 Hi, Jeff Frick here from the Cube offices in Palo Alto, California, welcoming you to a special Cube conversation that we're going to have today on Bitcoin. As you may have seen last week, Greg Stewart and I took the Cube gear out to Stanford Stadium to cover the California Classico, the fourth annual contest between the San Jose earthquakes of Major League Soccer versus the LA Galaxy. It's a big event game. They have it at Stanford Stadium, 50,000 people showed up. A lot of pomp and circumstance, parachutes, et cetera, but we went out there as the Cube to really see what impact tech was having on the game, on the fan experience, et cetera. Really a follow up to the conversation we had with David Koval at SportsDataSV at AT&T Park earlier this year. So we had a great time going out there, but one of the interesting innovations that we covered was the earthquake's introduction of Bitcoin, both as a way for fans to purchase merchandise right there out of the little fan, merchandise cart, as well as tickets. So we met with Richard Fidesco, who was the Senior Director of Business, Intelligence and Sports Science for the earthquakes, a great little interview. He's doing not only Bitcoin, but other things, and I think you'll find it of interest. We're going to roll the interview and then have some conversations with Marcus and Hopkins, our own internal Dr. Bitcoin, after this segment. So we'll run this segment. Greg's got it queued up and we'll be right back. Welcome back. This is Jeff Rick here from the Cube. We're out at Stanford Stadium for the San Jose earthquakes versus the LA Galaxy, the California Classico. And I'm here with Rich Fidesco, Senior Director of Business, Intelligence. Rich, thanks for spending a few minutes with us. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Awesome. So what Rich is working on, which we thought was pretty interesting, we know the audience is really interested. Bitcoin, right? A lot of talk about Bitcoin, it's a lot of speculation about Bitcoin, what's Bitcoin? People doing crazy back alley stuff with Bitcoin. But here, what can you buy with Bitcoin from the earthquake? You can buy any merchandise you want. You have, you know, we partner with Coinbase. So anybody that has Bitcoin, they can just download the Coinbase wallet from there. They just go to our merch stand here, pick out whatever they want. And it's a really simple, probably like one minute transaction, just really similar to credit cards and whatnot. We have a tablet that we just punch in the amounts. And from there, all you're doing is scanning your phone with the encrypted Bitcoin amount. And with the push of a button, you send the Bitcoin to us and we send the receipt. And there you go. You have your merchandise with Bitcoin. So talk a little bit about this initiative. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone taking Bitcoin at the stadium. And I'm a huge sports fan, I go to a lot of games. So where did this come from? Was it initiated from the Fanbase? Was it some innovation internally? What kind of made this happen? It was a combination. I mean, for us, I mean, Dave Cavill, our president, you know, really interested, he understands and as an organization, we understand we're in Silicon Valley. You know, this is the hub. This is the incubator for technology. And Bitcoin is obviously an interesting piece to that. And, you know, I know that in Palo Alto here, there's coffee shops that take Bitcoin and whatnot. And it just, you know, we talked to Coinbase who, you know, kind of brought it to our attention that it was a relatively easy transaction. And we partnered with them and they've been a great partner with us. To, you know, make it a seamless, easy opportunity for our fans. And, you know, we've done it, we did it a month ago at our last home game. We had 15 to 20 transactions. And we have a ton of people taking signs of, you know, we accept Bitcoin and stuff. So there's definitely, you know, a lot of interest and a lot of curiosity. So it's been it's been great so far. And we're interested to see where it's going to go. And with the new stadium, you know, the opportunities there. Yes, one of the things why we like to have in the earthquakes is because you guys are so progressive, right? 15 to 20 transactions, not a big transactions. Probably didn't cover the cost of putting the systems in. But it's innovation, it's excitement, it changes the flavor. People like it. Absolutely. I mean, I think that right now, yeah, you're seeing 15 to 20 transactions. We haven't really, you know, promoted it too much. But we think there's an opportunity for it to continue to grow. And it is an interesting thing. Another thing for our fans to, you know, try out and, you know, just get a taste of in real world transactions. You know, people hear about Bitcoin. We're kind of educating our fan base a little bit. And they're educating us in regards to if they want to do it or not. Yeah. So talk a little bit about the transaction itself, because most of the buzz or a lot of the buzz about Bitcoin is about the way that the price moves and fluctuates and is a speculation vehicle and what's going on. How do you work with that? You know, I just want to buy a $20 hat or a $100 jersey. How does that work? Well, it's pretty simple. I mean, you buy the Bitcoin and, you know, right now they're trading for like $550 or something like that. You can buy partial things, but you go on download the Coinbase app. You can buy Bitcoin via Coinbase. And then from there, you know, during the time that you're buying it, you know, the day of purchase, there's a dollar figure assigned to it. So on our end, all we're doing is using the Coinbase merchant app. We're just typing in the price of the actual merchandise. And it's then generating the actual price in Bitcoin. And from there, the fan is scanning it. And then they accept that this is how much it costs. And this is the Bitcoin equivalent. And then it transfers to us. And for us, because of Coinbase, you know, they're actually the intermediary. As the earthquakes, we don't really want to, you know, deal with the fluctuating market as much. So Coinbase allows it to immediately at that point of transaction deposit into our bank account in the cash equivalent that we sold our merchandise in. So we can make sure the $20 hat is, you know, we're getting $20 and not, you know, waiting and, you know, the next day and all of a sudden, it's, you know, maybe dropped a little bit or, you know, it'd be nice to went up. But if it goes down, we don't want to, you know, worry about the fluctuating market. Right, right. So, Richard, title, Senior Director of Business Intelligence. So I want to shift gears a little bit away from Bitcoin and talk about some of the other business intelligence initiatives that you guys are doing to help the fan experience, to help run the organization from the team perspective or from the business perspective. What are some of the initiatives and things you guys are working on? Well, I mean, for us, I mean, we're obviously big data, you know, really looking at all the analytics across the board. We've over the last year, we've implemented a new CRM system, Microsoft Dynamics and used other software, you know, our ticketing system, tickets.com, along with, you know, pulling in different marketing initiatives that all, you know, we want everything to talk to each other so we can get a full picture of the fan, what they're doing. And then as an organization, understanding it, you know, the full picture of costs and profits, you know, everything going into one. On the fan side, for next year at the new stadium, we're going to be launching a new stadium app, which we hope will be a great leap forward for our fans. We're really pushing mobile ticketing. So that, you know, the hub of that will be allowing our season ticket holders and our people who buy on the web to start out with, allow them to, you know, literally have their mobile phone and that's all they need. They can, you know, using, we're partnering with Parking Panda so people can buy their parking, reserve their parking, using their phone and then actually have it right there so an attendant can scan it. Then they can walk into the stadium or go to the, you know, as they're walking in, their ticket will pop up, they'll be able to scan their ticket. And then inside will have more, will have some personal notifications or some geofencing type things to, again, help fans understand where things are and potentially do some other things as well. Geofencing, I haven't, geofencing, there's a new one. So I just want to kind of follow up on that. Talk about the innovation of the company. What is it about the earthquakes and how do you foster an environment where you can really drive this kind of innovation? What's kind of the secret? What's the process? Why do you guys continue to try to stay out on that cutting edge? You know, it's a top down, you know, Dave came in our president and he, he laid it out there. He says that, you know, he told us, you know, we're going, we're in Silicon Valley. You know, there's a lot of other great ballparks out there. I mean, the Giants of AT&T Park, obviously Levi's is going to open up, you know, in August we're actually going to be the first event there. We hope to be there with you. Yeah, it'll be great. But, you know, like it was it's important for us, you know, to connect to the community in the community here in Silicon Valley is, you know, innovation technology centric. And so, you know, that was the initiative put out there. And we are trying to follow through and listen to the fans, you know, at our current stadium, which isn't a great isn't great. But we're even doing, you know, we have mobile, you know, a lot of people to buy food and merchandise on their on their phone to get it delivered to them at games. So that was, you know, we really understood that our fans are tech savvy and they want this and for us to be, you know, good business people and to make sure our fans keep coming back, we have to feed that and keep pushing the envelope and that's it's critical for us as an organization. And is he charging you with like assigning 10% of your time to do something new? Are you, you know, corousing the league? I mean, you know, talk about kind of down in the weeds. How do you keep coming up with with new things? Is it huge, huge steps forward? Are you just continuing innovation? A lot of the honesty, Dave has amazing connections. He was here, you know, he's a Stanford grad. We're in Silicon Valley. There are so many startups and Dave is on so many different boards. He's constantly getting all these different startups and, you know, organizations that really want to push technology, you know, coming to him. And then what ends up happening is he'll then kind of direct them to me. And I sit down with, you know, 10, you know, I'm on the phone or in person meetings with, you know, like 10 or 15 of these, probably a week. And, you know, trying to understand realistically, is there an opportunity? How far along are they? You know, we love being beta clients for different opportunities because, you know, it's it's an opportunity to learn from people that really want to do it and push forward. And also, you know, it's a good it's costly for us. We doesn't cost us very much, you know, to be to help them. So for us, you know, we, you know, we're really constantly talking to these startups and in understanding what people are pushing, you know, like they're telling us what are the crowd and what people want innovation wise. And so from there, I'm kind of sifting through and seeing realistically what might make sense for the organization, what might not. And, you know, from that, we've we've gotten these different opportunities to the the order, which is the the seat, you know, order at your seat and whatnot. Different things on our app that we'll be doing, you know, I mentioned to your fencing, there's there's other, you know, things out there as well. I mean, we're going to be working with Nomi, which is another, you know, company that does mobile and things as well. So like it really is. I mean, a lot of connections, a lot of people just telling us, hey, here's different options for you and us sitting down and seeing if they make sense and trying to work with them, because a lot of them have good ideas and some of them are going places. And for those that are, we want to be a part of it. Yeah, that's great. And I'm sure some percentage of those things, you know, wash out or it doesn't work out, but really a great, you know, kind of culture of innovation to listen, take the call, hear what people have to say and give it a try. Absolutely. Now, we love interacting and talking and learning. So it's been it's been great, you know, and we anybody else out there that has these great ideas, we're always looking for him. Awesome. Awesome. So, Rich Fidesco, thanks for stopping by at the Cube. Tell us a little bit about Bitcoin. Greg's behind the camera. He's going to buy a hat. I know he's got some Bitcoin burning a hole in his pocket. Senior Director of Business Intelligence. Good luck tonight. And we look forward to hoping to see you leave eyes and then at the new stadium, I guess in March, right? Absolutely. All right, thanks a lot. All right, take care. Oh, great. Welcome back. So I hope you enjoyed that segment with Richard. I thought it was pretty informative and we'd like to introduce for the the next part of this show, calling in from Dallas, Marcus and Hopkins, the founding editor, Silicon Angle, and also the the writer of the popular blog post Dr. Bitcoin. So, Mark, can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. Great. So, I don't know if you'd seen that before. I'd love to get your reaction to the interview with Richard. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I'd watched it when it hit the YouTube channel. I hadn't I'd missed the last couple of minutes of it where he was starting the first watch through when he was talking about geofencing. That was an interesting thing. I actually use geofencing with my limited. I've been working on automating my home. And so I use like a little thing whenever we the family gets to the house. We turn on the the Nest thermostat with with a geofence. And I but I hadn't seen any like commercial application that. So it's kind of cool to see that them kind of applying technology innovation across the board. Yes. So it's interesting to note. I don't know that I would consider the earthquakes to be, you know, a very, you know, big brand. Obviously, a real reflection of kind of mainstream adoption of of Bitcoin. But I wonder if it is if not a mainstream, certainly part of leading indicator and and before the call, you shared some some sites of some other companies that are starting to take Bitcoin. Obviously, we all saw the Tesla announcement. They made a bunch of noise earlier in the year. But I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how the adoption of Bitcoin as a payment method is starting to gain traction in the marketplace. And who are some of the other examples that you can cite? Yeah. So I mean, you're you're seeing two types of commercial Bitcoin adopters and you're seeing it not not just like as in company types, but as in types of in ways they adopt. And he talked about the way that in segment, he talked about the way that they handle the Bitcoin transaction and the price volatility. And they allow Coinbase essentially to take the to de-risk it for them and immediately deposit the cash equivalent of the Bitcoin as the transaction occurs or the day of the transaction occurs. So they don't have to worry about, you know, a Bitcoin losing a dollar or gaining 10 or whatever and having to account for that in their business models. So that that that right there in my mind is one type of Bitcoin adopter. And you're seeing a few of those. You're seeing I think the Kings adopt that model as well. You're seeing probably I haven't heard word from this, but I've heard. But I think one eight hundred flowers is most likely doing that as well. Companies that allow Coinbase and BitPay and other middleman transaction, merchant services companies that facilitate Bitcoin are tending to do this sort of thing. They allow these companies to kind of act as a PayPal for them and not really let BitPay and Coinbase assume the risk and then not hold Bitcoin. And then you're seeing folks like Overstock.com, like Tesla, like, let's see, well, New Egg just announced this week. And of course, Tiger Direct has been around for a little while. Where you're seeing these companies where they're in varying degrees going whole hog into the Bitcoin ecosystem and not only holding Bitcoin from customer transactions, but also trying to set up their supply chain to accept Bitcoin so that they don't have to change in and out of multiple currencies. They can just live in a Bitcoin centric world and changed into other currency types as need arises. So it's interesting because one of the main tenets of a Bitcoin economy or a cyber currency economy is the fact that there is no trusted intermediary required that basically the encryption algorithm fulfills that fulfills that that role. So is that kind of breakdown in the example that the earthquakes use where you are using Coinbase as kind of that trusted third party intermediary? Yeah, well, I mean, I wouldn't say it breaks down, but it definitely it it mitigates the the benefit to a certain extent. I mean, Bitcoin is still fundamentally decentralized, but the way Bitcoin is served up to the user with services like and by user, I mean merchant in this case, the way it's served up to the user is in a centralized sort of way. Now, there are other kinds of web wallets that are out there and web merchant services that are more, I guess, you could say, Bitcoin native, but Coinbase, in particular, kind of serves as like a Bitcoin bank. Like they basically have a virtual vault where the bitcoins are stored and secured and it creates, you know, a central point of attack. I guess, so to speak, if Coinbase goes out of business, you know, so goes, you know, the horde of bitcoins. And, you know, they're they're they they have been certified by a lot of kind of experts in security as, you know, being a trustable you know, company. I certainly don't want to speak ill of them. But at the end of the day, you do have to trust them. Whereas Bitcoin, you have to trust the algorithm, not a company. So I've got I've got a theory I want to run by you. And it's and I ask it on most of my Bitcoin conversations. But it seems to me when you have, you know, a dollar in your in your wallet, you know, there's three purposes potentially for that dollar. One is just a way to hold value so you can carry it around. The second way is to exchange value for a burrito or whatever else you're trying to buy. And the third value is really the speculative value of that unit versus other ways of holding a value, whether it be a euro or another currency of Bitcoin, etc. And it seems to me that on the Bitcoin side, there's just a lot of activity, noise, discussion around the speculative nature of the way the price is fluctuated quite wildly at times versus the former two ways, holding value and trading value that I think is ultimately the best role that a currency can play. So to me, it seems like the adoption of Bitcoin will accelerate when there's less emphasis on the speculative piece in terms of making money on on the raise in value of a Bitcoin versus an alternative way, an anonymous way to hold value and exchange value. So I wonder if you've got any any opinions on that perception and and can you validate are we moving more towards the discussion around holding value and exchanging value versus the speculative nature as an alternative currency to dollars? Yeah, certainly. I mean, in Bitcoin, there's a there's a million you could spend. You could sit around all day and discuss all the interesting aspects and what makes Bitcoin unique. And I think that's that's the first thing you have to address when you talk about Bitcoin is the fact that this is this is really like no other financial instrument that's ever existed because it reduces so many would have kind of been like ivory tower functions of banking functions that were reserved for a small subset of of the populace, you know, the banking elite, and it puts it in the hands of everybody. So that speculation is no longer just, you know, a few thousand people that live on Wall Street or that work on Wall Street in New York City and other financial centers around the world. It's it's the whole planet that has an interest in Bitcoin can now speculate on it. So that does unique things to any market, you know, let alone Bitcoin market. So but putting that aside for a second, I think that we are progressing towards a more mature cryptocurrency market. I think by virtue of the fact, you're seeing such large and I went for the, you know, increasingly risk averse companies. I mean, Tesla, which was one of the first major brands to accept Bitcoin, you can't you can call the many things that risk averse is not one of them. But you look at a company like New Egg, which has been around for what, like a decade, decade and a half, they're, you know, that's that's a significant risk for them, like they're putting a business on the line on, you know, on a currency that hasn't been tested in the courts, you know, like if, you know, how the IRS is going to react to certain accounting practices, I mean, they've said what they want to do. But, you know, it's not been there's not a lot of precedent for that. The things can certainly change because it's early days. But because of the benefits, particularly for merchants, are you're seeing you're seeing a lot of increasingly risk averse companies jump into Bitcoin. And I think as the price goes up, because of speculation, you're going to see less and less emphasis on speculation. And the reason why is well, like anybody on a minimum wage salary could have bought in a Bitcoin, maybe dropped 500 Bitcoin, $500 on Bitcoin in 2009, 2010. And today they could, you know, buy their own yacht in a small island in the Caribbean, right? That can never happen again. The price of Bitcoin right now is in the six hundreds. That puts Bitcoin fundamentally out of the price range of the average Joe, you know. And so they can't there's not a temptation or this this this possibility of everybody, you know, speculating and becoming an overnight millionaire. I mean, yes, there are significant gains to be made as as Bitcoin progresses. But you're going to see that that potential pool of investors and those guys, people with dollar signs in their eyes are going to decrease as time progresses, just because of the price of Bitcoin puts it out of the reach of the average person. I don't know. You raise all types of interesting questions. There are one one is kind of the role of the government. And at the end of the day, it's going to be the taxing authority who's going to flex their muscle, as we saw with with pretty much every innovation. The government, you know, wants to get their piece, especially when it comes to the taxation. And I'm wondering in terms of the accounting, how that's how that's taken care of, where's it tracked? You know, has there been any interesting court cases? And the second part, which you just mentioned about the price of Bitcoin getting more expensive and kind of out of the realm of the ordinary guy. I would say that would potentially create more potential abuse as you do now kind of get back to a concentration of power, which you said originally was was part of the Bitcoin issue was to get it out of a small group of hands of control. But will that in fact happen as the price of Bitcoin gets to a point where it's going to be well financed people that can go in and potentially move the markets either illegally, maliciously or to their own benefit? So, A, give us an update on what's happening with government and taxation and specifically around merchants having to pay the sales tax back to the government, which they're going to want. And B, is there now a consolidation of power based as a function of the pricing of Bitcoin that's now moving it away from, as you said, the guy making minimum wage. You can't buy any bitcoins, at least at six hundred bucks a unit. So, all right, I'll address the government thing first, because that's easier. That's an easier question to answer. That that's there's been a lot of announcements this year by various government agencies. And there are two prevailing ways that there's two ways, one of them prevailing and that of how the government use Bitcoin. Most government agencies, particularly when it comes to, you know, prosecuting people for violations of the law, most government agencies regard Bitcoin as a, quote, unquote, digital currency or a, quote, unquote, foreign currency. So they're regarding it in one of those two ways. And that's fairly universal around the world. Notably, notable exceptions to that regard of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is China and the IRS, who the China Banking Authority have an IRS, kind of have a similar opinion that Bitcoin is a property or a commodity to be invested in. And that's how the IRS wants you to report Bitcoin and it gets into a very complex, almost untenable way of reporting, unless you're using computer-assisted accounting. I mean, that's the only way to to properly report your IRS holdings or your Bitcoin holdings to the IRS is you're using computer-assisted accounting. Some sort of weird first in, first out capital gains tax type situation that even I have a hard time articulating. But it's, I mean, it's really one of those consult your account in situations and then go buy the software that makes it work right, because otherwise you're going to owe a lot of money and or be liable for a lot of money that you don't understand, you know, how to calculate. Now, with regard to your other question, and I should say as a kind of a bookend to that, I think there's still more, quote, unquote, innovation in the regulation to go. The IRS clearly does not understand how Bitcoin works or they're being intentionally obtuse to kind of push people away from it, which I don't think is working actually. So my guess is if I had to make a prediction today that they're going to drastically change the way that they approach the taxation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies down the line. And to answer your other question, your other question kind of about centralization of power, I think that's interesting. And I will preface anything I say that intelligent minds can disagree on this. There's a lot of discussion here, like almost philosophical discussion, certainly economic system discussion. But my personal opinion is, you know, and is based on a couple of facts that I can back up is that I don't think that you'll see any kind of quote, unquote, centralization of power. Not in the way that we see in the current financial markets at any rate. And that's because the way Bitcoin is regulated, self-regulated, self-governed, it doesn't have much to do with who has the money. It has more to do with, you know, the way the algorithm works, the way the mining markets are working and the way the the open source is being updated. So right now, if there was, you know, let's say Bill Gates wants to come in and and muck up Bitcoin. So he pays, you know, you know, five billion dollars for some open source developer just to get in and put a bunch of stuff that Bill Gates wants. It's to Bill Gates advantage into the Bitcoin core code. He's still, even after that's done, you still have to get the buy in of the entire Bitcoin mining community. And if it's not in their best interest to and that's thousands and thousands, if not millions of people around the world. And it's not in their best interest to, you know, muck about in the core code of Bitcoin, then they're not going to do it. And it doesn't matter how much money Bill Gates throws at the problem. I mean, unless he throws that throws at the problem, more money than it's in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem, which at that point, it's a little bit self-defeating. Now, market manipulation is another matter. And I, you know, that is Bitcoin is certainly vulnerable in that department because it is an open market and the market cap of Bitcoin itself is below the market cap of many rich people in the world alone, rich governments. So it is susceptible to manipulation, certainly, over the long term. I don't see that as an issue because, you know, as an advocate or almost almost an evangelist, I won't call myself an evangelist for Bitcoin, but as someone who's extremely interested in it and would like to see it continue, my thought is that it's going to grow. It shows so many advantages to so many people that it's going to grow bigger than any one bad actor could manipulate past. You're going to see a lot of people unorganized, you know, like you see like the Winklevoss, you're going to see other rich people, other investment groups jumping in, and it'll be just like any other market. All kinds of people trying to manipulate markets, but because it is decentralized nature and it's almost foreign nature, right? It's not like any other stock market on the planet. High frequency trading isn't really a thing that the effects of HFT are much more mitigated in Bitcoin due to a number of factors than they are in actual markets or in Wall Street markets. So I think that I guess this is just kind of a broad answer to everything, but in many ways, the effects of traditional market manipulation are just plain old mitigated due to the decentralized nature and the chaotic nature of the beast. Yeah, I guess I guess time will tell what what right now is the size of the Bitcoin market. How many Bitcoins are there in terms of value? You said it's less than. Well, let me see. I can figure up right now. Let me take me just a second. But then while you're pulling that out, how, how, how often and what's the rate of new value being added, not in terms of changes in the value of a Bitcoin, but in terms of new coins being mined, I guess is the right vocabulary. Well, I mean, every, I don't know, it's like every 10 minutes you've got another. Well, I mean, it varies. So every every few minutes, you get another 25 Bitcoin. So if you go to blockchain.info. You can kind of there's a there's a real time updating screen there where you can see right on the top age of like, let's see, this is the transactions. You want to go to the stats. So time between blocks is roughly 8.73 minutes. It was, you know, kind of set up to be about 10 minutes. But about every 8.73 minutes, you've got a new block, a new block of transactions that is verified by Bitcoin miners out there. And there's roughly 20, I mean, there's well, not roughly, there is exactly 25 Bitcoins created with every new block. And, you know, over time that will decrease that that is the amount of Bitcoins created by a new block. It's on a set scale that decreases over time until we reach the maximum amount of Bitcoins that will be minted ever. So that's already prescribed. There's already prescribed number that once it hits that there's no more to be created 21 million Bitcoins is the maximum number of Bitcoins that will ever be minted 21 million. Yes. And that's what makes it deflationary over time, is that like like any other limited resource as demand goes up and supply remains the same, the cost or the the product will go up. And what's to stop somebody from making the 21st million and first and one Bitcoin? 21 and well, the core code of Bitcoin. And like I said, the core code would have to be modified and then all Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin users that use the wallet to prevent a hard fork would have to agree to basically update. Everyone have to update their code to accept a change in like the supply of Bitcoin. OK, OK. So looking at the trends, you know, you follow this very closely. You watch what's going on. You're on top of the news. What is kind of the next big hill for the Bitcoin phenomenon to take in terms of its its adoption or, you know, kind of mainstream adoption? What what's the next significant thing that's going to happen? That'll be an indication of that. Well, I think it's going to be. So in terms of mainstream adoption, you've got to see some more brick and mortar adoption right now. And you've got to see more successes in brick and mortar. And one thing that I heard from from from your interview there with the earthquakes that was a little bit disappointing with me was the volume of transaction that happened there in person. What was it, like 21 transactions? Is that right? Am I remembering that number correctly? Yeah, something like 15 to 20. 15 to 20, right? What time frame was that? Was that like the day opening day or was that like over all time? Or I don't know if it was per event or all time. I mean, it's a very small number. Clearly it's it's almost more of a PR move than it is a real, you know, business move. And it's it's a reflection of I think the earthquakes desire to be, you know, cutting edge and, you know, they're in Silicon Valley, they want to be that way. But clearly it's not, you know, it's not a big number. You know, I would say it's it's not really meaning. And that was what surprised me, right? Because if you look at like one of the one of the articles that I sent you and I think we cover this in Silicon Angle as well was a coin desk. They wrote an article on Overstock. They interviewed CEO Patrick Byrne, 1.6 million Bitcoin 1.6 million in Bitcoin sales over the course of like, I don't know, it was like a weekend or the week. You know, it was like the first, you know, time period they were reporting earnings for after they accepted Bitcoin, which is a massive number. And that was what stunned everybody and kind of got other legitimate brands interested in paying attention to Bitcoin. So but again, Overstock is an online only brand, right? So they're they're they're playing to a global market. So, you know, I think so when you ask me, what's the mix big hurdle for Bitcoin for on its way to mainstream adoption is there has to be a solid brick and mortar win, right? You're seeing is particularly in Silicon Valley, which is surprising to me. You're seeing Bitcoin brick and mortar adoption lagging. There are other cities that we visit on the spring tour with the cube that had a lot more Bitcoin. Las Vegas has more Bitcoin adoption than in certain cities in Silicon Valley, which, you know, is interesting, maybe not surprising, given the gambling aspect of things, but it's definitely interesting. And so once those successes start to get reported with brick and mortar and become more widely widely known about, then I think you're going to see that's going to be the next big uptick and the other major watershed event that's going to have to happen is the realization of the value of supply chain integration with Bitcoin. And that is because one of the main benefits for Bitcoin for a merchant is avoiding charge backs. I mean, plain and simple, that could be like up to 20 percent or more for other businesses of the cost of running the business is charge backs and Bitcoin eliminates that because it's an irreversible transaction just like cash. So once you see and that's great, but once you see integration of a company that does accept Bitcoin, where they're not just buying it and cashing it out the dollar, but holding it and then using it to pay their suppliers with and thereby avoiding even more banking fees, you're going to see a lot more a lot more kind of adoption across the board. Once the realization of the benefits of B to B Bitcoin as opposed to B to C. It's interesting. I again, I think for that to happen, it's got to be much more steady in its value fluctuation because if most merchants not big ones, obviously, but a lot of them are not in the business of arbitrage and currency. And that's a very different business than buying and selling t-shirts or buying and selling groceries. So I think once the volatility of the pricing reduces and so that it becomes a little bit better and a little bit more consistent holder of value, then potentially you'll see more adoption of actually holding Bitcoin and doing more back end transactions on Bitcoin versus kind of a front end novelty, which it still seems to be a lot of these places, obviously not all of them. And then I think too, 21 million is just it's not a big number in terms of if this thing ever really rocks and rolls. It'll be interesting to see if that ever gets readdressed. But but we've been running a lot of work here before we sign out. So, you know, so with with with regard to the Bitcoin 21 million thing, you don't have to have like I have right now in my my wallet on my phone. I've got two point nine one and a bunch of numbers past the decimal point, bitcoins. So you don't have to spend whole bitcoins at a time. And you don't you can even own like less than a hundredth hundredth of a Bitcoin as and if that that hundredth of a Bitcoin, you know, in 15 years could be worth, you know, $5,000, right? You know, that's it's infinitely divisible. And that that's an easy thing to make. So I don't think that's that's that's not too big of a stumbling block for Bitcoin. I don't see that they may add more decimal points as time goes on. You know, God willing, that means those that hold Bitcoin today are going to be very, very rich. But the with with regard to the fluctuation, there's an exact number that you can put on that, right? So 20 percent is kind of the average loss for a normal, non quote unquote, non risky business that they lose to charge backs. So if you see Bitcoin fluctuation not within the range of like a swing of less than 20 percent, then that is the exact point in which Bitcoin becomes less risky. Then using credit cards as a primary way of interacting financially with your customers. I mean, just that's the simple math. That's a number as a quantifiable number because you're losing, you know, 20 percent of all value held to use, you know, to use credit card systems and fighting bad actors. And if your price is staying relatively stable, which it is, if you look at Bitcoinity.org, which tracks the Bitcoin price historically going back four years, you can see the price over the last, let's see, the last seven days and the last month has only swung. Let's see, let's look back 30 days. It's only swung point oh seven percent in either direction in the last 24 hours and three percent back and forth in the last 30 days. So stability is here, right? We're much more stable, you know, at Bitcoin being, you know, $600 a coin than we were back when it was $11 a coin shooting up to 1200 and back down to 600. I mean, this and it's been like this for for many months now. So especially given all the crazy news that's coming out of the Bitcoin world, this is remarkable that it's become this stable this quick. Most credit card transactions are nowhere near 20. Where's the 20 coming from? Is this just like I've read reports kind of circulating around. So there was a report that the it's like kind of like a big global economy thing that the IMF put out that kind of talked about merchant merchant accounts and remittance remittance markets a few weeks or a few months ago, actually, that talked about, you know, how much of the world. I mean, it's like the ones like how many billions are in the remittance markets and, you know, where the margins were on that. And, you know, how it was it was it was a report strip, particularly about the opportunities for cryptocurrency. And one of the things that it mentioned was, you know, online businesses fighting fighting charge backs. That's a lot higher than kind of a typical good U.S. company plays to a typical bank. But but anyway, so there's a lot of things are moving. So thanks, Mark, for joining us. Thanks everyone else for tuning in. We will continue to update the story as we go out to talk to more merchants as Bitcoin adoption continues to increase. Thanks for Mark for joining us again. Great interview with Richard Fidesco at Earthquakes. I'm Jeff Frick. We're a CUBE Conversation in Palo Alto, California. We'll catch you next time. Thanks.