In this episode, Brad Mines chats with Pedro, a key member of the Meme Factory, about the upcoming Bitcoin Halving Party in El Salvador. They delve into the significance of the event, its organization, and the broader implications for Bitcoin and its community.
[0:03] Introduction: Brad welcomes Pedro and discusses the Bitcoin Halving Party in El Salvador. [0:20] Pedro's Role and the Meme Factory: Pedro talks about his involvement with the Meme Factory and his responsibilities, including managing IT infrastructure and BTC pay servers. [1:28] Bitcoin's Decentralized Nature: Discussion on the freedom and global reach Bitcoin offers, especially in terms of financial transactions. [1:57] Event Details: Insights into what attendees can expect at the Halving Party, including the relaxed atmosphere, resort stay, and ticket pricing. [3:30] Global Interest in the Event: Pedro shares his surprise at the diverse international interest in the event. [4:37] Sean Harris's Role: Introduction to Sean Harris, a key organizer, and his background. [5:15] Bitcoin Focus: Pedro's stance on Bitcoin maximalism and his journey away from other cryptocurrencies. [6:21] Date of the Halving Party: Discussion on the timing of the event and its alignment with the actual Bitcoin halving. [7:30] El Salvador as a Venue: Why El Salvador was chosen and the significance of the location. [8:12] On-the-Ground Preparations: Feedback on the resort and efforts to improve the guest experience. [9:09] Brad's Upcoming Visit to El Salvador: Brad shares his travel plans and seeks recommendations. [9:50] Pedro's Personal Plans: Pedro talks about his family and his first trip to El Salvador. [10:41] Bitcoin Price Trends: Analysis of recent Bitcoin price movements and comparisons with past cycles. [12:04] Predictions and Trading: Pedro shares his thoughts on Bitcoin's future price movements and the risks of trading. [13:36] Investment Strategies: Discussion on different investment approaches in Bitcoin, emphasizing the risks of trying to time the market.
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Pedro, welcome to the Havond or Poor Podcast. Thanks for doing this this morning. Thanks, brad, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, you had posted something on your YouTube channel. It's about the Bitcoin having party happening in El Salvador. Is that something of great interest to you? Are you going to be at the party? What's the significance around that?
Speaker 2:
I am with a group of guys called the meme factory and we've been planning a having party in El Salvador for I don't know, maybe it's been over a year now.
Speaker 2:
We've been talking about it on our channel. Big Sean Harris is actually the person who's been on point for this and really the driving force behind making everything happen. My role in this is sort of I do like infrastructure stuff for the meme factory, so I run the websites. I set up all of the different things that are needed to be able to do the IT type of things from an internet standpoint to be able to get it to happen. My favorite part of it is probably running the BTC pay server in my basement and having people make Bitcoin payments to us for the having party ticket using Bitcoin. I think it's just another layer of what Bitcoin is about and how to not have to ask permission from anybody to do something that you want to do. We all know, when it comes to the money part of it, there's more and more aggressively, there's a lot of people who want their hands inside of what you're doing with your money, right, and so to be able to operate outside of all of that.
Speaker 1:
It's been really fun for me, yeah for sure, and obviously one of the main things about Bitcoin is being able to have that ability to work outside traditional financial systems and you can collect payments from anywhere across the world and there's no really restrictions when you're doing that in this decentralized manner. It's just super cool. So you're talking about the selling tickets for the having party anticipated in what is like 19, 20 weeks. We're looking at now how much are tickets and what can people expect at the party?
Speaker 2:
Well, so in terms of what people can expect from the party. Really, sean is handling the vast majority of that. He obviously invites us to the meetings and stuff, and some of the guys in the manufacturing are playing more of a role in that aspect. I kind of expect it to be sort of more laid back than your typical conference. We don't really want to do the thing where there's speakers up on stage every hour of the day and people are sort of expected to be excited for the speakers so much as we expect it to be more of like what happens sort of on the outskirts of a conference, where people are sort of hanging out in different areas with each other and sort of just meeting like minded individuals, which is kind of what the hard part about folks with our mentality is right is that it's not exactly a mainstream thing, and so being able to meet like minded individuals is fun and exciting for people.
Speaker 2:
It's going to be in a resort, so people are paying for, people have to pay us for the ticket and then they also have a book stay at this resort. We're probably going to have the majority of the resort book, so it'll be just mostly bit coiners that are hanging out out there. It's all inclusive in terms of, you know, people being able to not have to worry about food and drinks. All of that is going to be included. It's pricey, for sure. I mean the resort is. I think if you're a couple and you're staying there for like three or four days, it's gonna be something in the neighborhood of like six or seven hundred dollars. I think we are charging at this point. We've been steadily raising the prices of the tickets. At this point, we're about three ninety nine in terms of fiat and I think it's like three fifty if somebody pays in Bitcoin.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's, that's not too bad, then you're. Then you're talking about your flight on top of that. So, depending on which part of the world you're coming from but I'd imagine it'd be you know quite a few different people from all over the world Attending. As El Salvador's attracting more and more attention from Bitcoin is around the world, would you say yeah?
Speaker 2:
That's kind of been. What's been most surprising to me is the amount of people coming from different areas of the world and I just, you know, from my standpoint, sean's been talking about this for a long time and planning it and, you know, hyping it up and I didn't Expect the demand to be at what it is right. I know that's kind of one of the things that I said to him initially is how many people were excited about coming, and From all different parts of the world. You know we had to jump on calls to help people figure out how to buy from, like Australia, because I guess they were being their IP addresses were being banned from the resort's website so we had to figure out workarounds on how to get them to be able to get to that website and book the resort. Things like that has just been really interesting to me and I just did not anticipate the amount of demand for this type of thing. So that's been pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:
Now, you mentioned Sean Harris a couple times. Now Is he on Twitter? Where can we, where can we follow Sean?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Sean is at Big Sean Harris on Twitter.
Speaker 1:
Big Sean Harris with the basketball beside his name. There it is, that's yeah, that's a cool.
Speaker 2:
He's a former. Actually, I don't know if he if he's made that announcement he's playing basketball in Europe for a long time.
Speaker 1:
Wow, very cool. I was just gonna say you know, I saw him on on your channel a couple times and obviously you know the main organizer of this event going down, so I just want to make sure I click follow and subscribe so I can get all these updates as we go. But sorry, what were you saying?
Speaker 2:
He's been.
Speaker 1:
He's publicly, publicly shared that he's in the US right now and traveling a lot, so Okay, cool, and you guys are very Appeared to be very Bitcoin only says right on his on his page Bitcoin, now crypto. So you're in the? Are you in the Maximals? I'm camp is. Everything else is scammed.
Speaker 2:
You entertain a theorem, yeah no, I don't entertain a theorem. I did have. I did have some bags, maybe 2017, ish, 2018, ish. Okay, I've been aware of Bitcoin for a long time, probably before it was even a dollar. I remember somebody telling me about how they were mining it. You know, I always thought it was something that people were speculating on. I never dug into the fundamentals or whatever. When I did sort of start playing around with some of this stuff in 2017, the.
Speaker 2:
That is when I started Digging into the fundamentals behind these different things and sort of came to the conclusion that a lot of stuff is Very scammy and looking to just do the old Rookpool thing, and so I pretty much went Bitcoin only at that point now I'm seeing on the having party 2024 on their other web page.
Speaker 1:
here it's having party MF on Twitter, slash X, april 3rd to 5th 2024. Is there any chance that the having doesn't occur between those days?
Speaker 2:
That's an interesting comment. We've been had a lot of folks call that out that it's highly unlikely that the having actually happens when we're having our having party. I wouldn't fully acknowledge that. I mean, there's not really a way for us to have planned out in advance being able to put the resort being able to plan out all these events in a in a way that wouldn't cost the end user a lot of money At the end of the day, right? Like we could have tried to time this thing and say and and we would have ended up paying a lot of money to a resort. Or like Users would have ended up paying a lot of money wherever we would have figured out this was gonna happen, or they wouldn't have been able to plan out their stay in the first place, right?
Speaker 2:
So we can just wanted to get everybody together as best as possible, especially folks that you know we've been hanging out with on Twitter for a long time. That was kind of the. The reason why we wanted to do this is because we just wanted to meet a lot of these people. We wanted to do it in a fun place. Like you know, salvador's Obviously a lot going on over there and we thought it would be interesting to do that, so there was no way for us to just plan an exact date.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, that'd be cool if it does happen when you're there now. Yeah, you guys, I'm on the bitcoinhavingpartycom website and you know you guys got quite the lineup of Bitcoiners coming, so that should be very exciting for anybody that wanted to go and meet people in this space. You got a wealth of knowledge of People lined up coming, so that is super cool. I have a little bit of announcement. I haven't said that I'm going to the Bitcoinhavingparty, but I am going to El Salvador next week and Going to explore the country as much as I can for for about a week. So do you guys have any you know boots on the ground at this time? Are there people there kind of checking things out or there? Do you know people that are there full time?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we've we've had folks that have been there that have given us sort of feedback on the resort. Sean has been to the resort I want to say it at least once. He might have been there a couple times at this point. Yeah, there's been other folks who have visited and sort of shared in regards to what's going on over there. I think the main concern from the main feedback that the resort gets, is around wait times to check in. It looks like there's a lot of negative feedback on the website about that and I know he's partnering with the. I've been on some of the zoom calls partnering with the folks that run the resort to try to mitigate the issues with the wait time. You know that's been the main concern that people have.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'm just. I'm just wondering, like I should definitely just check that out the beautiful royal D Cameron saline. So, salinas, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing. Yeah, there you go, that's right. Sweet. I might go there and just check out the resort just to see in case I'm not there for the having party.
Speaker 2:
I can kind of see what you guys are gonna experience, and if you have, that you have would be very welcome, though That'd be cool. Do you? Do you already have a itinerary of where you're going out there?
Speaker 1:
Not really. I was going to spend a couple days in San Salvador before making it down to the beachway and doing that strip there. Do you have any recommendations?
Speaker 2:
No, I don't. I've never been to El Salvador, so this will be my first time. First time in April, yeah, yeah, that'll be my first time. I'm gonna take the wife and Well, so which fingers cross here if everything goes well with the birth of our next child, and then we'll be there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you got. You got a few kids now, yeah yeah, I'm five, five.
Speaker 2:
They're not all. We're not taking all of them.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a lot, yeah, but glad to be speaking somebody so intertwined with with this having event. You know, obviously you know, here on the having report, we try to emphasize that Cycle to newcomers coming to the space, trying to help them zoom out and see the big picture with Bitcoin, and I think you guys are doing that too. You know, by focusing on El Salvador and focusing on the having and bringing bringing light to you know what that means for Bitcoiners and miners. And you know the distribution of coins and the inflation rate and everything that goes along with with the having, because it's often, I think, overlooked. You know, during those bear market years, people don't think about it until you know we're getting closer, we got the price coming cut, starting to come up. You know, what do you think about this little price bump that we've had in the past week?
Speaker 2:
or two. Yeah, we were just talking about this with some of the guys A couple days ago when we hit 44, I ran some quick numbers. I'm not a charts guy. I sort of like prefer when it comes to like my Interactions with the guys and what I focus on it's more of the technical stuff with Bitcoin and especially Pushing folks for to self custody, pushing folks around their own note. But I did some quick math and I caught that the previous all-time high from 2017 was around 20,000. I'm just doing some rough numbers here. Yeah, and then we had that pump I don't know if you remember in 20. I believe it was 2019 where we went to like 12k in October or so.
Speaker 2:
Okay yeah, and when you, when you, when you do sort of like the percentages of that, that's like 65% of all-time high, and then we promptly dumped after that and all and then retraced all the way down to like Like 3600 at one point during the COVID scare and then so when you do those numbers with this one against this previous all-time High, it's 64%. So like we're like right, like when you look at the chart and you try to check it where you are in the versus the previous cycle, like you could sort of see you are here at like 12, 12 and a half thousand dollars Versus the previous all-time high.
Speaker 1:
So do you think we're gonna see a significant pullback then before reaching new all-time highs?
Speaker 2:
Man, I have no idea like that's kind of that's the. That's the reason why, that's the reason why I don't trade, because I would. I'm very bad at it, right, and so it's like 95% of anybody that's out there trying to trade against these whales that have so much control, it's probably like Either one of the two things gonna happen right, we're gonna, we're gonna break against that trend and go up, or you know Something. You know. You know a lot of people are predicting some sort of credit event Like we've had in the past, that if it were to happen, we'd probably see a pretty big pullback. But you never know, I mean, it could break the trend and go in the other direction and you could be sitting on dollars and be being very regretful of that. So yeah, I don't try to play those games.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's funny. I was just invited on to a local podcast guy. His name is pizza review Joe. We sort of like Dave Portnoy inspired, but like for local pizzas around here, but now he started a podcast. He's in real estate but now interested in Bitcoin. So I went on there and he has another Bitcoin crypto friend that's telling him to. We're trying to accumulate more Bitcoin by trying to time the top and Not not time the top. But you know, selling higher than than what you bought at and then buying lower to get more Bitcoin. And I'm not sure if I expressed it enough or good enough to him at the time, but I just said, like you're probably going like a lot of people are going to end up with less Bitcoin over time. But we might get a couple trades, but it only takes one bad trade to get caught with your pants down and end up with less Bitcoin. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:
No, that's, that's a hundred percent what happens and you know 95% of the time you hear somebody saying that they're gonna do that. The next time you talk to them, they got rekt, I mean that's just the reality.
Speaker 1:
So yeah, that's why we, you know, emphasize that dollar cost average strategy and Help people into self custody long-term holding.