From Wall Street to Bitcoin Beach: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Future | Tone Vays of Unconfiscatable

Live from Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte, El Salvador, in this episode, I sit down with the one and only Tone Vays, a long-time Bitcoin advocate, educator, and Wall Street veteran. We dive into Tone’s fascinating journey into Bitcoin—starting with how the Cyprus banking crisis and WikiLeaks opened his eyes to Bitcoin’s power as censorship-resistant money. Tone shares stories from his Wall Street days, his transition to becoming a full-time Bitcoin educator, and his experiences traveling the world promoting Bitcoin’s core values.

We also get into Tone’s passion projects, like his Unconfiscatable event, which started as a Bitcoin conference and is now evolving into a high-stakes poker tournament for Bitcoiners. Plus, Tone gives his take on Prospera ZEDE, a private city initiative in Honduras, and why he believes projects like it are critical for advancing freedom and capitalism.

If that’s not enough, Tone shares his Bitcoin price predictions, some insights into his trading strategies, and even his new love for scuba diving. Tune in!

- Mike

Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:
https://twitter.com/Bitcoinbeach
https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv/
https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach
Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com/

Follow and connect with Tone:
X: https://x.com/ToneVays
https://www.youtube.com/tonevays
https://unconfiscatable.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@unconfiscatable
https://understandingbtc.com/
https://thefinancialsummit.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMZe3aGArxffPZKpMve82wQ

Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:
0:00 - Introduction
1:50 – How did Tone Vays discover Bitcoin and what role did Max Keiser play?
4:32 – What stopped Tone Vays from getting into Bitcoin mining in 2012?
4:50 – How did the Cyprus banking crisis push Tone Vays toward Bitcoin?
6:10 – How did growing up in the Soviet Union shape Tone Vays’ views on Bitcoin and wealth?
7:47 – How did Tone Vays get started with Bitcoin conferences and public speaking?
9:30 – What does it mean to be a Bitcoin influencer, and how did Tone Vays become one?
12:10 – What is the "Unconfiscatable" Bitcoin conference and why did Tone Vays create it?
14:50 – Why is Bitcoin’s "unconfiscatability" so important to Tone Vays?
16:21 – How did the Unconfiscatable conference evolve into a Bitcoin poker tournament?
23:25 – Why does Tone Vays think shadow banning hurts Bitcoin education?
26:13 – What is The Financial Summit, and how does it help traders and investors?
27:52 – Why are small financial retreats better for networking than big conferences?
29:42 – What does Tone Vays think about Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador?
40:31 – What is Prospera ZEDE, and why is it important for Bitcoin and private cities?
47:15 – Why is Prospera facing challenges in Honduras, and what could happen next?
56:15 – What are Tone Vays’ Bitcoin price predictions for the next year?
57:23 – Where can you follow Tone Vays and join his Bitcoin poker tournaments?

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Transcript

Mike Peterson  
Tone, we finally are going to get to sit down and chat last time you were in El sante and you couldn't pull away from your girlfriend long enough.

Tone Vays  
I know, no, it's tricky when you're at these events and the more people there are, it's impossible. Like, if I want to, if I'm listening to a speaker in one stage, and I want to go listen to a different speaker on a different stage, I'll never get there. Like, an hour. You get stopped, you get recognized everywhere. You probably have the same problem now here and at these events, 

Mike Peterson  
I found if you just pretend like you're on the phone while you're walking, then people are less like

Tone Vays  
my face is too unique. You know, I get recognized too easily.

Mike Peterson  
Well, we are here at, actually, the adopting Bitcoin Conference. That's why we have a little different backdrop here. So thanks to Paco and Andy for setting up this, this great setup. But I'm looking forward to actually learning a little bit more about your Bitcoin story, and then hearing about the uncomplicated little conference that that you run and how that came about. Because, to be honest, I only know bits and pieces about your your story, so on my journey to Bitcoin, yeah, so would love to hear, that, we'll dive right in. How did you Bitcoin kind of move into your life, and then what happened to lead you on the path to do the conference and the other things?

Tone Vays  
So just like with everyone you hear about Bitcoin, at least a year before you get in. Usually it's somewhere between one year and two years, unless you're stubborn, like a Peter Schiff, and then it's never but for most people, you know, if it catches your attention, and then a year later, it does it again, and then you start taking it seriously. So for me, Bitcoin caught my attention for the first time when I heard Max Kaiser talk about it in terms of WikiLeaks using it as payments because they were about to be de platformed because they were no longer able to take donations through Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and all registered means of payment. So that's when I heard about Bitcoin for the first time. And the reason I found Max Kaiser is because in 2011 I was following the Ron Paul campaign for President of the United States, and ironically, the only channel that was following Ron Paul speeches was Russia today. As ironic as that sounds, that's where you had to go to watch a candidate for US presidency, because the US media was not covering the Ron Paul campaign. So that brought me to RT. That caught my attention was Max Keiser show, but the show that I found that I was watching more often was called capital account on our team, those that remember from a decade ago maybe remember a show capital account and the Kaiser report from RT was

Mike Peterson  
now, was was Max like a was he? Was he orange pill at that time? Because I know he's we started the Kaiser report before Bitcoin was really big component of Oh,

Tone Vays  
yeah, no. So he was a full blown bitcoiner. But at that time, there were no old coins, right? So you were Bitcoin only, right? So that's what I heard about it the WikiLeaks use case, which is a use case for censorship resistant value transfer. Because I'm going to talk about three specific use cases of Bitcoin. That was the censorship resistant value transfer use case of Bitcoin.

Mike Peterson  
Hey guys, just a brief interruption. We'll get back to the exciting show here. But I just want to really ask a favor that you guys could make sure that you're subscribed. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on a podcast, please take the take a second and review this. You know you don't even have to write a lengthy review or anything at all, just click the number of stars that you want to give us. It really helps us in the algorithms to make sure people are finding out about what's happening here. All right, back to the show.

Tone Vays  
Now. I found it intriguing. I found it interesting. And I remember googling Bitcoin in 2012 and everything that came up was mining, mining money. I'm working Wall Street. I'm working, you know, like 10 hour days. I have to commute an hour to get to the city to work because I was saving money. I was a, I don't know I'm a. My background is, let me back up here. I was born in the Soviet Union. I grew up in a communist country. I was basically. Really, you know, struggling broke my whole life. I mean, we did okay as a family, but I remember working when I was 10 years old, not going to school while we were refugees coming to America, and then starting at 13 years old, I was working my first job was doing dishes, mopping floors at an ice cream shop, through high school. Then in college, I always had two jobs. One of those jobs was driving like the safety van, so the, you know, people don't have to walk across campus. It was mostly for, like girls not to have to walk alone. And that Job was like two, three in the morning every night, then I'd come home, then I would study for my classes. And so always, like, just did a hard worker and a saver. So when I had my Wall Street job, and I'm making, you know, 8090, grand to start, and then over 100 grand, I'm not paying $5,000 from Manhattan apartment. Like, I just can't, I can't get myself to do it like, so I'm saving money. I want to buy a property. I want to buy my house, buy an apartment. So I don't have time to deal with Bitcoin mining, so I never got in. And then in 2013 something changed. The next time it caught my attention. It really caught my attention. Those were the Cyprus banking confiscations of 2013 It was April of 2013 you remember that time, yep, where the European Union and Cyprus decided to confiscate 50% of everyone's wealth in their bank accounts above 100,000 euros, and they did nothing wrong. These were people that had money in at the bank, and I had over $100,000 saved in my bank account in the US, and I saw that, and I'm like, holy shit. How can that happen? That changed my entire view. I mean, again, I was already following Rob Paul. I was already moving into this, like, libertarian kind of thought process, because several seven years of college, liberal education. And I went to the most liberal schools possible. And I also grew up in New York, so literally, High School in New York, college in upstate New York, and probably the most liberal colleges. And then Florida State for grad school, which is the most liberal District of Florida, Tallahassee, Florida. That's the district that was, like, overwhelmingly votes Democrat. So that's a lot of brainwashing into, you know, the liberal mindset. And so that one really caught me, and I'm like, What do you mean? They can just confiscate your money? And after that, that's when I started taking Bitcoin seriously. And of course, I pick up my first SATs at the 2013 top, at the bubble. Like everybody 

Mike Peterson  
gotta buy at the top your first time, right? You gotta buy at the top your first 

Tone Vays  
Of course, right? Most people got into 2017 top. I ended up at that 2013 top, and then I watched it fall, you know, down to $200 down to $150 and I'm like, Jesus Christ. What's happening here? But I had a certain I had a couple of expertise. So one is, I've been an educator my whole life. My initial college education was actually in teaching. I was a high school teacher for a year, besides my job of driving drunk people till two in the morning, my other job was tutoring and and then I was doing that. I was a college professor for a little bit after my master's degree, because I couldn't find that Wall Street job. So I'm really good at teaching. I really like public speaking and standing on stage. And I was now working Wall Street for almost 10 years. Well, at that time, in 2014 15, I was only working Wall Street for like, six years. When I What were you doing? I was on the quant team building risk models for traders, okay, but I was also a trader on the side. Actually, no. In 2014 I started working on Wall Street in late 2016 early 2000 sorry, 2006 early, 2007 so in 2014 I was seven, eight years in, and I really started reading about Bitcoin, following everything about Bitcoin, and I attended my first conference in New York in 2014 it was called Inside Bitcoins. That was the only company that was going around the world doing Bitcoin conferences, and I sat in the front row, and I asked really good questions that got noticed by a couple of people in the audience that had podcasts, and they thought I was important based on how I presented myself, so they invited me on these podcasts without knowing that I'm just, you know, a guy that attended asked questions, but those couple of interviews created a little bit of a social media profile which I then used, which I then leveraged, along with my Wall Street background and my financial experience and my ability to speak publicly to. Speak at the next Bitcoin Conference, and it was in Hong Kong where my company happened to have an office, so it was like a work trip. And then I got to take one day off while in Hong Kong go to attend this conference and speak. And that one speaking appearance kicked off my career as what eventually became known as an influencer, because at the time, that word didn't exist, and I'm not a fan of that word, but I just don't have a better word to use. That one speaking appearance in Hong Kong attracted coin telegraph, which had just launched, like a month or two prior, and they were looking for content creators, and I started writing a weekly series on coin telegraph about trading and investing using Bitcoin as the asset. And again, that one speaking appearance led to several YouTube interviews led to more speaking appearances, and that kind of kicked off my social media and my public appearance, and with that as the expertise that led to me being a consistent guest on a YouTube channel called World crypto network, that led to me having my own show on the world crypto network. And in 2016 I came off the world crypto network to launch my own YouTube channel. And through all that time, I'm attending as many Bitcoin conferences as I can and speaking at these conferences, and people like to hear what I have to say. So my popularity is growing, and eventually, in 2015 at the worst possible time, I quit my job at the bottom end of the bear market. So this is why, like, people think, like, Oh, you've been in for so long, you have so much Bitcoin. I'm like, No, that's not how it works. Because I ended up quitting my job at the worst time, in beginning of in March of 2015 I had left my job. I made so many mistakes. We all made mistakes. My biggest mistake was I ended up resigning because I really hated I didn't like it anymore, instead of just being a bad employee and having them, you know, fire me because then I can collect unemployment ish, you know.

Mike Peterson  
So they hadn't invented quiet quitting yet.

Tone Vays  
I know, I know. And so anyway, times were different, and I spoke at so many conferences, and there was, there were things I didn't like about conferences, and that's when I decided to start my own. Also, around 2016 I think I kept using the word on confiscate able. So this is, brings us to uncomfortable, where this was the Bitcoin property that got me into Bitcoin. It was that Cyprus banking confiscation. So whenever I talk about Bitcoin and all these interviews in 2015, 1415, 16, I always talk about this as a unique, independent property of Bitcoin. There is uncomplicated ability, and then there is censorship resistant value transfer, completely independent. Being able to send your Bitcoin to somewhere else in the world. You can send it pretty cheaply. It gets there pretty quickly. It gets there somewhat anonymously. If you know what you're doing. They're not perfect, but they're better than everything else we have. But uncomplicated ability is different. Uncompatibility allows you to store wealth in your head. No one has to know you even have it. It's too late for people like us. We're public people, but I always say, maybe it's better to just be an anonymous stacker. No one has to know you have it. You can store the password in your head, you can leave a bad situation in a bad country, go to another country with all your wealth. And again, I come from a communist country, the Soviet Union. I was a little too young to remember, but my family members reminded I mean, they would talk about this over dinners. When we left the Soviet Union. My parents were also pretty frugal. It's not that we had a lot of money, but we sold everything we had. Because you're leaving the country, your passport is being surrendered. My parents have actually never gone back, really, to Russia or any of the Soviet Union countries. For that matter, Georgia, Ukraine, half Russian, half Ukrainian. My parents have never been to any of those countries. My once I had the family I used to spend summers in Latvia. It was all Soviet Union. Back then, was all one country, and they've never went back, and they never planned on going back. Sell everything you have, and you're only allowed to leave the country with 100 US dollars per family member. And remember, you can't store wealth in your head. You know, they're checking everything. They're going through all your stuff. They're going through all your jewelry. And start your new life, $100 per family member. So you have, I mean, at the time. It. It buys you more. But still. Yeah, right. Still, right. Can you imagine, like if you had to leave El Salvador and you were only allowed to leave with $500 to your name? Can you start a new life? Or if you have a wife and kids, $2,000 for all of you, that's it. You're going to a new country that you don't know the language of, and that's all the money you have, right? That's what my family had to do. So I'm confiscating ability is the most important property of Bitcoin, okay? Because you can get around sending your wealth somewhere else, but you cannot get around, not being able to take it with you. And one of my fans, I guess, or one of my followers, reached out to me and said, tone, do you know that, since I'm confiscating is not a real word, the domain is just available for $12 and I immediately bought the domain, and I didn't know what to do with it for years. And then I got really frustrated with conferences. There weren't Bitcoin conferences. They were all old, Coiny shit coins were taking over. We're talking 2017 it's the shit coins everywhere,

Mike Peterson  
and they could just print money. So they were throwing sponsorship money at all, 

Tone Vays  
and that's the problem. Yeah. So being a public speaker, being a conference speaker, for years, I learned something that most people that go to conferences don't realize. When you go to a conference, you believe, most people believe that the person standing on stage is an expert that was pre selected to educate you. That's not what happens at any conference on any topic anywhere in the world. The reality is 90% of speakers at all conferences are salesmen that paid to sell you something. That's just how it is, and I wanted to do different. I wanted to have a conference where being a sponsor did not guarantee you a speaker slot. Your speaker slot depended on your expertise. That was approved by only me, and because I, I got the ball rolling a little slowly, like three or four Bitcoin only conferences beat me to it. Honey Badger and bitlock boom came out right before I'm confiscated. All did, but on confiscate able was also that Bitcoin only conference, and I put up on confiscate able as a Bitcoin only conference against any other Bitcoin only conference. We were very low on sponsors, and it was and the conference would lose me money every year. I also did a couple of other events understanding Bitcoin, and then I have a financial focused event, but I am exiting the conference. It's just so hard, it's so uncomfortable. Has now become a Bitcoin sorry, a poker tournament only so uncomplicated is rebranding from being a conference to just being a poker game, either a poker game or a poker tournament, and I'll bring uncomplicated poker to conferences. So we're here in El Salvador, and I got, we got a couple of poker tables going, and I have, we have our custom chips and everything. I don't have my banners yet for uncomfortable poker, but that's kind of the new plan for uncomplicated because the brand is just too cool. The domain is cool. I don't want to give it up, so I need to do something with it. So now, the next time we do it in Vegas, and I'm confiscating was always a Las Vegas conference because of the poker side of it, and now it's just going to be a poker tournament. And since the Bitcoin Conference is coming to Las Vegas, I'll do the poker tournament the day after the Bitcoin Conference. So the oncoming, skateable brand will stay alive, but it's no longer a conference. It's now just a poker tournament. We also have the scammy Awards, where we give out awards for scams of the year. You know, best new scam, scammer of the year, things like that. 

Mike Peterson  
So who are some notable winners of the those awards. 

Tone Vays  
You know, last year's 2022, scammy Awards, which was in December, anything FTX. And Sam bankman freed, just won across the board. And he had competitions, you know, Luna imploded, machines, key I was hoping would win something, but Sam bankman Fried, I mean, Richard Hart's been very popular winner of multiple awards. We have the Peter Schiff Award for Most clueless, no coiner. We have the ripple award for the most centralized, the decentralized blockchain, things like that. I. Yeah, this year, this recent year, we had, what was it? Scammiest shit coin on Bitcoin. You know, it's a battle between runes and ordinals and stamps and whatever taproot wizards are doing. They've already won a few. So it's fun. We have the lifetime scammer Achievement Award. We named it after John McAfee, after he passed. I was really hoping, the first year we did the scammies, we had the lifetime scammer Achievement Award. I was really hoping McAfee would win because for age reasons, he did not. I think who beat him out that first year? I it was either Craig Wright. I think it was Craig Wright. And I'm so happy that this past year, the guy I've been voting for for the last four years finally won it the lifetime scammer Achievement Award. That's Jeb McCaleb. He's always been my vote. Are you familiar with Jeb McCaleb? Don't think so, the original creator of Mt Gox, okay, who sold it to mark our palace with 80,000 missing Bitcoin. Also the creator of the ripple token. And when ripple kicked him out for doing what he's been selling all the ripple tokens. Because when he created the ripple token, he gave himself 33% of it, he then replicated it and created stellar so he's had a but he's, you know, flies under the radar because he's not on camera much, and I think metallics already won. I'm kind of disappointed in that he's got a long lifetime to do more stuff. Yeah, so that's the kind of stuff I do now. I have my financial channel, um, under, my under, it's not really my brand. I kind of diversified it financial summit brand, because during the pandemic, I was a big traveler. I was traveling that was I spoke at like 40 conferences around the world in 2019 I think I went to like, 30 plus countries in 2019 and then the pandemic hits, and that really alters my lifestyle. And I'm witnessing this, you know, totalitarian lockdown. And I went very political on my streams. I had a Bitcoin channel under my name, tone vase. And then I got very upset at the riots over BLM. I got very angry at the lockdowns. Then I got very angry over the vaccine mandates, then the election irregularities of 2020 I'm going to be politically correct not to ban your channel the way mine was. And I was very vocal about the 2020 election. I attended the January 6 protests. I live streamed from there, and that got my channel banned for live streaming. I eventually got the channel banned, not the videos, not the recordings, and it was all labeled misinformation because they were live streams of what actually was happening is now misinformation. And that got me shadow banned on Twitter. That got me still shadow banned on YouTube. I'm actually still shadow banned on x. If you ever, if you ever interview Elon Musk, please ask him to on Shadow ban me on x. I remain shadow banned on x and but

Mike Peterson  
just so frustrating, you build something up, and then there's nothing you can do. It's

Tone Vays  
everyone makes fun of me. Tony, you have 300,000 followers on x, but your tweets get eight likes. Haha. What those are fake followers? I'm like, No, those are real followers. You may want to look into a different direction as to why I get eight likes. I've never paid for a single follower those that was organic growth in in 2017 I was getting 30. I was getting 1000 followers a day on my Twitter, and man and my YouTube used to get 30,000 views a day, and then it all cratered once you shadow banned, it destroys your business completely. People don't realize it once you're demonetized, once you shadow ban, demonetization is actually not even that bad. It's the shadow ban. Yeah, and YouTube, I don't care, like, I don't even monetize my YouTube channel. I mean, YouTube monetization, it's okay. You make like, $20 per 10,000 views, or something like that. It's fine. I think one, I think my best year on YouTube, back when I was getting 20, 30,000 views per day on my daily streams, I think I made maybe 30, $40,000 that year from YouTube. I mean, we're not talking life changing money here, right? But when 30,000 people watch you every day, you go into partnerships with advertisers yourself. You do ad reads, right? So YouTube demonetization is not the problem. They don't pay you much. Yeah, it's the shadow banning. It's not recommending your stream. Streams to people that need to be watching your streams. That's the problem with what they're doing. And because of my political takes on all that, then the Russia, Ukraine war breaks out. Being Russian, half Ukrainian, and being as vocal as I am, I had to say something, and it wasn't what the West wanted to hear. And then the whole ISRAEL PALESTINE situation happened. And again, I had to say something being Jewish. And again, I'm not saying what the mainstream media wants to hear, and all of that adds up. So now my personal YouTube channel is my political channel. Those that don't want to hear my politics. Can follow the financial summit channel, where we don't talk any politics, and we only talk about trading and investing and focuses on Bitcoin, but it's a general trading and investing channel. I also still hold an event called the financial Summit, which is a five day networking retreat for financial professionals, traders, money managers, hedge funds, financial services, very high end. The next one is in the Maldives we've done-

Mike Peterson  
Is it focused on Bitcoin, or is it just general finance? 

Tone Vays  
It's general, but Bitcoin dominates, just because that's my main following. So Bitcoin dominates, but it's general, and it's basically how to make money in the markets, and it has a huge health and wellness component, which is my new big interest. I'm actually thinking of rebranding it to a health and wellness conference for financial professionals, because if you're like, at a five day like, secluded retreat. Everyone is qualified to be a speaker because it's only for 50 people. So you're better off having health and wellness presentations and discussing business and finance, because now you have to be like, I'm he's speaking and I'm not speaking. Or everyone's speaking, right? So it's one of these. It's like everyone there is qualified to speak. The event is expensive, since, instead of places like Maldives, Bali, Dominican Republic, like super high end resorts, everyone gets their own villa, their own private pool. It's family friendly. So I like those kinds of retreats. You really get to know people at big conferences, even like this, you meet someone, you talk to them for 20 minutes, you know, you exchange numbers, and then you have to come back. You have to remember who everybody was. When you have small events of like 3040, people for like a week, it's like, what? What's his name? The big motivator Tony Robbins. It's like what Tony Robbins does, right? Not the big ones of 5000 10,000 people. His retreats for like, CEOs, right? It's like 2030 people only. It's that kind of style,

Mike Peterson  
Yeah. I mean, those just a whole different experience. Oh, you know people, you know they're backstory. You developed. 

Tone Vays  
So many people from these events have already started businesses together, like people have altered other people's businesses based on these, you know, two day discussions. I know I have it in my testimonials, where my friend, his name is Mike jarmouse, lightning ventures. I don't know if you're familiar with him, so he was his the way he used to make money is he would invest in the late stage startups. Well, what is that? That's when you invest between round C and IPO. You invest there, and you're like, a year or two away from the IPO, and you're just looking to double your money, if you're lucky, you triple your money, because you're getting in with an established company with a path to an IPO and well, why would people sell if you know you're going to double or triple your money at that point? And it's like, yeah, but some of these people that are selling, they've been there since Round Eight. They're up 20, 30x like, they don't care for another doubling or tripling, right? But what he was doing was he was getting in, like he was invested in like 100 companies. They're all going IPO, invest like, 10,000 here, 20,000 here, you know, and everything is like slowly doubling over a year or two. And then he's at this event, and it's in the testimonial talks spends like, two days talking to another guy who's like, no, what are you doing? You're doing all wrong. You have to get in and round a, you gotta get in and round B. You know, alters his business. And now he has his own fund, and this is what he's doing. He's funding Bitcoin startup companies, and this is what happens when you get to spend a couple of days with the right people.

Mike Peterson  
No, I love that. So this is your second time, or third time here in El Salvador. 

Tone Vays  
Um, third, or definitely, minimum, third time in El Salvador, first time at the conference. 

Mike Peterson  
Okay. And last year you went, I believe you went to prosper after, 

Tone Vays  
I did go to prosper after. That was my first time going to prosper. Z8 in Rotan. So this was after the having party in April. That was my first time going to prosper. This is November, and on Monday, it will be my fourth time going to prosper. 

Mike Peterson  
So I would love to you to give people your opinion on what's happening in prosper. I have not been there yet. I am a a citizen, any resident of prosper, prosper, but I haven't yet been there. So love to hear your take on what they're doing. I know recently they've been battling the government there.

Tone Vays  
Boy, so I have multiple so I think, okay, how do I do this without being too Bitcoin. When I properly learned about Bitcoin, it changed my life. It altered my life within two years of I mean, we're not we're not going back to 2011 right? So since the Cyprus banking confiscation, when I took Bitcoin seriously, exactly two years later, literally, almost to the day, I quit my Wall Street job and went all in on Bitcoin. The reason I did that is I was confident. I hedged my my bets, right? It's not because I was wealthy in Bitcoin at all. I was confident in myself, and I when I quit my Wall Street job, I had four or five avenues of how I was going to pay my bills, I opened the physical business. I was a massage therapy office. I went into partnership with my massage therapist. I may not look at it right now, but I used to be pretty athletic. I used to do like CrossFit every day, and I used to play sports. I was a volleyball player for like 20 years since high school, and played some baseball as well. So I decided to open a physical business. I always wanted to quit my job and be a trader on my own. For the first seven years of Wall Street, I wasn't allowed to trade because I was working for Bear Stearns and then JP Morgan, these big financial institutions and the line of business I was in, I can I have access to databases of hedge fund positions. So I was illegal for me to trade, even on your own, even I'm prohibited from trading, I can trade in very limited capacity, and I could, I could trade in a monitored account where I need to get approval on any trade I make from the compliance department, and I'm not allowed to sell the position for 30 days unless I'm losing over 20% then they let me sell, right? So that's not a good way to trade, right? So in my LA, my very last job on Wall Street, I literally quit my job with the big banks and went to a smaller company, took a pay cut to go to a smaller company, because at that company, we weren't, uh, analyzing hedge fund position risk in house. At that company were building risk models and selling the risk model service. So at that company, I had no insider information. I had no access to hedge fund positions because we would, they would run our models in house over there, and that Job had no trading restrictions, and that's when I started trading properly for the first time in my last three years of my last company. But then it's like, you have a job and you're trading, and I'm sitting there in meetings with my cell phone under the table, you know? And I just wanted to quit and trade in peace. So this is how I was risk averse myself. I had a physical business that I opened, full time trading. I started this YouTube and public speaking career, plus, you know, Bitcoin itself, okay, these were my four things that I was going to be doing, and mostly it was the three, four money right there was going to be physical business, public speaking and trading, investing, Bitcoin and traditional markets. Mostly I trade traditional markets. I'm an options trader, and I was hoping all three would work out, but the physical business was a disaster. I still have, I still own half of it. It did not make it never made me any money. It was always like barely surviving. But I'm not a quitter, and I had to at the worst time. I have no job. I. No fiat money coming in. You want to be buying Bitcoin. I'm not making any money. I'm trading so I can't sell those profits. I'm building up my trading portfolio. I have to keep the physical business alive. Public speaking doesn't pay. My YouTube channel hasn't grown to make any revenue yet, and literally, at the depths of the bear market, I gotta sell Bitcoin to support the physical business, right? But out of the three things, my trading was doing pretty well, the physical business was not but I loved traveling and public speaking again, other than migrating from Russia to America through three countries and taking road trips to Canada for my geology degree and spending time in asbestos mines. I never left the United States from the age of 10 again, road trips to asbestos mines in Canada doesn't count. I never left the country. And from when I came to America in 1919 90, until my very first vacation, I think, in 2008 or 2009 and I went on vacation one time I left the country. I went to Carnival in Trinidad. And then the following year, I left the country for the second time. I went to the Philippines again on vacation. There were girls involved, you know, based on who you're dating. Let's go to your you know, home country. And and that was it so. And then I got the Wall Street job, and then I'm working, I'm saving money, buying a place I never traveled. I did not travel at all. And then when I quit, and then I went to Hong Kong before I quit my job, like the year before. And then I'm like, wow, this is great. And when I quit my job and I started public speaking, started traveling, and I loved it. So, not much time to trade when you're always traveling, doing interviews, public speaking. So then I'm okay, so how am I going to pay my bills? So I started traveling, speaking at conferences that don't pay you to do that. And I started teaching workshops, teaching people how to trade. So I would go to a conference like this in El Salvador, and on a Saturday, I would rent out a co working space, and I would advertise on my YouTube channel and on my website, and I would charge like 500 to $1,000 for people to spend all day with a boot camp, a one day boot camp on how to trade. And that's how I would be financing my life for a couple of years, teaching people how to be traders while running my YouTube channel. And my youtube channel had trading content. It had a legal show on Bitcoin legal status. It had a tech show. And I think my biggest contribution to Bitcoin was in 2017 when me and Jimmy, Jimmy song and I were navigating people through the four course, basically. And so that's what I was doing. Then I started the conferences, and now I'm stepping back from the conferences. You kind of get tired, you get bored. I still like to travel, but I've taken a break from travel now. I mostly live around Latin America, Panama, electro time. So how do we get the rotund I was goodly off topic. So when I discovered Bitcoin, the reason why I quit my job two years after I discovered Bitcoin was because I felt that Bitcoin was too important to fail, and I felt that I can do my part, and I can help Bitcoin succeed, and I think I've contributed to that movement all throughout 2016, and 17, especially during those four wars and people still to this day, most of the time, people are recognized me because, again, because of my shadow bans, many people watching me right now probably didn't know who I am, and that's because I've been shadow banned for years, and my youtube channel now gets a few 1000 views instead of 30,000 that it was getting today, it probably would be getting 100,000 views a day if I never got banned and shut down. But it's okay, we adapt and we move on. Not the first time for me, with all my career changes, being a high school geology High School earth science teacher, you know, and then going to Wall Street, but my Wall Street was, I did a master's in financial engineering because I wanted to make money, so I quit high school teaching. I. I went to get a master's in financial engineering, which is a very hard degree, math, programming, computer science. But again, you persevere, you tough, you work your way through it. So I thought Bitcoin was too important to the world to fail, and I wanted to do everything I could to help it succeed when I got to prosper, after the last time I saw you and I spent, you know, three, four days there, I felt that Prospero zeta was too important to the world to fail 

Mike Peterson  
and maybe explain to people who aren't aware of prosper. Just 

Tone Vays  
So the reason why is because prosperous A is the was the first private city being built. It was the first city to be run by a corporation. And a lot of people see it as evil, and there is a lot of propaganda why this is so evil, but this was a first attempt to build a private city with and they had a zone in on the island of Rotan. They still have this zone. It's written into the Honduran Constitution. It was written into the Constitution eight years ago that they allow for this ZEDE zone. ZEDE stands for zone for economic development and employment in Spanish, the words are switched a little bit, but, but only the Honduran criminal laws apply to the ZEDE zone criminal laws like they can't make murder legal, they can't make drugs legal. Those are criminal laws. Non criminal laws are at full discretion of the manager of the ZEDE. In this particular ZEDE, the manager is a company called prospera, and the city is also called prosper so which has happens to be an American corporation for legal reasons. As much as people hate American corporations, American corporations have very good legal protections. That's why a lot of companies want to be American corporations. Companies don't want to be American corporations for some legal reasons and for some tax reasons, but sometimes an American corporation makes sense. I am still Incorporated. My company is also an American company. I have an American LLC for tax reasons, because it's better for me, for for my tax advantages, it's better to still have an American company. Maybe in the future, it won't make sense, but with the Trump administration coming in, it may make more sense. It really depends on each person's individual situation. So they were building a city, the first private city in the world, and the city itself, not the federal government, sets all laws that are not criminal, tax laws, health laws, building code laws, all laws. This was going to be the lowest reasonable tax zone in the world. It wasn't going to be a zero tax zone, but it was going to be a 5% tax zone, and 1% on corporate taxes, like corporate tax is 1% personal taxes are 5% and that has huge advantages. Everyone is like, Oh, I'd rather be zero tax. I can get Caribbean passport. I can go live in Dubai. Yes, you can live on a zero tax system, but that also comes with its own problems, and I discussed this with the founders of prosperoze in my podcast with them. So there are two interviews on my personal YouTube channel with the CEO of prosper and one of the founders of prosper. And the founder is a big Bitcoin Maxi, a silent one who but he does interviews now because he's the president of prosper, the city. And if this city succeeds, it paves the way for how a city could be built on minimum taxes, where every service provided by those taxes is actually there for you and not for the benefit of some government bureaucrat. Everyone in that city could be replaced because it's run like a company. Everybody can be fired. The taxes are mostly voluntary, and these taxes are there, you're going to want to pay them, and you're not forced to live there. And all the time I spent there, and everything I learned about it, I felt that a city like this, it needs to show. In a world, how much better life could be if more of these private cities existed, and that's why I've been there. This is my fourth time go in there. It's also a beautiful island. Even if this prosperous did not exist on the island of Rotan, it would still be my number one vacation place in the Caribbean. I'm getting my diving certificate now, when I go there, I went diving for the first time, the last time I went, no one diving before. Only did snorkeling diving again, my new favorite hobby, absolutely incredible. 

Mike Peterson  
They have a dive shop there, run by a Bitcoiner,

Tone Vays  
a prosperous ZEDE made Bitcoin legal tender actually before El Salvador. It just didn't have the publicity. You can have Bitcoin as unit of account there. They're trying to get the entire island to accept Bitcoin. They're doing a great job. The coolest looking Bitcoin Center is in at the top of the at the highest point on the island. It's just such a cool Island, great place. People are nice, and they were building the city. Everything in that city functions on Bitcoin as well. And a few months ago, the current government of El Salvador, which is a very left leaning government of Honduras, sorry, of Honduras, my bad, they the court ruled that eight years ago, it was unconstitutional to add these zays into the Constitution. And the point of these zays was to bring the concept of Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore. The ZA is trying to create a Dubai in a country like Honduras, which at the moment is the fifth most dangerous country in the world by murder per capita, if we include, if we exclude Caribbean islands like Saint Lucia in the Bahamas, it's these statistics need To be adjusted for reality. You know, proper population so Honduras, the one was, it was like El Salvador before bukele. 

Mike Peterson  
Well, they used to go back and forth between who had the highest murder rate in the world. One year is El Salvador. Next year is Honduras. Right? They would switch back and 

Tone Vays  
Rotan Island is pretty safe compared to mainland Honduras. But there are, but there is a ZEDE zone inside the main uh, the mainland of Honduras, and it's the safest place for anyone to live, because it's a private city with private security, and it's like the ultimate gated community, because it's a gated city and this is where, and it's super cheap to live there because they don't have the federal government bureaucracy, and these Zeti zones were going to change Honduras for the better as they grow. They would have made Honduras safe. They would have they could make Honduras prosperous. But the current government of Honduras demonized these zones as you know foreigners coming to take your land? Yeah, they're colonizers. They're colonizing your land. And the ZD on the mainland was created by Honduran had no you know foreigners there at all. It was created by a Honduran for Hondurans, and they still managed to demonize it as foreigners coming to take away your land, and it's so unfortunate. Now, the Supreme Court ruled that these zays were created unconstitutionally. Even though they were, they ratified the Constitution to create them, and the prior president wanted a capitalist like it's a test run. Even Communist China had Shenzhen, where capitalism was happening all throughout you know, it was an experiment. It was communist China like, hey, let's just see what happens in this one city. Let's just let them do whatever they want. And that was the booming zone in China that probably changed China. It was that zone, like they were able to see capitalism while they were running a communist system. And this was the effort in Honduras, and they demonized it so much that even you It's so disappointing that even YouTube channels like the gray zone, which is usually so good at identifying the right side of an issue, even they screwed up and demonized these zeta zones, going with what the government of Honduras claims that they are. So it's unfortunate now the Supreme Court ruled that these Zetas are unconstitutional, but they haven't really done anything other than the publicity that these zones are unconstitutional, so unfortunately, this hurts potential investment. This is going to scare a lot of people, but there is still a chance that legally, these zones are still okay, and we'll see what happens in the next Honduran election.

Mike Peterson  
I've heard they've kind of they were. They were pushing hard on it, but after Trump won that, they've kind of paused, because there, there's some fear that you know, because that you know the Trump administration will not look favorably on the way that they're going about and doing this. So hopefully that slows them down. 

Tone Vays  
In the nicest way to put. I have a very pro capitalist platform, and I'm a very pro capitalist views. I tend not to talk too much about the countries I spend a lot of time in. It's kind of like, I don't know if we can curse, but as a statement in the US, don't ask where you eat. Basically, I mostly live in Panama. I rarely talk about the politics of Panama, but I talk about the politics of the us all the time. Well, two reasons. One, the US still has some elements of free speech, especially with the current administration coming in, so I can badmouth the US while living in the US. And since I don't live in the US, it makes it easier for me to badmouth the US, but I have less bad things to say about it today than I did a few weeks ago. Let's say, and even though there are a lot of things that Trump is going to do that I'm going to very disagree with, but we'll see. But in general, I'm hoping that Honduras becomes more capitalistic, and it follows what El Salvador is doing, because there's a and there's the other thing. I'm also a lot of people are coming to El Salvador. My This is why I wanted to go and help prosper. El Salvador has enough. It can always use more, I guess.

Mike Peterson  
But it's got enough momentum, right? It's on momentum.

Tone Vays  
You have Max Kaiser. He's but prosper, I doesn't have a Max Kaiser. And in order to make sure some place like prosper wasn't gonna get scammy with shit coin. I was really looking forward to moving there and becoming that voice, kind of like what I did for Bitcoin back in the early days of 2014, and 15, having probably one of the most popular YouTube channels at the time, educating about Bitcoin, I wanted to do that with with the Prospero Zetta, which would have been a big and making sure that it stays at Bitcoin city and doesn't become shit coin. Yeah.

Mike Peterson  
Well, I think there's a big contingent of people that are going after this conference that are going to spend some time in prosper. 

Tone Vays  
I hope so a few people are going, but, but, yeah, you should interview. There's a couple of people from prosper here. Duchamp, yeah, I've had him on the show, excellent. He's great guy. Same thing Dushan. He came from Slovakia, and, you know, he showed up. He's like, Oh my god, I love it. I'm gonna move here. What can I do? And they're like, Well, we have this awesome building at the top of the mountain. He's like, okay, great. I will make this a Bitcoin Center. Same thing with Amelia, who runs the scuba shop. He's a scuba diving instructor, and he's like, Oh my god, this is awesome. I want to move here. What can I do? I'm going to open a Bitcoin scuba shop. It's called Bitcoin scuba so many people. It's couple of Canadians there. People just come they love it, and they're like, Okay, I want to help the city grow, and that's what I wanted to do as well. So we'll see if I'm still on that path. I want to open my little tequila bar. I'm ready to just retire, open a little bar restaurant on the beach and enjoy my new scuba diving hobby.

Mike Peterson  
Nice. Well, I think that's a good note to wrap up on. But make sure people know where they can follow you on Twitter, where they can follow your shows, sure where they can get involved with the poker tournaments. 

Tone Vays  
Yeah, no, you can't. Everything is Tone Vays. Just my name. I'm sure you'll flash my name somewhere. Yeah, Tone Vays, T, O, N, E, first name, last name, V, A, Y, S. You can also find my financial content on the financial summit brand, so you can just Google the financial Summit, on YouTube or on the web, you find the conference in the Maldives, the sending a conference, a networking retreat in the Maldives, and also our financial channel, where we talk about the price of Bitcoin every morning, on weekdays. And my view on Bitcoin, that's what most people ask me. What do you think the price is going to do? And I really think we temporarily topped right here, right now. I think for the next few weeks, we're going to get stuck in this 80s $80,000 range. Yes, we can pop into the 90s. We already did. We can pop into the 90s again. Yes, we can slide into the 70s. I don't think we're gonna go lower than 72 anytime soon, maybe never. I also don't think we're gonna go over 100,000 anytime very soon. But my view is 100,000 we're. Break next year, not this year. It's very possible we can break it tomorrow. Not trading advice. I am setting up. I'm taking profit. I've already taken some profit this week. I might take a little more profit next week off my positions. I think for the next few weeks, we're going to tread water, maybe slide down a smidge, and then we're gonna have a push above 100k in December into next year. That's my trading plan. At the moment, things can change any minute, but that's my current plan. I've been very bullish on Bitcoin this the first half the year when we started to go down from April into August. If you go to back to those videos, I just kept saying, Wait till October. Just hang in there. Till October. I expected the bull market to start in October. We're actually even a little bit higher than I expected us at this time, but I expected the bull market to resume in October and continue all the way through at least the summer of next year. So I am looking for 150,000 and above. But these are my views on the price of Bitcoin. 

Mike Peterson  
Okay, yeah, we, we don't talk about price a lot on this channel, but since you're mentioning it, you so you think it'll top around 150

Tone Vays  
I don't really have a top. It can top anywhere. That's my current trading plan. Like I said, I'm taking profit now. I will be back in the market before the year is over, and I'm not taking all my profit. Of course, these are just trading positions. I trade with about 10% that's 10 20% is what your if you were trader, you should only trade with 10 to 20% of your you know, stash, whether it's traditional markets or Bitcoin, doesn't matter, and that's kind of my plan. Get back into the markets later this year, and I'm still expecting the bull market to continue. But for details on this, follow the financial Summit. Sweet and on Twitter, Tom bass, Tom vase and the financial summit as well. I think it's, I think it's Finn Summit. On Twitter, too many letters, financial Summit. Someone had the financial summit from like, 10 years ago, but the financial summit was too long for

Mike Peterson  
And then when's the book tournament here?

Tone Vays  
it's still, it's not a tournament, but we are gonna be playing poker starting in about 30 minutes. Okay, I don't know if this is this going out live? No,

Mike Peterson  
no, it'll be, it'll be after so, so, but just for future, at most of the Bitcoin conferences, 

Tone Vays  
We'll see, we'll see, if I'm there, there'll be poker involved, and it's legal if I'm there and it's legal, which is anywhere in Latin America, poker is legal when it's Dubai. It's a little bit different. But yeah, there'll be some poker involved, either a cash game or a tournament. Here's just a cash game. People come in with SATs, not a lot. You know, we're doing 1000 set blinds. Low price here, like it's about $1 less than $1 so like, 100,000 sat buy in $80 right now, $90 and, yeah, play as long as you like, and then cash out, perfect back into SATs. 

Mike Peterson  
Well, I'm glad we were able to make it happen this time, and I'm sure you'll be back here. And also 

Tone Vays  
Awesome, thanks for the invite. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, thanks Tone.