble, right?

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Um and what would have happened is I I would have invested a total of eighteen and a half thousand dollars into Bitcoin and I would have gotten two and a half Bitcoin by that time. But if I had taken all that money and buy at the very top of the 2017 bubble, I would have gotten less than one Bitcoin, right? So this is, this is, you know, the, the concept of if you're afraid that you're about to buy at the very top, um, dollar cost averaging essentially removes the risk. Obviously, if you're buying at the very bottom, it's better than dollar cost averaging, but no one knows these things. No one knows of the top, no one knows the bottom. Uh, I don't know these things. So if you want to get in and get long-term exposure, but you don't want to worry,

• 17:18Speaker 02

  is it the top, is it the bottom? Dollar cost averaging is the way to go. And getting your paycheck in Bitcoin is essentially the easiest way to do that. Right? Cause you're, you're, you're circumventing the process of having to essentially get dollars first before doing that.

• 17:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. I completely agree. Um, as you think through, uh, kind of the, you know, just massive surge of interest in this, um, how much of it has to do with COVID and the move to remote work, uh, versus this was just gonna happen and it's less about, uh, COVID and remote work?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so where BitWage stands, we, we are, I, I see ourselves as in the middle of, of the two sections of remote work and cryptocurrency. Right? Because not only do we have this dollar cost average use case, but we have this international use case where people are getting paid internationally, doing work for US, EU, UK companies. And the, that whole, that whole remote work, uh, growth is really bringing that sector up. Additionally, we have the cryptocurrency sector. And what in my opinion is happening in the cryptocurrency sector is everything is being lifted by Bitcoin and Bitcoin is being lifted by inflation. Right? The, the dollar inflation, I was talking about this earlier.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  If, if you look at, at what happened in, in 2020, um, the, the monetary supply increased by 25%. If you look at how much real estate increased, I think it was, uh, around 15%. If you look at how much stock increased by the beginning of the year, it was, uh, it was in general, I think. S and P grew maybe, maybe thirty percent. So it's, it's pretty close to the, the number of cash that was, that was, that, that, that was raised in that time period. And, and that's where, where cash has been going. It hasn't been going into everyone's pockets. It's been, and it hasn't been causing,

• 19:14Speaker 02

  you know, food to rise substantially, the price of food to rise substantially, but it's been causing all real assets to rise substantially. And that's causing, you know, the, the, the movement in Bitcoin. So both of these two things, COVID was the catalyst for both of these two things, the remote work and the cryptocurrency industry. And that's why Bitcoin payroll is now really so, so hot because you have the interest in crypto and the understanding to essentially need to hedge against your, your dollar holdings, but also because there's the growth in remote work, this use case, this cross-border use case is, is very valuable, right? Because we all know that a Bitcoin transaction is not entirely cheap.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  If you're trying to buy coffee with Bitcoin, it's, it's really not that easy to do. Right now, I think you're paying like ten dollars for that transaction. But when you're talking about a paycheck, you know, maybe it's, it's five thousand dollars or it's, you know, something like that, you get an entire paycheck across borders in Bitcoin, that, that transaction cost is, is actually relatively low. And, um, you know, the way that we do the system, we're batching it all. We're doing, we're, we're doing batches of the transactions. So the, the cost is even, is even, is even lower to do, you know, a whole batch of Bitcoin transactions to everyone's paychecks around the world. So it makes sense to do this. The, the cost savings is there. It's real. It's relevant.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  And it's a real use case for, for Bitcoin.

• 20:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. When, when you think through, um, kind of just the adoption of this, what numbers can you share with us in terms of whether it's the number of companies, the number of individuals, the amount that's being paid out, just any numbers that you can share with us so people can wrap their head around how popular this is?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we've done about a hundred million dollars in, in, in payrolls. We have fifty thousand registered users on the platform. We have people in over a hundred different countries who are getting paid. What we saw from the beginning of COVID, um, so in the beginning of COVID, we saw 25% dip in our, in our volumes, which actually made sense because people stopped getting paid during that time. Everyone was freaking out, didn't know what was happening. But since that bottom, we, we've actually grown more than 50%. Uh, and it's, uh, the, the, the, the growth line is looking really spectacular right now.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  And, um, I, I think that this, this, this trend will just continue because of this COVID catalyst for remote work and the cryptocurrency industry.

• 21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I tend to agree with you. Uh, one of the, uh, the arguments that people will make is like, why do we have to do this with Bitcoin? Why don't we just do it with stable coins? Uh, do you guys support just Bitcoin? Do you support other crypto assets? And then how do you think through the pros and cons of Bitcoin versus any other crypto asset?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So we, we have, we have Bitcoin, we have stable coins, uh, and we have, uh, we have some other crypto. And if you look about, think about like, what are the, how, how, how we're actually using these things? So in the U S, we actually do see people diversifying from, from Bitcoin into other cryptocurrencies. On the cross border, you pretty much only see people doing stable coins or Bitcoin. You don't see people diversifying in their cryptocurrencies so much. Um, and, uh, so when they, when they're getting paid in, in stable coins, again, the idea is they are being self-sovereign to a degree, um, with, with owning the coins, although maybe the peg is not a totally self-sovereign concept.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  But, uh, they have more control of their money than they would otherwise. Um, but, uh, they don't deal with the volatility of Bitcoin, which is like the stepping stone for people, because a lot of people, they still want dollars. A lot of people in countries around the world still want dollars and it gives them access to this. Um, but When we are moving money from one country to another and then we're depositing local currency into someone's bank account, we often are using Bitcoin and not stable coins or some other cryptocurrency to do that. People think, oh, why Bitcoin is slower or more expensive. But actually Bitcoin is not that slow and it's not that expensive. And the reality is that it has the network effect of being really, really liquid.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  So if I wanted to go and sell a million dollars worth of Bitcoin into a particular country, I can easily do that. And it's not necessarily possible to do that with other coins, with stable coins all at once, without kind of crashing local prices and getting bad rates. So that's why we use Bitcoin behind the scenes because of that network effect that it has and the liquidity that it has.

• 24:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what do you see in terms of stable coins versus Bitcoin, like the adoption? Like, what do people want and kind of how do you see that breaking out?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I always think of stable coins as a stepping stone to Bitcoin because Bitcoin has two big barriers to entry. The first is volatility, right? And there's a lot of focus on that. But the part that isn't that much focus is the public-private key cryptography. Right? How do you deal with that? How do you learn about that? I mean, if you're an average person trying to get Bitcoin, you've never even known about this concept before, right? And it's important for people to know because that is the true value of Bitcoin is owning your own money. And thus you have to understand how to protect your private keys.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  And what stable coins do is they take away one of those barriers to entry while introducing the other. So it becomes an easy way for people to enter the space, right? I know about dollars. If I'm in Zimbabwe or Venezuela, I believe that dollars is more stable than my local currency. So I would love to get access to dollars. That I could use anywhere.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  And so, uh, stablecoin, so then they want stablecoins and then they take those stablecoins and they, they say, okay, how do I actually hold it? How do I actually use it? They learn about wa- you know, wallets and private keys and public keys and all this stuff. And now they know. And so the next step is basically when stablecoins stop being so stable because the dollar or some other, you know, major world reserve currency stops looking so stable. And when that happens, then it's a very easy switch to go from a stablecoin to Bitcoin. So I think that stablecoins are not going anywhere. I think they have a very important role to what,

• 26:01Speaker 02

  what's, what's going to happen uh, around the world because not everyone is ready to get a hundred percent of their wage in Bitcoin. Let's just be real. So, uh, but, but people, people, you know, a lot of people are ready to get a hundred percent of their wage in, in, in dollars. And this sort of gives people access to that. And um, at some point, at some point, there will, there will eventually be the move to, to get into Bitcoin from there.

• 26:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Uh, before I let you go, I was asking everyone the same three questions. And then when we finish up, uh, you'll get to ask me one question. Uh, the first question is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  The most important book that I ever read?

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Huh. Most important one.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Most important one. Um, I, I really liked, I really liked a, a book by Talal Calvino called Ifana Winners Night. Uh, i- i- if, if, um,

• 26:58Speaker 02

  uh, oh man, I actually can't remember the, the, the name of it off the top of my head. If, if, uh, let me look this. It, uh, but Calvino, most modernist writer, um, uh, Calvino.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  If on a winter's night a traveler, that's what it is. If on a winter's night a traveler. And so I read, I read this, you know, like a decade ago, this book. And it's basically a book about the journey to, to find the end of stories. Right? And, and it, it, it has two parts to it, like a person who is looking for the story and then the story itself. And right when it comes to the climax, it disappears. And it's this, this ending search to try to, to, to try to find meaning in the end of things. And it sort of teaches you to appreciate the, the journey.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  And not so much, you know, the, the end. So.

• 28:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I love that. It, it makes me, uh, it, it makes me remember, um, kind of, uh, the enjoyment is in the process. Right? Not the final result, uh, which I think that the greats always, always align on. So that's a great recommendation. Second question is more personal, sleep schedule. I used to sleep like five or six hours, but our friends over at Eight Sleep had me sleeping on this completely cold, uh, kind of thermo-regulated bed. It is fantastic. I sleep like a little baby now and get like eight or nine hours. It's completely changed my life. What's your sleep schedule and how has that evolved over time?

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I started off doing six hours. At some point, at some point, at some point in college, I, I switched to a nine hour schedule. And what that ended up making me do was I, I, I was so, so efficient in learning that two days before all my finals, I didn't need to study anymore because I knew everything. And ever since then, that's, that's what I've been striving for is, is eight, eight to nine hours of sleep. And I, I, I tried to be very rigid about it. Right now, during, during all the chaos that's happening, it, uh, you know, uh, in crypto and, and at BitWage, it's, it's hard for me to find the time to, to do that.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  But, um, when I have the time, um, I'm always trying to get eight to nine hours because then I'm at full brain capacity for the next day. And I always feel better.

• 29:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I am a full convert to the sleep religion. I keep saying that because it is definitely true. Last question is more fun. Aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  I believe that the chances of there not being aliens is basically a non-zero.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Because, you know, the universe is so big, how can it be possible that this event of creating life only happened once? I think it's not. It's not possible. Have we ever had contact with alien life? That I don't know. I'm usually skeptical when I hear about people who think that we have had contact with aliens.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I completely agree there, my friend. Before you get to asking one question to finish this up, where can people go and find BitWage if they want to use it either as a company or as a employee getting paid?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can go to www.BitWage.com. You can follow us on Twitter at @BitWage. You can also follow me on Twitter at @JohnChest or me on Clubhouse at @JonathanChester.

• 30:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh, we're getting the Clubhouse plugs now. You're the first person to plug the Clubhouse on the podcast. I like it. I like it. What one question do you have for me to finish up?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  What question do I have for you?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  I wish you had told me. I was gonna have to come up with a question before so I could come up with something fun. What's your favorite animal?

• 31:13Anthony Pompliano?

  My favorite animal?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  And why?

• 31:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Probably silverback gorilla, just because ain't nobody fucking with him.

• 31:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know. Like, I feel like I'm cool with a lot of animals, but the silverback gorilla just seems like, you know, he's one of those that just chills, nobody messes with, and if anyone does, they get reminded quickly as to why they shouldn't mess with them.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Nice. Awesome.

• 31:39Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. I'm a big, big fan of what you guys are building and think that obviously everyone should take some portion of their salary in Bitcoin. You guys are empowering people to do that. So keep up the great work, and we'll definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.