 Hello from Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, Florida. Sitting with me today is Ricardo Salinas, Mexican billionaire and the founder and chairman of the Grupo Salinas. Thank you, Armel. How are you today? Good, pleasure to be here. How you got into blockchain and where you heard about Bitcoin for the first time and what the price was at that time. That's a good story. You know, I got invited to a conference in New York a long time ago. I think it was 2012 or 13. And so Barry Silver from Grayscale was there. He made a very good presentation on Bitcoin. I said, gee, this sounds like a pretty good thing. But I didn't have any idea. I couldn't know where to buy it in exchange or anything. I had no idea. So I just sent him some money and I went into a close fund with him. It was $200. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I wrote it up a long ways. But the reason I didn't sell it is very simple. I couldn't get out of the fund. They had no liquidity until one year after. So we can't. Well, but you were lucky in the end. Well, you know, there you go. In hindsight, I would have been much better off if I hadn't sold a single one of them. You know? So we also make mistakes. Hindsight is 20-20, they say. Yeah. And this morning during your panel, it was titled Bitcoin Billionaire Capital Allocators. You mentioned that you were one of the oldest on stage. Yeah. I'm like, you're more than a boomer, maybe. Well, I wanted to ask what you thought the importance of the boomer generation and the older generation talking about Bitcoin and blockchain? Well, I don't know. I cannot speak for a whole generation, but what I do know is that you can't judge people by their age, at least not their physical age. You got to judge them by their mental age. I've seen some very young people who are old and don't learn anything. And I've seen some very old people that learned a lot, like me. I try to learn all the time. So I'm very curious by nature, and that's why I got into Bitcoin, out of curiosity. What is this thing? And how do you see Mexico leading the adoption of Bitcoin in Latin America? You know, unfortunately our country is dominated by this thinking related to the fiat institutions and the fiat fraud. So the central bank is run by the priests of fiat fraud and the minister of finance has a lot of those too. And I think there's just one senator, Indira, who even has this on her radar. And it's too bad. But I think that we will be able to change that by pushing very hard. Well today Senator Indira announced that they're trying to make Bitcoin legal tender in Mexico. Yeah, well she's trying to do that. It's gonna be an uphill battle because the powers at the central bank and the government ministry of finance, they hate Bitcoin because of the freedom it represents. And it's a direct threat to their monopoly money. How so? Well, when people can choose between two kinds of money, the good one and the bad one, they choose to keep the good one and spend the bad one. It's called Gresham Land Law. You know, good money and drives out the bad. And so let's talk about your banks, Bankosteka. And how will they prioritize Bitcoin banking over fiat banking? Well, that's a problem, you see? Because as a banker, I'm part of that system. And even though I'm very, very much aware of the shortcomings and I would love to have, my bank have full access to Bitcoin payments and Bitcoin deposits and lending, I am absolutely forbidden by the authorities to even get close to Bitcoin on the bank, on the bank side. However, we do have our electric shops, which are very effective and they can definitely buy and sell Bitcoin on the electric store front. So that's what we're working on right now. Okay, and then what have you seen to be the biggest barriers to adoption, both the institution side and then just the general public? So from the regulatory point of view, it's very clear, the regulators hate it and they wouldn't want to Bitcoin to exist. However, there's the people side and people want it to exist. So they start trading it and do anything and these guys are having a hard time catching up. Now on the people side, I think the most difficult point is getting people to understand that it's a store of value, that it should not be a speculation, that if you bought your Bitcoin, you're not gonna look at the price every 10 minutes and try to sell it because you made 30%. That's the wrong approach to Bitcoin. You should buy it, sit on it, just like you sit in your house and enjoy it. It's your nest egg for the 20 years ahead. And how are you feeling beyond Beyonce here in Miami and at the conference today, the optimism of the people here? You know, this is an amazing crowd. I didn't imagine there's so many people interested in Bitcoin, but there you are. And it was really gratifying to see the way they received the Jack Mulders and how they applauded his presentation. And he's a good kid, he's very young and he's making it big and he has a way to communicate with people, but the response of the public is just amazing. And how do we keep that momentum going? How do we keep this adoption? I don't know. I don't know. I think I just spread the word, I guess. Somebody said today that even though we, in this circle of Bitcoiners, even though we understand it and love it, that in terms of the total population, it's very small percentage. I wouldn't know because I don't know the exact number, but I do think that we're still early and that it's still a long way from universal adoption. And people will understand, I've been doing some demos with my friends, so I tell them, look, get the wallet, download it like that. I'm using Blue Wallet, which I love very much. So they download the Blue Wallet. Now what? Okay, now the words, boom, now words, write them down. Bang, man. Okay, now what? Now you're ready to receive Bitcoin? Nah, you're kidding me. So I send them $50 and do boom, and wow, I can't believe it. And I say this, you could be in China, you could be in the other building and you're still gonna get your Bitcoin. So then they say, wow. And I think that the wow effect, when people can actually transact and make the payments happen, it's gonna be the wow effect and we're still very far away from that. Like that was part of the presentation that Jack did, when he did the checkout of all that and how easy it was to scan the code and make the payment. It's amazing when you see it happen. And what about in the next five or 10 years, how do you see the blockchain and Bitcoin ecosystem growing? You know, I think that blockchain has a store of value and then maybe lightning or liquid, whatever side chain that makes it very fast and cheap to transact, that's gonna be the future, I think. There's no way the government are gonna be able to stop it. Doesn't mean they're not gonna try. Now, you saw that China banned Bitcoin and that took potentially 1.3 billion Chinese off the Bitcoin market. So could the US bureaucrats ban Bitcoin in the States? They could. Now, many people doubt it, but I have come to expect nothing of the government bureaucrats. Nothing but the worst. Well, one more question. What has been the biggest lesson out of all this in your journey so far in Bitcoin? It's very simple. I should have never sold. Unfortunately, I did. So now I had to start back again. I would have had a lot more coins if I didn't sell it. All right. Go. Well, thank you so much, Ricardo, for your time. All right. That was Ricardo Salinas with Cointel Graph.