There's probably a lot of sharks out there who just want to take the money.

Of course, because, you know, the way, you know, now it's not even about waiting for the guys to become the NBA, you know, the EPL.

It's not even about that.

Now they're getting kids at younger ages, right? Teenagers, right? Especially in America, you have the NIL where...

high school kids are making millions of dollars, right? So the Sharks are even attacking younger kids now, right? And I think for us, I've always been the guy that's been the OG, they call it, where I want to give the free game and free knowledge, right? Because I had some great veterans and some great OGs men that were before me that were able to give me the game and they were, they taught me and I did a good job being a sponge and listening and absorbing that information and then be able to take it back and kind of digest.

So, you know, for me, I try to do the same thing, but I also tell people, you know, when it comes to investing, they have to be You got to be cautious, right? I think you have to understand that, yes, nothing's guaranteed in life except if you're in America, death and tax.

If you're in Singapore, you guys might be a little bit more fortunate.

Still alive after leverage trading on 10-10.

Okay.

During, during the pandemic.

And I, so I said, "Okay." I said, "You know what? I'm gonna listen.

They're, they're the OGs.

Uh, you know, they've have, have, you know, one of the, one of the top tier." I remember months later, I'm on social media doom scrolling, and I see, you know, y- yeah, yeah, you know, uh, Larry Fink saying, "Hey, we're gonna start adding Bitcoin to our balance sheet and start, uh, uh, accumulating." I said, "Oh, wow." So look what we have here, right? Like any, like any institution that, that, that invest your money, you know, when you take your money off their platform, they get questioned by their manager.

They get questioned why, why is that m- account having that kind of movement somewhere else.

And it just showed me that if they can't benefit from your capital, they're not gonna always have your be- your best interest i- in mind, right? And then from that, sparked a light bulb in my head.

How do you decide Bitcoin or otherwise, like generally what gets through your filter, what you consider, where you're gonna deploy capital?

Like w- how technologically forward has being an athlete really become at the professional level?

I mean, you know, tech has grown so much, Anthony.

I think especially in the last couple years, I think the, the, the beauty is that Adam Silver understands the power of technology, and whether it's analytics...

Even if you look at Daryl Morey, you know, a few years ago, when he constructed his Philadelphia 76ers team, he said he used AI and tech, techn- and the technology to curate his roster, and that's why he paid Paul George and brought him on, 'cause he saw the areas that, you know...

Sometimes i- it's about a balance, right? I think sports, people are so used to just, like, either it's the eye test or analytics, but it, it could be a combination of both, and that's why the great franchise, whether it's the OKC Thunder, the Spurs of the world, Miami, they understand it's a combination.

But for me, even personally, I think, you know, yes, we watch film, and we, we, we get analytics of, like, you know, for instance, you know, Jaylen Brown, when he goes left, he finishes 34% of the time.

When he goes right, he finishes at 70%.

I understand the five-layer cake." How do you, uh, go and actually find where you wanna put that capital?

What type of, of impact did that have on you? Because you, like you said, you were very, very close to your mom.

Yeah.

No, my mom was my everything.

You know, she would text me in the morning, text me at night, every day, never missed a beat.

FaceTime me.

So you know, when that happened, I remember being in the gym on January 5th working out, and I remember it was, like, around 9:30, and I'm, I'm, I'm in between sets and I'm looking outside and I see a rainbow.

And I was just like, "Oh, it's a nice rainbow.

What was it, what was it like? So was there d- was LeBron different in LA than what you remember him in Cleveland?

Right

... and that's my brother.

So Rich is like, "Hey, keep sharpening that knife, 'cause you never know what 23's gonna do.

Listen, he in Miami, but doesn't mean he's gonna be there forever.

You don't know what's gonna happen.

So, like, get yourself ready." And I remember when we were in Orlando for, for the All-Star weekend, when me and Ky were doing the rookie/sophomore game, you know, we're Bron's little bros.

So Bron's like, "Hey, I'm watching you guys.

Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lilly.com.

I like it

... you know, give guys the opportunity that I have, and it's globally.

It's not just in America, you know? It's...

You know, yesterday I was sitting with some gentlemen that work with the QIA, and they've been really good.

And they've been very open doors to me, and they showed me nothing but love and respect, and I love the people of Doha and Qatar.

So I wanna give the people the opportunity that I have, because I think it's about paying it forward, and that's about being a real team player.

Yeah

... you know, uh, construction, landscaping, right? All those areas, robots and robotics can help.

What are you kind of seeing in terms of like an opportunity there in that intersection that I think will be very beneficial for a lot of people?

Yeah, I think the beauty is, like you said, the intersection between retail and web 3.0, the importance for us to get some Bitcoin to a million dollars.

I don't want to see it there.

We're going to have to keep onboarding the everyday folks, the Web 2.0 folks.

The best way to describe it is create great products that don't have to push in there that's crypto.

The same way when we use Uber, we don't care if it's ran by a car or AWS.

As long as when we want a pickup location, a job location, we don't care what's under the hood.

Yeah, yeah.

Speaking of family, why don't you tell people a little bit about yours? How many siblings do you have? Like, lay it out for people.

[laughs] Well, I'm the oldest of four.

You have myself, Deshaun, Daniel, and Amari.

Me and Deshaun are three years apart in age.

Well, am I correct, four years? 'Cause I just turned 35.

I'm getting old.

Daniel is 20, going on to 21, and Amari's 19.

What did your mom do as a career, and were you able to retire your mother?

Was Bitcoin ever in the conversation? And how different does that conversation sound in the NBA locker rooms now?

When I first got to Bitcoin, it wasn't much of a conversation.

Obviously, you'd see a couple of guys, whether it was, you know, Odell Beckham getting part of his salary in Bitcoin or, you know, Spencer Dinwiddie trying to do his contract in cryptocurrency.

But it turned to Bitcoin, it wasn't as much.

For me, getting into the space, I started helping guys and kind of educating them.

You know, I was the same guy in the locker room.

that was yielding on Aerodrome and Oricon Radium doing USDC Solana pools or CBBTC ETH pools and yielding all day long.

Is there anything you would tell your younger self, like knowing everything you know now, like any little mission that you would do that?

you think the monetization of college sports has helped college sports and helped athletes, not the other way around?

No, I think NIL is good for players, I think, because the reality is that before they used to pay you through the back door, now they pay you through the front door.

I think the next step, because I know a lot of people are saying these players are going to pay a lot of money, I think it's how can we set up these kids for financial success once they're done playing? Because the reality is that only 1% of these young men are going to play in the pros, so they'll be able to keep making money at that tax bracket or that rate.

But there's going to be a lot of guys when they're done college after four or five years we want to make sure they have enough capital and cash.

Or when they start the real world and have their real job, you know, most entry-level jobs, you might get 50 to 70K.

And I think for a lot of these collegiate athletes, they're discouraged by that because they're used to getting 250,000, half a million dollars.

You know, and I think if we're able to set up a financial planning structure where they're able to put their money in more safe yield bonds or where it can just accumulate interest safely, where, hey, when you have that conversation as a financial advisor, say, hey, young man you know you didn't make the pros it's okay but we have x amount of money saved up it's giving us this return each and every year it's okay to take a job that's less than what you're getting nil because now you're into the real workforce where you could build yourself up but we have this this honeycomb of capital where you're still protected

What specifically does this technology do to help people like Amari and what are you most excited about the future looking like?

Fall Asleep.

... is, like, waiting that long, does it make it worse? Like, do you start doing the whole, like, unprepared, "Oh, crap, I can't remember what I was gonna say.

Okay, I got it again.

How much time do I have?" "You still got a couple of hours." "Okay.

Uh, fuck, fuck, fuck," pacing around? Or are you kind of...

Like, what are you doing during those long days? Like, are you truly just chilling in your trailer? Yeah.

Sometimes I think it depends on...

Now do something with yourself.

so what are you doing in crypto? Are you involved? I saw you made a comment the other day that AI was the ultimate teammate.

Yes.

What does that mean? Well, the way I look at AI, it's used as the terms of the teammate.

It's someone that can help advance and make what's better, what's wrong in the system.

For me, the first thing I always think about is health, the decentralized science, health data.

There's just so much brokenness and Lack of resources for the everyday folks, right? And for me, for myself, my brother, who has epilepsy, it's called LSG, which is basically, in the grand scheme of things, one out of 100 people have epilepsy.

One out of three million who are epileptic have his form of it, which means it's a very rare disease.

Correct? Yes.

Can NBA players put their contract 50% cash, 50% Bitcoin?

Yeah, no, I think, yeah, you heard the story.

And I think, you know, one thing I will give a lot of credit to the NBA is that they've created this new program for guys that retire, whatever age you choose to retire.

And this is some good context.

From the day you retire till the age of 55 or 60, when you want to kick it to your 401k, they've created something called the NBA Post Career Plan, where basically every year you're on an NBA team, on a roster, whether it's half or full-time, the NBA makes a contribution to this account.

And this account, you don't gain any yields from it, but at least you're able to contribute and the NBA is able to and it's protected and safe.

So that's kind of a roadmap so where guys can have some type of financial security before tapping into that 401k.

And are you doing anything with crypto as far as businesses are concerned?