Johny Fernandez: So welcome to deBanked News Live. I'm Johny
Fernandez here with Sean Murray. Sean. Let's do this. Welcome
back.
Sean Murray: Thank you. Thank you.
Johny Fernandez: So let's get straight to it. So big news on
Bitcoin. It's up to $18,000. Let's let's talk about it I
mean, what exactly happened and what's going on now?
Sean Murray: Yeah it's like the big story that nobody's talking
about, right? No, no, like, individual person seems to be
buying Bitcoin. It seems to be like faceless corporations
buying up the price. That's what it looks like. Right? Yeah.
Because in 2017, when we had the big bull run the big bull
market, everyone was talking about it. Your cab driver was
talking about it. My friends are talking about it. You know,
people's parents and grandparents were asking.
Everyone had it. Everyone had it. Yeah. CNBC was talking about
it constantly. Right now nobody's talking about it, cause
the price is right back up to where it was back at the peak of
the bull run. So something is wrong. Why is the price going
up? But nobody's talking about it? So I think what's happening
right now is we're probably have some sort of artificial market.
And I think that even though we're talking about it, and it's
really exciting. Bitcoins going up and you're like, oh, man,
should I buy anything? This is not like financial advice.
Probably hold off.
Johny Fernandez: So for someone that may think like that, that,
they're looking at it. They're like, oh, man, like this may be
the time to do it. What would be your advice? Obviously, you just
said, don't do it now. But when should they jump in? If they if
they want to?
Sean Murray: Yeah, you know, I don't like to time markets. And
I hate investing on like a speculation standpoint. But
right now, it'd be the worst time ever, to buy bitcoin? I
think the price is going to go down. I think the price is being
artificially inflated right now through from a, from various
sources that I won't get into. But I think it's an artificial
market. And so in terms of when should you buy into Bitcoin?
I've never really been a fan of Bitcoin, as far as buy it, for
it to go up in value and make money. I've always looked at it
from a utility standpoint. And so if you're looking at it from
an investment standpoint, you probably want to wait until it's
like $5,000 again, to think about it. I think Bitcoin has a
place in the world. But if you're gonna buy it, right, when
it's going up, like really quickly, that's the worst time
to buy, buy at buy after that, buy in the crash period, not
during the Bull Run period.
Johny Fernandez: So let me ask you this. I know like last time
that we talked about it, previous segment, we talked
about, like these big conventions and people gathering
and just like this obsession with it. Now obviously
Coronavirus is in the middle of everything. Are people gathering
like via have you heard of people like these gatherings via
zoom? Or I guess, is there this pandemonium with it? Or is it
simply just going up and people are kind of just observing it
from afar?
Sean Murray: I can tell you that during the 2017 like bull
market, not only were people meeting up in person and talking
about it, but they were doing it in groups online. Those groups
online are still pretty much dormant. So even the online
groups haven't really come back. You have a lot of people talking
about crypto on Twitter, that seems to be like the number one
place for crypto fans. Perhaps they're in like telegram. But
you're not really seeing zoom calls about Bitcoin. I haven't
been invited to any. I haven't heard of any. Maybe there's some
happening out there. But in terms of has the in person
experience of the crypto community gone digital? I don't
think any more so than three years ago.
Johny Fernandez: So in other Bitcoin news, let's talk about
the news between PayPal and Square kind of walk us through
what's going on with that.
Sean Murray: Yeah, so there are good things happening in the
Bitcoin world right now. It's not just this artificially
inflated market caused by nothing, there are things
happening that could warrant an increase in the price of
Bitcoin. One is that PayPal recently activated the ability
to hold crypto, hold Bitcoin. So before if you wanted to use
Bitcoin, you had to use like the Cash App, you had to go into
Coinbase you had to go into some shady exchange, you needed your
own personal wallet app, and you don't know if you're gonna get
hacked, right? You don't know if that if the wallet has like a
backdoor built into it. But now you can actually hold Bitcoin in
your regular paypal account. And I think that's a reason that
Bitcoin could be going up in value. I don't think as much as
it's gone up in value, I don't think it's all caused by that.
But in terms of like, is there any excitement around Bitcoin?
Could be could be that and then you have Square, which they own
Cash App. Do you have Cash App?
Johny Fernandez: I have Cash App, I do. Yeah.
Sean Murray: Do you see a Bitcoin, like option, in there
at all?
Johny Fernandez: I haven't used it in a couple of weeks.
Sean Murray: Okay, I've never I've never used it.
Johny Fernandez: Okay, I have Cash App, I have PayPal then I
have Venmo so I have all three, but I do know that for Bitcoin
that the it came up for for PayPal.
Sean Murray: It came up with PayPal. Yeah. So. So oh you've
seen it on there? Yeah. You know, I actually haven't logged
into my PayPal account since the news. But Square in particular,
they actually reported that you know, Square. Yeah. Right owned
by Jack Dorsey, owns Twitter. And they're a gigantic payment
processor 50% of Square's profit comes from Bitcoin transactions
now.
Johny Fernandez: So people are pretty much using the Bitcoin,
what they have for Bitcoin, and paying out.
Sean Murray: its transaction fee is I think they're like charging
you to buy it charging you to use it. And that's 50% of their
profit now. They're not they're not making money off of it going
up. Yeah. Well, in a way they are because they bought $50
million worth of bitcoin recently. Did you hear about
that? I did not hear about that. Square the company bought $50
million worth of Bitcoin to put on their balance sheet. And from
what I understand the value of those Bitcoin have recently got
up to about $84 million. So they are making money on Bitcoin, the
price or value of Bitcoin going up. But that's not a business.
Yeah. Right. I think they were doing that to draw attention to
Cash App. It's a publicity stunt. Why buy $50 million worth
of Bitcoin? Because everyone talks about it. And it's like,
oh, what does you know, what does Square have to do with
Bitcoin? Or you can use it on the Cash App. And then it just.
And then they did that 50% of their money is coming from
Bitcoin transactions. So obviously, it's in their
interest to do it from a marketing standpoint.
Johny Fernandez: So obviously, Bitcoin, it's a hot topic. Let's
talk about if have you used it in the past, personally, like,
do you have it? And what's been your experience with it? I mean,
it's something that is popular. So I know, I've had friends very
close friends that they were going crazy in 2017, during the
high of it, and they were just like, on their phone like 24/7
just constantly checking to see and it was it's like the stock
market, like they treated like it was like the stock market,
like making sure everything was going up, and they got too
excited. They're like we're gonna be rich. We're gonna be
millionaires and like, you know, by the world. And then it
crashed, and then it's like.
Sean Murray: We're you one of those people?
Johny Fernandez: I was not, I looked into, oh, maybe I was
because I was like, you know, I didn't really understand it
completely back then. Like what it meant, and I was like, you
know what, like, this seems kind of sketchy. But a lot of my
buddies swore by it. They were like, dead set on it.
Sean Murray: Yeah. So. You know, the fundamentals of Bitcoin
haven't changed. So if you're down, if you were really bullish
about Bitcoin before, and you're down on it now, it's probably
because you only cared about the price going up. And you probably
didn't really truly appreciate the underlying utility of
Bitcoin, which is the ability to move money without government
interference. For me, that's the whole point of Bitcoin, you can
send your money to anywhere in the world, and nobody can stop
you. Right? You can take possession of your money, and no
government can seize it, depending on how you store it,
right? If you store it on like Coinbase, or you store it on
PayPal, and the FBI wants that Bitcoin, they can probably get
it. But if you store like on a USB, and no one knows what that
USB is, or even better, you you actually turn the you take your
private key and don't even have it digital, you just have an
actual written out private key and no one knows where that
piece of paper is. Then no one's going to take your Bitcoin from
you. And so as far as whether or not I had Bitcoin, I have a
little bit of Bitcoin. I have half of one Bitcoin. And this is
a holdover from like, a long time ago, like you were
mentioning, like the whole 2017 and checking the price every
day.
Johny Fernandez: It was serious. It was literally, like they were
like, they would stop their car. Yeah. If something was to go
down like it would.
Sean Murray: Yeah, you know, if you're investing in something
where you have to check it every five minutes. Yeah. It's
destined to fail, it's gonna it's gonna blow up, you're gonna
lose money on it eventually, right? If you don't sell, it's
not gonna go up forever. I started getting bitcoins way
before that, like 2014. That's not like the very, very, very
beginning of Bitcoin. But that's way before most people had heard
of it.
Johny Fernandez: How'd you hear about it?
Sean Murray: Probably because, you know, we publish things
about alternative finance. And I think the concept came up a few
times. And at first, I just wrote it off as a possible scam,
to be honest with you, right? And then someone's like, no,
check it out. Look how it works. And I was like, wow, that's
So looking at that now, and looking at it, you know, from
really, really, really interesting. Not because like,
well, this could be worth a lot of money someday, but because I
could actually have money and send it somewhere or bring it
with me and that nobody could take it from it. Right, and that
there was no centralized control. It was completely
decentralized and was governed by map. It's a whole, it's a
whole big thing. Yeah. But once I learned about it, I said oh
this is pretty cool. And we actually had on our site, we had
an advertiser paying us in Bitcoin. And we still I actually
have on our invoices to this day, we have a credit card
option, an ACH payment option. We have a Bitcoin option. It's
been there honestly, since 2014, and only one person has ever
done it, and they haven't done it since, like 2015. But we had
back then, and knowing what you know, now knowing everything
somebody paying us in Bitcoin. And the thing was, who paid
that it went through, and then seeing this go up, do you think
Bitcoin and I would immediately convert it into cash. Okay. And
people would say, well that means you didn't believe in
Bitcoin. No, I did believe in Bitcoin. I didn't believe in
holding it just so it would go up, I believe in the utility of
Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is not useful if no one else is using
Bitcoin. So if I hold a lot of Bitcoin, I can't use it to pay
my vendors, then it doesn't do me any good. Yeah. So you know,
the company obviously had expenses, they couldn't just
mass Bitcoin. Yeah. Especially when I'm not holding it for the
purpose of it going up. Yeah. So I would take the Bitcoin and I
would immediately sell it. And it wasn't until 2017 that I
that would ever be a possibility, again, to have that
started to think about how many bitcoins I had. Yeah. Back then.
And end of 2017, the price of Bitcoin went up to almost
$20,000 per Bitcoin. And I started looking at my old
transactions from back in 2015, how much was a Bitcoin back then
it was like 300 bucks. For one for one, right? I was selling
Bitcoins for 300 hours. And so I started counting up how many
Bitcoins that I have total. Now, I didn't sell them all off at
once. So selling them all piecemeal, as they were coming
in. Yeah. Well, let's say never saw them, I just hold on to them
thats only $300 in Bitcoin, you know, I didn't really need to
sell it. Yeah. I could have just held on to them. And if I had
held on to all those bitcoins and never sold them, at the peak
of 2017, I would have had $1 million worth.
type of money in Bitcoin? So I mean. But it's tricky, because
it's everything's going up and down, and, and.
Is it possible for me to have a million dollars worth of Bitcoin
again? Or just. Just in general? So I mean, the price is back up
to $18,000. So we're close to the all time high, right? But
the problem is, it's in the market that nobody's talking
about it. So who's making them price go up? It's not everyone
we know. Yeah. It seemed like it was last time because everyone
we knew was getting into it. Yeah. I look at it like this,
right? There's only 21 million Bitcoin ever, there's a cap on
the amount of Bitcoin that there are. And there's actually less
than that. Because if you lost your private key that Bitcoin
can never be used ever again. Okay. So think about it, there
were only $21 million in the entire world. And you had one of
them. You'd be worth way more than a millionaire. Yeah. Right.
So in terms of, could it get up? Could you become a millionaire
by holding Bitcoin? I think, very possible. I think that's a
terrible way to look at Bitcoin. Yeah. But I think you could I
think if, and this is why some people hold on to Bitcoin that
think about what happens if the US dollar collapses? What are
you gonna do? It's the reserve currency of the world. It could
be a period of time, could be a freak event, could be a
pandemic, twice as twice, three times as deadly as the one we
have now. And all of a sudden, people are like, they can't get
into Euros easily. And then people are like wait, the Euro
is also tied to the dollar. So all the all the currencies are
kind of collapsing at once, right? All of a sudden, you have
Bitcoin, which has a fixed supply, nobody can inflate,
nobody can print more of it. Yeah. And temporarily becomes a
currency that people use until everything gets under control.
And there's only 21 million in the world one bitcoin could be
worth the equivalent of like $50 million or something. You could
be all of a sudden extremely, extremely wealthy, just if you
have one. Just one. So if you're going to invest in Bitcoin, look
at it from like a moonshot perspective, take money you
don't care about, hold on to it, put it on the side. And one day
the whole world collapses you can be one of the richest people
on earth.
Johny Fernandez: That's wild. So speaking about that, let's let's
jump into the Bitcoin Center. I know we we did a couple pieces
with them. So walk me through. I mean, that experience and just
like the center itself.
Sean Murray: Yeah. So um, I first went to the Bitcoin
Center, the original one on Broad Street back in 2014. And
it was kind of like, a dark, mysterious place with a lot of
strange people. Okay. Into Bitcoin for a lot of different
reasons. Now you have to remember this is 2014. Early
days. Okay. So the only people who are like super passionate
about it are probably weird people consider myself weird.
That's why I was into it. And it had its own character and you
could go there, they usually had open bars, and you had to. At
the center? At the center and you didn't pay anything to get
in. Okay. You just went in, it was basically like, very, like a
weird anonymous type setting. Okay. Like you had to fill got
your name on a sheet of paper, but a lot of people would put a
fake name, open bar. And then you'd have to sit through a
presentation. And then they would actually do trading,
bitcoin trading. And so you take people who had Bitcoin, and you
take people who have cash, for whatever reason, I'm not going
to go into why they wanted to do the deal. And they didn't want
to do it online. But some people wanted Bitcoin transferred to
them directly, where there was no trail of it through like an
exchange. And so you had people that it was selling Bitcoin to
other people in person, all happening in this room, there
was like a trading bell. You had all these people like
negotiating prices, it was crazy. That's wild. So that was
the Bitcoin Center back. Now, it's called the Blockchain
Center. And it's actually on the Upper West Side. And we just had
a another reporter, Kevin Travers go up there. And he
interviewed a few people, we actually interviewed the
director, Adam Gensberg, and it's not what it was, you know,
from back in the day, you know, Bitcoin is a lot more
mainstream. But there still is a Bitcoin Center or a blockchain
Johny Fernandez: That's interesting. It sounds like it
center now.
was an experience back then, for sure. But it's like you said,
its own world at that point, like at this point, like, you
know, it's tough to see that. So I know we talked about it acorn
Robinhood. Let's talk a little bit about like, those that way
of investing and making money versus Bitcoin itself? Because I
know that's something that people are always asking like,
oh, like, what do you think about like, their opinions on
like acorns versus Robin Hood versus Bitcoin, then there's so
many alternative ways to kind of invest now. So.
Sean Murray: Yeah, well, you know, what's interesting about
Robin Hood is that it's just, it's really just front facing
software for traditional securities trading. Right? Yeah.
Just buy stocks. Yeah. Options. So it's not like a new way to
invest. It's more of a more Gen Z, slash younger, millennial
friendly way of investing. It's an app on your phone. Honestly,
it feels a little bit like the Bitcoin crowd. Who were really
into it.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah, I could see that.
Sean Murray: So there was like a, there was always a thing.
Yeah. A certain point in time, but everyone kind of rallies
around. And before it was Bitcoin. There was a time when
it was like online poker. Okay. Everyone was obsessed with
online poker. Right? And online gambling was the future. And
seriously.
Johny Fernandez: It's funny cause you say you hear you hear
that? Every 10 years, like this is the future.
Sean Murray: And ou have of these young 20 Somethings and
like this, is that yeah. And they're like, Oh, this is
totally you know, this is where you're gonna make all your
money. This is the future. And it was I was honestly with
online poker for a while. And then there was something in
between, but I wasn't paying attention. And then also it was
it was crypto. Yeah. Right. That yeah. And everyone's into
crypto. Yeah. And all the different coins and it's the
future. And that's how you get rich. And then all of a sudden,
people got people got burned on crypto, prices went down, the
rally ended. And I feel like this whole securities trading
very old fashioned thing, but made fresh through apps. Yeah.
Is kind of the new glue. Yeah. I feel like the same type of
crypto enthusiasm is kind of being adopted by like the Robin
Hood crowd. I could see that. I personally have never used Robin
Hood. I don't I don't trade in any individual stocks of
securities. Except for, you know, mutual funds. Yeah. But
you know, a lot of people are using it, for sure. You were
mentioning something about acorn early. Yeah, I use acorn. How
does that even work?
Johny Fernandez: So I mean, pretty much they hold on to
money, they let you link it to your debit card, or they'll take
out money from your bank account. And then from there,
you have money saved to grow your acorn grow your tree,
because you start with like $1, $2, $5. And now you know, you
get into like the hundreds and then the 1000s. And pretty much
use that money and invest from within what the acorn had like
the options and it's pretty safe. I mean, for the most part,
and you're right, it is more like a Gen Z millennial thing,
because I know a lot of my friends, they use it. And they
were the ones that told me about it. I was like, oh, like that's,
that's interesting. And it's easy. Because everything's on
your phone at this point, like you do everything on your phone,
you log in, you log on, and you can do everything and they help
you take care of most the, all the hard things like looking for
like, you know what companies to invest in, and then like making
sure they give you your money and things like that.
Sean Murray: So is it more of a saving, from your perspective, a
savings app or an investing app?
Johny Fernandez: It's both because you can save money like
I haven't really done much investing, because I'm like,
alright, like I still want to see how much money I can
actually get on there. But then they also give you the options
to invest from within, you know, the acorns app.
Sean Murray: Okay. Are you investing into like individuals
stocks on there?
Johny Fernandez: Not like individual stocks or like just
like new like let's say like Nike comes out with like a new
product or whatever like they'll kind of give you a heads up and
then like they'll. They give you a heads up? Yeah, well. Inside
your trading app? I gotta get into this. For $5 I mean, you
can have your little bank account and they'll give you a
heads up on stuff so it's.
Sean Murray: I'm gonna get acorn now. Yeah. I'm sold, they even
tell you the news before comes out. And you can trade on the
insider info.
Johny Fernandez: And then you become a millionaire that way.
Forget big forget Bitcoin cryptocurrency. So let's talk
about the new administration. I mean, that's big news last year,
have been hectic. And obviously for the industry, for Bitcoin
for everything like the administration President like
Biden and Kamala Harris. So what exactly do you think it means
for the industry in general? And, you know, for just our
industry, the news, what's going on within our industry?
Sean Murray: Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned Harris, when
you mentioned Biden. Yeah. Because they feel when a new
president is coming in. People forget about the VP. But it
seems to be this kind of like subconscious understanding.
Yeah. That she may need to step in. Yeah. This is truly a Biden.
Harris. Yeah. Administration, whereas pence to Trump, Pence
was a guy who would come out and give a speech. Every now and
than, we didn't look at it as a Trump Pence, administration.
Atleast i didn't I. Yeah. It was it was the Trump administration.
Johny Fernandez: And even if we look back during like Obama, and
during Biden, like it was an Obama Biden, it was Obama cause.
Yeah. Did you yeah was it, or you know what Biden play a huge
role in that administration? No. No, I don't think so.
He was a guy that came out gave his speech, did his part of the
job. And then he'd go home but.
Sean Murray: Yeah, so you know, you kind of you kind of said it
in a way that everyone is talking about not to minimize
the position of VP. People are kind of operating under the
assumption that she could play an increased role, you know,
maybe even a majority role at some point. But as far as what
does it mean, policy wise? People say, well, it's too early
to call because the Georgia Senate race hasn't been decided.
And I think that matters from a legislative standpoint, because
if the Republicans continue to control the Senate, then you run
into a situation where they can't pass legislation.
Democrats can't pass legislation that they really really want.
Yeah. Republicans really, really don't want right. Yeah. Well,
there's more to it than than just legislation. There's also
regulation, right, you don't need to pass a new a new law to
enforce existing laws. And so that's the that's the real thing
to look at here is what did the new administration mean, from a
regulatory standpoint? And you say, well, Biden, you know, he's
maybe like, a, he's more of a moderate or something. Right?
Yeah. It really doesn't matter what Biden the person stands
for. Right. It's the people around him. Right. It's
Johny Fernandez: His team.
Sean Murray: His whole team and it reaches nationwide. Yeah.
It's who he appoints. And, you know, sometimes the to his
advisors suggest he appoint he doesn't know every single
person, right. And so you kind of get kind of just get a tone
set at the top. That's usually how it works, atleast in my
opinion. I'm not a, you know, political commentator, but what
I think it means I think we'll see increased enforcement
activity from agencies like the CFPB, the FTC, things of that
nature. Yeah. I think they'll be more active in enforcing
existing laws, or even be more proactive in their
interpretation of what they can do. Yeah. So that's, that's what
I think it means I think that we will need to be looking at
increased enforcement activity on existing law.
Johny Fernandez: So obviously, another thing that is also
changing is how we've all done life with Coronavirus. So I know
there's been talks and I've had people tell me like, oh, my
gosh, you know, the shutdown is coming down and another shutdown
and obviously, even walking around New York City, there's
this vibe that reminds people of like early March, where it's
just kind of like things are starting to feel different
versus the summer. So let's talk about another shutdown with if
that happens, like how it will impact the industry.
Sean Murray: Yeah, so my initial impression was that it was going
to be very, very, very bad economically to have shutdowns
on the scale that we did last time, because we didn't really
recover from that. Yeah. The stock market is up. Yeah.
Unemployment has gone down. But I don't think that a lot of the
rent payments and the mortgage payments have really been caught
up. Yeah. I think people were still behind. Yeah, absolutely.
I think people were still in that that situation of how do we
work out what happened in the past? Right? Do we go on a
payment plan? If they're going to be forgiven? And then to go
into another shutdown, we're just gonna pile on on top of the
previous problem. I think that's a real big issue. So I was
talking to some people within the alternative finance
industry, like, hey, are you worried about shutdowns? Again,
because it devastated the industry before. Yeah. And the
feedback I got was not only are they more prepared to deal with
that, if that happens, what they feel from the handful handful
people I've spoken to, that the business owners are more
prepared, right? Before you had businesses that had no takeout
at all. Till the takeout route. Yeah. Right. But it took a while
to get there. Yep. And and at first, they were like, no, we'll
just wait the two weeks, right. And then two weeks became
months, and they're like we got to do takeout. But they're not
they don't even have a website. Yeah. Or they don't have one
that you can use to order yet, right. And everyone's kind of
gotten that part figured out. And doesn't mean that businesses
won't fail. But the company that finance them feel a little bit
more confident in how business owners will be able to react, if
there is another shutdown, they're kind of hoping that it
won't happen at the scale that it did before. But they're
confident that business owners are more adequately prepared to
do what they have to do this time around. Last time around,
just nobody knew what was happening.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah. No. Well, let me ask you this. Do you
think that obviously, what happened last time, I mean,
we're still going through parts of it, because it's still not
fully over. But like, if there's certain restrictions that come
along, and that it's not a total shutdown. But, you know, it kind
of feels like one. Do you think that you said business owners
are prepared, but do you think that they prepared to live and
run business like this for like, another year or another two
years? Like, because at this point, there's no end date.
Sean Murray: Yeah, I don't know. I don't, no. So I don't think
that long, I think, no way, right? Yeah. I think I was
really talking about a month or two. Yeah. To be honest with
you. If you're an E commerce business. Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. You can go a year or two.
Johny Fernandez: Well, let's talk about that. Like,
obviously, with the E commerce and the threat that's going on
between, in the Merchant Cash Advance and the business lending
industry. So let's like kind of segue into that.
Sean Murray: Yeah. Yeah. So if you're in E commerce, or you
were in E commerce, man, you're in a good spot, right? Because
the whole world went digital. My ninety year old grandma was
talking about ordering her groceries online. Right. These
are things that would never happened. Yeah. And so if you
weren't digital, and you're not digital now, from an E commerce
standpoint, it's very dangerous. Because even though I think
there's some conventional wisdom that people are going to want to
go back to doing everything in person again. Yeah, right. Some
people will continue to use the digital technique, the digital
experience in their everyday life. Yeah. Someone who never
did online grocery shopping, is going to start is going to
continue to use it. Yeah. Then they, then they, if they didn't
before, right? And how that's translated into success for
alternative finance, if your company that's financed
ecommerce businesses, that's been really good for you. Yeah.
Right. The stock market is up. And people are like, why
everything's terrible, right. But some of these really big
companies are doing excellent right now, like Amazon's doing
great. You have Shopify, it's doing really, really good. And
guess what, Shopify also makes loans, to the businesses that
are on their platform. And they are quickly shifting up the
ranks to be to being one of the largest business lenders in the
country. In fact, the largest non bank business lender right
now is PayPal. Yeah.
Johny Fernandez: Which is wild, because you don't you wouldn't
think necessarily that they would have those resources
because I think when people think PayPal, or just like think
any of those, it's just like, oh, like a transactional?
Sean Murray: I looked at a list from like, 10 years ago, who the
top non bank, alternative funders were right. And people
were like, well, one day these companies are gonna be bigger
than Chase, in lending volume. Instead, they got usurped by a
new breed of alternative finance company. And in some cases,
companies that have been around for a long time that were able
to add another product to their, to their business like PayPal
was a payments company, PayPal's old now PayPal is more than 20
years old, right? But they could just be like, hey, we're gonna
do loans now. Yeah. Everyone's got PayPal. Yeah. All of sudden
everyone can get a loan from PayPal. Well, you have to be
eligible.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah. But you can still, isn't it easier to go
through them than going through a bank? For the most part?
Sean Murray: Yeah, it's definitely easier. I don't know
if it'll be less expensive. It'll be, it's definitely
easier. And same with like, you know, companies like Shopify
too, if you're already using Shopify, and you just had to
click the Shopify capital button to get money. Yeah. It's a huge
advantage. Yeah. Why are they going to call a broker who's
going to connect them with a funder who's going to ask for
paperwork, because they don't know anything about you. The E
commerce company knows your entire business, you are their
business, right? All you have to do is hit hit the button,
they'll know right away if you're good or not.
Johny Fernandez: So who's the biggest funder right now?
Sean Murray: So it's PayPal, right? And Square, though, is
coming up there too. And so it's interesting. I was trying to
think I was trying to find like an analogy with. I don't know if
I came up with a perfect one. But Square is kind of what every
sort of like Merchant Cash Advance Sales Rep wanted to be
10 years ago. Okay. Square came in, they dominated the payments,
business, right. And merchant cash advances used to be tied
into payments. And so if you wanted to have a big MCA
portfolio, you had to have a lot of merchant service accounts
too, so Square comes in, they dominate that. And they dominate
the financing industry too. And then what do they do they buy
$50 million worth of Bitcoin on top of it, right? That's, that
was kind of the dream. Yeah. You come in, you dominate payments,
you dominate financing, and then you throw away $50 million into
Bitcoin and sit back and watch the stock go up. And you know,
that's, that's, that's life.
Johny Fernandez: That's the end of it. Which is wild, I mean,
but yeah, I mean, they definitely dominated and now
that I feel like they're always someone to like, keep your eye
on because they'll pull out something completely new out of
the blue. And you're like, oh, wow, like, these guys are on it.
For sure. Yeah. And it's always I mean, at this point, the world
has changed after Coronavirus. And then they're not going
anywhere. Like everything's done online. Everything's done
through your phone. While I think human interaction,
everyone desires it now more than you know, before, but like
you said, I definitely do agree with the fact that like, people
are going to incorporate like, when we go back to like, normal
life, whatever that looks like, people will incorporate these
things, these technological advances in our life, and it's
just part of life now, like. Yeah. Ordering groceries and not
going to the store.
Sean Murray: Yeah. You know, one thing I don't think will
continue to be a really big part of our lives is Zoom.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah, absolutely. People are zoomed
out. We've talked about it.
Sean Murray: Yeah. I mean, but now now, compared to what when
we were talking about it a few months ago. Yeah. People are
like, repulsed.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah. Well, I think it'd be interesting to
talk about this now. Like, obviously, we've had, we always
do events here at deBanked. But I guess, what have you seen in
regards to the desire that people want to go back to in
person events versus doing something like a Zoom event,
which a lot of people, a lot of companies and organizations and
organizations had to do, because there was no other option, and
they had an event, you know, planned out.
Sean Murray: My personal opinion is that the virtual event
concept is done. People want to do things in person. And I have
constant conversations with people all over the country.
Right? We live in New York. Yeah. So we live in like, you
could call it the ground zero of of a pandemic. Yeah. Because
we're close together with everybody. But in other states,
they don't they're not operating like we are. Yeah. There are
states where you don't have to wear a mask, and nobody does.
And nobody thinks about it. Yeah. Right. And these are
potential people who might want to come to our events. And so
when I tell them, you know, it's not a good time to have one
right now. It's hard for them to just understand. Yeah. But at
the same time, I noticed that there are those who express that
they are not afraid of the virus, who actually are. They
talk a big game about freedom. This is a whole other topic,
right? Yeah. And I totally believe in the whole freedom, I
believe in all the freedom aspect of it, right. But when it
comes to okay, so will you come to a mass gathering right now?
They're like, well, not me. Maybe someone else. Yeah. I'll
watch it remotely. Yeah. You know, so they they act as if
they want to go to one this very second. Yeah. But they're like,
well, not actually. Yeah. And so it's confusing. Yeah. In terms
of when you want to put events together, that's all. That's all
I was really trying to get at. I wasn't trying to get to any
politics or anything like that. But we tried to figure out,
when's the best time to have an event. And so if everyone's
demanding, we have one and we want to meet in person, right?
Now we start to think about it very seriously. Should we have
one? Where can we have one? What are the laws about having one,
who would come who would feel comfortable, and we've just
found that those who expressed that they would feel comfortable
when given the prospect of actually coming to one, are
actually have a lot more reservations than they
originally led on to. So I think we're really going to need to
have the vaccine available for people to have to comfort you
and for people to do what they want to do. That's my thought on
it.
Johny Fernandez: So let's talk about this the new magazine.
Okay. So let's I mean, obviously, it's funny, because I
think the title itself is great. It's like when the music stops
how the pandemic threatened the history and culture of Austin,
Texas. But I think what's interesting is how it affected
all of us like, no, but specifically this, but I think.
Yeah. This can be taken, put anywhere. And yeah, but yeah,
let's talk about the magazine. I mean, the new article.
Sean Murray: So that's the future story. It's about how
the, how the pandemic threatened the history and culture of
Austin, Texas, right. So I think too often we're thinking about
how does it affect a restaurant? How does it affect a baseball
team, right. But we don't really think about a culture being lost
as a result of a pandemic. Austin is pretty much known for
its music history. Now, I'm not the author of this particular
story, right. But the music culture is very big in Austin.
And a lot of people are involved in that industry, because they
have a passion for music. So if you run a music hall in Austin,
it doesn't mean that you make a ton of money doing it, you're
doing it because you love music. And it's part of the culture,
it;s part of your you know, it's your passion. And you have bands
that share that same passion. And so when a pandemic comes,
and you can't pay your rent, you can't pay a mortgage, and you
can't host any events. It's devastating. Yeah. Because they
probably did not have a ton of cash set aside for this type of
event. And in terms of being able to recover, we were talking
about earlier, like, a few months, goodbye, and you owe
money to your landlord, and you're like trying to make a
work out deal, right? In certain parts of the country, people
might look at the business that you had, and think that place
could be better used at something else. Now that you
haven't paid me for a few months, now that you're
struggling, you know, I'd rather turn this venue that you have
into an apartment complex, or an office building. Yeah. And they
don't really want to do any work outs, right, it's more
profitable to actually let the business die. And so you have
this whole situation in Austin, Texas, where you have all these
music halls, essentially on the verge of going out of business,
or in the case of one that we actually started off at the
story starts off talking about a place called Thread Gills, the
staple the Austin community. And it starts off talking about how
the place is in dire, dire straits. Right. And it's
heartbreaking to read about, and there's several others that we
that we talked about in the story. But the writers name is
Paul Sweeney. He told me like you got to publish the story
online now. And I'm like, we really wanted to wait for it to
go in print. Before we just share it out. Yeah. Out there on
the internet. He's like, the problem is you'd like the
circumstances of some of the businesses is going to change
dramatically. By the time you put it out there in print. I'm
like, in like, two weeks or a month, and he's like, yeah, very
possibly. So when we put out this story online, that main
venue, Thread Gills actually went out of business completely
to the point where two weeks ago, they held their very last
concert. And not only is their new ownership, but they're doing
exactly what I said could happen before the new owners, this is
what I read. So the new owners plan to bulldoze the building,
and turn it into apartments. And so you have this historic place
in Austin part of the music culture of the city. That's
because of the pandemic is literally going to get not just
new ownership. And you know, it's like, oh, it's different
now. Right, literally gonna get bulldozed and turn into
apartments, and that will never come back. And so that's one
well, that's why we focus on what why Austin, Texas, you know
what I mean, that's kind of the whole point is that we're not
just losing a business here and they're like, oh, well, new
capitalism is new business will come in and you know, everything
will be fine. The problem is that we could lose entire parts
of American culture too. So that's the main story that we
lead with. Then we also talked about what's happened with
OnDeck, OnDeck this year. Rollercoaster. OnDeck roller
coaster. Yeah. People know a lot about what's happened there.
They were, they were recently acquired by Enova. There's quite
a bit of drama, you were actually reporting outside
their. I do remember, we're outside their headquarters.
Yeah. And then and then we did a story that actually you were
this is based on your report. Yeah. So when you were at
Horizon Financial Group, so we turned that into a story. We
thought that was a really good snapshot of how small commercial
finance brokerages were managing the pandemic. So we took that
report that you did when you went out there and we, and we
turned it into a little story.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah. And it's, it's really interesting, just
seeing, obviously, the changes going on between, you know, just
different businesses. And, you know, either they're out or
they've had to adjust and now they've branched off to like,
even bigger things that they wasn't on the map for them. And
they just had to, like, do it. And they're going and they're
striving and it's a 2020 pandemic year. So
Sean Murray: Yeah. What's crazy that we could have an entire
another year of all this right?
Johny Fernandez: Yeah.
Sean Murray: So
Johny Fernandez: So, we'll see what happens.
Sean Murray: Yeah. Crazy.
Johny Fernandez: Alright, Sean. Thanks for coming through. It's
been great having you. And everyone watching.
Sean Murray: Yeah, thanks for hosting me here at our office.
Johny Fernandez: At our office. deBanked headquarters here in
New York City.
Sean Murray: Hopefully, I come back again soon.
Johny Fernandez: Hopefully you come back soon here. Yeah, and
thanks, you guys for watching. Appreciate it, and we'll
definitely do it again soon.