Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and The LODE Project With Nicholas Prouten

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, yeah, I mean, global currency that’s a, it’s a tough, it’s a tough one to crack, right because it an extent requires people. It requires people, I shouldn’t say people, it requires governments to want that to happen. And I think a great example of this is when Facebook tried to launch Libra a couple years back.

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Ezekiel Williams I like to welcome everyone to another episode of the Let’s Gather Podcast. I’m your host Zeke. In this episode I have Nikolas to speak about blockchain, cryptocurrencies and the LODE Project. I like to give a content warning for any strong language used in this episode. And I hope you have a nice day and enjoy the show. 

Ezekiel Williams  Record. So thank you for joining the podcast.

Nicholas Prouten: Sorry, I missed that. Can you start from the top?

Ezekiel Williams So the to one, Father, Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Nicholas Prouten: Hey, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Ezekiel Williams No problem. Thank you for being interested. So So the first question I always like to ask is what would your origin story be and how it’s like to represent it? So they did like a story or book.

Nicholas Prouten: Absolutely. My origin story is, you know, way back in 1991, I was born in Winnipeg, Canada. And it actually spent the first few years of my life being raised in California on the border of Compton and gradually made up my way through the West Coast. Little did I know at that time that I would have the opportunity to work in one of the most exciting emerging technologies in human history. In flashforward, 2021. I’ve been working for almost half a decade now in the blockchain arena. And the arena hasn’t been around that long. So anybody that says they’ve been in blockchain for 2030 years is lying to you because the technology didn’t exist yet. But I’ve been I’ve been in the space for a very long time now. And I work as a COO, was the Chief Operating Officer for a team of 70 people that is producing stabilized crypto currencies, so currencies that are backed by silver and gold, kind of like the gold standard in the United States dollar used to be and bringing to life mobile wallets, payments, technology, so that people can spend cryptocurrencies with businesses and merchants and merchants can accept those currencies and switch back to their their regular old US dollar when they need to. So that’s kind of my origin story. I’m glossing over some of the more awkward years like high school, I like to just keep that forgotten and suppress down there. You can stay where it belongs. But yeah, it’s really, really awesome experience to be on the forefront of crypto, like most of the world’s finances are moving over to blockchain technology. And at the time, when I got in the market, which is like 2016 2017, there were only 7000 people in the world who could even code a blockchain. So it was it was very, very small and hadn’t quite exploded yet. And so, you know, now we’re at this point where almost everybody and even your grandma has probably been like, how do I get some Bitcoin? Right? So it’s crazy. To watch that go from something very small into something huge. That’s consuming the entire world.

Ezekiel Williams Nice. And before we get into blockchain, how would you represent your origin story? would you would you really want to choose to do it?

Nicholas Prouten: Oh, (stuttering) how would I present it? Oh, man, I don’t know probably like a Netflix series. I probably have like one season and get cancelled, but that’s okay.

Ezekiel Williams Nice. Now, let’s get into the meat and everything. blockchain So what kind of brought you into the technology?

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, what brought me into the technology was the idea that the money that we had was bad, right? And I was I was actually consulting an e commerce. So like a Shopify business guy was actually a really good artist, um, you know, very, very renowned artist that I was working with. And he says, I want to accept cryptocurrencies and I go What the hell is a cryptocurrency? Which I think is how most people learn about blockchain technology. I think somebody just comes to them and says Bitcoin and they’re like, what? In right, so I started looking into it and be like, Okay, this guy wants to accept this stuff. And his business isn’t safe. What is it all about? And I started going down this rabbit hole of understanding monetary policy and understanding how the money that we use in the world works and the pros and the cons of it. And it became really apparent that the money we have sucks, right? it inflates. So year over year, it loses purchasing power. So there’s more money in circulation, and the value of that dollar is actually going down. That’s why when I was a kid, what you used to be able to buy for $1. And now cost you $2. Right? And that just happens consistently year over years. And in worst case scenarios, your money goes into a state of what’s called hyperinflation. So this is what’s happened in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. And any number of other countries around the world is that it basically becomes worthless, like, you know, millions, millions of dollars effectively can barely buy you a loaf of bread is what I’m talking about here. And we in the Western world, feel maybe a little bit safe from that, but um, there is no reason To believe that the way that it’s done here in the Western world is done so slowly that it’s like a frog boiling in water, if you’ve ever heard that metaphor, right, the temperature, right gradually rises in the frog doesn’t jump out, because it doesn’t realize it’s being cooked. And the same logic is here with the money, eventually, we’re going to reach a point where $10,000, or $100,000 doesn’t really mean that much anymore. And I’m sure you probably subconscious, you’ve already felt that like when somebody used to say $100 million, you’re like, that’s a lot of money. Now, somebody says, a billion dollars, and you’re like, Oh, that’s not that’s not like a lie. You know, like, it’s not Jeff Bezos money that’s not Elan musk money, right, we need to go to hundreds of billions of dollars getting into the trillions of dollars. And that is because of inflation. So here I am looking at this going, Okay, there’s a real use case, and around having better money. And so, you know, I got really excited about Bitcoin and about some of the other altcoins at the time that were coming into the play and coming into the forefront. And I was like, wow, this is almost like a complete inversion of what we are doing right now. And then the 2016 717, or the 2017 2018, boom happened and everything exploded, right? And every bank from here to you know, Timbuktu was just like, it’s a scam, don’t buy bitcoin, it’s evil, like, you’ll lose all your money in like that. But here we are in 2021. And all these banks are like, yeah, buy bitcoin, we’re gonna move on, we’re gonna move Bitcoin into our pension funds. And really what was taking place there was this technology was was disrupting their their power hierarchy, right, because banking is just a network, small network of companies is a, you know, an old boys club of banks. You know, saying we are going to dictate the rules of how you engage with your money and bitcoins that now we don’t need to do that. We can, there’s another way, there’s another solution. So that’s, that’s how I got introduced to the technology. But it became really apparent that as great as Bitcoin was, it actually still wasn’t very good as money, it was great for accumulating wealth, what’s called a store of value, right? When you just buy something, you hold it, you sit on it, and it goes up in value, right, like a stock or a bond, it’s great for that kind of stuff. And I do recommend that, that everybody hold at least a little bit of Bitcoin. Not that I’m a financial advisor. So some of you are professional. But it became obvious that we needed digital currencies that were better money, that were better money, and that were stabilized comparatively. So that’s when I came into contact with LODE. Right. And as I mentioned, before, LODE creates stabilized money that’s built for businesses. So let me paint a hypothetical situation for you. Let’s say you go to a coffee shop, coffee is like, you know, maybe maybe a buck 20 maybe two bucks, five bucks, if you’re going to Starbucks, right? And you you go there and you pay with your Bitcoin. And then you look at your phone and Bitcoin goes up, like 20%. So now that that coffee that you just paid for you actually spent, you know, six $7 or, you know, like 525 the point here being that the value of that that coffee has now gone up because bitcoins price fluctuates so wildly. And as a business owner, how are you supposed to give your customers fair pricing? Because, and me as an individual, why would I sell something that is expected to go up doesn’t make a lot of sense. But that’s where golden silver come in, see golden silver, throughout most of the world’s history have been used as money, the United States dollar had a gold standard. Most empires in the world, I’m talking all the way back to ancient Greece. And, and, and beyond a used golden silver for money. And it worked. You know, so there’s like 1000s of years of monetary history here. And what has been proven to happen is that precious metals are a great store of value, but they’re also a great medium of exchange, meaning that they preserve their value over time. So what a gram of gold could buy me back in the Middle Ages is pretty close to what a gram of gold could still buy me today. Right? In terms of equivalent purchasing value, you know, 100 years ago, what a gram of gold could buy me it’s pretty much for the gram of gold combined me today, maybe a little bit better. But um, but because of that there is stability, right? And it protects people from inflation. So by backing your money with these assets, you’re you’re protecting your wealth for tomorrow and when you want to take your wins with Bitcoin, right? So you want to get out of Bitcoin because you know, lambos on the moon, and we’ve all we’ve all gotten You know holding Bitcoin in its now super wealthy, you want to take your wins, you want to lock that money in and make sure it doesn’t disappear if Elon Musk farts and says I hate Bitcoin, right? So where do you put that money? Do you put it in the dollar, which is going to lose value year over year? No, you’re going to put it in something like gold and silver that’s going to keep its wealth and stay where it’s supposed to be in terms of its value. So that’s, that’s how LODE got started. And I came across this project, and I was like, wow, okay, this is a real, this is a real like unicorn for lack of a better phrase, and it has has the power to really change how people engage with money. And it’s been it’s been that way ever since, you know, um, so I’ve dumped a ton of information on you. And I apologize for going on a bit of a rant, but I’ll put it back in your court.

Ezekiel Williams Straight everything I’m aware of my introduction to Bitcoin was 2015 when I was seeing like a random YouTube video about it knows like, this is good, but there’s still some things I’m missing.

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, right. It’s really like I got Bitcoin has a soft spot and everybody’s heart that’s been invested in the space because it was it proved the value that blockchain could bring. Right. And it, it was like this, there was like a rallying cry That said, there is another way, right, we don’t have to do the same thing we’ve always been doing, we can do something different. And and I think that’s a big part of the reason why why Bitcoin has value, it proves that blockchain technology works and can perform, you know, its intended purpose, you know, outside of existing financial ecosystems and infrastructure. But I still think that, um, you know, when it comes to transacting there, there are better options out there. So,

Ezekiel Williams Yeah.

Nicholas Prouten: You know, it’s interesting as well, because people don’t really, a lot of people aren’t aware that there are actually different kinds of cryptocurrencies, then they’re not all made exactly the same. There are kinds like LODE, and our ag x and au x coins, that’s our digital gold and digital silver, respectively. Those are what are known as stable coins, right. And there are lots of stable coins out there. Now. If you guys are crypto traders, and you know about USD T. That’s a great example of a stable stable coin, right? It represents a backing of the United States dollar. Then there are like the Ethereum ‘s of the world, right. And Ethereum is the number two token out there. Ethereum is really different from Bitcoin, because it allows for smart contracts and for people to build easily on top of it, right. So it’s almost like an operating system the same way you would have a Windows or a Mac operating system, and developers can go through and they can build apps on and for this for this software, or for this operating system. In the same way. aetherium and the trends in the EOS is of the world are like that. They are essentially operating systems for people to put their projects onto the blockchain, and to create tokenized assets for their company for their project for whatever that may be. And that serves a really important role as well, which is why I think even at 4000 Canadian, I think it’s 3000 something us as the time of recording this. Um, you know, even though it’s at that price right now, I think it’s highly undervalued and we could in the future, see like 10 $20,000 aetherium easy. Then there is the basic sort of cryptocurrency which is very speculative, it acts like a stock or a or an ETF or something to that effect. And those are those are your alt coins and those are those are Bitcoin, right those things just go up and down and there’s no really logic or reason or even practical application of them right so they’re not being used like operating systems like like aetherium they’re not being used like money really the the way or they’re not stabilized the same way stable coins are they’re basically just a token that people can pump and dump and speculate on it will it will go to the moon because why right? Because people want to drive the price up. So that is the third type of cryptocurrency and the one that is a you know kind of what made this scene big and I’m all for people using that but it’s that’s the riskiest bet horse you could possibly back. Right? So common logic, any rule like anytime you are investing, please be sure that the money you’re putting into it you can afford to lose I know Dogecoin right now is like everybody wants in on Dogecoin it was invented as a joke. It was originally it was a meme right and it is still a meme no matter what anyone says even Elon Musk takes this whole little fan army and sends people to it. It’s still a it’s still a meme. And what that means is eventually it’s going to crash. They’re all markets are cyclical, Bitcoin. Real Estate doesn’t matter. They all go in cycles, right? And right now we are in a big sort of up period, I would argue or even potentially hyperbolic Right, which means that we’re basically almost curving back in on ourselves, we’re going, we’re going so high, which means that there is going to be a correction, the market is going to come back down, people are going to take profits, they’re going to cash out. And as soon as that consumer psychology switches, you better hope that you’re not holding a product like Dogecoin, because you will, you will hemorrhage cash. And if you’ve gotten low enough, maybe you’ll be okay. And your wins will just be smaller, but there are a lot of people out there that are buying in at the top. And so they could lose a substantial amount of money. So you know, those kinds of assets? I would say, you know, they’re not they’re not for beginners. If you’re a beginner, if you’re just starting out with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, get some Bitcoin gets an Etherium get some comfort around what you’re doing before you start buying into things like Dogecoin. Because you could get hurt, and I don’t want that to happen to anybody.

Ezekiel Williams Yeah. Luckily, when my friends made $251, I was like, nice.

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, like, like I said, I mean, like, Yeah, lots of people are getting lucky on it. And but, you know, are you are people really investing in it? Because they’ve done the research, or they’re just hopping on a bandwagon because all their friends are doing it, and it’s going up right now, right? And there’s nothing wrong with that. But you need to you need to have a strong understanding that those profits that you’re seeing on your screen won’t mean anything unless you actually cash out. Yeah, you have to take your wins. Right? You have to take your wins at some point, which is hard, because emotionally, we’re always like, Oh, well, it could go up higher. Right? It could go up, Pyro it’s going to go to the moon, right. But and I think bitcoins going to the moon, for example, right? I think we’re gonna blow past $100,000. And it could even I don’t think that saying a million dollar Bitcoin is out of the question. I don’t know. But it’s not going to happen this year, what’s going to happen is another market correction is going to come probably towards the beginning of 2022. And who knows, Bitcoin might go down to 20,000, again, might go down to God forbid, 3000 again, right, and then you’re stuck. If you didn’t take your profits, you’re stuck holding that for three, four years until the next cycle carries again. So you know, that’s awesome that your friends are winning on Dogecoin. But make sure make sure they take some wins, right. Yeah, because those wins can turn to losses real quick. Yeah, too. No, no, please, please

Ezekiel Williams Go down to like the utility of a cryptocurrency cassavas my mother the other day about sending money to my cousin, should I want my money order and send it through mail, I was like, we could use Cash App it, have it a quick and easy safer method and said, Wait, rely on the um mail even though they have a useful system? This always a chance this can happen.

Nicholas Prouten: Sorry, I apologize. My Computer glitched out there. Can you just ask that question one more time,

Ezekiel Williams I was telling the story about how like the top my mother used cash at the sag using money order to send money to cause it across the country? Yeah, we’d like the quicker easier way I think that my Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are falling into that mode as well.

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, they are. And remittance is actually a really big industry, that’s, you know, that’s performing that disruption that you’re just talking about. They’re they’re, you know, the Venmo is a cash app to the world, they do a really good job of sending easily like a US dollar back and forth. Bitcoin can make it easy or similar. cryptocurrencies can make it easy to send that stuff across the world. Because traditional remittance apps, you can pay big fees on top of that four or 5%. And if you are somebody who’s working as an immigrant in this country, and you need to send money back home to your family, or you know, maybe you’re an exchange student or something like that, whatever it is, you’re losing a lot of money when you make that transfer happen, but cryptocurrencies are just like like that, and they don’t take a huge percentage off the top. So it’s, it’s a really great disruption to see happen. And like you said, what you’re describing is like a much smaller scenario of that, you know, more local scenario will say of that, and, and it’s still just as practical and just as valuable right? To be able to send that kind of money, that that kind of asset to somebody in a peer to peer fashion. That’s actually one of the great ways that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are different from something like a stock and a bond. If you do any traditional investing, whether it’s through like a robin hood app or something like that, good luck trying to send, you know, a friend, a Tesla stock or an apple like go Good luck trying to figure that one out. Because these apps don’t allow you to do it, but blockchains are meant for peer to peer engagement. They were built with That intention. So, you know, me sending you some Bitcoin is is as easy as sending regular cash at this point. So that makes me that makes me really like excited. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so difficult to put blockchain back in the bag. You know, lots of countries are like trying to ban it. But it’s really, really hard because this stuff does not operate on any government oversight it this technology isn’t its autonomous, it works without people being in the middle of it. So as long as you have access to an internet and a cryptocurrency wallet, you can just send receive, and nobody can walk you out of that money, which is really, I think, important for people because I think I think we’re all getting a little used to having some of our civil liberties and rights taken away. And that’s pretty exhausting. It’s nice to know that nobody can take my Bitcoin from me, shit hits the fan, pardon my French.

Ezekiel Williams And then I’m thinking about how this can also lead to like a global currency. Or some close variation of it. 

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, yeah. I mean, global currency, that’s a, it’s a, it’s a tough one to crack, right? Because it an extent requires people. It requires people, I shouldn’t say people, it requires governments to want that to happen. And I think a great example of this is when Facebook tried to launch Libra a couple years back, you know, Facebook has, you know, a third quarter of the world’s entire population using it. So they’re like, yeah, we’re gonna release our own cryptocurrency to for payments, to like 2 billion people all over the world, and they’re just gonna use it and governments were like, no raises, do they put the ban hammer on it and just rubber stamped, and they’re like, no way, no how, and they buried them under legislation, and they’re still working through it. Today, even though Facebook is working on their own cryptocurrency wallet now. And it’s, it’s because that idea of a universal currency takes away power from local governments to impose monetary policy on their citizens, they lose control of their population in that way. Because they don’t have the infrastructure to support Facebook’s currency, right? People can’t pay their taxes and governments want people to pay taxes, and I paid my taxes. And I, you know, there’s taxes are a good thing when they are applied properly. But that concept that something is bigger than the government currency, and that they won’t have control over the money and they won’t have control over the population of that country is really terrifying to a lot of governments. So do I want a universal currency? Absolutely, that’s in part with what LODE and ag x and au x that we produce are trying to do, right? stable money that can people can use, send and spend everywhere in the world, but we have to work really slowly, to get to that point, you know, I have to work with regulators in 135 different countries, you know, to to get permission to have this type of currency be accessible to the people of that country. And that’s not an easy thing to do. That is like lawyers and legal calls and documents and diagrams, enough to give you a headache, right? And to give you a headache, and you know, I don’t know if you know, I don’t know if there’s any going to be there ever going to be like one true universal currency. But certainly there are a lot of people vying for that, right there in US included, right? You know, China, the United States dollar at this point is kind of considered the global reserve currency, meaning that you know, you know, you go to most places in the world, you hand them a US dollar, and they’re gonna be like, yeah, sure, I’ll take it right. Because it’s, it’s basically used almost everywhere. You know, compared to if I go to like, give if I come to Canada, and I try to give a local merchants a Chinese one, they’ll probably be like, No, we don’t we don’t accept that there. Right. So there, China is, for example, trying to unseat the United States dollars, dominance there and try to have their their money, you know, become the new world currency. Facebook tried to become the new world reserve currency. But I think in the future, most people will hold the basket of these currencies, right? They won’t have they won’t be just one that everybody flocks to, everybody will hold a little bit of Bitcoin, everybody will hold a little bit of gold and silver, and we’re going to pay with whatever makes sense to us. Right? It’s not like there’s going to be one. This isn’t Highlander. There’s not there can only be one, you know, you know, there’s no, there’s no Lord of the Rings. It’s not one ring to rule them all. We’re gonna have a basket of things that people hold on to and that’s interesting because This kind of way of holding our money in our wealth is something that this type of learning, and financial literacy is something that is new to the middle class. Like maybe if you were like upper middle class or you took financial courses in school, you know, you, you would have an understanding that everybody should hold, you know, stocks, bonds, ETFs real estate, and maybe keep about 10% of your holdings in cash, that information used to kind of be like private, or you would only learn it if you were privileged, but now, because of the Internet, and because of, you know, because in part of cryptocurrency movement, this kind of financial literacy, and this kind of stuff is coming forward a lot more and more people are understanding that stuff, you know, that type of how to how to build wealth for themselves. And that’s a great thing. You know, as power to the people, I love to see that kind of stuff happen. So, yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s kind of my thoughts on global reserve currencies. It’s a slow, long haul, eventually, we’ll get there, but there’s going to be a basket of these currencies that people hold. It’s not going to be one.

Ezekiel Williams Yeah, with the basket is ss happening now with the links earlier to different cryptocurrencies use with different things? And have different data? 

Nicholas Prouten: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, where are we at today, right now, if you want to talk about adoption really quick, most people might feel like cryptocurrency is too high for them to buy into right now. Or they feel like they missed the boat. where we’re at in the slight lifecycle of adoption of cryptocurrency. And I don’t know if you’ve seen this graph before, but I highly recommend anybody who will just look up adoption curve graph. In Google, just pump it into Google, you’ll get a couple images of it. Basically, it always goes like this. Right? You have the innovators, you have the people who like invented this stuff in their in their close network of friends, those are the first people to adopt, then you have your early adopters, right? You have the people who are kind of like the first group of people outside of your friends and family group and your sort of immediate connections to buy into this new technology, this new way of doing things. That’s what 2017 2018 was, right? That was that early adoption curve. Now we’re coming into what’s called the early majority. And by the end of 2022, we’ll probably have reached the end of the early majority. This is to paint a metaphor. This is like when Facebook was first getting popular. People were like, do you have a Facebook? Or do you have a MySpace? Right and you’re you’re crazy and that you see at Thanksgiving didn’t have a Facebook, guess you didn’t even know what social media was. Right. And and that’s where we’re at with cryptocurrency adoption. Right now we’re at the point where not everybody’s on board, but everybody’s probably heard of it at the very least. So what will happen after we go into our next market correction is, you know, through the ASME will go down for a few few years or so probably. And then we’ll go into our next big bull run, which will be what we call the entry into the late majority there. So this is kind of like the peak of the mountain, most people in the world by I would imagine. Let’s say 25 or 2025 2026, maybe 27 most people in the world I would argue as long as you have access to digital payments, right so if you are under in a developing nation and you don’t have a D ID and you don’t have a bank account, like the unbanked are a big issue and I don’t know that all those people will be in by that point. But most people in developed nations will hold cryptocurrency by 2018 2025 2026 I I’m almost 100% certain on that. So if you feel like you missed the boat you didn’t there’s still time to get in just be talked to an expert talk to people who have been doing this for several years and make smart decisions with your investments and strap in.

Ezekiel Williams Yeah, as we were speaking about like our own thing about like, how can it look? Because I right now is pretty much you have it, then you take it out and then transfer it to somebody else with the cryptocurrency to somebody else. I’m trying  figure out how can we like what kind of technology how we look? We’re just so could you tell yourself as well? I mean, that’s kind of what we’re

Nicholas Prouten: Sorry, I think I got a little bit of lag on you. I apologize. My Internet’s just not loving me today.

Ezekiel Williams One more. Now just trying to figure out how will it look because right now is trying to come up with currency into like a US dollar that’s taken from us, or which I see how can the cryptocurrency become the currency itself.

Nicholas Prouten: If you yeah, absolutely. So this is where we’re coming in with, with LODE, right. So right now everybody just buys into it, because they want it to go to the moon. And they just, they’re just speculating on it. But merchants and businesses want to be able to accept this stuff, too. The technology just hasn’t been there for them yet. So we’re building this payment ecosystem so that, you know, you if you hold a cryptocurrency wallet, whether that’s an exchange wallet or something else, you can go to some you can go to a local store, and pay with Bitcoin, or pay with LODE or a gx or pay with whatever currency you want to pay with. That is that as in crypto, and this is the next big arms race that is going to take place in the crypto space right now. We’re, we’re, we’re working on it over LODE. Visa, MasterCard, just recently said they will allow merchants to settle to usdc. So accept credit card payments at the point of sale, and then actually settle in cryptocurrency in the US DTSC stable coin, for merchants and businesses, and this kind of technology is going to come more forward. The other thing that is going to happen is that lots of countries are going to start producing their own government back stable coins. And allow individuals to to trade and send and spend those as well. So the existing financial infrastructure is going to move over to using cryptocurrencies and new payment technology is going to come out. That is, allows people to accept cryptocurrencies. And that’s really what’s going to make that shift from kryptos being really speculative to being practical tools there. The one blocker to that is ease of use. So right now, I go on a lot of podcasts. And right now, when you when most people talk to me, they go, Well, how does blockchain work? How does how does cryptocurrency work. And when people are going to send in spam, they’re like, Okay, I have my private keys, I have my public keys. And they’re still thinking a lot about how to actually use and send and spend this money versus something like debit visa, or tap and spend with your with your iPhone or your Android or your you know, with your with your card, you know, you go to the grocery store, you tap you’re out, you’re not thinking like, Oh, this is a conversation between two banks. And we’re using the Visa, MasterCard, right? You don’t even think about it, you’re just like, give me my groceries. So I can go home and watch Netflix, right? And we need to get to that point. With blockchain technology, when it gets so easy to use that your grandmother can just pick it up and tap in. And that is when true adoption is going to take place. And that is when you will see that shift from from the currencies that we use now to this new payment technology.

Ezekiel Williams Yeah. that will be cool. Everything’s on the phone, essentially. 

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah, I mean, everything. You can’t go backwards, right? I know, there are some people out there that, you know, they they’re just like, you know, they’re like, we should go back to the olden days. But like, honestly, if you really take an objective, look at it, yesterday, sucked. You know, like, history, things can only go forward, and we only keep improving not without great conflict. But they, you can’t, you can’t just live in the past, eventually, physical cash is going to go away almost entirely. They’re already beginning to phase it out in some countries, and we’re all going completely digital, right? For better or worse, right? You know, starlink is going to change how we interact with the internet, right? You have the Satellite Internet Providers, and now nowhere in the world, will you ever run out of reception and, you know, kind of beats out traditional internet service providers, and there’s all of this new technology that’s coming to the forefront that’s actually gonna really change the way that our society interacts with the world interact with our money. And I’m excited for it. I mean, the future is gonna be weird, but it’s gonna be fun.

Ezekiel Williams Yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Prouten: So, um, that being said, you know, we’ve been engaged with with LODE for about four or four years now. We’re really excited to be bringing this product to market into the United States. If you’re interested in what we are doing, and you want to come say hi to us, head over to ldpay.com LODE, pay calm and you can either downLODE our mobile wallet that’s available in app stores from the website, or you can go ahead and start joining our telegram channel and having a conversation with us. Were a group of people who are just really pumped to get people excited about what’s happening in crypto. You know, I, and we do believe that this is the biggest wealth generation event of our lifetime, right? And we want as many people along for this right as possible, right? I’m not a big fan of FOMO like fear, fear of missing out, but but the reality is, is that opportunity has a shelf life, right? There is a window of opportunity, and that window is going to close one day. And I don’t want anybody left behind. I want everybody on this bandwagon with us. So we can all go to the moon together.

Ezekiel Williams Ready is a good time to stop, I guess. Drop. So last question.

Nicholas Prouten: Yeah.

Ezekiel Williams What would you name your origin story? And then from there?

Nicholas Prouten: My origins story. Um, I think I would name my origin story. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Yeah, that would definitely be the title of my memoirs, it seemed like a good idea at the time, because I am where I am right now. And I live a great life. And I’m really happy for the opportunity that I’ve been blessed with. But it would didn’t come easy. It was a long ass haul to where I’m at now. And I made a lot of mistakes along the way. So I wouldn’t say necessarily that my entire career has been falling upwards. But yeah, it kind of feels like that sometimes, like I’ve it’s only through a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning and a lot of failure that I have now reached a point in my career where I consider it a success, right. So it seemed like a good idea at the time. title of my title of my memoirs.

Ezekiel Williams Thank you for educating us, and hope your project does well. Thank you again for joining the podcast.

Nicholas Prouten: Now, it’s been my absolute pleasure, Ezekiel. Take care you too.

Ezekiel Williams That brings another episode of the Let’s Gather Podcast to a close. Again, I want thank Nicholas for joining the podcast. For next week I have The Blerd Explorer to speak about his book and traveling and living in South Korea. I hope you continue to have a nice day and hope to see you there.

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