Why You Should Invest in Bitcoin with Gary Leland

Learn more about Gary Leland

Transcript

Gary Leland
Gary Leland: [00:00:00] I'm not telling you, you need to do anything, but she should be looking at investing in Bitcoin, but I'm not a financial advisor, but to me, it's just a, take a look at it. Try to figure it out and try to understand it.
Jared Easley: welcome back to starve. The doubts. I'm your host, Jared easily today. My friend, Gary Leland's joining me, Gary, of course is a co-founder. Podcast movement. And now he runs the bit block boom conference. I host a number of podcasts about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and all these other things. So welcome. 
Gary Leland: Glad to be here, Jeremy.
I got to correct. You please. Do. I really don't do cryptocurrency. I just do Bitcoin. Just pin. No, you think there's the same, but there's not. There's a line. There's Bitcoin and there's cryptocurrency. Well, in 
Jared Easley: the beginning you were a little bit. Cryptocurrency, but I was like, now you've said, okay, enough of that, I'm not 
Gary Leland: messing with figured out or got so I understood it.
And I understand that to me, Bitcoin is the only thing that's worth putting your time and our money. Um, 
Jared Easley: so, so first of all, let's talk about, I've [00:01:00] had you on the show before, but there might be some people listening that haven't heard that episode. So let's talk about how. And so we met several years ago.
Yeah, 
Gary Leland: it's been, it seems like a long time ago now. It's Vegas. Yeah. Las Vegas. I think it was blog world or something, but he had changed the name of it or something, but I think it was around anymore. Yeah. 
Jared Easley: It's a weird story we met and, uh, through, uh, an a, a new media event. And then, uh, that launched a whole series of events that cause United team up with a couple other people to start podcast movement.
And then now you fast forward several years. And now you're into Bitcoin. 
Gary Leland: Yeah, I got into Bitcoin. Well, while I was still with podcasts movement, and then I sold my share podcast movement and moved on and actually put a lot of that in the Bitcoin. Now Bitcoin. Now Bitcoin is my full-time job. I do. As you said, Bitcoin podcasts.
I do a conference. I'm doing a party. A bit block party is the name of it. Yeah. Austin in June, not even when my conference is there, I've rented a two-story nightclub and I'm [00:02:00] just throwing a party for Bitcoins. And I think I'm like, I think 300 people can come and I'm already halfway sold out. I think, I 
Jared Easley: don't know about that.
I don't have enough. 
Gary Leland: Yeah. You gotta have a lot of Bitcoin to come to this party. And then it's kinda, it's kinda weird, you know, cause I'm 66, so I'm a boomer and they call me the Bitcoin boom. But it's kind of odd how much people like meeting a boomer that is into Bitcoin. People come up to me all the time.
Go. I just wanna shake your hand. Cause I think that they wished that I think they, I think they kinda like throw off the look of their parents on me and they'd go, and I wish all my parents understood this stuff, you know? So I think they're excited to beat some of their parents age. Knows as much, if not more than they do.
So it's funny. It's a funny world. 
Jared Easley: Well, you've been business savvy for many years and you've run a number of successful companies and things, but then a lot of those, even when you were still running those full time, you, you, all of a sudden had this fascination with Bitcoin, which wasn't as well understood or known as it is now.
And it's still a lot of people don't know about it. So when, what, what, what [00:03:00] happened? How did you first. Yeah, turning, how did you get turned onto this? And then at what point did you realize, Hey, there really 
Gary Leland: is something to, well, it was really a pretty normal for people. It took me three times being exposed to it.
That's why many people have to be exposed three times and they get it on the third. And I was no different, but the first time I was taught, it was online stocks, which I said, I didn't want to mess with that. We're just not. And then the second time. Adam Curry told me about it. And I was like, ah, and then the third time, another friend of mine told me about it and I got it right away.
The way he explained it was perfect. He explained it as an internet protocol, rather than stocks or money or digital gold internet protocol. He said it was the missing protocol. It was money for the internet. And, you know, I started my first e-commerce site in 96. So I've been doing stuff on the internet a long time.
So when he said. Uh, protocol for internet, the internet that really interested me. So I was speaking at a conference, a big B conference in Dallas is like noon. I just finished talking. And I think when I heard him overheard him talking to someone and we sat on [00:04:00] said, Hey, can I talk to you about that? We sat on the couch from like noon, till five.
O'clock talking about Bitcoin. And the conference was over and we were still sitting on that couch. So I drove home, listen to some podcasts, call him up, said, Hey, can I come over to the conference and talk to you some more tomorrow? And we sat there all day talking that night, I went to. My first Bitcoins.
That's awesome 
Jared Easley: now. And then not long after that, you're like, Hey, I love podcasting. Why not create a podcast? That's on this topic. So tell us about that. 
Gary Leland: I think, well, actually the person who told me about Bitcoin, Tony, Cassius, him and I did a podcast together called the crypto cousins. Because back then I was into, as you said, all crypto is not just Bitcoin.
And actually we were making a lot of money. I mean, these cryptos would come new cryptos. They want to advertise on our show and we charge like three, $4,000 to bring on our show and interview and they do it if they could pay in crypto, can I pay for that stuff in crypto? So we'd look on an exchange and if we could exchange that crypto of theirs for something else I'd be going and you can't blame them, they just made this money up.[00:05:00] 
If you just make up $500 worth of million worth of money. What the hell you don't mind spending way more than you need to, to be on a show. So we were really taking advantage of that for a while. And then, uh, the bear market of 2018 hit, and most of those people went out of business and their coins turned out to be worth zero if you'd kept any of them.
By then, in the meantime, now that we're back in a bull market. In the meantime I came a Bitcoin maximalist. That's all I really mess with now. So, uh, so in Bitcoin people don't spend their Bitcoin, like they do crypto shit that they made. 
Jared Easley: Well, okay. So let's talk about that because that was some advice that you'd given me.
It was, you know, it's nice to have it and hold onto it. And. Leverage it, that type of thing. But then you're talking about there's other countries and stuff that are going to potentially use Bitcoin as their, their currency. So they're going to be spending 
Gary Leland: right, well, soundboard or uses it as a currency right now.
They, uh, announced back in February, they were going to make it a currency and everybody who accepted money, every store, every restaurant, everything had to accept Bitcoin. If [00:06:00] someone walked in wanting to spend Bitcoin. Cause that's the key is if you gotta, if you're gonna make it a currency, you gotta be able to.
And I think most people kept their Bitcoin. And now it's worth three times as much and 30. They, every citizen got $30 worth of Bitcoin in El Salvador. That's a lot of money. If you live in El Salvador, now they all got $90 worth of Bitcoin. So that 
Jared Easley: country really ponied up putting a lot in a bed and they bought 
Gary Leland: a lot of big point citizen.
Now they're using a thermal power from their volcanoes to create energy for Bitcoin mining. Wow. And I think they're getting ready to sell bonds. El Salvador bonds, the back the. Production of electricity for Bitcoin mining madness. And I, and then I heard, uh, Brazil is the next one. I think it's supposed to roll over the Bitcoin, but it gets to be a time when people were tired of having a currency that just keeps dropping in value.
You know, it's like in Venezuela, their currency, the Boulevard, you know, the lady was walking down the street with a wheel barrel of bull of Boulevard. So wheel barrel of money to go buy some coffee. And a reporter came into said, aren't you worried? [00:07:00] Someone's going to steal your money. Because he had a wheelbarrow, the money's worth, I'm worried.
It goes through my, my wheelbarrow, how I move my money around, I think. Yeah. That's heartbreaking when that happens to your country, you want a money that has a little more stability or a chance of being worth more, not being worth less all the time. Yeah. Venezuela's removes zeros off the money. You know, if it was $200,000, it's now $2,000.
They just removed zeros because their money was getting so expensive. I mean, never having $200,000. That's. 
Jared Easley: Yeah, well, I that's a shame, but, uh, I can see how situations like that are creating more opportunity for Bitcoin to be, be more widely accepted, trusted, 
Gary Leland: and as Bitcoin gets more expensive, you know, when it starts hitting a million dollars, which I believe it will in 10 years or so to be rained about inflation rate of growth habit Willis.
Yeah, but we're still not at that point yet where everybody's still buying it, grabbing it, wanting it to go up, holding on to it. But there'll be a point where everybody's on the Bitcoin standard. So I know you're not in like a 
Jared Easley: financial advisor or planner, [00:08:00] so, but if, if you're talking to somebody who's new at saying, Hey, Gary, I think I want to try this.
I want to put a little into it. What do you 
Gary Leland: tell somebody? And I'll tell you the best way to do that is the same thing I told you. Go to, I'm going to get, I'm going to give up my affiliate link here. You get $10 worth of free. I think if you use it. And so do I, but go to Gary Lee, lynn.com/swan S w a N yep.
Go there. I'm a, a, um, a divisor that company and own stock in the company. So of course I'm going to like it, or I wouldn't be messing with it, but go there and set yourself 
Jared Easley: up. I'm a member of Swan. I've had a good experience 
Gary Leland: with them. So they're a great company. They're all great people, but set yourself up to do a dollar cost averaging, which is the same principle as seasons.
By a little bit every week, every month, however you can afford it. If you drank a six pack, two, six packs a week, maybe drink one and buy, spend that other money on some Bitcoin every week. It's a good idea. And then before you know it, you've got some Bitcoin, you got some value there. A lot of people will get confused.
I see Bitcoin like it as the day at 62,000. And I think I don't have $62,000 to buy a Bitcoin, [00:09:00] but they don't realize you can buy $5 worth of Bitcoin, $10 worth of Bitcoin, a dollars worth of Bitcoin value. Yeah. It's still going to go up just the same percentage, you know, remember for you though. And in, you know, if you get some skin in the game, then you start paying attention to it and learning about it.
No, that totally makes sense. But that's, my advice is go to, and you can do that in a lot of places. You can do that with the cash. You can do it through swung line. You can do it through a lot of places, but start buying on a regular basis. Just whatever you can afford, you know, there's gotta be somewhere.
You can cut $5 a week or $10 a month out of your budget and use that to invest in Bitcoin
Jared Easley: okay. So you started the podcast and then you realize, okay, I need to not be all about other cryptos, but just on Bitcoin. So what was the realization. 
Gary Leland: Well, I just thought I said in 2018, when the market dropped and all the other currencies, most of the cryptocurrencies went out of business. They just went out of business.[00:10:00] 
And even the top ones like Ethereum, you know, Bitcoin had tripled before theory and got back to where it was before the bear market. Right? So at that point I realized, you know, I'm not a trader I'm not buying and selling and doing all this trading, you're better off just are. I was better off. I thought just buying Bitcoin and letting it ride and sitting there, you know, I'm not a professional stock trader and I'm not professional Bitcoin.
So every time I traded stocks, I lost money for the most part. So I felt it was safer just to buy and hold. I think that's the best strategy for me. 
Jared Easley: Yeah. Well, I can testify that. That's nice. You gave me, I did that and that was very beneficial to my family, but there's another podcast can talk that, talk about that later, 
Gary Leland: but yeah, but yeah, the fact that every year.
Half as much new Bitcoin put it on the market. So the price goes up because there's less available and more people that want it. So it's simply supply and demand. There's half as much as something and twice as many people want it, it's going to go up. 
Jared Easley: So I guess the podcasts kind of helped you have that reality.
Check where that moment, [00:11:00] that aha moment where you realized, Hey, I probably do an event for, 
Gary Leland: sorry, you're doing one within six months. So we didn't know what I was doing. The podcast, 
Jared Easley: you know, I was doing yet the coin conference, which was, this was before I'm sure there's a lot of them now, but there wasn't that many, well, there's 
Gary Leland: not a crypto conferences and mine was a crypto conference at that time.
There there's only like a handful of Bitcoin only conferences. It's kind of a niche, but yeah, we decided to do a. And then we had, I didn't even know enough about this to me about the subject to do a conference, but what the hell we did a conference. We got some good speakers coming down in Dallas and we couldn't even sell tickets.
We could hardly sell tickets. We were given tickets away just cause I had all these people coming and I couldn't have 25 people nodding. And, uh, when the event was over, maybe we broke, even made a little bit of money, but we didn't make it rich. But then my partner decided us since we didn't make a lot of money.
He didn't want anything to do with it. I could have it and I kept pursuing it. Now this will be our fifth year we're in Austin, Texas. We have about 700 people, people [00:12:00] like tone, bass, and, um, who, if you probably, probably don't know tone, but he's one of the top, uh, Bitcoin traders. He's old. JP Morgan guy. I think they got into Bitcoin.
He did that financial analysis for them and he just switched to Bitcoin, but he calls it one of the top four Bitcoin conferences on the world. So actually now it's really taken off. Tell me a long time to get that out. Sorry. But now we've grown from a conference. We couldn't give tickets away to, to a conference.
That's an August every year. And last year we sold out of tickets in February. That was six months ago and people were scalping our day and tickets. So this year we had to put a transfer fee. Because they were selling the tickets cause they bought them and they were worth, uh, maybe two to three times what they were.
They were selling two to three times where they paid for him. That's a great problem to have that cause a nightmare on us, you know? So now we have a transfer fee in there to hopefully slow down loan that. But if not, we'll at least we'll get some money. 
Jared Easley: That's bit block. Boom. A bit block, boom.com. People can check that out and it's next [00:13:00] August if people want to get, although it's likely going to be sold out 
Gary Leland: most likely last weekend in August.
Always. Yeah. That's great. 
Jared Easley: So tell me, tell me about this. Like yeah. So you start selling it out and you're like, What do you do then? 
Gary Leland: I said, well, I started actually looking for more sponsors. I had nothing to sell for six months. You know how that goes? You, uh, you sell most of you. You're going to come with me.
You've been in conference business. You sell so many of your tickets. The last couple of months. That's really when your push comes, we had no tickets to sell, you know, 
Jared Easley: Okay. And so some of the connections you've made with a podcast ended up helping the event. I would imagine because those were people that were speaking and 
Gary Leland: actually very few of them more.
Cause when we were doing a podcast at a time, um, it was a crypto, a podcast, not a Bitcoin comp podcast. And my shows, uh, my conference is Bitcoin only. So it helped it out a little bit. Not as much as you would think. The connections I made, I made more in real life at the current. And people who just [00:14:00] came because it was close and turned out to be Bitcoiners.
Yeah. You know? So that makes sense. Yeah. So, but we have, now our lineup is like, we have a, I think we're going to have Senator dilemmas there this year. She's called the Bitcoin Senator. Our waiting is for, as they get their schedule for the. For the Senate, like in November or December. So we're waiting for her schedule to make sure she's open that weekend, but her staff says she should definitely be there.
Yeah. You know, I've gone down to a state Capitol to a session down there teaching the tech committee on what Bitcoin is, you know, matter of fact, next weekend I go down there and one of the. Congressman has given me a tour, me and my wife, a private tour of the Capitol. That's wonderful. Yeah. So I made a lot of good connections in Bitcoin and I orange pilled him and turned him when a Bitcoin and he's buying through Swan.
Any messaged me though. They say he had gotten to an old Bitcoin now, so he was really excited. Yeah. That's great. So yeah, it's just. Just a matter of people understanding. And once they understand it, I think the real problem people have is they don't [00:15:00] understand money. They have some money, they spend some money, they make money, but they really don't know what money is.
And once they learn what money is and all about money, then they are suddenly you go, oh my God. Well, let's just go there for a minute. What is money? What money really is just the way a ledger keeping system to say, who owns what? And did I've transferred my $5. And you gave me a piece of bread and now you own the $5.
That's how money is, but our money is Fiat money and all the money in the world right now is Fiat money and Fiat money. Fiat is a Latin word. That means because I say. Basically that's the short episode, our money is money because the us government says this money. It has no intrinsic value. It's just money.
Cause they say it's money. And because it has no value, they can make as much of this as they want. And that's why you see the printing presses and they're talking about $4 trillion adding to the budget because they just. Four more trillion dollars in pedal. That's not backed up by gold. They took it off.
They took the silver out of the quarters when I was like in third or fourth [00:16:00] grade, like in 63. And then they took the gold, the dollar off the gold standard in like 1971. So now since 1971, the dollars have been backed by nothing that made a Fiat money. And the average lifespan for any Fiat currency in the world is 50 years.
That's pretty much it interesting. 
Jared Easley: And our us dollar has 
Gary Leland: lasted beyond that. Right. But yes, like 51 now. So it's just gone over it, but we're in a different situation because we're the petrodollar, you know, when we went off to go, most people don't know when we went off, the gold standard in the dollar is worth nothing.
We cut a deal with Saudi Arabia that all oil sold will be sold in us dollars. So that's kind of have a value you will. Cause if you want to buy. If you're a country and you want to buy oil, you don't have to buy the oil with, and most of the other OPEC countries went along with that Petro dollar. But now, um, China's talking about coming up with their own petrodollar in any country.
That's tried to [00:17:00] use any other currency except the dollar for Petro. Pretty much. Didn't go too good. Like Libya, they started accepting euros for a gold. And you saw what happened to Qaddafi and then Panama or Venezuela. They started taking a. Another currency. I came around to west off top of my head. And you saw what happened to the waiter.
They always, they don't do very well if they didn't get off the Petro dollar, but it's going to happen since
Jared Easley: you think banks are annoyed by Bitcoin 
Gary Leland: or now, you know, in Texas banks can hold Bitcoin so they could actually make a. Uh, wallet, space of storage systems for it's a digital wallet for everybody. It's not a coin, but they can make digital wallets and you walk in you can't now, but they it's illegal to do in Texas.
When it goes into effect, you could walk into a bank and say, Hey, transfer $10,000 out of my savings account and buy Bitcoin with it and put it in my Bitcoin account. And banks would do that for you. And I think [00:18:00] currently not available. What's not available. If it's legal, I just got legal like earlier this year or last year, it's just a matter of time, but it is legal to do.
I think banks, banks, those guys are smart. Dudes take out a lot of money. When you got a lot of money, you know how to make more money. You don't lose much money through your bank. Believe me, those guys don't lose money. Who got all the money during the financial crisis, the banks, you know, they all live.
Cause they were too big to fail because they got all the money. So they made themselves too big to fail. So I think that they understand is a lot of money to me made in Bitcoin. So I don't think they're annoyed, but I think they were. But now I think they understand that it's not going into. And there's a lot of money to be made and they want to make it so, so they're getting in the game.
They're getting in the game. Yeah. That wouldn't be surprised in five years, every bank you just go buy some Bitcoin and say, put it in my Bitcoin account. Interesting. Yeah, they want, they want a Bitcoin. They don't want you own any Bitcoin that you personally own without them. They want to be in the game.
Jared Easley: So it almost seems like even more reason to try to use your Bitcoin now, before 
Gary Leland: the banks have more, more control. Yeah. What? Cause once they [00:19:00] control it, then it's going to probably go up even more because they control it. It's kind of like gold, you know? And like the, I can't remember what it was, but they was hiking, maybe twenties or thirties, thirties, the president.
You can't own gold anymore. So legal to own gold in the United States because the United States government didn't have enough, they needed more gold. So they made it illegal to have gold. And you can keep four ounces. If you had more than four ounces, you had to turn it in to the government. Wow. And that was the law and it was a federal crime.
If you kept more than four ounces. And everybody was really patriotic back in the forties and thirties, whenever this happened. So they just went in to the fed and said, here's my 10, here's my goal. And they gave him like $25 an hour. Then they also went to like all the banks and gold vault places. And they just like, that went into effect Saturday, Monday, they worked the vault when they opened at nine o'clock and seizing all the gold in there.
And I'm paying those people $25 to the analysts. Then when it got out of the gold, they revalue gold at $35 an ounce conveniently. And so everybody lost everybody's dollars, which were backed by gold lost. They [00:20:00] lost her gold and their dollars went down in value 30% overnight. So a lot of people were scared that would happen with.
That it would become a currency in the United States. Government would go, wow, this happened, we don't have enough of it. We need more step. I don't think in the year 20 21, 20 22, 20 23 people are as patriotic as they were back there, they've been screwed so much by the government that I don't know if they would go, oh, let me give you all my Bitcoin.
You know, and just, even though I know it's gonna be worth triple next year, let me just give it to you now. No, they wouldn't. 
Jared Easley: They don't 
Gary Leland: have to. Right. Because they made it a law and a federal crime. It would be, that's what they did. The gold, you can old Goldie and then tell them what 
Jared Easley: your Bitcoin isn't 
Gary Leland: it's in a wallet.
They can't get it. They can't get it. And they probably can't prove how much you have. Technically, they probably can prove how much you have, but I don't think that'll happen, but there are people who are scared that it'll happen. So that's why they don't leave their crypto, their Bitcoin on a exchange. If that did happen instead of the private wallet.
Yeah. Instead of the government going to the banks to get the [00:21:00] gold, they would go to the exchanges to get the big Coleman, but ain't never went, I don't think they ever went to anyone's house and say, Hey, we think you've got six gold coins in there. We're taking that. I don't think that ever happened, you know, cause everybody turned in their money.
So that's a whole nother. Yeah, but it's 
Jared Easley: interesting. Well, I'm a personally proud of you. I mean, you know, you got on this wagon early and it's served you well and has served me and then you're leveraging other things that you love, like podcasting and new media. To further grow the things you've been doing.
Like the 
Gary Leland: conference I can on my podcast, my biggest podcast now is a four minute Bitcoin show and people will, uh, in a short it's four minutes. So I liked that show, but 
Jared Easley: so you're basically just keeping people updated on the 
Gary Leland: latest to try to do one news article every day about Bitcoin in four minutes or less.
So how do you curate that? I just read, I read a lot of material on Bitcoin. A lot of blogs. You, I have a lot of subscriptions to my blog 
Jared Easley: reader. So you kind of have an idea of who's telling good advice. Yeah. [00:22:00] And it also 
Gary Leland: keeps me, keeps me up to date on what's really happening in Bitcoin because I read a lot of content about it.
Yeah. So I did that show with people, telling them about contact me. Can we advertise on your podcast? I go, man, I just do the podcast to promote the conference a mine because you know, I've never been real big on advertisers for the most part, unless they were paying like they were in crypto in the early days.
Uh, still offering that or no, but they probably are those kinds of companies. Yeah. So you may, you may change your tune. I never changed my tune. Now I've gotten beyond the point that I have to work and I just worked me out. Cause I ha I like it really deserve that. But then again, I'm 66. So, you know, I've been doing it a long 
Jared Easley: time.
Well, I will talk about this, this isn't related to Bitcoin, but I mean, you, you had an incredible weight loss journey in the last several years. Let's just touch on that for a minute. 
Gary Leland: Well, I bet I've gained back. Oh, I quit my diet. Whenever you're getting 
Jared Easley: back is nothing, nothing like where you were. I mean, yeah, I lost the incredible 
Gary Leland: shrinking.
I lost like 150 200 [00:23:00] pounds. Maybe you lost it pretty quick amount of time. I quit eating for the most part. I mean, you know, I went to LA, I went on a liquid diet to begin with just protein shakes. Uh, 'cause like, I couldn't fit in the airplane seat. Oh, wow. Extender. And, uh, you know, any picture I saw of me, I looked like I was just a big blob of lib, which I may still look like, but I'm not as big and blah, blah, blah.
But
actually, you know, when I quit drinking diet Pepsis, I used to drink diet Pepsi. So like maybe 10 a day, I drank a shitload of PepsiCo. Uh, you might have to cut that you were addicted. I was addicted to soda and when I quit diet soda, when I quit drinking diet soda by itself, without even trying to lose weight, I lost 30 pounds when I switched from I'm not going to drink anymore.
And all I had headaches, caffeine, headaches, but I switched from that to water. And I still only drink water, you know, when I go out to eat, but I lost 30 pounds just giving up diet, soda, [00:24:00] occasional coffee or something like that. Your coffee a lot. Okay. Yeah. But then not that I don't think a black coffee.
Is what Daya soda is? No, no, no drink 
Jared Easley: chemicals. Yeah. I 
Gary Leland: drink black coffee and I like 
Jared Easley: drinking more soda than 
Gary Leland: I should. So I'm telling you, you want to get rid of weight. The quickest thing to do is get rid of the, it's not a ton of weight, but you can notice it as go to water from diet soda. I think even regular soda might even be better with sugar, but they put so much of that.
Well, then you're not going to want as much. Yeah. But I think diet, soda, the seminar, it makes you want to crave more diet. So that's good advice. Yeah, but that was the start of it. And then the liquid diet, I lost 30 pounds there. I lost 50 pounds on the liquid diet. Actually. Maybe I did that for so-so. When you say liquid diet, what were you just having protein shakes.
And then I drank a soup broth, just broth and canned soup broth and protein shakes and put you're like starving life. Will you do star for the first month, but you can make it. Actually, if you can make it past the first two weeks, I think your body, the first two weeks [00:25:00] goes, man, I'm hungry. Give me some food in a psych telling you you're hungry.
I think after two weeks it kind of goes not getting any, give it up and you know, well it's burning the fat, right? Yeah. So I did that. And actually like last year I went on a liquid diet for a month. And it wasn't that hard to do. Cause I did it before and I understood that it was the 
Jared Easley: weight started 
Gary Leland: melting off.
Oh yeah. It comes out when you aren't taking in any calories, hardly at all, but disappeared. I was like, you're doing morning walk. I was walking two miles every day when I weighed 350 pounds too, you know, so I mean, It's what you put in your mouth. It's not the exercise, exercise money. Walking's good for your heart, but you walk two miles.
You might burn a thousand calories, healthy, eat a candy bar. There you go. There should a thousand calories to walk. Yeah. So everything else. And if you're eating candy bars, you probably aren't eating one a day. But I would 
Jared Easley: imagine now, like you, you've noticed a tremendous difference in like your energy level and your like enthusiasm and 
Gary Leland: yeah.
I definitely have more energy than I did before. [00:26:00] That's the thing about it is just not eating now. I pretty much, uh, I had some French toast today, which I really never had bread, but I just couldn't resist that French toast. But now I pretty much just eat meat products. Um, Cafe Brazil don't have good food 
Jared Easley: here.
Yeah. Cafe Brazil, if you're ever in Dallas, where is it? 
Gary Leland: This is the Oak cliff. 
Jared Easley: Oh cliff. So if you ever know cliff and Dallas go by Catherine 
Gary Leland: Brazil. I found this because it was kind of in the middle of this is 
Jared Easley: Leland. Yeah. This is a great little spot. Uh, Gary and I had some breakfast here and decided, Hey, let's record a podcast.
And I'm glad we did. We're sitting out here on the patio. Drinking some coffee and, uh, just 
Gary Leland: across from a LA carte steakhouse smokehouse. And I heard that had great barbecue. Yeah, it looks, it 
Jared Easley: looks like it does. From the 
Gary Leland: outside cow on the side, what's showing the cuts. That's usually a good side and a pig with the cuts of meat.
We have some barbecue[00:27:00] 
Jared Easley: so Gary, as we start to close up here in the Bitcoin world, who's doing something that interests. 
Gary Leland: Um, Jack , you know, he's got the strike app go to strike.me/gary, if you want to get that. But he's been, what is that? It's a app for converting, uh, money into Bitcoin. So, uh, actually on Twitter now you can tip people on Twitter with, uh, And so if someone likes your show, they can go to Bitcoin and see the tipping box.
If you've enacted it and just send you a dollar 50 cents podcasts, I could have a 
Jared Easley: striker, 
Gary Leland: what you have a strike account and it's a Twitter tip jar, but you have to have someplace for the money. So it points to whatever wallet. No, it's not really a wallet. It goes to, it's gotta be a certain kind of wallet, which Jack Mausers has made that.
And he's working with a jacket Twitter. I can't send it to 
Jared Easley: my ledger 
Gary Leland: now. Now you can from the Shrike though. Okay. Twitter, you'd have to send it to a strike that go to strike that me slash Gary. Got it. And then you can convert it in the [00:28:00] Bitcoin, but he's the guy also that helps set a bell. You know, to start accepting Bitcoin as a currency.
So that's amazing. He's doing amazing stuff, Jack 
Jared Easley: Mauer, where where's, 
Gary Leland: he? I don't know where he's actually from. He doesn't want to be found here, but he seems to be a nice guy. I want to see him on TV. Um, but he's, he's doing personally or no, no, I've never met him. Okay. 
Jared Easley: All right. Uh, and then, um, people that want to check out the podcast, 
Gary Leland: what do they do that just go to four minute bitcoin.com or go to bit block.
Boom. We're getting ready to start. Boom. Um, 
Jared Easley: which if you don't get a ticket, now you probably won't get one. 
Gary Leland: You got to come home or you going to have to, 
Jared Easley: do you have like a virtual ticket or something? No, 
Gary Leland: we've seen it free. Oh yeah. We found that it's better for our case of streaming free and then people see it and they want to come the next year 
Jared Easley: when that means some people will be like, eh, well, I pay 700 
Gary Leland: bucks.
I can just stream it. But we sell out. So evidently it's not, it's not hurting us. Evidentaly so we look at it as an adverse reactions are 
Jared Easley: literally, you know, such a big, big thing. 
Gary Leland: It's a, you know, it's about [00:29:00] networking at my conference because let's face it only about 3% of the population has any Bitcoin.
So if you live in Pierre, South Dakota, you may not know a bit corner that you could ever talk to about Bitcoin and Europe probably fascinated with Bitcoin and want to talk to people about it. So people don't come to watch my conferences. Really. They come to hang out in the hallway. My hallways are packed the entire con.
Yeah. Okay. Come the hangout ethic and then go to our night party. So we have dinners and parties. We have more events that aren't at the conference center than we do at the conference center. I love 
Jared Easley: that. Well, I always like to close out with final thoughts, Gary. So final thoughts, final 
Gary Leland: thoughts is enjoyed seeing you.
Yeah, likewise. It's a great day in here in Texas, but I'm telling you, I'm not telling you. You need to do anything, but you should be looking at investing in Bitcoin, but I'm not a financial advisor. To me, it's just, uh, a good thing to do. That's my final thought is take a look at it, try to figure it out and try to understand it well 
Jared Easley: said, Gary, 
Gary Leland: thank you so much and enjoyed it.[00:30:00] .