 You might have heard of Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and his decision to buy a Welsh football club. Why did you want to purchase a soccer team? Well, first of all, we call it football. Ryan Reynolds and Rah McElhaney have become the new and unlikely owners of Wrexham Football Club. Let me tell you about how a bit coiner from Bedford near London has bought his local football club and he's turning his town into the capital of bitcoin in the UK. My primary mission is to raise up my town. Opportunity and success for my town. Welcome to Rael Bedford. It's pronounced Rael, not real, because the owner, Peter McCormack, has Champions League dreams. I could raise a billion and I would get in this club in the Premier League in nine years, because you have no money to do it. I could build a 200 million pound stadium if I did a shit coin. It's really tempting. The town of Bedford is small, in significance even. At just 180,000 people, it's one of many commuter towns surrounding London, the financial hub of the UK and Europe. But what would happen if you could inject investment into this small, local economy? I'm quite struck by how many shops are closed on the streets of Bedford. Must have walked past seven or eight shops on the high street, all of them closed. It's kind of wild. Inflation here is not good. Devonham used to be one of the UK's leading high street stores. It's been closed now for years, and in Bedford they haven't replaced it. What do you make of Bedford right now in terms of, I mean, this shop has closed down, that shop's closed down? Everything's empty. It's a real shame, really. They're spending a lot of money making it look pretty, but there's not much going on inside, so it's a shame. What do you make of the situation right now in Bedford? There's a lot of closed shops. No, it's so bad. And for people like our young age, it's really bad as well, because there's nothing there to do. In Bedford, what do you make of the town right now? What do you think the direction of the town is? Well, it's still got a bit of life to it, but the town centre has dwindled. It's always shopping online and the whole Covid thing. It kind of killed town centres everywhere, but still sick, you think, for walking around. That's true. I'm optimistic things will get better. What do you make of the vibe or the atmosphere right now in Bedford? Every day I'll heal with what we notice. All the towns seem to have gone downhill. A lot of shops closed down. A lot more homeless on the streets. Drug addicts. It's not the same as it was here since we've lived up this way. Everyone's going through hard times. They say they want open shops. We want to attract more business, but everyone's just down depressed with it. Bitcoin in the United Kingdom has had a tough time of late. The unelected Prime Minister, Richie Sunak, has been pushing CBDCs or central bank digital currencies. Inflation is the highest among most northern European countries, and rail staff, doctors, teachers, you name the public sector worker, most of them are on strike right now. Can Bitcoin really grow into a meaningful tool for change, or will it fade into irrelevance? Because here in Bedford, Bitcoin could be gaining a strong foothold. It's becoming a firm fixture on the Bitcoin World Tour, alongside El Salvador's Bitcoin Beach, Lugano, and Miami. The market town has hosted some of the biggest names in Bitcoin, including Jeff Booth, author of The Price of Tomorrow, Lawrence Lepard, James Lavish, and of course Peter McCormack himself, the local boy. There was a time when I was looking to move to Texas. Yeah. And there was a time when I was looking to move to London, and I was thinking, well, you know what, why don't I actually just try and do something in my hand there? Well, friends are here, that's where I'm from. And so yeah, and I think in doing this, I've come to really love the town, because people have got behind the project, really supported me. I mean, all the volunteers every week can come out and help. All the people who come and support us. That makes me love it more. Peter McCormack is proudly from Bedford, and he wants the orange pill or introduced Bitcoin to his town. He's doing it through his podcast, the most popular podcast of Bitcoin, through the local football club, and now recently through the purchase of a bar. He wants to raise up his town and put Bedford on the map. What does your ideal Bedford look like? What's your vision for Bedford? Economically prosperous. For the team and the family. But just economically prosperous. Yeah. We'll have four, five hundred people coming in here today, flying from all over the world to this, to Bedford, spending money in this town. The Swan Hotel is fully booked out. They're going to the pubs, they're going to the bars, they're going to the shops. They are... Tens of thousands of pounds will be spent this weekend in Bedford because of this. Let's try being an economic opportunity. New businesses will be created from that. So, yeah, I just want Bedford to be economically prosperous. Yeah. But it's not just an economic there, right? The one thing I've taken away from... I mean, I was here at the first game of the season, and finally left out the last home game this season. Yeah. There's a real sense of community that's built here on top of that. There have not been other sort of things like the youth team, the women's team, like anything that exists prior to... No, the women's team did. They existed, Bedford girls and ladies, but we partnered with them, provided them with kits. They're now going to come under our management next season. So, we rail Bedford ladies, and we will have 200 young girls every week going out training under our brand. Give us another year. We'll have a youth. We're probably going to have a disability team next year. And that's why I need a new facility. I need to raise seven and a half million quid, six big corners where I can build a ground, three training pitches, a gym and a rehabilitation centre. I have a centre for football excellence in the town where people can come all day every day and play football. Are you familiar with the story of a local lad called Peter McCormack, who bought the football club in Bedford? No, I don't know. I don't know anything about Peter McCormack. Does rail Bedford mean anything to you? Never heard of it. Do you know about the football teams here? Have you heard of rail Bedford before? No. Do you know there's a town called Rayale Bedford? Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, I know Rayale Bedford. You've been to the game to see a few matches? Yeah, I've been to one of their games once or twice just to see what's going on. Is that the one that's now called Rayale Bedford? Did you hear about this takeover? Yeah. Have you been to a game? No, not yet. Are you familiar with the football scene here? Bedford Town, yeah. Bedford Town, OK. What about Rayale Bedford? I've heard of Rayale Bedford. They're doing pretty well to do that takeover sort of thing. So I don't know who's taking over, but they're doing much better than Bedford Town has been. I was getting off the train earlier today and I was like, if it wasn't for Bitcoin and it wasn't for Peter, there's no way that I would have come here. There's no reason I would have come here. The world-famous Bitcoin Beach or Alzante in El Salvador put the tiny Latin American nation on the world map. Peter McCormack was one of the first Bitcoin advocates to visit the town and he's even interviewed the president of El Salvador, Naib Bukele, twice. But can you really apply the success of Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador to Bedford? Jeff, welcome to Bedford. Thank you. Is your second time here, right? First time here. Is it really? Yeah, pretty well. Yesterday was my first time here. OK. And had you heard of Bedford before Bitcoin? Besorbed Bitcoin? No. I have heard of Bedford until... Peter McCormack bought the tin. OK, fantastic. And of course, you wrote one of the... It's becoming a go-to Bitcoin book, even though it's not about Bitcoin, the price of tomorrow. And to also manage a fund at EgoDeath Capital, what do you make of the current sort of economic scene? Globally speaking, right now, before we come to Bedford. OK. It's playing out exactly like the book predictor that will play out. And the corresponding problem in the world, because those two systems are at polar opposites, is playing out exactly as predicted in the book. Unfortunately. And Bitcoin is essentially a fix to the system outside of the system. So it's a transition to a new system. Does the word Bitcoin mean anything to you? Bitcoin. Bitcoin, I don't understand. What does the word Bitcoin mean to you, if anything? Avoid. Avoid? And what about Bitcoin? Does Bitcoin mean anything to you? And what does the word Bitcoin mean to you? Bitcoin. Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin? What is a Bitcoin? Isn't it a currency? Yeah, it's a currency. Yeah, nailed it. That's good. Yeah, OK, cool. I've heard of it. I don't really get how it works and all that stuff, but I've heard that if you can invest in Bitcoin, you can make some serious money off it. Does the word Bitcoin mean anything to you? I know Bitcoin, is it? Yeah. What's Bitcoin? It's... I had to put it into words. It's basically a computer-generated currency. It's tangible in your hand, but it is traded in the world. It's tangible in your hand, but it is traded as currency. Yeah. Does Bitcoin mean anything to you? It's a digital currency. I don't use it. I don't intend to use it at the minute until it's more safe in a way because it can beat the details we've stolen and stuff. What does the word Bitcoin mean to you? Stocks, investing. Do you have any Bitcoin? No, but I have had an interest in wanting to invest. But how can you sort of fix this disconnect? How can you get more people to make that leap into doing what Peter's doing, doing what you're doing? I think it's just time people start to realize that the Bitcoin rabbit hole is deep. It's really deep. And if you're at the top of that rabbit hole, the first thing you probably do is hold it. A lot of people, the next thing they do is go and buy some other shitcoins. And then they come back to Bitcoin, and then they start to understand it more. Some people go down that path really quickly. Some people go down slowly. But eventually, I think it's just... To me, I think it's a time thing. When you're spending more time in the world you want to see, you meet more people that are aligned in the world that you want to see. And that's why I keep saying on these podcasts, I can't believe I get to do what I get to do. Yes, we're going to make a ton of money, but besides the money, you're meeting... I get to spend my time with the most brilliant entrepreneurs and the most brilliant people building the rails of the future. It's just... I do it for free. All places start out as nothing, right? Yeah, the guys on time. Yeah, exactly. And economic growth like what Bitcoin could do here and drive attention and more and more people, it emerges. A bunch of other businesses walk into there and it creates something that would look different just like Elzanto. It looks different than it probably did ten years ago. Much the amusement or bemusement of local fans, Bitcoin people from all over the world are coming to Bedford to watch this local team play. Even non-footballers are keen to meet up. It's an unexpected collision of two vastly different worlds, Bitcoin and football. Behind me, Ben Art is putting together a Bitcoin point of sale device with things he brought with him from home. We're in the football clubhouse at Rail Bedford. He's showing people how to set it all up. The game is happening right behind us. We're in the second half, it's 5-0, 6-0. Do you even care? Yeah, I mean, I don't really follow football. I'll be honest, Joe. Why are you here? Well, I'm here for the Bitcoin. And actually, I will say that I'm obviously out of here. Yeah. And I think what he's done with the club is fantastic. You see that corridor with the death metal corridor? It's amazing. And I imagine these away teams coming in, like walking through this corridor of graffiti and skulls and death metal. And it's such an un-football experience. In any real-world use case of implementing Bitcoin, then there's all these really interesting use cases and opportunities to build interesting software, which we weren't aware of before, so I've never engaged with, you know, building software for a football team except in Bitcoin. So now we have that opportunity, so that's very exciting to me. That's Hitchcock. Hitchcock lays one back forwards. That is a handball, but Brown is there to tap it home. I think they just scored. Whereas that's not so exciting. You have a connection to Bedford. I grew up here, yeah. You grew up here, okay. What does it mean for you to see, you know, the local team winning the league and getting promoted? That's great. I think it's really good that, you know, this team is going from coming from nothing really and getting it. And I think it's great. It's also kind of bringing the crowds out, you know, you know, getting people coming together from, you know, Bedford, who is quite a cool town, you know, but haven't got maybe the recognition from the other club. So it's good to have this club now kind of coming along. And also what Pete's doing is great with all the kind of different, you know, approach to it, I think, you know, having a look at how it's a smaller league team but with decent sort of sponsorship behind here and understanding how to mark the tier and doing things properly so fans want to come down because good atmosphere, there's, you know, things going on outside of just the football. So it's really good. The story here is that you have somewhat of a pantomime villain in cases of people who call Mac and sort of comes in and radicalizes everything, changes everything and everyone automatically goes against it. That's just British culture and nature, isn't it really? And slowly he's turning the favour and support of locals and the general public and their understanding in a similar vein to what he's done with Bitcoin, really. It's a very similar sort of strategy of sort of more and more people are learning that this is a good thing. This is a very good thing that's going on right now. And, you know, it's great to see Bitcoin coming to my town. You know, I've been involved with cryptocurrencies for about three, four years now. And to see some of the faces that are here as well as Pete being here and, like, back in this football club, it's massive. It's massive and it just makes me feel really proud to be from Bedford and makes me really excited, to be honest. I just saw you showing someone how to use Bitcoin from the back of your car in the rail at Bedford car park. Why? What was going on there? So it was a business owner who was interested in accepting Bitcoin payments and it's a completely new concept to him. So it so happens that I happen to have a point of sale device in the back of the car. So I just ran through the options with him and the process by which he could accept Bitcoin payments and he's really keen, so I'm really excited for him and he's really excited for the community, the business community that he works with as well. So hopefully I'll pack up a few leads and we'll see a few businesses in Bedford to start to accept Bitcoin soon. What do you understand about Bitcoin? I have some. I don't understand it at all. And I was quite surprised to find out yesterday that Bitcoin, Peter, I think his name was sponsoring the team and I didn't know anything about that. Yeah, you're from Bedford? Yeah, I'm from Bedford. So I was told to go and Google it who Peter is in Bitcoin and he will come up and find out more if I wanted to. The Bitcoin price over the past two years has steadily trended down as the bear market rages on. The focus for Raelle Bedford in this environment is to not only win the league but manage the treasury and retain those important Bitcoin sponsors. This is part of the problem of running a business with Bitcoin in mind, right? It is incredibly volatile and when it goes down, it goes down hard. How hard has that been managing this club with sponsors which, they're all actually live today or once I see today, maybe not compass. So they agreed to sponsorship during the ball one. So that was great. So I plan the year ahead. So I've got my entire budget for next season in the bank. Done. So what I'm really raising is for the season after. So every single year, I'm a year ahead and therefore if there is a bit of difficulty then I've got a year to plan for that. When your business and you accept cryptocurrencies your customer base expands massively. You know, you're attracting more people which is why there's so many international people here already because they're interested in cryptocurrency. They're interested in Bitcoin which is bringing them here to Bedford. The goal is to communicate Bitcoin to the country. It's a bit like Elzonte was the seed that turned El Salvador into a Bitcoin country. I want this to be the seed that makes our country understand and have better regulations towards Bitcoin. I would say when I think about Bitcoin it potentially is one of the largest countries today but it's digital in nature and it's spread out everywhere. So those Bitcoiners are very connected and they actually have massive purchasing power that if they started to shift it would shift the balance of power to Bitcoin really quickly. But it's so distributed that it hasn't built really strong network effects locally. And so that local connection and some of those network effects is happening. It's just early in that and it's early in that because for a long time all you could do with Bitcoin is hold it. There was no lightning. There was no FedE coming on. There wasn't a whole bunch of other ways to be able to use it. So people just held it. Now there's ways to use it and create an economy around it. I think like anywhere there's a Bitcoin hub and there's a reason to go and for people to meet in the meat space like exciting things happen and the thing that's happening with this football club and every time there's an opportunity to use Bitcoin in the wild actually use it paying for goods and services then there's a whole bunch of cool things we can build off it as a use case. So I get super excited when anywhere adopts Bitcoin. Railbed football play in the league above next year for the 2024 season. That means more money, more prestige and ultimately even more Bitcoin awareness for the town. I think this is one of these projects whereby I don't think anyone really understood it in a style and they're like whatever and I think it's starting to make more and more sense to people. I don't think anyone really understood the branding or the name. I think it's starting to make sense now. I could see it. I see the whole vision. I can see how we can get to the Premier League. It requires hard work and a bit of luck and Bitcoin to get behind it and keep doing its thing.