The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below. 

00:00:03:14 – 00:00:25:17

Richard Carthon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, your host here, Richard Carthon, and today got a very special guest with us, has been in the Crypto space for a while, has been doing some incredible things, actually has his own media company, is dropping some podcasts, and is making some really good content to educate people in the space. And, as y’all know, we’re very big in the education space. We have David Gokhshtein, how are you doing today? 

00:00:26:11 – 00:00:30:00

David Gokhshtein: What’s going on? Pleasure to be on here, Richard. Thank you very much for the invite. 

00:00:30:13 – 00:00:38:02

Richard Carthon: Of course, man. Well, excited to talk to you, learn about all the various things you have going on. Let’s start with your background. Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

00:00:40:12 – 00:01:50:02

David Gokhshtein: Came into this space, I would say, came into Blockchain around 2014, heard about it earlier, but I started studying Blockchain just because I like the whole concept of decentralization. Decentralization to me is basically bringing trust back into the system. Friend went ahead and threw me some Bitcoin, I didn’t really want it, wasn’t interested in it when he threw it to me. Experience, you learn a lot. I wish I would have gone ahead and got in earlier, but I got in. But ever since then, I’ve been educating myself on digital assets and Blockchain technology and I’m just focused on and Gokhshtein Media is focused on educating those that want to come into the space but don’t know where to go to get their information and have it simplified for them because many of times, we come in here and people are talking coding, C, C+, C++, Python.

00:01:50:18 – 00:01:51:08

Richard Carthon: Yep.

00:01:51:10 – 00:01:58:28

David Gokhshtein: Nobody understands that coming into this space for the first time, so simplify the process and you help onboard people a lot easier.

00:01:59:21 – 00:02:33:11

Richard Carthon: It’s aligned with what we’re doing here at Crypto Current, trying to bridge the gap between people who are thought leaders in the space with newbies and affluent people who are just trying to learn and spark some curiosity in the various areas and all the possibilities in the world of Crypto and Blockchain. You said that your first introduction was your friend giving you Bitcoin. What year was that? And then, like, from that moment, how did you kind of go into the world of Blockchain and Crypto and decide like, this is where I want to be? 

00:02:36:14 – 00:03:07:24

David Gokhshtein: Should I say the date? I’m going to go ahead and take, this is the first time, well, it won’t be the first time I plead the fifth on this one. I’ll say around the time that I got in or I would say that right around the time that I started studying Bitcoin, not Bitcoin, but Blockchain technology, somebody went ahead and said, a really good friend of mine said, “Hey, you should go ahead and take this on.” I’m like, What’s wrong with you? Like I don’t want this. 

00:03:07:26 – 00:03:08:11

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:03:08:13 – 00:03:20:10

David Gokhshtein: It has no use to me. And I was an idiot. So, but listen, I didn’t turn him down. I turned him down the first time, I did not turn him down the second time. 

00:03:20:26 – 00:03:21:11

Richard Carthon: Yeah. 

00:03:21:13 – 00:03:23:21

David Gokhshtein: And thank you and I’m sure he wants them back, so. 

00:03:23:23 – 00:03:46:14

Richard Carthon: Yeah. I mean, just on that note, man, that same conversation you had with your friend, I feel like I’m having a lot of those conversations with my friends and even people who are just getting into space right now. I really feel that we are at the beginning of something really awesome and really beautiful. And as time goes on, Crypto’s surviving the test of time, right? you know, crypto was made in response to the last financial recession back in 2008. 

00:03:46:16 – 00:03:47:01

David Gokhshtein: Correct. 

00:03:47:03 – 00:04:09:08

Richard Carthon: And we’re heading towards another one. And you know, at this time of this recording it’s the end of 2020. We’re about to head to 2021, COVID, everything else is still going on in the world. If you don’t know about it, open up to the news. But right now is a great time to be learning about this and getting first introduced to the space, because in this next decade, I really think we are just at the beginning of a much larger market. 

00:04:10:25 – 00:04:31:17

David Gokhshtein: Listen, it’s just like you know, we’re still in the beginning stages of the Internet, the way I would go ahead and put it. So like, this is just like, this is a baby, but this is a beautiful baby like Crypto. Cryptocurrency, Blockchain technology, you’re still early when people come in and they’re like, “Oh, I missed the boat.” Like, no, you didn’t miss anything. 

00:04:31:28 – 00:04:32:13

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:04:32:15 – 00:05:00:06

David Gokhshtein: You’re still an early adopter here and that’s the beautiful thing. You still have time to go ahead and learn. There’s going to be so many opportunities to go ahead and work in this space, so you can go ahead and just dive in, learn as much as you can, do some internships, do some volunteering for projects, like I did. And one day, that resume just fills up and you can go to any project out here and say, “Hey, look, I know how to do this, this and this.” 

00:05:00:20 – 00:05:01:05

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:05:01:07 – 00:05:09:04

David Gokhshtein: And you’ll get paid for it. To be in a space that, you know, I feel for me personally, this space has freed me.

00:05:09:06 – 00:05:09:21

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:05:09:23 – 00:05:16:21

David Gokhshtein: Like you can use the Matrix analogy, it’s like I took the pill, went down the rabbit hole, yeah. 

00:05:16:23 – 00:05:17:08

Richard Carthon: Yeah. 

00:05:17:10 – 00:06:00:01

David Gokhshtein: And you know what? I’m happy I did. Yeah, there’s bumps in the road, but like, ultimately this is the best thing that’s ever, I won’t say the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but one of the best things that’s ever happened to me is this space and I appreciate it for freeing my mind. You touched on recession, 2008, obviously that’s where Bitcoin gives birth January 3rd, 2009. The people who went ahead and pushed it out there to the point where you have PayPal now buying into Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies.

00:06:00:03 – 00:06:00:18

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:06:00:20 – 00:06:21:15

David Gokhshtein: It’s a beautiful thing, it’s free to everybody and it’s let everybody have the ability to hold and control their own money. And I was going to touch on it real quick, 2008 obviously the recession hits, but we’ve been in a recession for a long time, but we’ve just been putting Band-Aids on everything.

00:06:21:17 – 00:06:22:02

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:06:22:04 – 00:06:37:26

David Gokhshtein: 2015, 2017, now. You can’t, I’m really good at mathematics, you cannot tell me that two plus two right now equals four, because right now it’s five with the way things are going. Stock market hitting 30,000 points, I mean.

00:06:38:02 – 00:06:38:17

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:06:38:19 – 00:06:40:18

David Gokhshtein: None of this.

00:06:40:20 – 00:06:41:05

Richard Carthon: Nothing’s adding up. 

00:06:41:13 – 00:06:43:16

David Gokhshtein: Yeah, nothing. Forty one million unemployed. 

00:06:43:21 – 00:06:45:21

Richard Carthon: It’s literally like the movie “The Big Short.”

00:06:45:23 – 00:06:46:08

David Gokhshtein: Yeah.

00:06:46:10 – 00:06:50:16

Richard Carthon: Like this giant thing that just doesn’t make sense until someone comes and breaks it down. 

00:06:50:18 – 00:06:51:24

David Gokhshtein: Yeah.

00:06:51:26 – 00:06:53:18

Richard Carthon: It really feels reminiscent of that, but yeah, please continue. 

00:06:53:26 – 00:07:03:03

David Gokhshtein: I mean, it’s just Rich. I mean, like, you look at this and it’s just like, no, I mean, it doesn’t. Forty one million people unemployed, it doesn’t make sense.

00:07:03:07 – 00:07:03:24

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:07:03:26 – 00:07:50:24

David Gokhshtein: It just, nothing adds up. So, yeah, print out more money, we’ll go ahead and we’ll put another Band-Aid on it. But at some point, the Band-Aid, you’re printing out money and you’re printing out money, people during COVID, they’re home, they’re looking at everything, they’re like, “Where’s all this money coming from? How is it possible?” And I think, I’m sure you’ll have questions about this, but I think this is what expedited the process for people, regular people to get into this space because they sat home during COVID and they’re watching money being printed and they’re like, “What is going on?” Dow Jones is up, I’m unemployed, this one’s getting richer, something’s messed up here. 

00:07:51:09 – 00:08:35:10

Richard Carthon: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the wealth gap like and this is what’s not really being talked about right now, like, the middle class right now is getting stretched so thin that we’re almost eliminating it in a lot of ways because the equity markets, the way it’s set up right now, doesn’t make sense. The fact that Dow Jones is hitting, just like you said, hitting all time highs, over 30,000, S&P 500 also crushing it right now. And a lot of it’s led by tech, by technology and e-commerce and also the kind of stuff, those aren’t people working those jobs. The fact that Bezos has almost what? Doubled or tripled in value. A lot of these other big tech giants have all this money, but like, it’s not being distributed out to the rest of the country. 

00:08:35:23 – 00:09:24:06

Richard Carthon: It doesn’t make sense how, another piece of this too is just like you said, a lot of people are about to lose, if you’re unemployed, you’re about to lose your benefits, unless it gets renewed, which means we need to print more money, which then causes a domino effect. You have a lot of people who haven’t been paying their Medicare, so they’re going to get hit with that at the beginning of the year. You have a lot of people who haven’t been paying their rent or mortgages, it’s been forgiven until Jan one. And then you also have people who haven’t been paying their student loans either and all this other stuff. It’s all going to hit at the exact same time, right, when you need more money. And it’s just, so what do we do? We put a Band-Aid on it, like you said, print more money. That’s why the U.S. dollar right now is going down and I think Crypto’s in a very well positioned place to be a viable option.

00:09:25:14 – 00:10:18:19

David Gokhshtein: I sit back and I’m like, a lot of us have blinders on, so a lot of us will say, “Bitcoin’s going to take over, it’s going to be the global currency.” And me, I’m more like, Yeah, I have more Bitcoin in my blockfolio than anything else, but Bitcoin will be a great asset, a great store of value. I don’t ever think it will become the global currency, what I see happening is obviously all like Canada, the United States, all the major countries are going to go and you know, the United States is going to create their digital dollar. They were going to send out everybody a wallet during the first stimulus package. So, I mean, that’s what you’re going to have happen. I could play against Bitcoin. 

00:10:19:18 – 00:10:55:26

David Gokhshtein: To me, Bitcoin will be the digital, our digital gold, moving forward, sometime in the near future when the future comes. I don’t know what timeline it’ll fit in. I would say five to ten years you might see that. Listen, big companies are already hedging their money against Bitcoin, so you’re going to have that and you’re going to have the digital dollar. Hopefully they come together and that’s it, but if they don’t listen, this small, we forget like there’s sovereign countries out there, third world countries that will use Bitcoin for their currency. 

00:10:56:15 – 00:10:57:00

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:10:57:02 – 00:11:05:27

David Gokhshtein: So there’s a lot of opportunity out there too, especially for third world countries to have currency that actually works for them. 

00:11:06:06 – 00:11:45:22

Richard Carthon: One hundred percent. I call Crypto the great equalizer. The thing that I always go back to where everything kind of made sense for me, I had a friend who lived in the Philippines who worked in oil and gas, and they were sending the money back to the family in the states. He used to wire the money, but then they would lose 40 percent of it between like, going from currency to currency, and then it would take five to ten business days. You’re losing 40 percent. He then converted all the money to Bitcoin, would send it, it would take a couple of minutes and it would cost a couple of dollars. How do you defend that, right? And like, where in the world do you go where your money is your money? And if you go to China, you have to go to the Yuan, if you go to Canada, every time you go somewhere else, it switches. A Bitcoin is a Bitcoin anywhere. 

00:11:46:00 – 00:12:15:13

Richard Carthon: And then I had somebody on the show who works with a lot of people that live in Africa and a lot of African currencies aren’t accepted because a lot of them are seen as scams, aren’t seen as valid, so a lot of them have been finding ways to switch to Bitcoin and to other Crypto’s that are seen as a more secure way. And like, now they can have legitimate businesses in whatever. It’s just, it is opening up the world to having access to money that’s a little bit more secure than local currencies and that’s powerful.

00:12:16:07 – 00:13:31:06

David Gokhshtein: Correct, this country is at a sanction right now. They’re going to find a way of, Okay, we’re sanctioned, who cares? We’re going to go and use Cryptocurrency. Look, some countries, I hate getting into this, but some countries do deserve to be sanctioned. But then with sanctions comes, poverty, where you know, innocent people are suffering. They have nothing to do with what’s going on and they’re suffering and Cryptocurrency helps them avoid all these sanctions that are put into place. So. It sucks, man, but you know what? Again, Cryptocurrency is the greatest thing on the planet. I mean, it is great. And we go back to it like for third world countries, it’s a huge benefit. It is a huge benefit. For me, biggest thing is just, I have a problem with banks, I really do. I have a problem with, I give my money to a bank and they take my let’s say, $30,000 and they spread it out and they make money on it. 

00:13:31:19 – 00:13:32:24

Richard Carthon: Yeah, a lot of money. 

00:13:33:27 – 00:13:38:11

David Gokhshtein: And in the month, I gotta pay the money to have an account with them. 

00:13:39:21 – 00:13:40:06

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:13:40:09 – 00:13:41:01

David Gokhshtein: How does that make sense? 

00:13:41:17 – 00:13:43:27

Richard Carthon: And on top of that, they’re paying you like .01 percent.

00:13:44:17 – 00:13:46:03

David Gokhshtein: Correct.

00:13:46:05 – 00:13:46:20

Richard Carthon: Barely nothing.

00:13:46:22 – 00:14:31:16

David Gokhshtein: So I look at it like, Okay, I’m unbanking myself. I’m going to hold my own money, whether it’s Bitcoin, whether it’s your favorite XRP. I’m just kidding, I’m just throwing it out there just to mess around. But XRP because I do believe that XRP has the capability to be a store value, just like Bitcoin. Whatever Cryptocurrency in the top ten it is, you have the opportunity to hold something and you can unback yourself. You can take your money whenever you want, you can send money whenever you want in seconds, you don’t have to tell the person that it’s coming in four days. That’s the beautiful part about it, whereas it lays in the bank and it earns you absolutely nothing. 

00:14:32:05 – 00:14:32:20

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:14:32:22 – 00:15:08:12

David Gokhshtein: So to me, it’s about unbanking yourself and having power, getting that power back and looked up. O.C.C. went ahead and passed legislation to where banks can go ahead and hold Crypto. Hopefully that’ll build more trust with the banking system. I believe you’ll have CBI’s and the Bank of America’s, JP Morgan’s that’ll finally understand that they have to adapt, which they will, and they’ll free up everything and they’ll show us everything because they won’t be able to hide it anymore. 

00:15:08:21 – 00:15:09:06

Richard Carthon: Right. 

00:15:09:08 – 00:15:18:21

David Gokhshtein: Everything will be so transparent that the trust will come back. But until that happens, I will go ahead and prefer to hold it in Crypto, 

00:15:19:06 – 00:15:28:26

Richard Carthon: Yeah. Until you force someone’s hand, they’re not going to change because it benefits them, like, why would they? And you’re looking at a disrupter that hasn’t been disrupted since the beginning of time, right? 

00:15:29:01 – 00:15:29:18

David Gokhshtein: We are disruptors, all of us. 

00:15:29:20 – 00:16:14:20

Richard Carthon: Exactly. Especially, I mean, if you’re listening to this right now, you’re getting more knowledge on this and just finding various ways to get involved. I mean, that’s the beauty of it. One of the things I’ll look into, even when you talk about Crypto, yeah, we’re talking about banking the unbanked, having access to capital, but then also you have other things where you can like, go and create art. You can create non-fungible tokens, you can go and create all of these things on the Blockchain that just give you greater access to even like, the decentralized world, like Decentraland or a Crypto Voxel. You have these digital worlds where you can go buy these, like digital things, put them in there and at what point in life, other than like, the last Internet, the ,com bubble, right? 

00:16:14:22 – 00:17:22:13

Richard Carthon: When people were making all these new creative things like, Oh, that’s just a fad, whatever, but when it caught up and the ones that really put in the legwork and the ones that survived are thriving. And I really feel like there are some Crypto companies, whether you want to call a Cryptocurrency, a platform or whatever, it is all under the umbrella of Cryptocurrency, there are some really major awesome companies out there and some that aren’t really discovered yet. But the ones who survive in this next decade are going to be massive. And it would behoove you to do some research and to look into these opportunities, to tune into both me and David’s content that we’re putting out there, because we’re going to give you the insights to be aware of this stuff and it’s very empowering. And on that, I just wanted to ask, you said with Gokhshtein Media that you do some education and like, the issue that you ran into is the same one I ran into. Like, when I tried to get education when I first got in, everyone was talking very technical or they were very high pie in the sky, this is going to help you get rich quick and I’m a Crypto millionaire, blah, blah, blah. And I wanted to sift through all that and just be real with it and say it in such a way that anyone could comprehend it. So like, is that kind of what pulls you into it? And like, how are you presenting the information? 

00:17:24:11 – 00:18:51:06

David Gokhshtein: I was born in Brooklyn, so I’m going to say that if you came to Brooklyn and you started speaking C, C+, C++, somebody would have told you to go and I’m not going to finish that line because I don’t know if this is a PC show or rated R, and I don’t want you to lose my monetization. So at the end of the day, look, my job is real easy, like Gokhshtein Media, my job is easy. Like, I go out there, I’m talking to regular people out there in the street out in colleges, companies, just breaking it down, simplifying the process, not talking in code. Like I’m just saying, like, look, this is what it is, you can go ahead and own your money, you can hold your money, like, you can hold your money, here’s a wallet, download this wallet. It’s so simple and you rule it. And here are the benefits and this is why we need Blockchain. And people get it, like, it’s so simple and when you simplify it, people understand it and then they want to go to the next level. Now, if somebody wants to go ahead and educate themselves on coding and becoming a dev, great, not my job. I do have that on the website, not my job though to go ahead and push you into that direction. 

00:18:51:13 – 00:18:51:28

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:18:52:00 – 00:19:14:23

David Gokhshtein: You want to learn, not a problem. Look, I’m the CMO for PAC Global, I’ll hit you with one of these things where Apple and Google control our data. PAC Global will give you the ability to go ahead and literally take back your data. Like you own it, why have somebody else own your data? 

00:19:15:02 – 00:19:15:21

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:19:15:23 – 00:19:24:23

David Gokhshtein: So, very, very, very big on that. Like, having control of your own data, that’s everything.

00:19:24:25 – 00:19:25:10

Richard Carthon: Yeah. 

00:19:25:12 – 00:19:32:18

David Gokhshtein: They have that, it leaks somewhere, somebody has your social, that’s not how it’s supposed to work and they profit on it. 

00:19:32:25 – 00:19:33:10

Richard Carthon: Yeah.

00:19:33:12 – 00:20:25:18

David Gokhshtein: So, again, all this stuff keeps everybody honest. And look, I’m really like, I’ve done like, so many interviews and I’m always repetitive. I’m excited about the space, I’m excited about the direction that we’re going in, I’m excited that young people are getting into it because yourself, I’m sure you’re pretty young, I’m still there. I have a bunch of friends that are young, we constantly talk and three years ago I was being told that I’m a nut job and in 2020, sitting at a dinner table, everybody is asking me which wallet I should download and where I should go ahead and buy Bitcoin. And that’s the beautiful part. It takes time, but sooner or later people start to say, you know what, let me look into this. 

00:20:26:00 – 00:20:55:05

Richard Carthon: And at that point, you’re then the thought leader and you’re the one who has created this way and this path to get everyone up to speed a lot faster because you’ve endured it yourself and you can give them the quick here’s how you do X, Y, Z. Quick question I want to ask you is just, with everything going on in the market and we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but like, where do you see the future of Crypto and Blockchai going, whether it’s in the short term? Let’s call it 2021 or let’s call it the next decade. 

00:20:56:24 – 00:21:20:21

David Gokhshtein: Ten years from now, everything, the biggest thing is to get the small businesses to learn about Blockchain. Like, I’m going to speak from the United States standpoint, small businesses to run this country. 

00:21:21:21 – 00:21:22:10

Richard Carthon: Yep.

00:21:22:12 – 00:21:44:05

David Gokhshtein: So, I would love and I can’t wait to see the small business go in and integrate Blockchain into their day to day operations, because that’ll just lead to more ROI. That’s where I see it, because Blockchain’s not regulated. Blockchain isn’t what’s regulated in the United States, it’s the digital asset itself. 

00:21:44:18 – 00:21:45:03

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:21:45:05 – 00:22:35:20

David Gokhshtein: So and hopefully within a year, I hope sooner, but I hope a year or two years, that will also be I mean, it’s time to let go, don’t regulate it. The more you regulate something, the more somebody’s going to want to use it. Listen, like I said in the beginning, I don’t think that the U.S. dollar is going anywhere. It might be worth six cents right now, I get it, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere at this current moment or at least for the next 10 years. I don’t believe it will, I think they’ll come out with a digital dollar and we’ll settle on that, but, there’s Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology right now, I see it going more towards sovereign countries. I see it helping those third world countries that are really in need of help, really, 

00:22:35:27 – 00:22:36:17

Richard Carthon: Yep.

00:22:36:19 – 00:22:42:20

David Gokhshtein: They really, really need the help. I’m talking about, you know exactly which nations I’m talking about. 

00:22:43:29 – 00:23:07:21

Richard Carthon: For sure. And It’s going to be adopted, it’s going to be used and it’s just more viable as an option, as a source of currency, as a way of transferability as well. Among everything David, I appreciate you coming and joining and having this conversation with me. I think you’ve dropped a lot of good nuggets, but, what is the final thought that you want to leave with everyone listening here today? 

00:23:09:25 – 00:24:03:27

David Gokhshtein: Think outside of the box. I really hope that those that do go in and go in and invest into Bitcoin or into anything into the altcoin market. The bull market’s coming, a lot of people are going to make a lot of gains, make sure that you hire a financial adviser and make sure that you do not go and become reckless with your money and start buying Bentleys and Lamborghinis and all that stuff. The ultimate goal is you want freedom. This is going to give you that freedom, now turn that money into passive income. I’m talking about get into real estate, you know, look for things that depreciate and don’t depreciate. And when I say depreciate, cars depreciate people.

00:24:04:11 – 00:24:04:26

Richard Carthon: Very fast.

00:24:04:28 – 00:24:13:25

David Gokhshtein: And it doesn’t look cool when you’re like, pushing a $250,000 car that’s worth $50,000 dollars, and you’re at a gas station with a dollar in your pocket. 

00:24:22:01 – 00:24:29:13

Richard Carthon: All right, you heard it here first. Well, David, again, really appreciate your time, what are ways that people can connect with you and learn more about everything that you have going on?

00:24:30:14 – 00:24:41:28

David Gokhshtein: Guys, you can connect with me on social media, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, I’ll even dance for you on TikTok. Gokhshtein,com. Yeah, it’s the new trend, right?  The running and whatnot. 

00:24:42:20 – 00:24:43:05

Richard Carthon: Yes sir.

00:24:43:07 – 00:25:10:25

David Gokhshtein: But Gokhshtein.com, our news site is coming out. If you’re watching, it’s December 2, 2020, outside will be out within two to three weeks. All education, all educational education, we’ll have Richard on hopefully on my podcast, the Gokhshtein Unfiltered podcast, which is tonight at 9:00 p.m. And I do appreciate Richard’s time here for bringing me on. I was late to the party, so I do apologize. 

00:25:11:10 – 00:25:17:12

Richard Carthon: All good man. Well, thank you for joining, look forward to hopefully being on your show soon. And for everyone listening, Stay Crypto Current.