Yeah, what's up everybody, appreciate y'all for hopping into this space.
I know we're a couple minutes late here, but hopefully everybody had a good day.
Got a fun space planned for us tonight. Kit's actually gonna be joining us here in just a
couple moments to, yeah, just chat, talk about a couple things and just have a pretty cool space
here. If we might have some people up on stage later tonight, but if you guys want to do me a
favor, click that button in the bottom right hand corner and drop a comment, a like, or a retweet.
It's the best way to support the space. And it is 10.34 p.m. Eastern time. I am still in New York.
In a couple days, I'll be going over to Denver for East Denver. So if anybody's there, I'd love
to meet up as well. Give me a couple moments here too. I see Kit's in the room here. Drop an invite.
If any of you guys don't know Kit, you're about to know Kit. He's super cool. Had a chance to
chat with him and meet him at Permission List this year in Austin. And figured we'd run it back here
on the Twitter space or on the X space, if you would. But again, hopefully everybody had a good
day. Always a lot to unpack and a lot to discuss. So ready to make it happen. Let's see here.
Oh, and shout out to everybody who popped out to space last night. That was one of our biggest
spaces in a really long time. And it was a ton of fun. So if you didn't see the space last night,
you can check it out. It's on our page. And I think we had over 7,000 people listen to or tune
into that space. So that was a lot of fun. And probably just make that one a quarterly thing
with Frank as well. Let me grab my water. Let's see. Okay. Laptop.
It's a couple minutes here while people tune into the space. Connect to the internet.
Go. Cool. We'll do a little traffic weather report here. What is this?
I'm actually at a hotel in New York right now. Let's see. Cool. Perfect.
Okay. So Bitcoin down 0.5% today. Actually really not that much movement when it comes to a lot of
the coins. Up or down basically a percent or two across the board. Solana down 2%. Ethereum down
almost 1%, 0.85%. Cardano. Oh, we might be having Charles Hodson sit on the space here
in the next week or two as well. So that could be really fun too. And for all of you guys who
don't like Cardano, we're about to do a whole Cardano space. So just to guys wait. I'll jump
over to OpenSea here. Oh, Personas. Personas minted. We didn't even chat about this yesterday.
We were so caught up with everything else. They're sitting at 0.5. ETH right now pre-reveal.
Lulu's from OD Labs are sitting at 0.2. About 2x up from mint. Azuki's 0.5 or Azuki Elementals.
What else? Little Pudgy's at 1.9. Oh, another thing too we'll probably talk about in the next
couple of spaces. Not tonight, but definitely next week is the blast unlock as well. There's
almost $2 billion in liquidity that's going to be unlocked back into the ETH ecosystem. And a lot
of people are theorizing that it's going to be a pretty big moment. I don't think that liquidity
is going to flow into your favorite NFT project or your favorite shit coin. I don't think that's
going to happen at all. That being said, that's not what happened with Jupiter. People thought
the same thing about Jupiter. That's not what happened at all. That being said, I still think
it's going to be a pretty big moment. What I'm more excited about is the things that are going
to be launching on blast mainnet. Most people are looking at it for the shit coins and whatever
degen stuff people put on it. But I think there's going to be some cool applications as well. And
I've been talking to a few people that are building there too. We'll see if we can get
Pac-Man out of space too. I've been trying to get Pac-Man out of space for a long time.
But we'll see if we can make it happen here as well. We'll jump over to Magic Eden.
Oh, we didn't talk about this either. But Magic Eden retroactively rewarding all Ethereum users
who've interacted with really like any Ethereum NFT thing or just in general dating all the way
back to 2017, which is pretty big to say the least. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of OGs.
I mean, it's a super vampire attack times 10. But it's not surprising that they're doing that.
And I feel like OpenSea is probably like, what the hell are we going to do now?
Fergana is at 3.9. Sol. Solmab is at 0.2. Fox is at 5.8. MadLads almost breaking 200. Sol just
sitting at 197.6 right now. Tensorians at 78. And I think that's about it. OK, bears at 15.4.
In regards to Bitcoin, NodeMonkey is damn dude. NodeMonkey is at 0.3.
Insane, honestly. Bitcoin puppets at 0.09 as well. QuantumCats at 0.25. There's just
an OMB sitting at 0.8. What are the Bitcoin decods sitting at right now? Let's see.
Yeah, basically everything on the Bitcoin ecosystem just kind of going crazy today.
Really just kind of going nuts over the past couple days. What else?
Yeah, I think the Bitcoin decod is sitting at 0.5 right now.
There's like 45 listed too. Frank was talking about that last night.
Yeah, actually like just the volume on the Bitcoin descriptions are just going crazy across
the board. Like if you look at the chart too, there's just so much. I mean, we've been saying
this for a while too, right? That that's going to be the narrative for the cycle. But yeah,
Bitcoin decods sitting at 0.51, which I think is what, like eight or nine ETH.
That's the equivalency. I actually did see that Frank and the team put out an announcement today
that you would be able to actually transfer your regular ETH decods for Bitcoin decods.
I don't really know how they plan on doing that, but that's pretty interesting too,
to see some cross chain. I mean, they did say omni chain, cross chain, interoperability,
all that good stuff. Yeah, and quantum cat sitting at 0.24 right now. So anybody who
meant to die is up to two and a half X two. So just, just crazy, crazy gains across the board.
Let's see. There was one more thing that I wanted to touch on here before we jumped into it.
Oh yeah, moonbirds, moonbirds seeing a ton of volume to over the past,
over the past seven days, 4,500 ETH traded over the past seven days, which is,
which is just a ton. And they're sitting at 2.2 ETH right now. So it's interesting to see
that they've actually held pretty steady since the Yuga acquisition, which is still just shocking
to me that that even have, Oh, this is what I wanted to talk about to portal coin, dude.
I think the pre-launch portal coin points, essentially the token is trading like OTC
on things like you like prediction markets, whatever, like a dollar 80. And the angel round
was five cents. So you got to imagine people like I saw a tweet from OSF and OSF and Mando have that
legendary ape trade where they basically dumped like 72 apes on top of mochi's head and cashed
out like $12 million or something right before apes took a second leg down to where they are now.
And I saw OSF tweet out a couple of days ago, something along the lines of that his
portal investment is going to be like more legendary than their ape trade. And if they made
10 mil plus on the ape trade, I can't even imagine how much they're they're making on this.
But yeah, just some quick maths for you. If you if you were like in the initial round and like
the in the angel round, whatever, let's just say you let's just be conservative and say you were
like a $25,000 check. And you did that at five cents. And this thing is trading at $1 80. Yeah,
kind of insane. The cabal wins again. And I'm not gonna lie, I definitely, I mean,
I didn't farm portal point at all. I got a DM about it yesterday. And somebody was like,
do you regret not farming it? I definitely don't regret not farming it. But I am. So because at
the end of the day, like you make decisions and you got to stand by them. But at the end of the
day, I am surprised at how how big it is. And I got to give credit where credits do.
They basically did this deal with Binance where you can stake your BUSD whatever and like receive
I don't even know this whole thing. But I saw a similar thing happen with zai token with sobi.
And that launched at like a 1.5 billion ftb and ran to three bills. So whenever you get the
the Binance partnership, and they do this whole like staking thing, whatever, which again,
we saw with sign, we've seen with a couple other tokens, you're almost guaranteed to launch just
like a ridiculously inflated ftb. And I mean, there's like pros and cons to that. Obviously,
the pros is that all the pre sellers, everybody who farmed it, everybody makes a bag. And that
liquidity just comes from, you know, like the world retail market, just dumping into, essentially
into the into the market, the moment it goes live. And the con is, that's probably going to be
overvalued. But at the same time, at what does ftb even mean? And I've stopped. I think it's so
easy to say this retroactively as well. But I think it's easy to look a lot at a lot of these
assets and try to find some sort of merit or something that would vilify the the valuation
whether it whatever it is. But at the same time, these are these assets just go to ridiculous
numbers. I don't know who who put out the tweet. But there's like a famous tweeters like
these are this new meme and omics that like, traditional people can't even understand. And
happens to be true. Let's see. Oh, another thing too. And I by the way, I didn't see this. I just
I've been so busy all day. But I guess BitBoy is boxing the like, I don't know, some guy from the
Harry Potter Sonic Obama, Obama Inu token. I don't know if it's like the team member or the founder
or something. But yeah, he's doing a boxing match right now. And there was a video of them doing
their standoff that went kind of crazy tonight. And it's from like this company like karate
something and there's like a karate token. I don't know what the hell's going on. But uh,
it did it did look interesting. If anybody has more info on that, please send it to me
because I just don't understand why BitBoy is boxing but I am kind of here for it.
Hold up, I'm gonna send you an invite here. So click I think actually this is kids first
Twitter space ever I think kit just do you see that microphone in the bottom left hand
corner? Just click that request up and I'll let you up. Let's see if it works.
Yeah. What's up kit? Good to have you up here. Yeah, I wish it was a little more intuitive,
but but we're here and we're ready. How are you? I'm good. How's it going? Cool. Cool. I saw it. I
saw it there. I just didn't want to like, you know, you were in the zone, you're doing your thing.
I'm not gonna just interrupt. I was talking about nothing. I was sorry.
But anyway, let's just jump straight into it. It's awesome to have you up here. Like I said
earlier in the space. We did meet at permission list, which was a lot of fun. And I actually
don't think that interview ever came out. So we're just gonna go I don't think it ever actually
came out. So we're just gonna go into this fresh as if we've never known each other. And sure,
I've been a big fan of your work for a long time. So that's why it's just kind of cool to be able to
TLDR 30 seconds synopsis of like who you are, what you do.
I try to play the perfect victim, I suppose, for all kinds of different scams. I started with
tech support scams, like the guys who claim that you have viruses on your computer, or pretend to
be Microsoft. And then over the years, branched into all kinds of different things, like the
people who would claim to work for the government and say you're going to be arrested if you don't
pay money, romance scams, all kinds of stuff. And I've been more recently getting into the
just like investment scams and pig butchering scams and things like that.
Hey, what is a butchering scam?
All right, talk to me about that. What is that?
Okay. Yeah, I, my understanding at the terminology for it is kind of, I don't know if grotesque is
the right word. But the concept is, as I understand it, you lure someone in, perhaps via maybe some
kind of romantic type relationship, or it could just be a friend. We see it actually a lot with
a hacked social media account. So someone's Facebook gets hacked, let's say, or whatever
social media. And suddenly, let's say your cousin starts posting a bunch of pictures of these really
fancy cars or whatever. And you're like, yo, what's going on? And he says, I've been investing
money in this really cool website, or this other person that I've met. And you go to this website,
and it's this really high tech looking, fancy trading platform. And they kind of promise really
good returns. And once you get started, maybe you send in $500 or $100 or something, you think,
whatever, I'll just try it out. And I think the reason why they call it pig butchering is the
concept of kind of fattening up the victim. So maybe you send in $500, and they have these fake
dashboards and fake, like the whole website's fake. So you log in a couple days later,
and that $500 is now $2,000 or $5,000 or whatever. It looks real, but they've already stolen your
money. And sometimes, if you try to withdraw your funds, sometimes they'll even give you
some of your money back. So it seems legitimate. But in most cases, now that you think you have
$5,000, the idea is, wow, I just, what's that, like 10x my money or not even way more than that.
Like, I'm gonna dump even more in now. I will tell all my friends about it now. I'll get my
brother and my mom and my dad, and everyone just starts dumping more money into this platform.
They're fattening you up. And then all of a sudden, people have refinance their homes and
taken out loans and all kinds of stuff. Their entire life savings is in this fake platform,
and then it just gets shut down and it goes to you and all your money is gone.
So it's interesting, like we're in the crypto space, and there are probably more scams than there
are legitimate projects or just like legitimate things. And I think a lot of people assume that
the people that are getting scammed are probably like degenerate gamblers that are just throwing
their money at the wall and hoping for the best. Do you find that it's actually not that in the
traditional kind of like web to scammy world and it's more like honest, hardworking people that
don't typically do these sort of things, but just fall into it? I think it's a little of both.
So I do see some of it bleed into the like, hey, come explore this brand new like,
like I'm trading this brand new cryptocurrency or I'm like, I'm a professional whatever,
web three expert come three X year Bitcoin overnight. Like I do see some of that
in the same fake platforms, fake stuff. But I also would say I brought up Facebook, like I
I haven't had a Facebook account in a long time. I think I imagine a lot of us listening don't have
Facebook accounts, but my mom does. And so yeah, to go back to what you were asking, I think
there are lots of, yeah, the more traditional or the more someone who's not looking, maybe who
doesn't even know what crypto is or doesn't really understand this space, but they are hearing about
it for the first time and they're excited about it. And maybe they've heard news stories about it
and they're like, oh, everyone's making money off of Bitcoin. And I wish I would have gotten in
earlier or whatever. Like maybe that's just sort of in the back of their mind. And so now when they
see or hear these stories about this brand new investment platform that's investing in whatever
and AI investing platform, they're like, okay, I guess I should try it. Like I don't want to miss
out on this one. So just I'm looking at your YouTube right now. And by the way, I got to ask
about the glasses too, but you have 3.3 million subscribers. You've put out 509 videos and you've,
it is actually kind of insane. 590 million channel views. That's actually absurd.
That's a lot of views. Yeah, that is absurd. I already have these 509 videos. Are you just
scamming scammers? So like I think what surprised is that there's a never ending,
like is it just never ending? Like could you essentially make infinite amount of videos and
infinite amount of content? Is there that many scammers out there? And then also, how do you,
like genuinely how do you find them? Are people sending you like tips like, hey, call this number.
This is like a group of scammers, like whatever. Like how does that work? Yeah, yeah. So in some
ways I'd say it's unfortunately infinite in that there's probably always going to be someone who
wants to take advantage of someone, right? Like, especially for financial gain or whatever.
I probably will go insane if I, you know, if I did this for the next 100 years, let's say,
oh, okay, 100 years, I won't be alive unless AI is cyborg, whatever. But yeah, so to answer that
first question, like I try to keep it fresh, switch it up. We're always coming up with no
ideas or investigating different scams. But yes, there are a lot of scams out there. In fact,
just the past few days we've been collecting, there's a bunch of scammers pretending to be me
now. Like if you just go on whatever, TikTok or Instagram or any platform and search for Kiboga,
you'll see just like hundreds and hundreds of fake Kiboga accounts claiming that they'll help
you get your money back if you've been scammed. So I'm trying to like now go after the scammers
pretending to be me. It's like, yeah, it's like a never ending game. And then your second question,
I get a lot of my, what would you call them, leads from the community at this point. So just
friends or people who watch the stream or watch the videos will email me or DM me or something
and say, hey, like my grandma got a call from this number or I was on Twitter earlier and I saw people
hyping up this weird, right? So a lot of it's just people send me stuff and I go after whatever I
think is interesting. And what's wild about the whole thing is like these aren't like five minute
videos or three minutes. These are like 30 minutes a piece. Some of them, I mean, this one's an hour
long. Like how are you chopping up these things and then condensing them into this or like are
some of the, I guess a better question is like, what is the longest like sort of thing? Like is
it a couple hours? Like, have you seen something like over a couple weeks? Like what is the time
period in which you're kind of scamming these guys? Yeah, I mean, some of them would probably go
for months or years, especially if I sent them money, right? I think the longest over the course
of months, I spent about 50 hours on like the phone with a particular group of tech support
scammers. It's actually the one. It was when I announced the partnership with Kraken. We
built this like honeypot Kraken account and he had been talking to me for about a year
and he basically every time he thought that I was going to transfer him money,
he'd give me like a bank account or something and I would always have a problem.
So he thought I had hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm this rich like businessman.
He'd give me a bank account and say, why are $50,000 here? And I would accidentally type the
account wrong. I would always have excuses, right? So at the end of this like year long,
whatever battle, we let him log into this like, it looks real, but it's a fake or like honeypot
version of the Kraken environment. And he types in his wallet to withdraw what would have been
about at the time, like $400,000 worth of Bitcoin. And he's like, you can hear him. He's like,
oh yeah, baby, you finally did it. And then I changed like one letter in his wallet and
pretend like all the money went to the wrong place and he freaks up. But yeah, that was like my,
that was the longest scam riot ever. That was like the record over a year talking to that guy.
And then he loses his mind. It's a good one. Wait, just to give people like a reference of
like what kind of this sounds like. So it's probably gonna sound pretty bad over my,
over my computer speakers. But this one, this one says scammer breaks down after 10 hours,
redeem equals rage. First of all, who the hell is writing these titles? But I don't know.
I got you. I got you. I got you. I'm literally shouting. I'm literally shouting right now,
ma'am. Yeah, you only need to shout. Take a breath. I gotta, hey, Abel, I have the,
I don't know if you heard me before. I had one of the coats. The, uh, I got, I got,
this is a $500 coat. Okay. So I'm gonna, I think I can get the, uh, no, no, no.
I think the best part is we just like keep talking over them. Like this is where he freaks out.
How do you, all right, first of all, do you get like a high off this shit when, when they,
yes, I mean, if I'm honest, yeah. Like, also, I don't know who titled that one. There are people
who just take those clips and like, you know, rip them and share them all over the place. But,
um, yes, I, I definitely enjoy, um, those moments. There's something,
it feels like a little bit of revenge, you know, like a little bit of payback or, or a little bit
of, um, yeah, like giving them a taste of their own medicine, right? But yeah, that was Abel,
I think his name was, he spent quite a few hours with me, like 10 hours.
Well, you just recognize their, you like know their names and you like recognize their voices.
Well, some of the more memorable ones, I've done thousands and thousands of calls at this point,
but yeah, that guy, um, he, he basically thought that I was about to give him a Google play gift
card, but I coded this fake Google play store. And so if I type, I mean, I could type whatever I
want into the, um, redemption box, let's say, as if I scratched the code on the back of the car.
And when I click redeem, it just says like $500 is about to be added to your balance. And that's
when he's screaming like, no, no, no, like you don't have to do that because he wants to take
money. That was going to be his, you know, score for the week. And he had spent 10 hours talking
to me for that $500 gift card. And then I just take it away from him. Yeah. I think the best
part about these videos is just like watching you try to hold it the last, like I, what I always
wonder is like, do these scammers, I'm like, they know, I feel like they have to know what's going
on, but they're just so deep into like, they feel like sometimes that they just ignore any red flags.
Probably it's almost like, I think it's an interesting psychological thing, because
I use a lot of the same tactics that they would use, but but against them. And like, I don't know
if they're looking for it, even though it's it's what they do all day long, maybe they're just not
expecting it to happen to them. Like the sense of urgency and I'm just different. I throw a lot
right back at them. But but maybe the other the other thing, too, we have there, or I say we,
but it's like, you got to remember that they at times, at least these tech support scammers,
like that guy, I don't know if it's the same for every type of scam, but some of the bigger call
centers are spending like all day calling hundreds like literally thousands of people.
And most of them just hang up or say, like, you know, a few and like, they know it's a scam.
And then another, let's say, whatever, I don't know the percentage, but let's say half of the
people start going along with it. But then as soon as they say, let me connect to your computer,
they say F you and hang up. And then another like, so maybe it's 10% of the callers,
let them connect to the computer. But as soon as they say, Hey, can you log into your bank account
to hang up, right? So now, if you if you get where I'm going with this, it's a very, very, very small
percentage of their calls actually get that far. So perhaps this guy had spent all week, or all
month, calling hundreds, like hundreds and hundreds of people hoping that he's going to get someone
that will that will go along with this. It's like a numbers game, you know,
so or what's the what's the term for it when you you've just spent so much time, and you're like,
surely, this is going to be the one that I forget the fallacy or whatever. But I think that's part
of what plays into it is they they believe like, this is it, this is my big break. This has to be
the moment. Now, a lot of these. Do you find a lot of these scammers are in? I don't know if this is
like the politically correct way to say it, but they're like in third world countries or countries
that are a little bit more. There's like not as much money going around, essentially. And, you know,
that $500 is I mean, that's a lot to anybody, even, you know, in the United States, let alone
in some of the like, like my country, my family's from Syria, like $500 is a ton. Right. Do you find
that to be the case? Yeah, I think like there are definitely I've talked to scammers all over the
world. For sure, there is there has to be I think, if we're honest, that that plays into it
to some degree. Like another thing that a lot of people don't know, though, which I think is just
crazy to talk about is a lot of these scammers that are working for call centers or organizations
that are doing this, they actually themselves, I don't want to say get scammed, but
if they steal that $500, they probably they typically get about 10% of that. So even though
they steal the $500, they only get a little tiny bit and they're like the big guys who run the
call center get 90% of the funds. And even though still that would be a lot of money for them,
it's just kind of crazy to think about how these guys who run the business who aren't even on the
call center floor are like hiding somewhere. So if the call center gets raided, they're not even
getting in trouble. They're the ones making all the money. It's kind of crazy. I did not know
that. So you're telling me there's businesses and they basically, let's say that I don't know
how many people typically were like 10, is it 50? It depends. I've run into them that are really
small. It's like two, three guys in their hotel room or whatever, but sometimes they're huge.
You can hear it. You'll hear just hundreds of people making phone calls.
These are hundreds. You've seen operations that have like 200, 300 people.
Yeah. And I think so going back, kind of circling back to your question too,
one of the reasons that I think we find it in perhaps third world countries commonly is that
the infrastructure for call centers is just so prevalent because we here in the US,
well, not just the US, but a lot of countries outsource their phone support now to these
different countries. And so now you have all the infrastructure there. And what some of them do
is they by day will run a legitimate call center operation for whatever company or companies,
and then by night they are running scams. Or there's a great scam leader, Jim Browning,
who does a little bit more of the investigative style. He'll actually do some hacking of these
call centers. And he has a couple videos where he'll show the security camera footage of these
call centers. And let's say it's three stories that they're running this call center in,
and the first story and the third story are running legitimate calls, outsourced calls.
And then the second story is running a scam. So if someone ever tries to investigate the operation
or the police show up and they don't thoroughly search all three floors, they just kind of hop
into the first floor. They're like, oh, everything seems fine here. And they leave, but there's
actually... Anyway, sorry if I'm rambling, but it's crazy. No, you're not rambling at all.
So in crypto, obviously there's a ton of scams. Like I said, I feel like there's more scams and
there are legitimate things in this space. And I've talked not directly, but inadvertently,
sometimes in the past, even over DMs when people are trying to scam me, I've straight up asked
people why they're doing it or if they're ethical, so on and so forth. And what I find from a lot of
people in crypto is they actually don't look at it as stealing. And they feel like the money is just
out there and it's like floating around, it's theirs to grab. So they don't look at it
in ethical. I think a lot of them do, but a lot of them don't as well. Do you find that to be
something similar when it comes to these sort of scams? Do they think about it consciously as,
hey, I'm kind of stealing from these people, whatever, or are they just thinking about it,
like this is a job and I'm here to make money? Yeah. Well, I've seen both.
Maybe after I give a thought about it, I'd love to hear some of those experiences from your end,
because I think a lot of the guys who do the call center jobs, they'll just sort of lie to themselves
and say, this is my job. I put on this hat. When I walk in the building, I get paid if I take money.
I'm not going to take that much. They kind of try to lie to themselves and say,
people in America are rich or whatever. They'll make stuff up. I actually just took the other
day to talk to some scammer and I had a kind of serious conversation with him at the end.
You were just talking about and he's like, well, if someone only has a couple hundred dollars or
a couple thousand dollars in the bank account, I won't steal it. I don't believe him, but maybe
he's being honest and that makes him feel better about what he does. But at the end of the day,
like he's still stealing. So I guess my overall answer is, yeah, perhaps
these people are trying to make themselves feel better, but I'm curious. Could you describe a
couple of those DMS or those? I wonder if it's like a different, would you say
it's like a scheme versus a scam or like, are they selling you something that could benefit you?
Because again, really quick, like a lot of the people I talk to, it's just very,
it's straight up a scam. There's no way around it. But I wonder are some of the people that
are talking to you like, well, this coin could make you money. It probably won't, but it could.
Anyway, I think, yeah, it's just weird because we talked about this at Permission List when we
had the interview with Thread Guy and with Kraken. It just depends. So if we go down the
coin route, let's say somebody is like normally the coin route is not a full on scam in their
traditional sense, at least not in 2024. I think like 2021, it was in 2022, it was like really
popular to get people to buy into like a honeypot, right, where you buy into the coin and then you
can't sell. And then the person who made the coin can rug, quote unquote, the liquidity. So they'll
pull the liquidity pool and they'll take, you know, whatever have our many thousand dollars
that are in there. Sometimes it's maybe five grand, sometimes it's 50 grand, whatever it is.
But I think what like ruggers, as we call them, have figured out is it's way more profitable to
actually build up a token. You make way more money. And like, especially now, the majority
of coins that are being launched on like a daily basis are actually happening on Solana.
And on Ethereum, there is like a cost to transact, really, it costs money to to do anything on the
Ethereum blockchain to deploy at could cost thousands of dollars in a, like a really high,
like a day that there's a lot of traffic. Maybe it's just a few hundred dollars, whatever it is.
So it becomes expensive to do that. But on Solana, you can pump out hundreds of tokens,
basically, instantly for a for a very small amount of money. And it becomes a lot more profitable to
you just like take a lot of stabs at it. So these days, you'll see people try to just like build up
a token. And they'll they'll get their communities or their telegram call groups to like go start
shilling it under everybody's posts and and try to get people to buy it. And they'll large amount of
the tokens themselves. And if there's any sort of traction, they can just sell those tokens into the
like in essentially into other people buying them and then they can pull out their money there.
I don't see that as much as like a full on scam. Because it's the casino we've like the meta in
crypto has changed to like, we basically is the way people think about it. They're like, we all
know what we're doing here. This is a casino. It's gambling. If you lose, you lose. And I personally
don't like that way of thinking, but it is a reality for many people. And I think that if
people do go into the quote unquote casino, knowing the rules, which is, hey, I'm probably
going to lose money, it's not as bad, where I do think it becomes really malicious. And this gets
like a lot of bigger accounts in crypto get targeted by this all the time. There's two things.
So I almost fell for this. This was maybe like a month ago, and I almost fell for this.
This guy DM me and he's like, Hey, I'm with I think it was GQ is like GQ or some comparable
like big news publication, whatever. And they're like, we want to chat with you. We love yours. And
they get very specific. They're like, we love your spaces. Like leap, you're amazing. Like we've been
following your content for a while. And the account will look very legit. And they're like,
we would love to schedule an interview and like write an article on you. And I looked at that,
I was like, damn, this is pretty cool. I've never had anybody write an article on me. This could be
really interesting. I respond to the DMS, and they send me a Calendly link. And okay, I was smart to
ask around. And apparently, this was like a very common thing, but I just didn't know about it.
And it's not the real Calendly, right? Like Calendly, for anybody who doesn't know,
it's basically a calendar app in which you can schedule meetings with somebody.
So this looks like Calendly. But the moment you click it, it asks to connect to your wallet.
And then basically, if you say yes, because you're not really thinking too much about it,
it will just drain all your money instantly. So basically, they're pretending. And another
common one kit is and this one's even more malicious, because this one targets, not just
big accounts, but anybody, there'll be a quote unquote game developer and gaming and crypto is
huge. Like it's the biggest narrative right now. And they'll have an account that looks very legit.
And like a founder account, a project account, all this different stuff. And they're like, hey,
we want you to actually play test our game. And you'll say, I don't know, whatever, whatever,
they're like, just come over to our discord, like, we'll chat about it. You join a very
real looking discord, right? Like it's discord, there's people in there, they're
you go in there, and eventually they convince you to play test their game,
and they're gonna pay you like an ease to do it. Wait, do you have to download the game? Sorry,
I'll let you keep going. I'm just curious. No, that's it. They send you a link, you download
the game. And the moment they put a key logger on your computer and like basically get you that way.
So they like that's the thing that the scams are becoming very involved. And it's not like getting
into someone's bank account, which I feel is a little bit more difficult with crypto. I mean,
you just have your wallets on your computer. And right? Yeah, they can just and this is my
next question for you. So I personally believe that like crypto is going to be
even if it's not in its current iteration, I think some form of crypto will be probably one
of the most common ways, if not the most common way that people transact on the internet over the
next decade. And with that, like, yeah, you're you're you have ownership of your assets and your
wallets on your computer and all this stuff. And I think the scams that we see in a traditional
like web to world will be 50 x as impactful and more prevalent with crypto being a thing and more
and more people getting involved in it. And I guess my question for you is, I mean, is the world
prepared for that? Well, I mean, I, I think I don't think we're prepared at all like where
the FTC, at least here in the US, just released some statistics from last year. And it's something
like, I want to say four point eight billion dollars were reported stolen just from investment
scams here in the US. And then I think total something like eight or nine billion just overall
like various scams. And it's it's kind of notoriously underreported. So if you think about it,
like earlier last year, we we helped this lady that she had been being scammed. And we found out
about it and called her and kind of like helped explain the scam and helped clean up her life.
We found out that she had been basically like, we're calling her like, man, what's going on?
Trying to explain the scam. And I said, is there anyone that you trust that can
we can call preferably if there's someone who knows how to use computers?
And I'm not joking. She calls this guy. She says, well, my computer guy,
he might not be awake right now, but he's great. And she calls this scammer who seven years ago
had done like a tech support scam, just like a really basic, hey, there's hackers on your
computer. Pay me five hundred bucks to fix them. And for seven years, he he continued to scam her,
like stole her identity, all this stuff. But she had no idea. She did. She thought he was the
nicest dude in the world. I met him like I talked to him. It was insane. But I bring that up just to
say she didn't report it. You know, she didn't know she had been scammed for seven years straight.
So, yeah, I don't think we're prepared currently.
I maybe won't rant too much about that unless you want me to. I just lately have been feeling
a little bit angry or passionate about that because, you know, you look at social media
platforms like I was saying earlier, there's hundreds and hundreds of duplicate Kipoga
accounts on something like TikTok or Facebook. And they just don't do anything.
I'm sure you've seen the fake like Elon Musk things that have gone on on like YouTube or
Twitter, maybe even Twitter, where he's like, hey, guys, I'm giving away like one Bitcoin to the first
you know, hundred people who upload or not upload. But like, have you seen those?
I've seen those, which actually goes into what I was going to ask you about next is like,
the AI stuff. Like how do you even like now they can just pretend? Yeah, yeah.
I thought it was like somebody pretending to be Joe Rogan for like some hair growth thing.
I'm like, Joe Rogan doesn't even happen. Why? Why would he be selling?
Like, I'm pretty sure he purposely shaves his head. And yeah, I don't even know how it works.
I honestly don't even know how we're going to deal with it. Do you think like in terms of
demographic of people who get scammed the most? Is it mostly elderly?
It's really so interestingly, I did a couple interviews last year, because the statistics
actually talk about now the younger generation or generations, I should say, like millennial and
younger are getting scammed more. And people were like, okay, can you explain this to us?
Like, what's, what's your take? What's your take? And my, my like first thought honestly was,
well, those are the people who report it. So we get scammed. And then we realized we got scammed
and we report it. And then, okay, right, if you're following me, so statistically, yeah,
technically, it's the younger generations that are more often being scammed. But I think it's
perhaps just because they are the ones who figured out and report it. And I'm not trying to say,
like, oh, the older generations are dumb, or like, they don't realize, I hope it doesn't come
across the wrong way. But yeah, statistically, though, it's like, maybe close to 5050, or like
6040 younger people are more likely to report being scammed right now. What platform are people
getting scammed the most? Like, you mentioned Facebook before is it and I'm assuming, like,
a lot of the younger generation. I mean, hell, when I before I was doing like crypto stuff,
so I went to school for classical piano. And I'm kidding. Okay. Yeah, and then now I'm doing
on Twitter, on Twitter. This is kind of interesting outworks. But after after school,
I got into like, like heavily into audio engineering and doing studio work and things
like that. And there was like a point in time where I was like, I'm, I'm gonna be a rapper,
I'm gonna be the biggest rapper. And I wanted to do that, too.
Wait, are there? Is there Kip Boga rap songs on YouTube? No, but
are we gonna get a debut here on the space?
Well, okay, so anyway, so I'm on I'm on Instagram, like posting these videos, I think I'm like the
coolest person in the world. And I remember, like the first video I posted on Instagram,
and it got like decent views. And I got contacted. I can't even remember. I could
probably find his name. I can't remember right now. And it was like something the producer,
and add, like, I mean, his account looked really reputable pictures with like Wiz Khalifa, this,
like, like, it was a real dude, like a real person. And he had DM me and long story short,
we ended up being on like a bunch of calls. And he tried to convince me to basically pay him,
like, I think it was like $10,000, which, I mean, now is a lot of money for me. But even back then,
I mean, I was broke, like barely any money. And, and he's like, Look, the 10,000, it's gonna be
for a music video, this stuff, stuff, whatever, whatever. And I was so convinced that this guy
was like a real, like massive entity. And that like, if I paid this money, it would, yeah, like,
I'd have my big break. And I remember telling my mom, I'm like, Mom, I told you like, it's gonna
work. And she's like, what's his name? Like, let me check him out. So I give him, I give her his
name, and she just googles it. And the first thing that comes up is this guy's like a notorious
scammer who targets young people who want to be famous rappers. Oh my gosh. Like such a specific
niche. And that was on Instagram. So do you feel like a lot more scams are happening on Instagram
and tik tok as opposed to just email, which or like phone scams? Yeah, it's it's hard to say
again, because if you just if I just go off of statistics, it's like, I'm just pulling them up
really quick. I know email, it's weird, because actually, the number of reports for scams are
really high for phone calls, texts and emails. But they're also those three mediums are also where
you're like least likely to lose money. So even though, like, well, when I say least likely to
move the people who got scammed, like 9% of people who got a text scam, and went along with it,
lost money, let's say. Whereas when you switch to social media, this is again, this is just like the
Federal Trade Commission here in the US, the most recent, they have they released like an annual
report every year. It was like 12% of the reports came from social media, whereas like email is 24%.
So like double the amount. But then 68% of those people lost money, if that makes sense. So like,
even though only 12% of the scams are coming from social media, or, or something like,
even websites are really low to like 13%. They were 60% more likely to have lost money. So I don't
know if that helps explain it. But it's, I think it's all over the place where these scams happened.
Wait, so how the Batman of scam, like, how did you become like a vigilante of like going after
these people? Did you personally get scammed? And then you're like, screw it, like I'm gonna go
after these guys. Yeah, so I, I, I don't know if any of you guys listening ever played RuneScape
are now old school RuneScape. But if you're familiar with it leap, it was like the, in my
opinion, it was the MMORPG for a decade. Okay. So you remember then, the people who would tell you
they would, yes, they would trim your armor. For people listening who don't know it was like,
they could make your your armor look like really cool. Or it would be really expensive to do that.
But they would say they would claim to do it for free. And you'd be like, yeah, that's sick.
And for whatever reason, you'd trust them. Because they were really high level account
or something. And you would trade them your really expensive armor, and then they would just log out.
Or another one was, they would, they would tell you like they're doubling all of your items,
they found this glitch, and you could like go drop all your items somewhere. And if you log out
and log back in, you'll get, but they would just steal all your stuff. So I got scammed, like,
through those sorts of things. The inspiration for it really just came from,
my grandmother had dementia, and my grandpa had Alzheimer's, and they had been not scammed by
like a text support scammer that I know of, but they got taken advantage of in a variety of ways.
Like people would just, I remember one time I went to the house, and my grandma had this like
beautiful garden, she loved roses, and she spent like her whole, I don't know, at least
the whole time I knew my grandma, she worked on those rose bushes. And there was this landscaper
ripping them all up. And I remember being like, what the heck are you doing? And he was like,
oh, your grandma's paying me to, you know, rip out these rose bushes. But he wasn't just like
destroying them. He was very, like, meticulous about how he was
doing it. You could tell he was just gonna go reuse those, like try to replant them somewhere.
And she just, you know, as she got older, this guy told her like, your rose bushes are dying
or whatever, you got to pay me to rip your rose bushes out. But he was just like stealing them,
and he was gonna use them on other like landscaping jobs. So stuff like that would happen to them.
And when I first heard about tech support scams, about seven years ago now, I immediately thought
of them and was like, shoot, if I'm like a software engineer, millennial, I'm on the internet all day
long. And I didn't know these tech support scams exist. I didn't know people called you and claimed
to be Microsoft or whatever, like surely my grandma wouldn't know. And that was kind of the,
I guess like moment. I'm like, I guess I gotta do something, you know, I gotta try to help.
So and it's funny enough to that you that you mentioned RuneScape as well. I've talked to a
lot of a lot of people in crypto, just in general, were internet kids and being internet kids, you,
you probably played RuneScape or, or Maple or World of Warcraft or something. And I have heard
from like a surprising amount of people that the reason they haven't been scammed in crypto is
because they got scammed in RuneScape. Like the DICE thing, the doubling stuff or like the drop
party scams, like whatever, like follow me into the wildy, like trust me, there's some cool stuff.
And it's like, it's way more common than you would think. And, and what you're mentioning
about your, your grandparents as well, I think is something that people can really resonate with.
Also the fact that he was picking the, like she was getting, he was getting her to pay
him to pick the flowers. I mean, that is nuts. That is nuts. Okay. So you, you know, you heard
about this really quick. There was someone who would physically come to her house every other
week to clean the viruses off of her computer physically, like, like a human, like this was way
back in the day too. I don't even know if she had the internet at that point. It was nuts.
No, no, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what they were doing, but this person just told her
like, yeah, we got to make sure your computer is safe. And so like, I'll come to your house and
clean it. And she was paying for it just because she didn't know any better. And she, she had to
trust people. But it's so wild. Okay. So you, okay. But like, how did you, I just like don't
understand how it turned into like media behemoth. Well, very kind of you to say, I don't really know
either other than sometimes I think it's just like luck and the right place, right time. I,
like, I just got really passionate about it. I had a full-time dev job at the time. And
I think like once a week I would call these scammers on like Saturday or Sunday or something
like on the weekend when I had time. And I would always tell my friends about it. And one of them
was like, yeah, why don't you like stream it on Twitch so I can see because I would, I wouldn't
shut up about it, right? Like, you know, I, dude, I got this guy and I, I'm not good at it,
but I used to play guitar a lot. So I would like play guitar when I would talk to him and I'd try
to get him to sing country songs and just like stupid things. So I'd tell my friends about these
dumb things I got the scammers to do. And they'd be like, oh, you should stream it. And then
one day you said you were going to ask me about the glasses. This is kind of like the tie-in.
I think if I remember correctly, it's been a while, but one of my friends or someone on Twitch who
must have just like, like scrolling the channels with like two viewers or whatever, because some
people do that. They saw this video or the stream of, and the scammer, if you know the boot scoot
boogie, the like country song, I was poorly singing that. And one of the scammers started
singing it with me and they clipped it. I don't even know if I could find the clip, but they,
I think they shared it on Reddit. And I went, and then I got a bunch of views. I never saw it,
but like, I went to stream the following Sunday a week later. And instead of there being two people
there, there were like 50 people there. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? Why are there,
you know, like why are there people here? And I went and grabbed sunglasses out of my car
because I was like, I don't want anyone to know who I am. I don't, like, what's going on? It was
a very, this innocent, like, I wasn't trying to be a streamer, you know? But then suddenly,
like people were watching. Anytime I streamed, there were people there and it turned into
what it is today, I suppose. Yeah. It turned into 590. It was a few scamming scammers. Also,
I think, I think the funniest ones to me are when you're dressed up as an old lady. Yeah. Where,
where does it go? Because like, I can understand the voice changers and then you're just like,
screw it. I'm just going to dress up as an old lady. Yeah. You got to get into it. You got it.
I mean, it's, I learned pretty early on that if I made a video that said like,
here's the top 10 scams right now. The people just like, they didn't really care. They weren't
going to click on that video or share that video. Like some people would. But if I made a video
where I got a scammer really angry, right? Or like, I exposed something interesting
about the scammer. I made it entertaining. Then people would share it. And if the mission was,
well, I want to waste scammers' time so they're not talking to other people's grandparents and
I want to educate people about the scams. I was like, well, I guess I can't, I guess I can't just
make a infomercial. I got to be funny. Like I got to find ways to make it entertaining.
And so that's, that was sort of where that came from, like trying to learn different voices or
different ways to goof around. So this vein, this lane of scamming scammers is huge now, right? Like
there are probably hundreds of creators that do similar things and some of them like really really
and people really kind of taking it and doing their own thing with it. When you started doing
this, was this an industry and content? Were people doing this or were you the first big one?
So I, for sure, like I don't want to take any, I don't want to toot my own horn. I don't know
the word for it. There's a whole, if you ever, if you look up like 419 Eater, it's this whole
big thread that's been going on for years and years, specifically covering like the Nigerian
prince style email scams. Like it was predominantly when, there's people for decades who have been
baiting scammers and messing with them. So I definitely was not the first person to
mess with a scammer. And at the time, I mentioned Jim Browning earlier in the call. Jim was also,
Jim had started to put out some videos then. I think the original thing I could
claim, I think. I don't know anyone who was doing it live and I don't know anyone who was doing
like voices and stuff. Like, what if I had to be an old man? I would say that's probably
like the entertainment side. And I don't know if I like set out just to, again, I hate to make
myself look, I kind of fell into it, right? Like I was just trying to do my thing and have fun and
mess with the scammers and it worked out. But yeah, now there's all kinds of, it sort of turned
into a big, a big thing. I just want to play this clip because I mean, these people like go and like
go to your channel and just watch some of these because these are just ridiculous. I mean, for
again, that my speaker is probably pretty bad, but for people to listen in, here we go.
Watch how angry this scammer gets when I don't give him access to my bank account.
Mom, I am not interested in money to each other.
You think you're very smart, right?
Write down the name of your favorite teacher. Write down the name of your favorite teacher.
Write the name of your favorite teacher.
I was trying to, what's the name of your favorite teacher supposed to be like the security code?
That's so weird. That is so wild. Um, do you.
Does it get like depressing after? Like, I don't know if that's the right word for it,
but like after you're dealing with like hundreds of these people, is it.
Like, do you ever like get to a point where like, damn, like this thing never ends. Like they're,
It's a good question. I, there's definitely like some days.
It hits different, you know, like some days it's just funny.
And then there's, there's other days where you're like.
Holy crap. This is, this is crazy. Like, this is real life stuff.
Cause I tend to get so engrossed.
It like, so I grew up, I really liked whose line is it anyway, or like improv shows.
I never like took improv classes, but I would go to improv shows.
And I, I just always thought that was really fun.
Um, and I basically become the character.
Like if, if, if I'm an old man, I, I like am that guy.
So that guy gets scammed. It's a, it's a pretend universe.
You know, like I, it's not real.
I could just hang up the phone and I kind of forget it happened.
But then there's, there's other days when it gets particularly dark or, um,
you know, sometimes like someone will email me or I'll get on a call and they're like, hit my,
like my grandma went to a Bitcoin ATM multiple times this week and essentially,
uh, lost her entire life savings.
Like they would instruct her to go into this Bitcoin ATM,
$10,000 at a time in cash and, and, you know, send the, send the money to, to this wallet.
And it just really, all of a sudden it just hits you.
You know, like it's not, it's funny when this camera screams at me and gets angry,
but it's not funny when you realize like, shoot, this is real life.
Like he thought that was real.
So, so some days, yeah, some days it's, um, it's tricky, but I think,
I think at the end of the day, like you said, like I, I, I don't,
I don't really look at the stats anymore, but, um,
yeah, five, what did you say?
Like 500 million views is, I just, it makes me smile to know that millions of people have
been educated or got a chance to laugh.
And I also hear, um, for those people who have lost money or have gotten scams,
sometimes it can be a bit of like a cathartic.
My grandma used to say laughter is the best medicine kind of thing.
I mean, I like even going back to your, like I just went to your channel and your
oldest video from six years ago, tech support scammer refuses to say Jesus or talk about Trump.
It is when scammer thinks Minecraft is a virus software and tries to fake Siskey.
I don't know what I was doing.
I gotta delete those videos.
It's just wild how you were doing these.
And, um, yeah, I think it is cathartic for, for anybody who, who has gone
scammed and just like the amount of people that have watched this is like, you probably
educated millions of people on maybe even tens of millions of people, right?
Um, it's, yeah, it's absurd.
And the, the Bitcoin, uh, ATM, to be honest, I don't think I've ever used a Bitcoin ATM.
So like even me, that's something that is a bit intimidating and I can't imagine a scammer.
Like it's just such a, it's a hard thing to even think of.
Like I'm a scammer convincing, you know, like an 80 year old grandma to go to a Bitcoin ATM
and basically, you know, like teach her how to withdraw her life savings and send it to
And it just shows that, you know, as much as I love crypto, like it definitely opens up more
opportunities for, for people to get scammed.
I actually went to my first Bitcoin ATM at permission list in Austin.
I rented one of those scooters to go find a Bitcoin ATM because I had never, um,
I wanted to see it firsthand, but I, yeah, it's, it's crazy.
I've been trying to over the past year or so specifically, um, like I, I, I'm still trying
to bring the entertainment side and, and all that, but I, I think as the, as things have grown,
like it started off with just me and now I have about 12 people, um, like it's, it's turned into
a, you know, like a multiple businesses.
I launched, I launched a software company, but to try to protect people from scams.
I have a huge AI project we're working on to fight scammers.
And so as it's grown, it's, it's definitely become like, yes, I, I like to goof around,
but we're, we're trying to get a little bit more serious about how could we actually,
because there are more that we can do.
Um, and like in the crypto space, we, uh, and stop me if I'm like, um, we, we built this.
It's hard to explain quickly, but it's sort of like this honeypot website where the scammers
think that I sent them a receipt like from a Bitcoin ATM.
They think that I, I, I'm sending them money.
And then they, they go and they make an account on this, this fake website.
Um, and when they enter their wallet address to claim the funds and like steal this money.
Um, so imagine they think I'm an old man who, who went to the Bitcoin ATM.
I put in $10,000 and I made a mistake and I, instead of typing in their wallet,
I clicked this button that says like easily send funds to anyone in the world.
And then I print out this receipt. I send a text message to this scammer with this picture.
He thinks it's real. And now he goes and signs up for my website and he gives me his wallet.
Sometimes he'll, they'll give them like, they're, they're like real name and like
actual information. Cause I think it's a legitimate place. Um, and then now they're
giving us not, not like a brand new wallet that they just made today, they'll, they'll type in
like their main wallet that they're like, they're trying to put a bunch of funds into.
And we, so we work with, um, Kraken on that and their fraud team and we've collected about
700 wallets over the past couple of months that are, that are all like compromised like
wallets where they're laundering, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crypto.
And then some of them are dumb enough to, I tell them, um, hey, if you sign up, I say, hey, if you,
if you have a verified, um, Kraken account, you can get your funds faster. And so some of them
are stupid enough to do the KYC stuff where they'll like upload their passport and it's really
stupid of them. But I'm just trying to give some examples of like, we're trying to get as much as
it's funny. Um, for example, when they, when they go on that website, I present them with fake, um,
AI generated CAPTCHA images that are like ridiculous and they have to guess what the
images are. Right. But, um, so it's still funny, but at the end of the day, now we have like tangible
stuff that we can, we can take and take action on or try to get some of these funds frozen or
scammers investigated. Um, so that's been exciting too. Cause I, again, I started off
like, well, I guess I'll call some scammers and see what happens. And now it's, it's turned into,
um, we're like really able to make, make some huge strides and affect things.
Well, there, so I actually did not know that you're, that you're doing that. That's really
interesting. And, and, um, there's a need for it. Obviously, you know, that there are
entire businesses currently being built, especially in crypto for like people, not
like the same thing, but like trying to basically find ways to protect people. And I mean, ultimately
I think it's the, like we, we talk about in crypto all the time, like mass adoption,
bringing all these people in whatever. I don't think mass adoption ever happens in any sustainable
manner until we can find, there's never going to be a full solution to stop people from getting
scammed, obviously, but at least some safeguards or something that does go after malicious actors,
how do you find the time to balance making these, because these videos are not short.
Like you said, sometimes it may take like 10, 20 hours to create one video because you have to,
and you have to talk to these guys on the phone for that long. So how do you balance
basically building a tech startup and then also streaming and then doing all the content?
Um, I, I kind of, I kind of just don't, I, I've been trying to get better at it,
but like hiring people, that's, that's the main reason we've been hiring.
One, because of the time it takes and two, because I'm, this is going to sound dumb,
but I'm just being honest. Like the more, as our team has grown, the more I've realized like,
holy crap. You know, when you get a couple like smart people together, gosh,
now I'm saying I'm smart, but whatever you're going to get a couple cool people who have
ideas together in a room, like you can accomplish a lot. And then the more people that you add to
that, right? When, when you get a bunch of brain power going and start brainstorming,
you can just do so much more as a team. Um, and so now, now all of our, like any idea I have,
I throw out there to a team of people and then they make it like 10 times better. Um,
but yeah, a lot of it too is because it just takes time. So I, I currently work every day
of the week. Some days I try to work like a half, like half the day, because I got kids and I,
I want to make sure I am, I'm a dad, at least somewhat. But honestly, it's just been like,
I just work a lot. And the way I've treated it is, um, it's kind of a once in a lifetime.
Although I honestly leave, I thought that it was going to, I very specifically remember the day
where I told my employer, um, that the guy I was working, working with was kind of like a,
a good friend as well at this software job I was doing. And I said, you know what?
It's going to be a year, but I gotta do it. Like it's a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I don't even think this will last a year, but like, I gotta do it. I believe in it.
People are watching the streams and the videos and I'll be kicking myself if I don't, but I'm
sure I'll be back in like a year. I remember very specifically telling him, I'll be back in a year
and now it's been seven years. Um, funny enough, I hired him and now he works for me. But anyway,
um, this has been a crazy story. I don't even, I don't even know where I'm going anymore other
than I don't really balance it very well, but I love what I do. So it's like, it feels sometimes
it's work, but I'm blessed and honored to be able to say that like I, I get to sit down and do
something that I love with a bunch of people that I enjoy every day. So it doesn't really feel like
work. I can resonate with that. I had a call. Um, I think it was either yesterday or the day
before with, um, her name is back and she's a, like a phenomenal content creator in the space.
And she, she asked me the same question. Um, like, how do you balance doing, because I, I work a
full-time job. Um, my meetings start at like, you know, as early as 6am Pacific through like 5pm.
And then typically we'll start the space like 7 to 8pm Pacific. Um, she asked me, she's like,
how do you balance? And I said the same thing. I said, I really don't like it's, it's kind of like,
you know, just, and I so resonate with the, like you have this once in a lifetime opportunity and
you just kind of run with it. Do your kids watch the videos? Uh, they're not like old enough yet.
They're still pretty young. Um, and I, I'm just to be fair, like I am trying to get better about
like, I can sense now sometimes when I'll start to get a little burnt out or, um,
for sure. If I get the right amount of sleep and if I take some time and like, I like to fish.
So I'll take the kids, you know, on the weekend, like we'll go, we'll get, get in the kayaks and
go fishing or something. And I, I find that I then do much better work the next week, but,
but yeah, there's, there's so much to do and there's so many, um, so many ideas. I'm sure
you're the same. It sounds like you're the same way. Like you got, you got lots of stuff you're
working on and like now's the time to do it. Yeah. I do. I do think it's kind of like, uh,
an all gas, no breaks moment. Um, I want to, I want to take some questions from the room.
So guys, if he's listening right here right now, um, maybe we'll bring up, I mean, if you're up for
it, we also could bring people on stage, but, um, for anybody in the room, if you guys do have
questions, click that button in the bottom right hand corner and just drop them in the comment
section there. And then obviously I'm open to whatever man you do. Like if people want to come
on here, this is my first space is honestly, but it's, it's cool. This is fun. You're flattering
at this platform. Um, okay. So look, we'll actually, they, they introduced a new feature today. I didn't
even realize it until this space right now. They, there's native clipping guys. So if you look at
the bottom of the screen, there's like a little scissor. You can just click that and clip natively
within this, within the space, which is they used to have over a year and a half ago and they
removed it for whatever reason. And now it's back, but I'm, I'm actually, I think it can be kind of
cool to bring some people up. So if you guys have any questions, click that request button in the
bottom left hand corner, we'll bring a couple of people up. Uh, there is one question that was
dropped in the comment section. And, um, it was from elder Carl elder wrote leap. If you're taking
questions for kit, I would like to know if kit is workshopping any new personas for his videos.
I cannot imagine the hackers fall for the same voice.
So at one point I reached out to like a, a pretty reputable, um, accent coach
and was working on some accents, but I, I actually had a, it sounds crazy to say, but I had a
hemorrhage in my, um, one of my vocal cords. Cause I was like, just streaming a lot. And, um,
I had learned this, uh, like this boss, I said it was between Boston and Rhode Island or sorry,
Long Island in Boston. I don't know what this accent is, but I, I would, I would, I would usually
yell like really loud when I did that. And I just ended up like destroying my, one of my vocal
cords and I could barely talk. I get hurt to talk for a couple of months. And so I ended up
kind of like, all right, I'm not going to, I kind of just stopped doing that. Um, maybe I will
revisit it at some point though. Kind of your, so currently no, though your second part about,
you know, they're going to, I don't think there are, let me see, let me see how to say this.
There are so many scammers that I just don't think it necessarily matters. There are,
yes, some of them know me like every once in a while I'll have a scammer that's like,
hey Kipoga, I know it's you, but, but there are, yeah, there's new scammers every day. And, um,
I think I'm, I think I'm going to still be able to call quite a few of them for sure.
So the, the vocal cord thing is interesting. I, I have, I tweeted about this just a couple
of weeks ago. Um, so I, one of the big reasons, so we used to do spaces seven days a week,
basically for all 23 and 2022, it was seven days a week, you know, sometimes upwards of 12,
13 hours a day, mostly around like six to eight, but it was seven days a week. And I think the
only days I took off for basically that entire two year period was when I went to conferences
or like traveled or whatever. And it got so like, I had such an issue with my voice where I would
not talk at any point unless I was on the space because I just had to, I physically, and I ended
up discovering throat coat, which is like the tea. Do you, do you drink throat coat? I do. Yeah.
Okay. See, see now another person can co-sign this because people didn't know that it was a
real thing. And then they just kept calling me the throat goat, but that's a, a whole different term.
So I learned, maybe I'll just throw this at you. So I learned going through the like therapy,
the vocal therapy that, and this should have been a no brainer. Maybe you already knew this,
but throat coat and like drinking water and stuff, even though it's, it kind of seems like
it helped. Like I still use it, but the like water and all that doesn't ever actually touch your
vocal cords. Otherwise you'd be drowning and choking. So it's actually, when they told that
to me, like it blew my mind. I was like, yeah, I guess that makes, I guess that makes sense.
So it's actually more about like staying hydrated and drinking that stuff
ahead of time as weird as it sounds. But, but yeah, I do drink that tea and it does feel like
it helps. Wait, so what do you do to like, because even to this day I have, like I listened back to
recordings from, from like two, three years ago and my voice sounded much better. Now I, I sound
like I smoke like a pack of marble. I don't know, even know if I could fix it, but like,
is there specific exercises that you do? Yeah. And I mean, you could definitely,
you could go to like a vocal coach or vocal therapy and they'll like, I'm, I'm kind of doing
it now. Like I'm getting a little growly. There are definitely, definite ways to just like sit
up straight and kind of like they would have me kind of puff up my chest a little bit and practice
speaking from your, try to speak from your chest instead of speaking from your throat. It sounds
weird. Maybe, maybe other listeners know what I'm talking about, but there's, there's definitely
ways to do it and you can teach yourself to do it naturally. I don't, but yeah, that and drinking a
lot of water. Okay. Okay. I just got this a DM from Hippo420. This is totally a real DM and not
a DM that I just made up. Sure. Shout out to Hippo420. And Hippo wrote, Kit, what is the
maddest you've ever been? Like when did, like, is there any point that you was just like completely
lost it? And like, we're genuinely like so mad at somebody when it, when it comes to one of these
scammers? Oh my gosh, that's a good question. I don't know. I try really hard not to get mad.
When I was younger, I like, I think I had an anger problem. I just, and I've practiced
for years, like not getting mad. I think there's been, like related to scammers, there's been times
where, I was sort of talking about this earlier, where when I'm the character, sometimes I can't
tell. It's a whole other world. It doesn't feel like real life. But there have been a few times
where I'm laying it on thick, you know, like I'm an old, I'm practically being my grandma. I'm
pretending I have dementia. This scammer is trying to steal, like my, he's trying to liquidate my
entire life, you know, like a couple hundred thousand dollars sitting in my fake account.
And they're just, you know, screaming at me saying, like they're gonna, if I don't comply,
like they're gonna come kill me or whatever. Like there's been some really dark, really messed up.
And some of those afterwards I end up just feeling really, I don't know if I've ever done it on
stream or on video, but afterwards you kind of hang up and you're like, you just want to punch
something. Like, how can this be okay? You know, how can this be real life? But gosh, I wish I had
a better way to answer that question. I don't know if I, I can't think of like one moment,
particularly, if it comes back to me, I'll, I'll tell you Hippo 420.
Yeah, Hippo 420 is totally a, totally a real account. How did the, how did the Kraken thing
happen? Cause like, I know we talked about this a little bit at Permission List, but it's still
just probably one of the most interesting and bizarre crossovers that I've seen from like a
crypto focused company to like with a content creator. Did they just hit you up and they're
like, Hey, like let's do something. How did that work? Yeah. So I, funny enough, I think
um, Lou over there had DM'd me on Twitter, but I never checked Twitter. So actually after
we already had been working together for a couple months, I went on one of my Twitter DMs
and I responded to Lou and was like, yes, I would love to work with Kraken even though I already
was. But I, so I was looking for someone to work with because I had been,
the short story is when I first started, every scammer asked you to buy gift cards.
That's why most of my content from say four or five years ago was that fake Google Play store.
It was a very classic thing for me to the scammer thought I was about to give them a gift card.
And then I would redeem it at the end and they'd get really angry because they thought
they lost their money. And then that shifted maybe two years ago or three years ago to like,
we're going to, we're going to try to why we want you to wire money.
The gift cards weren't working anymore. For whatever reason, Google and all these
companies thought it was okay to sell $1,000 and $500 gift cards. I don't know who ever bought a
$1,000. It's absurd. But that went away. You can't buy those anymore. And the scammer
stopped using those. They switched to wire transfers. Well, then the banks started getting
smarter and it was harder for them to to launder the money and use like Zilla accounts. And so
recently, like about a year plus ago now, everything shifted to Bitcoin. It was like
almost overnight. Well, not overnight, but like there was this, hey, we need you to go to the
Bitcoin ATM. And that was the big moment where I'm like, shoot, I think if I'm honest, I really
was not prepared. I wasn't really involved in the crypto space. But I saw what was coming.
Like this is the next thing. And I had used Kraken. I knew that they
took security seriously. And so we were kind of like, well, we need to partner with someone
who understands the crypto space and can help me on the fraud side of things and help investigate
stuff. And then they I don't even know the exact way that this came about. I have an agent who
like helps me with with stuff at one way, shape or form one way or another. They were talking with
with the partners team over there. And I remember they basically called me one night and were like,
yo, kid, they they would even make a like a honeypot environment for you where you could
you could use their like, use this environment to mess with scammers. And that was this big like,
holy crap, like that, that would really change the game. You know, like who who does that?
And I've talked to dozens of banks over the years. And none of them would ever give me a honeypot
bank account, you know, and I talked like I talked to every major bank in the US. And I talked to
Okay, not I didn't, but we, you know, my agents are different people did.
We talked to when the gift cards were big, I would I would talk to Target and Google and all
these places and say, like, hey, can you can you somehow work with us? And and no one ever did. So
yeah, it was just it was just a really cool how it all came together, because
right now, and maybe it will be for a while. Um, the scammers have shifted over to crypto,
and I needed someone who could help me. So one, I just got to say huge shout out to the people
over at Kraken, some of the best group of people like we've done work with them as well. And we've
been lucky enough for them to like sponsor our space and just like help us out with content. And
they've been just immaculate every step of the way. And it's just like an amazing crossover
that you guys are working together. And it's not just like some basic what it like you've actually
like the whole honeypot Kraken thing. It's really interesting. Do you do you have like a negative
perception of crypto? So that's the other thing is when I before we we ever like made any of that
public or signed anything, I kind of I would I would like hop on calls with them. And I don't
want to say we were we were dating or I don't know, I don't know what the word would be. But like,
I would, I was trying to see like, okay, are these guys for real? Like, are they really gonna help?
Are they just saying that they that they would and I remember when I mentioned literally when
when a scammer would say, here's my Bitcoin wallet, I want you to go to the Bitcoin ATM,
my heart would sink everyone in in my stream. As far as we were concerned, like it was over,
you know, if someone sent money via crypto, that was the end. And we saw it as this really dark,
like hopeless thing. And so I remember one day, we were on like a zoom call with a bunch of people
at Kraken and like my team and Nick Percoco, the the chief security officer who I didn't know,
that's who he was like, he just was on the call. And nobody told me like,
the chief security officer is going to be on the call. And I said, so I said something about like,
it being hopeless. And then he, you know, I don't know, I spent like 1520 minutes just explaining,
you know, like the the blockchain and how actually, and I knew a little bit about this,
right, but how actually you can follow the trail. And it's really not as private as these scammers
think it is. And he literally just tutored me on all this and gave a bunch of examples about how
they actually can do something. And I remember messaging my, my manager and be like, you know,
I like this guy. He was like, Yeah, he's, he's like, the guy. And anyway, I just still laugh
about it, because I had no idea I was I was not maybe I wasn't prepared for that meeting or
something. But so now I, I feel like I have a bit more hope, because if the scammers think it's the
perfect way to, let's say, steal or launder money, but in some cases, it's it's really not,
it's like the worst way to do it. I don't know if that makes sense. But I went into this a year ago
thinking that it was really bad. And I've since changed my mind. So I think it's like good and
bad in certain ways, like just like anything in life, where I think it's very bad, because it's
so accessible, and it's very quick, and the money can disappear and can be, you know, laundered,
whatever it might be. But at the same time, like, blockchain isn't anonymous to a certain
it's like pseudo anonymous. Yeah, I think that's like one of the biggest misconceptions even just
around Bitcoin and crypto in general. It's like, yeah, the wallet addresses are just like a random
string of numbers and letters. But more than more often than not, there's a like, there's a trail,
they end up sending it to a centralized exchange where their name is attached to it or, or they
end up leaking in some way or another. And or like, a lot of times they'll like transfer it to tether
or some other asset like that and tether or some of these other companies can freeze the assets.
They even buy dance, if it goes through by dance, whatever it is, they can just freeze it. And
so there are ways to get the money back. But, but it is tough because like, I love this industry.
I genuinely, genuinely love it or else I wouldn't, you know, be working in it.
But it does facilitate so like a lot of bad things. And sometimes I think it facilitates more bad
than good. But I do think that's only a temporary thing. And hopefully we find a solution to it.
That's why I find it so interesting that you're, like, you're building like some,
how would you describe like, you can send me that I can pin to the top for people to check out like,
like this AI sort of anti scammer elimination tool, like, how would you even describe it?
Yeah, there's so many projects, it's hard because they all kind of blur together. Like there's one,
one of the more recent videos, it's a thumbnail of a maze, kind of goes over the,
the honeypot type website I was talking about earlier, where these scammers think that they're
about to get Bitcoin, and then they send me their wallets. Like lately, I've been doing this thing,
probably in a week or two, I'll have a video about it where I tell the scammer, because I'll get on
calls with them, or they'll talk to AI, like fake AI agents, they'll just stay on hold for hours,
and then talk to like an AI agent, or I'll answer the call, and I'll say, we can't,
you know, unfortunately, we can't let you withdraw the funds until you prove that you're
a human, it kind of looks like a bot account. And you know, we got to know your customer,
I'll just throw out buzzwords, and I say, please upload like a selfie of yourself.
And to my surprise, like they would, they'd upload, and I would do it while I was on the
phone with them, and then to make them prove it, I'd be like, the classic, okay, put a shoe on
your head, and they would do it. Like these guys, this has been something I've been doing,
like over the past couple of weeks, so there isn't a video about it yet, it's maybe some streams,
and then it got to the point where I'm like, all right, well, if these scammers really think
they're about to get $20,000 worth of crypto, and they're willing to put a shoe on their head,
maybe they'll record a video of them singing songs, balancing fruit on their head, and like all this
stuff, like, so I just kept doubling down, and like having them send me more and more information
about themselves, and doing stupid things, and they kept falling for it. So that story has been
a lot of fun, and it's still developing. And yeah, I hired some AI experts, and some people
have volunteered too, that are like really good at that world, who are helping me develop a,
essentially, think of like, if chat GPT could have a phone, and talk to scammers, that's essentially
what we're working on. And there's a couple of videos I have, actually, there's one that's just
called like, could chat GPT call scammers, or something like that, where I kind of demo a little
bit of it. But yeah, it's just talking about it is fun, man, because there's so much room
in the space, there's so many scammers to go after. But the AI thing is, it's like so
beautiful, but also like beautifully terrifying at the same time. In his late 70s, he's from Syria,
very old school, like very conservative. And he, like, it's hard for him to understand these things,
you know, bless his heart. And I was showing him when I was when I was back in Virginia visiting
family recently, I was I was showing him mid journey, and like, like image prompt. And I was
like, Dad, just like, say anything, like, like, just tell me a sentence, whatever. And like,
it'll create a picture. And I don't know, he said something about like, elephant, he was just like,
an elephant, just something very simple, an elephant. Yeah, there's a stick, a singular elephant.
And I typed it in, I said elephant. And it created an image of an elephant, like a photo realistic,
it looks like a photo. And I'm like, Dad, this is not a real elephant. This is the computer made
this and he could not, they wouldn't like comprehend in his mind that like, this was not
a real picture. And then I showed him like more involved prompts and, you know, like elephant
dancing on top of a rooftop and like things that are obviously not realistic. And I just saw this
like look in his eyes of I still think he doesn't believe it was real. There's going to be a lot of
people who can't how strong these tools are. Well, I don't want to, you know, totally derail
in a different direction. But it makes me think of like, as it connects to scams,
just like the deep fake or the voice cloning. I don't know if I could spin it up fast enough,
but I have a model that I have trained on my voice. And it sounds pretty much like me.
It's not perfect. It misses a little bit of the emotion, but it sounds like me. I'm actually
spoiler, I guess, for those who follow my stuff. I have this video concept in my head where I want
to like go visit my mom, but I'm going to call her while I'm recording her. And I'm going to
call her with my fake voice and see if she'll talk to me. I'm just curious because I really
think she would fall for it. And I bring this up because you were talking about your dad and
I actually told my parents, if I ever call you and I ask you important information about you
or my siblings or myself or like financial things, we got to have some kind of passcode,
like some kind of password, because I don't know about you guys growing up in the stranger danger
era. Like we always had this, if someone comes to pick you up from school and they say that they're
Uncle Jack, they better know the password. And so I basically told them, do you guys remember
that password? Because if anyone ever calls and they sound like me, you ask me for that password.
Because I think that day is coming very soon. It's literally not even soon. It's happening now.
People have messaged me already who have had family members be scammed via voice cloning and stuff.
So it's interesting. It's terrifying. Yeah, that's a better word.
The voice phoning stuff is nuts. There's someone in our community named Chris and shout out to Chris,
he's awesome. He in the like in the middle of his space, based on one sentence that I said,
was able to spin up a model and make it with my voice during our space live. Yeah.
And there's been like, like, he's a friend of mine. And like, it wasn't malicious in any way.
But there was somebody in the past who they basically like thread guy. We do content together,
whatever. And they both our voices. And without getting graphic about it, they made us say some
like really crazy. Like, like some nasty. Yeah, like pretty rated our stuff. And I DM and they
posted it and I DM them. And by the way, this was pre chat GPT. Like this was early on. And I DM them
I'm like, like, hey, this is kind of funny, but it's not like, can you take it down? And they took
it down. Like, they're very cool about it. But actually, it's it's a good idea to have a passcode
with the family members. Yeah. And I just want to play this clip. Just look, I have like 50 of your
clips up on the computer. This one is ever loses after 24 hour phone call, which is, which is
ridiculous. Here we go. I can. I'm not going to talk to you next time, man. You don't have your
memory. She's making she's making me Google, you know, making my mind. Look at this or not.
Rose went to the dentist this morning. She's having a little problem with her dentures.
All you are a bloody stingy. Do you know this? Well, coincidentally, when I did swallow that
entire packet of cucumber seeds, I did experience a very similar thing, Mr. President. Can I talk
now? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. If I could explain, please. He was pretending to be the president
of the United States somehow. Like that clearly doesn't sound like Joe Biden, but
my character fell for it. Right. And that is the same guy. So that guy is angry at 24 hours.
I talked to him for 50 hours total. And that was the guy I talked about earlier, who
that was like the first video I did with Kraken, where we he thought he was getting 400,000 and
then I mess up. So he shameless self-promo, I suppose, to watch that video. But he gets
very mad. He gets very, very, very angry. And the clip has millions of views. There's
millions of views on this clip. They all have millions of views. Wait, you're telling me that
this guy who you're talking to was pretending. What do you mean? So he tried more early on the
general. I mean, this kind of goes back to like, I guess we were talking about before, but
the term is social engineering, but it's kind of like hacking someone's brain.
So very early on, let's say three hours into a phone call where they're trying to scam me with
some tech support stuff. I honestly was getting a little bit bored and I just didn't really want
to talk to him. But I said something like, I got to go with the FTC is calling me, which
I was thinking, well, he'll probably pick up on that and think the FTC doesn't call you with some
scammer. And so he asked me to put them on the line. And then I did that voice that like,
hey, this is this is FTC Frank calling about your computer. So I pretended to be like
a different scammer. He gets mad and is like, you know, that guy's, he doesn't work with the FTC,
but I had my character fall for it. And I'm like, I'm basically talking to myself, right?
Say like, no, I'm pretty sure he works for the FTC. And then I switched and I have this other
voice where I said, like, I'm Kamala Harris. I'm the vice president.
And, and I pretended to fall for it. Like, oh, wow. Now I'm talking to the vice president.
And then out of nowhere, like out of left field, he goes, this is the president of the United States
of America. And I wasn't expecting it, but I just was like, okay, like I'll. And so I had my character
like, oh, hi, Mr. President. I like nice to meet you. I just immediately. And so he thought that
he convinced me. And right. But and that I was dumb enough to like fall for anything. But in
reality, like it was the worst. He sounds nothing like the president. But yeah. Have you had any
scammers like convert or like basically they're like, okay, I'm going to wrap up my scamming ways.
Like you've convinced me that this is not the way like I'm going to go return all this money.
Has that ever happened? I mean, I've had some conversations like that. I just I'm always a
little like, does it is it too good to be true kind of thing? There was one dude, unfortunately,
I forgot his name that I remember we had a couple conversations of like just serious kind of heart
to heart talks. Like, why did you get into this? What happened? And eventually he I remember he
called me back weeks and months afterwards. And at one point, I specifically said, Do you need help?
Like, do you need money? I know you quit. He said that he quit and like moved back in with his
family. And I remember saying, Do you need help? Do you need money? And he said, No, I want to do
this my own way. I need to do this by myself. And I remember feeling like, man, maybe he's being
serious then like this is months later. I'm just straight up offering him money. And he refused it,
which was a pretty powerful moment. I also had one guy, coincidentally, it was one of the first
like big videos I ever did on YouTube was if you look up, I think it's just called baited,
like if you're baiting a fish or something. Something like baited how three scammers wasted
24 hours on me or 30 hours. I already forgot. But he that guy eventually figured out that I was
Kiboga. And this probably happened like 2018 or 2019. Well, when COVID happened, like when it
first happened, he called me out of the blue, like just randomly one day, I'm sitting here in my
computer and this scammer calls me and is like, Hey, I hope I hope you and your family are okay.
Like, I hope I hope I'm with everything going on. I hope I hope and I'm like, What the heck,
like, this is this guy who, you know, I essentially, you know, tortured for for maybe it was like 30
hours. But we had some serious conversations afterwards. And, and maybe he changed his mind
or like, maybe he I don't know, the fact that he called was nuts to me. So when you're doing
these 30, I mean, 30 hours, that is a long amount of time. Do you drink like a lot of caffeine? Like,
how do you even stay up and engage? I mean, you have yes. And, you know, to be clear, it's it's
never talked to them for 30 hours straight. It's usually like, I talked to him for five,
maybe like five hours. And then I'll make some excuse like, well, church choir practice, or well,
I got bowling league, I'll just make something up. My grandson's here, he needs help with his
homework. And I'll, I'll hang up. And they call me all night. But I just just don't talk to him. I
just pick it up the next day. So I've never talked to them for like 50 hours straight. It's it's
across multiple days. But do you drink, drink caffeine? Like, what's the secret here? I drink
a lot of tea. But yeah, I don't know, man, it's just I do most of it's done live on Twitch. And so
the kind of the audience helps make it more fun and like give me inspiration and stuff. So I would
say that's a big, big part of it. On obviously, like what is do they have any crazy requests?
Like, what is the like, what are the craziest things your chat asks you to do?
Well, there's so many of that. Like, and when I again, when I first started doing this,
I had no idea, like, I was very, I feel like I was very innocent to the internet.
And so they would ask me to say things like, hey, Tom, your name is Ben Dover. And like, I just
didn't get it. Like, I didn't understand. And but there were like way worse names, like really,
like, really bad names. And I would just call the scammer and be like, Hi, my name is Ben Dover.
And I genuinely had no idea what was happening. So there are some really bad, like, probably,
you know, inappropriate or racist or whatever things that I said, but I genuinely had. So
there are some sometimes there's really bad things. And then other times. Yeah, there's just
really funny stuff, too. Like, honestly, the whole redeeming Google Play cards, I didn't come up with
the someone in chat that I used to. Like, I would just stay up if I if there were no scammers
around, I would just hang out and like code stuff and come up with ideas. And I was making something
and somebody in Twitch chat was like, Oh, what if you could make them think you redeemed the Google
Play card? And we all unanimously like that is the best idea ever. And just so that then I made
it that night. So yeah, it's been a really cool community. What do you think of like the coffee
Zilla's and like these type of like investigative journalists who they kind of take the same. They
just as exactly the same concept, but it's within the same vein. Are you fans of any of them?
Yeah, coffee is great. I actually I DM'd him the other day because I had a question about something
and he like immediately called me and chatted with me for an hour to just like help me. Because
so the short story, there's there were these guys doing a token drop. And it was themed around
crypto or sorry, themed around cybersecurity. And they like plastered my face all over it and said
that they were working with me. And I was like, Okay, how can I like, how can I go after them,
you know, but I'm just not very well versed in that space. And so I'm like, Oh, maybe coffee.
And so we traded about that for a while. He's great. I really like his his style.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there are some people that I maybe don't get along with,
or I'm not super into the way that they handle themselves. But I think, at the end of the day,
there's there's lots of people who are trying to educate or expose scammers or scams. And like,
I think that's a net positive, right? Like anyone who's talking about this stuff, the more the
merrier. So here's a couple comments from the room. So this is from Chris. Chris wrote, I miss
the evening coding streams. Yeah, that was like where when I was talking about before. Hi, Chris,
by the way, I I used to just late at night like this, I would I would hang out and make stuff for
the stream. When I when I first started and first made it my full time thing, I basically said,
every single week, I need to have a new thing. I always need to have something new. I can't
just call scammers, you know, I gotta come up with something interesting. And so I would just
stream that though, I would stream those brainstorming sessions or code streams and
people would help me. It was fun. Here's, um, this is from addicted. Addicted wrote today,
I had two customers say how their 401 company watch out as someone was trying to gain access
through sim swap, by the way, sim swaps are probably the most common. So like, this is also
something crypto that happens probably more than anything else. Or maybe not more, but it happens
quite a bit, where they take control of your Twitter account. And do that is because they want
to post like, like, let's say somebody goes after my account. And I don't I don't have a big account
by any means. But I you know, we have a community and a lot of people that support and, you know,
so grateful for that. And I don't have an NFT project. And maybe I do one in the future, who
knows. But so like, let's say somebody sim swaps me, then they basically have control of my account
and they post a tweet saying, hey, free mint for the community, like everybody go mint, it's gonna
be great, whatever, then the community rushes to go mint. And by the way, Vitalik, the creator of
Ethereum with sim swap, like, this is I think I saw that. Yeah, they're not just like targeting
smart. I mean, you're talking about the biggest people in the space are getting sim swapped,
because, and like, let me know your thoughts on this too, because they like, let's say somebody
works at T mobile, like some T mobile employee with like a high tier access can go sim swap you
basically instant and they'll take a bribe of like 50,000 or, you know, whatever it is to do it. And
like, this is not even about wallet security or like crypto security. This is like a web to your
phone provider, like that is so much. And it's happened to a lot of people that I know as well,
you know, within the space. And to be fair, the community in general has gotten better at not
falling for these things. And it used to be like when when a big person got some swapped and a
drainer link got posted, they would typically target big NFT projects. And you know, millions
of dollars would get taken or they would target the discord, whatever. Now, it's not as much
anymore. But like, but how do we if we can't even if the phone companies can't even protect us,
how can we even expect to protect ourselves? So I don't use my traditional I only use my sim
for data. I have never made a phone call with my actual okay, that's a lie. I have made a phone
call on accident, but I don't use my let's say AT&T or Verizon or whoever. They assigned me a
number. I don't know it. I don't know what that number is. I use VoIP numbers attached to my phone.
There's a couple different like apps you can use to do that. Honestly, they're not like the most
sometimes they suck. Like if I'm honest, like sometimes they're really great. In other days,
it can be tricky to do like if you're driving in a car, it's not the best quality. But if you're on
Wi Fi or have a really good signal, there's a handful of apps that will let you essentially
have VoIP numbers that go right to your phone. One of them is my pseudo I used to be sponsored by
them. So maybe I was supposed to say hashtag ad, but I'm not currently. Anyway, they allow you to
really easily have VoIP numbers. And the reason I say this is because then if you sign up for
like if you do your two factor authors or sign up on Twitter or a crypto website or whatever,
and you're not using your actual number that's attached to your SIM, like well, now what?
The SIM swap doesn't work anymore. So that's one thing that potentially would help you.
I don't know if that makes sense or I explained it the right way.
No, it makes sense. And we always tell people like don't put your phone, like your phone
number shouldn't be attached to your Twitter. And you know, mine is not. But regrettably,
for a long time, it was and I was really lucky that nothing happened. And I like just op second
general, I'm like pretty careful about like even with crypto, I have like multiple ledgers that
have like the majority of my assets attached to them. And then I also have like at this point,
I have four computers and two phones and like like an iPad or two. And I have my app split
between basically all these different devices. And there are different parts of the country as well.
And then I have specific computers that have never touched anything besides strictly the wallet that
I've downloaded and then just deposit the assets in it. And they've just never interacted with
anything. And it's the same thing like hygiene when it comes to your your body, like you take
showers, you wash your hands, you have to have good off sec hygiene or security hygiene. And
unfortunately, in crypto, like it's such a fast moving space. And if you blink your eye or sleep,
for an extra 20 minutes, you might miss on an amazing opportunity. But, you know, that being
the case, you also rush into mistakes, which end up, you know, people getting drained, whatever it
is. And even the most experienced like it doesn't matter if you are the most experienced person in
the world, it's like driving a car, you probably drive a car for 2030 years, never have a speed,
have an accident. And one day you just like, look at your phone, or you're like not paying attention
and something happens. And it sucks, man, like there are people who they build up these assets
for for years, and they grind and they work and you know, they build up however much Bitcoin or
Ethereum, whatever it is. And they get drained, and they leave the space and it's over. And it's
very hard to to recover from that. Yeah. I don't I don't know if there's ever going to be like a
full on solution. But I don't know. I mean, I hope people work on it. I always I always tell people
like, I think that my videos always say that people are valuable and that they matter. And,
you know, to go deep and sentimental, but I, I genuinely like there could be someone listening,
because this is what I think is really neat about having done all these videos or even being in a
like that. You call this a podcast? I'm sorry. What guys, what's the technical term?
This space. It's it's called so used to be called a Twitter space. Now it's called an x space.
Sorry, there's a space. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry about that. But so even this x space that like
genuinely someone listening right now could be the could be the person or persons who
creates some of these tools that that like help solve these problems. And I think that's really
cool. I think there's something powerful about that. Like I was inspired. I told you earlier
about, well, I saw when I first heard about tech support scams, I knew I had to do something about
it. But it was from a YouTube video. Someone put out a YouTube video about tech support scams. And
like I saw that. And and like now I'm doing all this stuff. And so yeah, maybe someone here will
create some of those tools. I've been working on a tool to help protect people from predominantly
tech support scams, the ones that when someone wants to connect to your computer, just because
those can be so devastating. Like, and like, I don't want my mom to ever let someone connect
to her computer. So we built some software to stop that. We're working on some solutions in the
crypto space. But I'm not an expert on that. Like maybe maybe someone here is gonna gonna do that.
Because I think people need help. And like you said, I don't, I don't think this stuff's going
away. Both crypto and people trying to steal money. So we just have to continue to educate and
iterate on it. As far as I'm concerned. I think that's a probably like a good way to wrap things
up here. And, you know, the nice thing about crypto too, is that it's built on this idea of
alignment of incentives, where like if you do good things, typically you get paid for it.
Which I guess is how the world works, but even more so here. And whoever ends up solving this
issue, or even like creating a solution that slightly alleviates it, will most likely make
a billion dollars. Because this is, we're talking about like trillions of dollars in value that I
believe will be transacted over the next decade. If not more than that. And it's a serious problem
that needs to be fixed. So I love to hear that you're working on it. And that, you know, this
started from just videos and streaming to like something that's so much bigger. And look, I'm a
massive fan of you. And I've actually been wanting to do this space since we met. Oh, cool. And I'm
glad that we finally made it happen. And shout out to everybody in the room that came through there,
I got a ton of DMS, you know, kits, a legend, like kits, awesome, whatever, like, based on.
And also, when you said x, I realized how bad the name of this platform is x space, that they need
to make them up with something new. But I will I'll send a message to you on maybe he'll respond
this time. But kit, I appreciate you. Any final words you want to leave the room with?
Um, gosh, I did not it was this was fun. I, I hope, I hope everyone enjoyed it. I you can find me
pretty easily if you want to watch any of the any of the stuff, or if you're interested in that.
It's called serif secure is that software we've been working on if you want to check that out.
But I'm really bad at responding to Twitter DMS, or sorry, x DMS. But if you if you guys have any
thoughts or ideas about stuff. Hello, at kitboga show.com is a great way to, to message me. I try
to respond and, like I said, they're, I'm sure there's people here who are like incredibly
talented and gifted at some of these things. So I'm trying to come up with better solutions or
ways to get into different spaces, not x spaces, but scam spaces. So feel free to reach out and
yeah, have a good rest of your night, guys. Leap. Thank you. This was this was a ton of fun. I
hopefully I don't ramble too much. I love to talk about this. And you've been a great host. So I
really enjoyed myself, man. No, thank you. It was fun. And send me some info on serif as well.
Because I'd like to share with people and you like do what I can to support because you definitely
deserve it. And we need more of this sort of stuff in crypto and just the world in general.
So really appreciate it. And again, shout out to you guys to everybody who showed up,
I'm probably not going to do a space for a couple days as I'm in New York and can be traveling to
Denver soon. So if anybody's at East Denver, hit me up. I'd love to grab lunch or coffee kit.
You're amazing. You're the go, you're the legend, all that good stuff. And that's it. I love you
guys. I'll talk to you soon. And yeah, have a good