 I'm here with Charles Allen, CEO of Blockchain Technology and Consumer Solutions. How are you tonight, Charles? I'm good. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So for our viewers, could you please explain in layman's terms what BTCS does? Sure. So BTCS, we're involved in really three things at the moment. The first is our blockchain infrastructure solutions business. And basically what we do there is we secure proof of stake blockchains. And just to take a step back, blockchains are decentralized ledgers. Think about it like a database or Excel spreadsheet. It's maintained over a network of distributed computers that all have to agree on a consensus of the transaction. And I know that's a lot to kind of grasp, which is think about you can send a digital asset from one person to another without a trusted third party because it's verified by a network of computers or nodes. The biggest one is Bitcoin's blockchain and Bitcoin's obviously a digital asset that can move across that blockchain. We secure Ethereum's 2.0 blockchain network, which is a proof of stake consensus that's slightly different. It doesn't involve mining machines, but we've basically taken at this point 15 million of our own Ethereum or 7,680 tokens locked it up onto Ethereum's beacon chain and our processing and validating transactions on that blockchain. And earning revenue in the form of newly issued or transaction fees for processing those transactions. So that's our kind of one of the businesses. We're also building a platform to expand that so others could do it through us. The other project that we're working on is a data analytics platform, which allows people to basically connect multiple exchanges through a read only API and see all their their trades their performance metrics equivalent of a sharpie ratio and then follow other other traders. And then the last component, the third piece that we're working on is just a, you know, having a digital treasury asset of multiple cryptocurrencies. Right now we have Bitcoin and Ethereum, but we plan to expand beyond that. Okay. Thank you. What percentage of your clients are institutional investors versus retail investors right now. So we actually have I think it's a lot of retail investors I'd say north of about 35,000 I think it's maybe 38,000 retail investors as far as institutions, it's hard to tell knowns reported owning over 5% yet, but in our last. We did a $9.5 million financing a dollar share back in an early March and that was for, you know, institutional investors to, you know, for, you know, funds that came in so apart from those I can't. Yeah, I can't really speak it's all it's primarily retail investors. So are they staking with you right now or how are they investing. So, for most for those the investors I just mentioned that the retail holders institutions. They're just buying our stock in the, you know, either the open market or with the financing did they purchased it through a, you know, an offering by the company. With respect to our staking as a service platform that's something we're building so we haven't actually opened that up to the public yet we literally just engaged we engage the firm called launch nodes to help us build out that platform. So that's a product we're building our thought process is one, hey, you know, let's let's stick for an account. Make sure we get good at it and as we do that, you know, expand to staking other other proof of stake block chains, and then expand into, you know, offering a service in a non custodial fashion where, you know, I would think that more that would be more like users or consumers could stake their, you know, their crypto through us as opposed to, you know, going to other alternative solutions like a coin base or a crack in. So you are us publicly traded company. And what advantages does that would that give you when you do start to stake over, possibly going to an exchange or some other type of staking platform. Well I think they're going to be two advantages I mean, right now if you stick. If you stick through an exchange like a coin base or a crack and it's a custodial solution, they control your private keys. You know they are effectively holding your money. They're pretty high fees to me coin base is 25% of the reward crack and 15% you kind of have to really have to read the terms of service to find that out. You know I anticipate will be a lower cost, but we're also going to be non custodial so we're not going to take your funds which would basically limit us to certain block chains, where you can basically run a pool and others can delegate to that pool, where they actually take their money. It's via a smart contract so you know I think is a US is a US public company with clear disclosure I think people would hopefully be more comfortable, you know staking or delegating to our effectively a pool, especially if we can offer a very easy platform right to take the technical difficulties out of it they can come to our platform in one place and figure out how to do it, and then monitor those, those holdings through that that one portal. I think that would be attractive to users right the credibility of being a public company, especially if we can you know get up to the NASDAQ. You know we think that'd be attractive compared to really the private competitors I think you know the custodial solutions the coin bases and the crack and it'll be hard to compete with them in terms of you know brand and recognition. What are some of the costs associated with staking what are the risks, and what are some of the risks or costs reduced or eliminated by BTCS you kind of talked about that as being a publicly traded company, and can you get into the aspect of regulation decentralization. That's that's a pretty common theme for our videos, and some of the advantages, possibly of being US publicly traded company but also the fact that you also might be regulated so it might be more secure, versus not being as decentralized. Yeah, so you touched on a couple things I think that on the first you mentioned cost. Right, so, you know the cost is staking is very different than mining. So most of us public companies right now are mining Bitcoin. That's like the main theme. Hey you want to go public just go mind Bitcoin right, like what's that public company do they mind Bitcoin right there's I think 10, you know NASDAQ listed companies most of reminding Bitcoin except for one or two. Same for, you know the bulletin board a lot of them are doing the same thing. And then in Canada there's a lot of mining companies as well, with, you know, a little bit more variety up there in terms of what what companies are doing within this space so from a cost perspective. And what we're doing in terms of securing a theorems 2.0 network which is proof of state compared to proof of work one, you know, we think proof of stake algorithms are consensus algorithms are much more environmentally friendly. If you can get the same security on a blockchain, without having to expend all that, you know, electricity and carbon emissions to do that, as well as you know manufacturing the equipment to do that is just a better solution if you get the same security you don't need to pay for the additional layer of security because it's really not there so from from that perspective the cost is much lower. Right our cost to mine a theorem is really the cost to run our, you know, virtual machines on Amazon Web Services. It's a lot more technical in terms of you know getting the code up and running making sure that the servers keep running. But it's, it's definitely less. You know, intense in terms of you know buying physical hardware running data centers and eating up electricity so we think it's a much greener solution. And so, you know, also going to the cost. The nice thing about, you know, right now we stake a theorem. If everyone else wants to come and stake a theorem they're going to drive, hopefully the price of the theorem. And our revenue will be down because it'll be a smaller participant in the network, but the value of our underlying assets should go up. If you're mining Bitcoin, you know unless you're you time it right you need to make enough money to pay for the machines but a computer, anyway you cut it is a depreciating asset which at some points going to break. Right so Bitcoin mining machines last, you know, 18 months maybe two years if you're lucky they're going to start having issues after a year. So I think from a cost perspective our model as much. It's a much more attractive model, we're getting an appreciating asset versus depreciating asset, and hopefully that'll increase in value in addition to the revenue we generate by running nodes to secure the network so I think that that you see any of that savings going on to possibly the investor with a proof of stake model where it might be a cheaper gas fees. Oh look, and that's a great question so gas fees have kind of gone through the roof. Right. You know, whether that's driven by, you know, defy or NFTs or a combination of the both, or interest in an Ethereum, you know I think the, you know the solution is really moving to the theorems 2.0. Right and that's been something that's been, you know, discussed since Ethereum was launched, right, I mean that that's been around like 2015 or something, the concept of moving Ethereum to proof of stake has been, you know, there from the onset. So there's a lot of risks and you know when and how that will happen right. I don't have a crystal ball I don't know exactly how it's going to play out. There are a couple ways it could right it could just be in the change merge and boom we're done and we're off to the races and it's sailing. It could theoretically end up in like a hard fork where, you know, maybe it's the, you know, the miners the guys that are running the GPU say we don't really want to do this and you basically have a fork and you have the old Ethereum you have the new Ethereum and then the new Ethereum. And hopefully it's a better, it's a better mechanism to, you know, to proof of stake first proof of work. It has, you know, faster, you know, lower gas fees, you know faster transaction times in more applications can be built on top of it because it's a more robust solution. That's kind of my hope, I mean hopefully we just, you know, merge the thing together right versus a forking but if that happens, I assume that the token will just get quoted, right it may have some accounting implications for us, right in terms of where we value it. Right, be the new token versus the old one if it actually if it goes down that path but yeah there's there's definitely some risks there I think from a regulatory standpoint because you touched on that. You know, we'll see I think the regulators, you know there's a lot of different regulatory bodies, right you have, you know, the sec, the, you know, the IRS, the commodities and future exchange you have, you know, things and so it really depends on what where you're looking. You know, for our business, our goals to be regulatory light on the operation side, meaning I don't want to be a custodial provider I don't want to take other people's money if you're operating like an exchange you have to register within Senate can be very expensive. Or then you have to basically be a bank, right so I don't really want to do that. You know, you're, you're the companies that have done that have raised a substantial amount of money. 100 million 200 million just huge rounds which I don't really see a need I see there's a great opportunity to provide non custodial solutions where people should be holding their own cryptocurrencies, not putting it in a centralized place where we can provide a solution that's actually kind of along the intent of what what crypto is supposed to do which is be kind of, you know, having having free money right where you don't have to put it all in the bank. That's where the goal of crypto is supposed to be going and what's really happened is now it was just piled into exchanges because I mean frankly when you start to get to a lot of money gets pretty scary. Right, like how do you secure it like where do you put it, you know, it's transactions are irreversible you know if you have $10 million in crypto and someone steals it like well, what do you do now right. It's not like if you have 10 million to the bank I mean grand your FDIC is only going to be well it's 250 grand but still it's pretty secure right like I didn't some chase get robbed anytime soon. Another issue but but your point is very well taken. I'm going to turn the page just for our viewers. I can talk about which that aspect all night but let me let me turn the page a little bit do you do Cardano polka dot or other smart contract plan for platforms pose a threat to you moving forward did you see them possibly being something you're going to get into. Definitely not a threat. I think there's something we're going to get into. If you look at our most recent presentation where you know my focus is really on. You know I want my cake and eat it too and what I mean by that is, you know, Bitcoin is a great proof of concept and it's a great digital asset store of value. Especially with like monetary basement but it's really hard to build anything on top of Bitcoin right like you're not seeing smart contract based solutions get built on top of Bitcoin you're not seeing NFTs on top of Bitcoin you're not seeing defy. It's just it does one thing it's a store of value right the digital store of value which is great. But I'm, you know, and we only five million Bitcoin don't remember mom we're not, we're not, you know, abandoning it, but my thought is I think there's a lot more value creation if, if you can have a digital asset which is a store of value, which is effectively owning a piece of like, you know, Web 3.0, right at the protocol layer, where, you know, all these solutions will get built on top of it if you can own that, and have it, you know that that inflationary hedge at the same time that's great. Whether that's a theorem or polka dot or Cardano or Tezos or Algorand or, I mean I can go down the list. We're very interested so my thought is, if you if you look at Web 3.0 what it's going to be built on top of it can be built on top of blockchain based technologies so you know whether maybe that's like it's like a tree with lots of branches, right. And the branches are all the apps that are going to get built on top of that underlying technology well there may be a better one that that that serves maybe NFTs better than defy or something else. So my view would be like well why do I want to bet just one and put you know all my eggs in one basket, I really want to be betting the underlying technology of Web 3.0 and in blockchain and if I can do a couple of these. That's our goal right so I would not even even though right now we're basically you know all in on or you know 15 million of our you know 23 million and assets are in a theorem speaking chain we're definitely looking to expand into, you know polka dot Cardano Tezos, Algorand. I mean I go down the list we basically what we did is evaluate them right so we have three buckets right what's the quality of the token in the blockchain, both in terms of market cap liquidity in terms of we get in and out of something. What's the quality of the technology like what's what's the use cases the usability that's kind of bucket one to is how much money can we make, you know, getting in there and securing it and then the third is how difficult is that to do. You know, and there may be certain blockchains we want to secure where we can't offer it as a solution to customers the theorems kind of that example like, there's no way to really offer a. A theorem to users to come in and stay through us it's very difficult, at least today and the reason I say that is there's no way with others like Cardano you can basically run a pool. Where I think we would have an advantage that hey we're a public company you can trust us come delegate to our pool non custodial. And, you know, we basically get a very small fee but if we can ramp up a lot of money of other people's money into our pool that small fee becomes quite meaningful. You know, the theory you can't really do that you have to run a note and it's 32 E. There are ways to do it, but then you start to kind of run into regulatory complexities right we're going to slice it up and issue some other token that represents their ownership. You know, all of a sudden you you start to be like a security issue or act like an exchange so our focus is much more on the regulatory light. And what we would do that we would offer and a stake into the service platform be much more, you know, the ones that are kind of designed to allow us to do that and then ones where we like to token but maybe difficult to run up, you know, a pool and leverage using other people's money without actually taking it. I think just do for an account and Ethereum kind of falls into that bucket. With that, I just know our viewers would like to probably hear your opinion on this and of just a quick answers of the other smart contract platforms that you've looked into. At this point, whether it be polka dot Cardano of Tezos some of the other ones, what algorithm what what ones do you do you see because of the technology that's involved. Moving forward, do you see might have a future. That's a hard question to answer. Right. And the reality is I don't, I don't, I don't have a crystal ball so I don't know. Right. It's a best guess. And what I mean by that you see like, you could have the best technology doesn't always win. Right. And that's kind of why when I said earlier, like, you know, I think Ethereum's one that's going to survive. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. Right. I, you know, for me to say, hey, Ethereum's going to be here forever. Like, I just don't know. I mean, and a great example of that and this is dating myself a bit is, I remember I used to watch movies on VHS. Right. Well, you know, it was better than VHS was beta max for the people that remember that beta it was smaller it was a smaller tape. It was like the same. It was just better. Right. In every single way but it lost out for marketing. Right. You had a similar, you know, argument what was it like I forget the laser disk that the DVD standards you had a similar, you know, back and forth of what's the standard so really it's going to come down to, you know, if you have technologies that are the same a lot of these are really easy to fork. It's going to be a bit of a marketing effort and it's going to be a bit of who builds on that blockchain like the more applications built on that blockchain the more successful it's going to be. So, you know, and I think we're still in pretty early days right now, like there hasn't been any truly killer apps that have been built on blockchains. It's all just been everything's been hyped today. Right. I mean, I know there's stuff actually happening in Define NFTs are happening but like NFTs are extremely risky. Right. In terms of securing the assets and you've got a record on the blockchain but like what actually happens in terms of custody. So I think from a use case perspective, we're just starting to see that development. I know to really answer your question but and the ones I do like to poke it out. That's new, right. Very fair answer and it is very difficult. I just wondered if there was one that's piqued your interest just because a lot of my interest right. The ones I mentioned are the ones that piqued my interest. There's a lot of others I mean we went through we went through all of them right we have a list of all of the you know all the proof of stake tokens we basically went through, you know, all every single token that's proof of stake looked at it and analyzed it. And, you know, we eliminated the ones that were smaller right I think if it's something's trading like a Cardano that's not pretty big. I'm interested hopefully it gets adopted. But again, I mean, we'll see, you know, my goal would be to not try to pick a winner, right, and, and just basically take pick a couple that we think have the most probability of success and even that is, you know, the next player up is like hey let me get the application let me pick the winning app and invest in that company that does that thing on top is like now that's like, that's like, it's a big deal right like it's a 1000 shot and having been in this space since with 2014 I've seen so many companies go out of business. So many startups that have the next great thing with the hockey stick, you know, revenue curve and where are they today they're going right their pets dot com. So it sounds like diversification to me, and I think that's probably what most investors do in the crypto space they don't put their eggs in one basket for them makes a lot of difference. What are some of the visions you see for btcs moving forward mergers growth, NASDAQ people that you might be adding anything. Where do you see yourself moving forward. So, I think in the short run, you know, my goal has been, you know, let's get to the NASDAQ. In order to do that there are a couple things that need to happen the first was we needed to get an independent board, a majority of our board members to be independent, we need to step up our corporate governance. So, at the, on April 1 we appointed Charlie Lee who's the creator of like point. He joined the board as an independent director, former point point base engineer. And then we also added Carol Vain Klee she's you know very prominent lawyer within the blockchain space and now we have a fully independent board in addition to David Garrity who was formerly the CFO of interclick and as that company so you know that was kind of fate you know phase one. Now we've basically met the requirements to up list in the NASDAQ. We do need to have a $4 stock price but that's like a no brainer I mean if either it's going to get the organically or we'll just do a reverse split as much as I hate to do a reverse split to get on the NASDAQ is, you know, well worth it right I think if we get if we do it. And we get there the valuation gaps in terms of what companies trade for and investor universe is a huge jump. So that's kind of one, in terms of hires the next hires the CFO and currently the CEO and the CFO. And then after that really just just kind of building the team so that's kind of the very short run. And then we'll be against the NASDAQ to which is coming up, or actually we're in right so, you know, we're, you know, that's really, that is a sure goal. Yeah, so, I mean if you look at what we've done in the first quarter we, we raise $9.5 million in that we were the first public company to file it's 10k. If I'll $100 million shelf to other registration statements, got our proxy out and got the vote done in January 31. So all bang that you one added the board on, you know, hired to software development firms to push our platforms forward. So we've been really, I'd say pushing pretty hard the next goals, you know, NASDAQ, CFO NASDAQ and then kind of broaden the operations when we get there so that's kind of the, you know, the short run, you know, the long run. You know, it's hard to say I mean crypto changes a lot right like like a year and cryptos like two years and most other industries are three years so I think you know, you know, we'll evaluate it there are areas that are of interest to me. I don't know, like for example I think NFTs are really interesting. It's kind of something that's been all over the news I think on those it's something that's kind of overlooked and that NFTs are like the first, it's like the first digits it's like the first application that where there hasn't been an incumbent player. Right, like, you know, you have overstock trying to put through their T zero platform and if anyone's familiar with that but basically they're trying to digitize stocks you can trade them on a blockchain. Well, the main stock trader there is the T zero preferred stock, right, which trades at a discount to the common price on their platform but it has all the same rights and it gets a dividend so it's like well that doesn't make any sense right so the issue is you have incumbent players you have hard systems to change with the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange they don't want to give it up. So these are kind of interesting that there is the art market doesn't have a digital, you know marketplace yet it doesn't exist right. It's the same in the internet the internet, like there was nothing there to compete with it you were competing against newspapers and magazines and mailings I mean it just, it didn't exist so it's a free from yeah a lot of companies failed, but a lot of companies got to figure out how to build new business models and new things so I think with with blockchain technology a lot of really good solutions already exist right the internet basically digitized and allowed for the global sharing of information. Blockchains allow for the, you know digitization of assets and the global sharing of assets without a trusted third party, but there's a lot of good centralized systems out there that were and aren't going to like give up without a fight so I think when I look at this like the first place where there is no incumbent player, and I think just a high level when I look at solutions that can get built on blockchains. One's where there aren't entrenched incumbent players that don't want things to change or just adopt adopt the technology themselves are the most interesting and idea like I want to be securing the blockchains on which those solutions are built, because those will drive value to the under underline protocol so that's kind of my, you know, for the future, I'd like to see more things built on, you know the blockchains that we either secure plan to secure. Sounds outstanding. Charles to sum it up, I'm going to let you kind of get your give your final plug or I, I'm a retail investor. Most of the people that are watching this video are retail investors that are interested in VTCS. So, what could you say, you've done an outstanding job of explaining your company, and all of the areas it's into, and that you're publicly traded and. But what what would you say would be the biggest reason to invest with your company. Well, I think, you know, if you're interested in, you know, blockchain technologies, digital assets. And you want to invest in let's say, and you want to do that through the stock market you have a couple options right I mean there's maybe 10 companies on the NASDAQ 30 and Canada and like, you know, 30 I think there's 13 on the bulletin board so of those options. I think we're unique. We're the only ones right now, apart from I guess point base because they're offer also offering staking but they're a different, you know, they're different animal. When you look in the smaller cap companies, we, you know, we're the only ones doing proof of stake, where the only ones looking to really with this business model most others are mining Bitcoin. And I think we're unique playing that we're looking at, you know, proof of stake greener block, you know, proof of stake consensus net networks which are much greener, you know, in our mind much more interesting so I think you've got a unique technology angle there of what we're going after. And then on top of that I mean honestly we're just a value play right now. So if you and we just put our pre our corporate presentation today and, you know it's very rare that you can look at a, you know, a public company, like a growth and look at it as a value plan what I mean by that is, you know, we just announced we have, you know, 20 million in crypto and 3 million in cash as of March 31. Now Bitcoin's down a little bit but Ethereum's up and it's more heavily weighted towards Ethereum. I mean that puts us and I'm just I'm kind of curious right now I think we're, you know, compared to our public peers, you know, on the on the OTC, we're like a 2.1 times price to cash, even if you include the preferred which is, you know, owned by management like a 4x, and we're, you know, a 3.3 times, you know, price to book, usually don't look at growth companies on these like price to book and if you look at some of the other peers on the on the bulletin board. I mean, it's like, you know, 61 times price to cash or another is 100, there's, you know, MGT, MGT capital 131 times, you know, 64 times, you know, price to book so from that perspective we're a, you know, really a value play and that puts zero, you know, value on the growth, but we just announced we've got not a huge amount of revenue but we just presumed revenue generating operations for Q1 we did 72,000 for the quarter, and all of our 240 nodes only came online on February 22. And so we're expecting at least, you know, over a million in revenue for this year and grand that's low but, you know, we're growing. And so I look at it as, you know, right now we're still on the bulletin board, compared to a lot of our peers and if you look at our deck, most of the requirements to get to the price, which we can, as much as I don't like doing it, we can reverse to get it so, you know, we're kind of a growth company trading a value play multiple, which I think is pretty unique in like even compared to the nasdaq peers, you know, we're a discount to them so we're probably right now the cheapest crypto play, if you're interested in the market, at least compared to if you want to use those metrics right obviously, you know, you can look at, you know, we've had some investors say hey well you should just trade it, you know, you're, you're tangible or you're cash and crypto you should just trade at that. And that gives zero value to everything we're building, right, or the revenue from our operations which we now have so you know I kind of look at it as, you know, we're in a pretty pretty unique place where I think got the best probability of most of our companies of uplifting in the, you know, very, you know, very near future. And we've got it just a, you know, a huge balance sheet for compared to the OTC pairs right, even bigger than a lot of the nasdaq companies so, you know, from that perspective I think it's pretty interesting. Blockchain technology consumer solutions CEO Charles Allen outstanding discussion. And I think you gave us a great look into your company and, and I think you gave our investors just an outstanding perspective so I thank you for your time. And I hope to talk to you at another point. Yeah, Jim, thanks so much for having me I really appreciate it. And one thing I just I just want to add is, you know, you know, we haven't paid for this interview where we haven't issued, you know, any shares this is, you know, I think it's very important investors know that that, you know, that we're disclosing everything appropriately so I just I just thought I'd mention that because I don't that hadn't been mentioned in the past. outstanding. Thank you, Charles. All right. Thanks so much. Take care, Jim. Take care.