10/23/13 – Arlo Pignotti – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And next up is our friend Arlo Pignotti.
He runs CommodityDiscs.com.
CommodityDiscs.com.
And yeah, welcome back to the show.
How's it going?
Hi Scott, thanks again for having me on.
Love being on your show.
Well, good.
Very happy to have you here.
And you know what?
I'm very excited still to this day.
I get all amped up in my mannerisms.
My arms start flailing around and all this stuff.
Because I was just earlier today describing about CommodityDiscs to a friend.
And I noticed, wow, look at me.
I'm all excited and flailing my arms as I speak and stuff.
I just think it's the coolest thing in the whole freaking world.
This is what, this is the future of mankind.
As long as you can get the word out, as long as everybody can know, hey, that's a thing?
Wow.
Then I think that this is going to be the one world currency of the future.
And there will be no central bank or police state involved.
It's just a one ounce piece of pure silver.
And it's got a QR code on the back so that you can judge its price instantaneously with a smartphone that pretty much everybody, at least in North America and Europe, already has with the smartphone and the free app there.
So I think it is so cool.
And tell them all about it.
You can say all the same things I just said if you need to.
Get them excited about it.
And then at the end I'm going to give them a pitch why they ought to donate to me and get one.
Yeah, no, your little description there, I mean, that covers most of it.
I mean, that's the great thing about it.
It's really simple.
I think it's a real simple solution to using silver as money.
If I didn't do it, someone would have thought of it.
But I'm on the first cement, the first thousand silver pieces, and I've sold almost or exchanged almost half of them.
And so what's great is, you know, even if not literally everybody has a smartphone yet, but between the person spending and the merchant accepting, hopefully one will have a smartphone.
And then they just scan it and they see the spot price plus suggested manufacturers added trade value to cover the cost of minting it and shipping it.
By the way, is a smartphone the only way to take a picture of the QR code, or do they, like, have QR code readers at stores and stuff like that, or how does that work?
QR code readers are kind of obsolete now.
I think anyone who's stocking goods or shelves in the back, you know, might have a QR code reader, but they wouldn't really encounter the currency.
Of course, anyone who has a QR code reader that they use at their workplace, they may want to start keeping them up with the cashier.
If we can get these things circulating enough for it to be commonplace.
I see people driving around with QR codes on the back of their car and stuff.
It seems like this is starting to catch on.
I don't know what happens if you take the picture.
I never tried it.
I was driving at the time.
Yeah, I think more people will at least know how to use QR codes to begin with.
That's great.
They're familiar with it.
Most people already have an app, and if you don't, it's free.
I recommend an app like Google Goggles is a good one because that also doubles as a way to sort of Google images that you take with your phone, so you can point it at a certain type of, say, plant or a flower.
It'll match it up with similar images to define what you're looking at.
Wow, that's cool.
What app is that?
It's called Google Goggles.
Not to be confused with Google Glass, but it's Google Goggles, and it's just a simple little free app you can install on your phone, and that's the one I used to test my currency because I knew it was a common app that many people have.
Well, you know, I just went to the app store.
I'm not all that fancy and sophisticated at the apps and this and that, but I just got a plain old QR code reader here on my phone.
It works great.
In fact, I was showing it to my friend this morning, and it went straight to your website and told me that the price of silver is $22 and something cents, right?
Yeah, right now, $22.66.
In the future, pretty soon, you'll be able to go ahead and compare to euros or won or yen or whatever you want, right?
Gold?
How many fractions of an ounce of gold can you buy with one ounce of silver, that kind of thing?
See, what I'm going to do is for every 1,000 pieces I exchange, and so it costs maybe spot price plus maybe around $4 to break even on this, so I'm exchanging them at spot plus $5 so I can at least raise $1 for every piece exchanged to go towards improving the currency itself.
And so what I'd like to do is maybe about every 1,000 pieces or so, I'm going to add a new function to it, and one of the first functions I would like to have is to where when you scan it with your phone, it can detect what country you're in.
So if you are in England, it will convert to pounds.
If you are in any of the European countries using the euro, compete the euros and so on.
Excellent.
And I've already had people in England and Australia and Japan interested in that, so it's pretty cool to think that as soon as I launch that, I'll have people in other countries using it.
Well, listen, silver's been currency in one form or another for about 6,000 years or more, something like that.
It's shiny.
It's a pure element thing.
It's pretty easy to divide, and girls like it on their fingers, and so guys like it because girls like it, and so it's always going to be valued at some price depending on your local currency, and it's always been some kind of currency.
It seems like, especially the history in America with the Spanish silver dollar becoming the de facto currency of America for so long in the beginning there, that it's just such a cool thing.
It takes the power away from those who would print money and force you at gunpoint to accept it, and I like that, and so anyway, it's the greatest thing, man.
I sure hope that this takes off, and at $1 over your costs, you make a billion bucks doing this thing and get these out because I just think it's the greatest idea in the world, and I hope everybody copies you, too.
I mean, what's the problem?
Everybody mint coins and put a QR code thing that tells you the instant spot price.
It's the greatest thing in the world.
Sorry, but don't forget to give your thing away.
You still invented it, but wouldn't that be great if that was just what everybody used with silver coins and paper receipts that really meant you could get your silver coin and you weren't relying on the government to come through for you, you know?
You know, what I love about having this, and now that I actually have it in production, I can hold it in my hand, I love showing it off, and it's not just only an educational tool to spark discussion with people about what's wrong with legal tender and why this is better, but it also connects me with others who they already know.
I meet more and more owners of businesses who totally get it, that why we should have money backed in something real, and that's great to make those connections.
So, you know, everybody should have one of these with them and just show it off when they spend their money in it.
If somebody doesn't understand or doesn't want it, all right, fine, give them regular dollars, but you get to see who gets it and who doesn't, and for people who will accept our silver commodity discs, I will put them on every directory, including our upcoming silver pages directory, so get them in touch with the consumers who want to spend it.
There you go.
All right, that's Arlo Pignotti, commoditydiscs.com and facebook.com slash commoditydiscs.
Thanks, Arlo.
Thanks.
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