Joe De Pinto was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. After spending 4 years playing professional baseball in the Chicago White Sox farm system, he co-founded his first venture, Barpay, in 2015 with Daniel Wagner. The company has since grown to become a leader in the mobile ordering and payment space for in-venue dining at bars, restaurants, and hotels, as well as digital menus, with more than 10,000 accounts throughout the United States.
In January 2021, along with Wagner, he co-founded Haste, the world’s first Instant Leaderboard Payout arcade. DePinto’s vision for Haste is to have the platform serve as a fun and entertaining visual representation of micro transactions, and how they can empower new business models. Along with his duties at Barpay and Haste, Joe is an avid surfer and enjoys being outdoors as much as possible.
Episode Highlights Here:
Joe:
In terms of, I guess, trying to get people to understand the utility of blockchain, one of the things I think that it really does is it changes the current Internet model, which is ad-based and subscription-based to micropayment based.
Brett:
What’s the number one secret to unlocking the future of Bitcoin SV?
Joe:
I think it’s learning about it. I think that a lot of people you know, have gotten in the crypto space within the last few years. Misled is a strong word, but I’m going to use I think they’ve been misled by the mainstream narrative that’s kind of been developed around BTC, which for those that are listening, BTC is the ticker symbol for what most people think is Bitcoin, it’s trading, you know, around $40,000 Right now, and it’s the main one, it’s the one that most people have heard of. However, if you actually go back, you know, way back when, when Bitcoin in the white paper first came out, 2008 2009. And you learn about what the technology was supposed to be and what it could do at the time versus what it’s turned into. I think that’s where a lot of people just don’t know these things, they don’t necessarily know the history of what Bitcoin was supposed to be. And what that is like we’d already touched on is peer-to-peer, electronic cash, something you can use in casual payments, I can go buy a cup of coffee with it, you know, and pay a minimal fee to send the $5 for my cup of coffee versus BTC. Right now, the transaction fees, you know, they’re ranging anywhere from $1, up to $50, depending on how much volume is going on, on that actual blockchain. And when you think about peer-to-peer cash, no one in the right mind is going to go spend $5 To buy a coffee and pay $50 in fees to go and send it the same thing with an Ethereum and the fees are around the same amount. So it just in my perspective, you know, thinking back to what Bitcoin originally was, there was two key things that we’re giving it value, it was useful, so I could send it, you know, and I could send it extremely quickly and extremely cheaply. And it was scarce. So it had utility. And then it was scarce in the sense that there’s only 21 million of these. So that’s going to obviously give it value over the long term that I think should appreciate. So in essence, I think what people you know, should learn about Bitcoin SV, or if they’re interested in getting involved in crypto, and a lot of my friends, for example, just say, you know, like, I just don’t get it like, why is this thing worth so much? Like, what can you do with it? And I kind of scratch my head, when I look at the one that’s, you know, 40,000 bucks, I’m like, I don’t know what you can do with it. To be honest, it does seem like it’s just kind of this quote-unquote, digital gold narrative, which you won’t find that one place in the white paper where it talks about it being just an asset that you hold, and digital gold and all that. I think that’s nonsense. I think what it is, is the people that are looking to actually build and utilize blockchain within their applications, like what we’ve done with haste. I think Bitcoin SV is what actually follows those original fundamentals that the white paper had set out. And just to give you an example of what that could mean micro payments. So everyone’s familiar with, you know, subscription-based models right now, like if I wanted to read an article in the Wall Street Journal, I start reading on it, if I don’t have a subscription, once I scroll through the first paragraph, I get a pop up basically saying, hey, to continue, you know, you have to sign up for 1499 a month, or whatever it is to be subscribed to The Wall Street Journal. Well, I might not like all the content that they put out, I might just want to read this article. So now I’m missing out on that content. The Wall Street Journal is missing out on that revenue, because I would gladly pay 25 cents or 50 cents to be able to read the rest of that article, instead of having to, you know, sign up for the subscription and create a new account. And, you know, up until actual blockchain and Bitcoin in its original form were created, there was no way to process transactions of that smaller than the amount because of the fees associated with credit cards. So in terms of, I guess, trying to get people to understand the utility of blockchain, one of the things I think that it really does is it changes the current Internet model, which is ad-based and subscription-based to micropayment base. And that’s basically what we’re trying to prove with the haste arcade.
Brett:
Excellent. So education on the useful utility if we could go back to its first original intent, like how do we get there, right? Because it’s basically it’s morphed into digital gold where somebody can come by it and it went so high, that if they wanted to purchase something, the challenge becomes it’s not very it’s expensive, right? I mean, they have tax rights, there’s a tax on it’s a taxable transaction. It’s, it’s no longer just like this peer-to-peer thing. It’s worth so much. I mean, we had a client who bought Bitcoin for $50,000. And, you know, this is 30 to $50,000 at a very, very early adoption rate, and it went to $50 million. Okay, and so she never exited she’d never sold she’s like a like if I sell I’m going to Cameron tax and be like I believe in the future of Bitcoin like I feel I feel really good about it. no other coin, by the way, was just simply Bitcoin, and then she found us, and then we helped her defer taxes. she exited 5 million of that deferred about 2 million of tax. But the reason she did that was not only to defer the tax, but she had a place to put the money. And the place was a brand new startup company, a tech company called Khan Academy with her college, former college roommate. When she retired from the big tech company, she started her dream. And so I think that’s so important to have both parts of it right, like, like, what do you want to do with the wealth? What can it actually do for you, but if it’s just out there in digital land, and we saw the 54,000 a coin, and then went up to 68 69,000, then it obviously talked back about 35. Now it’s about 40. And so you have a lot of this capital that’s sitting that wants to do these different things, but feels trapped by capital gains tax. So that’s part of what we do. So I love what you’re talking about. What you’re saying is on the other side, by the way, if you want to learn more about that anyone can go to capital gains. taxes.com To learn more about that.
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About Joe De Pinto
Sam Wilson is a self-storage, parking, multi-family apartment, RV park, and single-family home investor, as well as the host of the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. Sam has a bachelor’s degree in business finance from the University of Memphis and a Tennessee real estate license. He has a diverse background in business ownership and management, in addition to his years of real estate experience. Sam’s current focus is on presenting nationwide investment opportunities for his personal portfolio and the portfolios of his investors.
