they're issuing cease and desist orders
which actually has been cretaceous
but i mean if you're talking revenue of
over half a million a month it's really
not clever to do
that you mentioning that actually makes
my heart race because yeah this was a
major issue that we had to deal with you
don't have any liability protection you
know if you would get sued it would be
straight on your own personal
name think the removal of the dual arena
it is the beginning of the end not for
runescape but for rwt
[Music]
i literally bawled my eyes out early
cried for days on end
it's just like a never-ending story of
scammers and getting smarter
so they are making double of what they
would make in a normal job in their
country so they are happy it's not that
so today is very exciting i've been
waiting years for this opportunity
because normally nobody will talk a big
gold site owner reached out to me and
said i see there's been a lot of
misinformation floating around the
internet regarding jagex and how they're
combating real world trade i see you
have a huge following on youtube and
would like to offer myself to be
interviewed so long as you keep me
anonymous in the video i will be fully
transparent about my business and
dealings with jagex so needless to say i
seized the opportunity not just to learn
about how jagex's recent crackdowns on
rwt are affecting gold sellers but also
to learn about their business as a whole
i'm so excited to share this with you
i've time stamped each question i think
that deserves a like on the video alone
but if you don't want to like the video
a subscription would be even better
because we're really coming up close on
a hundred thousand on top of that
there's still time to get one of our
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description below
so obviously you've been involved in
real world trade for a number of years
besides your websites you have a pretty
big presence on all of the black market
forms for this game so i wonder so the
viewer can get an idea of who you are
can you talk about your growth from a
nobody to a staple in the rwt scene
my beginning day like i told you like i
i started off with the 50 euro that i
stole from my mom's purse and how i used
to do it you know player options right
yeah yeah of course
yeah i use the except pay save cards i
don't know if you know what those are um
you get them like a gas station right
yeah yeah they're cash preloaded cars so
i would receive pin numbers from my
customers
i would actually
deposit that pastry card to my net
dollar account and then while the
customer was waiting i would actually
buy the gold that they bought from
another
vendor on player options
and obviously for a lower price and then
i would talk it and save up the gold now
that gold i was using back in the day to
gamble myself or to play flower poker
and then the access gold that i would
have or created i would actually sell
that again so
this was just me this was no employee
this was just just on my own i think it
took me like six months to make much
about my first thousand euro
and then i remember
getting scammed for all of it and i i
was already pretty old at the time i
think i was like 20 23 at the time i
literally bawled my eyes out early cried
for days on end
and then you know it was quit or just
restarted over and then i restarted over
and then it went really fast and then i
started you know
making some more money investing that
into making a website getting my first
customers through that website because
the first website was was pure hell it
was ugly it was nothing like i made that
by hand on on webs.com like the the
earlier version of wix it was horrible
and then you know when sales started to
rake in i got my first two employees and
then i i started investing and
advertising the first big purchase i
actually made advertising wise was like
a banner slot on powerbot.org when it
was still still around and then it just
sales just started booming from there so
it is a hell of a road but it was worth
it and so you mentioned that you got
your first two employees back then but
just to give the audience a size of your
business now how many employees do you
currently have
our team consists out of
14 live chat employees and we have one
i call him the team manager
who manages it all so
in total i think i have i mean i have
other admins and stuff but the live chat
team itself consists out of 15 people so
one manager who oversees a team of 14
people
and going along with this theme people
on the community post i did were of
course very interested in knowing how
profitable it is to run a gold selling
website
oh it is very profitable to be honest if
you were one of the early birds and i'm
talking 2016 2017 if you started then
maybe even prior by now you probably
have a good amount of money saved up
like there
there have been months
where as a company
we were easily raking in 100 200k
so
um obviously you have to cut some
expenses out of that if we're talking
revenue
back in the good old days i think our
top revenue a month we calculate in
euros but i'm going to say this in
dollars if it was about 530 000
per month so that would be your total
cash flow and then you make your spread
on that right yeah so over half a mil of
revenue per month so
do that on a year and then you know get
a profit percentage of that of like 17
you can do the math so it it is very
profitable but if you would ask me like
would you start your business right now
i would say no you need to be one of the
early birds otherwise might as well just
not do it it does seem like it's quite
the oversaturated market like the the
barrier to entry is quite low i see all
these sellers all over these black
market forums trying to get into a
position that you've got yourself into
and it seems like the profit margins are
so low like paying for the big
advertisements is just not really
feasible
there were bad players in my opinion who
dragged the market down like before i'm
talking
2017 18 19 the spread that we could keep
was a lot higher i remember the days
where we actually worked on a profit
margin of 27 to 30 percent now we can be
happy that we have a profit margin of 16
to 17 percent
and that's pretty expensive because
other websites i'm not gonna
name any names but i think you know who
i'm talking about
there
if you look at their buying price and
then compared to their selling price
there is no way that they're making more
than five to six percent net off their
sales and that is just ridiculously low
i'm not doing that okay if i ever have
to go to that point where i'm just
making five to six percent on a sale i'm
just closing down i'm not doing it
fair enough i mean it's a tough business
isn't it because you've got the same
product as everybody else so really your
only competitive advantage is is
lowering the price yeah that's what i
mean the only two things people need in
this business is you know a low price
and a fast delivery if they don't get
their goals now now now they're not
satisfied and they're not going to come
back like i've had complaints where a
customer literally started raging our
heads off because they didn't get their
delivery in under two minutes it's crazy
sometimes and i do believe that it's
going to be solved with the dual arena
because most people who start raging
obviously i mean they've just lost money
in the dual arena or they want to
continue staking or so so yeah so that
thought actually makes a good transition
out of the intro and into the first main
question that people are curious about
and that's if you notice like any trends
and who's buying gold i'm gonna start
with going over our buyers now our
buyers are mostly active players
sometimes with a staking addiction this
is hard to say for me because a lot of
the people that buy gold do use it to
stake in the dual arena i would say 40
of our customer base the demographics
are mostly american customers canadian
australians the whole of europe
basically age-wise between you know the
ages of 15 to
20-29
most of the average
age of our customers now seller wise
most of our customers are like you said
earlier they are flippers we call them
discord bulkers because people like that
mostly flip gold from actual people who
play the game stakers gold farmers or
anyone that would sell to them any gold
that they can get and then they actually
sell it to our website for a margin but
those people actually supply our website
24 7. for example we have one bulker the
longest ship that he did on our website
was i think four days straight without
sleep so he just literally sat in our
live chat delivering our orders for four
days straight without stopping so i did
a whole video with a discord walker
before and basically what i gathered
from that is that for you as a gold
website it's a really good d risk
because if they get banned with the gold
well you haven't paid for it so of
course you're out nothing right yeah the
thing what we do is i would consider us
now at least a broker because we
basically connect the customer to the
seller directly and we keep a spread in
between so for example a customer would
buy a hundred dollars of gold on our
website we would buy that gold from a
person let's say for eighty dollars and
that seller would give the gold to our
customer directly so there is no ban
risk for us whatsoever
on the other hand we do have active
players who sell gold to our website as
well and that's also a big chunk so i've
found in experience that if you trade
gold from active player to active player
the band risk for both parties gets
reduced by a lot just a little at a time
interjection because i didn't pick up on
this while i was in conversation with
him what he's saying is that let's say
you went and sold 50 mil to the website
they might have you traded over to like
another player that's trying to buy gold
instead of like one of their mule
accounts can you imagine if you went to
sell gold and all of a sudden you're
trading your clan mate
obviously there's a financial deciding
factor why we did it because
back in the days like back in the good
old days 2017 2018 we did keep stock but
we stopped doing that beginning of 2019.
and was that like just about the risking
like turning your business into the
sales channel not having to worry about
your gp mules getting banned yes because
we had a period and i swear to god this
was in june of
2018 we could not keep 25 mil rs07
without getting banned every time we
took a little amount of gold on our
accounts it instantly got banned and
i've seen that disconnection screen on
runescape so many times it gives me
nightmares it's crazy yeah i mean i
certainly know they're able to crack
down on accounts like that because i
remember whenever dyson got removed i
think around 2012 they cracked down on
some of like the big dicers hard they
couldn't keep accounts up for for more
than a few minutes before jagex had them
nuked because they just want to
completely eradicate them from the game
like you said it's absolutely for sure
that's that's what i believe they do
know how to crack down an rwt the
difference between band rates is is
insane like there have been times where
we literally got banned for trading 25
mil 07 and two three months later we
could be keeping two to three four
five bill 07 on one account without
being banned and keep that account alive
for months so i really believe that they
do this in waves just to clean the
economy somewhat and to just make sure
that it doesn't get out of hand because
if the price of gold crashes to like i
don't know 10 cents that's really not
good for the economy you know the
anti-cheating team is small too so i
feel like it might just be a thing where
every couple months are like okay let's
dedicate a week to going after gold
sellers
yeah i mean i guess you could think of
it that way but the whole idea that
jagex knows how to combat rwt
is a fact for me i know they can
literally eradicate it within a month
for two months if they wanted to but
even if you want to get gold
the legitimate weight
it's going to take you a really really
really long time
players just don't want to go through
that and of course you can buy bonds and
something but you know i mean if you
want to buy two bills good luck doing
that in bonds for example i mean
you're not gonna start doing that
you know i suppose you're right i've
never really thought about that before
but thinking back to like watching sir
pugger buy a ton of bonds to to give
like a couple bill away for some of his
videos that is a huge limiting factor
just because the amount of work they
have to do to sell them for anyone
that's kind of interested in buying like
a tebow not to mention the price of
buying gold through bonds is
astronomical compared to the secondary
market and you know you say that players
don't want to earn the gold themselves
and i actually agree with you on that i
think there's i think the fact of the
matter is is that runescape has a much
older player base now with much more
disposable income but much less free
time and so there is a lot of people
that would just kind of prefer to pay to
skip a large portion of that grind to
achieve whatever it is that they want to
do in the game and honestly i mean bonds
are a thing i don't think it's
necessarily a bad thing to spend money
on the game in this way it's essentially
a hobby but my problem with real world
trade is is basically all the bad actors
that come along with it right like
fishing account cracking scamming etc
yeah i mean of course money attracts and
with all the staking and gambling and
that's going on in runescape it does
attract the bad apples all those kind of
people that kind of ruin the economy
obviously okay and so kind of going
along with this theme i wonder if you
know like what industries gold comes
from like who's selling the gold is it
scammers is it from people staking like
who's primarily supplying gold i think
the gold is created by by potters even
if you stake in a dual arena that gold
isn't made it's just exchange it's just
exchanging hands yeah it has to be
originated somewhere so i would say it's
like this 30
are active players
that
want to sell their gold because we do
have a lot of people who go like okay
i've played for this many months or i
played for this many years and i have
this much gold and i actually can sell
it or maybe even worse like i want to
quit the game i want to sell all my gold
so i would say 30 percent is that
then 40 of our supply i would actually
say are stakers so just people who get
lucky they make tons of the gp by
dueling by staking and they just sell
them you know but those are also the
people that buy it in the first place
because we have tons of people that for
example they place an order for a
thousand euro of gold and then literally
like two hours later they come like okay
here's uh
3 000 euro worth of gold i want to sell
to you
so i would say that's 40
of our supply are just stakers and then
the other 30 percent is literally actual
waters like actual gold farmers and
we're talking brazilians uh venezuelans
uh people from those kind of countries
that actually have a bot farming rig
that actually makes stupid amounts of
gold and then they offload it to
websites like us and that's where the
most profit is in because they actually
undercut the market by a lot because
they just want to get rid of it like
they they're literally going to come on
our website and going okay your price is
uh 0.5 per ml okay i'll sell it to you
for 0.45
right and they're from countries where a
dollar goes a lot further too so they're
they're happy to make that profit yeah
i've seen the message on on all dot com
for example which is shut down when he
talks about the people from venezuela
yeah we have a lot of those too
brazilian then and people from venezuela
are the biggest countries of the last 30
which are the actual gold farmers all
right so this is the big juicy question
right what are your thoughts on the
removal of the dual arena how do you
think it's going to affect real world
trade in general and how do you think
it's going to affect your business in my
opinion it is the beginning of the end
not for runescape but for rwt is it
going to die in the next couple of
months no obviously not but jagex is
taking dramatic steps into actually
trying to get rid of rwt in total but
they're doing this
not only by removing the dual arena but
they're actually issuing bans to gold
buyers this is something jags has never
done before now they're actually issuing
warnings if you do it again you get a
temporary ban if you do it again you
might have your gold removed you might
have a permanent ban
what they're also doing is they're
attacking our business directly they're
complaining to google so they're trying
to take our google ads down they're
complaining to facebook they're trying
to close their facebook accounts now
they're issuing cease and desist orders
which actually has
been
cretaceous i mean a lot of sites are
already tight uh taken down you know all
are as goldmine
are too pleasant all sites that got
taken down in the last couple of months
literally every website that i can think
of like even the small ones have gotten
cease and desist loaders so what they do
is they hire an ip company
and basically they send out the same
letter it's the same email that they
send out but just you know different url
of the website and and different company
information of who they're sending it to
but the letter is the exact same and
they send it out in bulk like we got two
or three of them in one week time and
then they go and send this to our
hosting provider so if you're for
example connected to a website host that
takes this kind of stuff seriously they
are going to close your account where
your hosting is based on so that poses
another issue but in general i can see
it's spooking a lot of people yeah i
mean if you're a small
for example if you have a personal
business linked to your website you
don't have any liability protection if
you would get sued it would be straight
on your own personal name so i can see
that being you know a factor of people
closing on their website and so after
all of these years of what sounds like
pretty clear sailing why do you think
they're just taking all of these kind of
extra steps now
yeah
the reason why i think
that jagex is actually cracking down on
rwt so hard
is not because they want to get rid of
rwt per se because they could have done
all these measures that they're doing
right now they could have done that a
long time ago the reason in my opinion
why they're cracking down on rwt so hard
right now is because of pressure from
banks and governments because in-game
gambling is a problem it forms an
addiction so
i've seen your last video and you talked
about how the commission is trying to
regulate the whole in-game scenario and
i think that is the major factor while
they're why they're cracking down on rwt
yeah you know i think this has been kind
of the common thought that i've heard at
least since when booga google got shut
down two or three years ago that while i
would like to think they're doing it out
of the goodness of their heart
that it's more about regulatory agencies
in the uk trying to get gambling law
which is already super strict in the uk
to apply to what's going on in the games
industry
so you know considering all these things
that they're doing to your business um
how has this affected you uh
yes our business has been affected a lot
actually our customer base has gone down
the orders have gone down the money flow
has turned back a notch and yes it is a
big thing yet i mean i know you said
earlier obviously 40 percent of your
business is gone with the removal of the
dual arena but what about that other 60
percent like jegs said they're banning
buyers has that been happening uh to be
fair our website hasn't seen that much
impact i do have a lot of customers that
said okay i'm scared of buying gold
because we did get a
i did get a warning so
i haven't heard of bands per se
i haven't heard of gold removal yet but
i've had
a lot of customers say that they got a
warning yet so i don't think that
they're actually going to start dishing
out bands the worst thing i can actually
see them doing and i think this is going
to become a reality is gold removal
because in the end they're not banning
your account so you can't still play
it's just de-incentivizing
buying gold so if you for example would
buy 50 euro gold and the next day you
look on your account and it's gone okay
are you gonna quit runescape i mean you
might but
less likely than if you would lose your
whole account you probably just would
stop buying gold altogether you just
play the game legitimately and i think
that's what jagex is actually aiming for
okay so people always want me to ask
this next one i think they think it's
illegal to participate in secondary
markets like this and they don't realize
it's it's only against dragon's terms of
service and not really anything else um
but yeah they're always wondering like
with all of this revenue uh how do you
handle the tax side of things
uh no we have a company we pay our
corporate tax obviously we have
accountants who work for us we have
bookkeeper bookkeepers who calculate
everything and wherever we put
everything together and yeah we have a
tax return every year so so no it what
we're doing is is not illegal
state wise or country wise or whatever
you want to call it
definitely not illegal the only thing
what we're doing is you know ip
infringement or that's what jagek is
claiming there's nothing wrong with
doing this because we do pay our taxes
or you should that's at least what we're
doing i don't know what other people are
doing but yeah we do you know basically
every interview i do i bring up taxes
because it's always a question that
people on my youtube channel want to
hear about and a lot of people won't
even answer it because they are kind of
flying by night
a lot of sellers are actually using
bitcoin as a loophole to not pay taxes
but i mean if you're talking revenue of
over half a million a month it's really
not clever to do that like we paid taxes
on everything we have an audit every
year so if we would for example bring in
one part of the business and leave
another part out i mean the audit's not
going to make sense anyway so we're
basically [ __ ] ourselves in the long
run i'm really glad to finally get that
answered on video so if you don't mind i
want to spin back to your live chat
agents again i'm curious if they're
people who are familiar with runescape
or have you actually had to teach them
to deliver the gold and uh and what
about trust too because i remember
seeing a post i think it was one boogly
gold shut down but it could have been
another gold site where they were
closing their operation and they wanted
to re-home their live chat agents and
kind of their main points for that they
already knew how to deliver gold but
more importantly they could also be
trusted with with big quantities of gold
and not run off with it i i know that a
lot of these people who work gold side
are
sometimes actual bulk sellers themselves
so what bigger websites would do
they would turn to these gold sellers
who have actual experience and they
would be like okay can you come work in
our live chat we might actually give you
a cut because for example there's a
difference as well we we pay standard
wage per hour
i know of other websites who actually
pay a profit percentage to their live
chat employees but
i think that's not a good way to go
about it
um our workers um are indeed not
familiar with the game runescape they
just know how to deliver gold and that's
it because in the end
i have
i've always had a feeling that
if if this for bulkers would actually
see how much money is coming for your
website they're not going to want to
work anymore for you they just want to
gonna want to try and do it on their own
so that's why i hire people that really
don't have any experience with the game
and so when you do hire people someone
else was curious where you hire them out
of
um all of our agents are from a
uh
yeah a non-first world country base i
don't know how to say that properly but
yeah no i get it just just somewheres
where a dollar goes a lot further i
imagine it's probably would be too much
to hire someone locally and have to pay
like the minimum wage wherever it is
that you're from right now because also
like
the times have changed and the i at the
beginning we did have a full uh eight
person live chat team and they were all
like canadian australian american
but
that was the time when i did pay profit
percentage some of these people were
making like 42 dollars an hour
and
that yeah that's not something that is
profitable for me now to do because one
the margins now are way too low and they
wouldn't even reach 42 dollars an hour
and now i like literally everything
every bit of money that the company can
make is a given you know because money
is flowing left and right now into
channels that we didn't have a problem
with before on the other hand i do have
to say like the workers that we have
right now i mean if they would actually
get a normal job in their country they
would actually make half of what they're
making now so they are making double of
what they would make in a normal job in
their country so they are happy it's not
that oh this is one i didn't think to
include earlier but have you ever had
the experience when a dupe happens and
people like go and start trying to
offload that gold
yeah
yeah i mean this is something that we
websites we notice really quickly
because there's like a constant flow of
sellers who come in our live chat and
they ask the price so we would give them
a standard command which is for example
uh we're paying 0.4 dollars per rso 7
mill and then suddenly
uh we're used to having maybe like
10 at a time
like suddenly there would be like i
don't know 30 40 50 people
asking to sell gold and they would
outbid each other they would be like
okay your standard price is 0.4 well you
know what take the gold off my hands for
0.3 and then if tons of people are doing
that we know there's a dupe going on and
so
what do you do like do you stop buying
the gold or or what
uh no because
like i said we do
broker now so
bands are not really an issue we just
always go for the lowest person and we
try to outbid them against each other
it's just business you know gotcha yeah
so it's the bulk buyers that are
affected yeah i talked to one guy he um
whenever the rs3 dupe happened he lost
like thirteen thousand dollars or
something ridiculous yeah he doesn't
deal with rs3 anymore because of it
chain bands are
crazy like i remember when we were still
holding gold and still actually keeping
the stock ourselves like rs3 was the
worst i remember it was june i can't
remember which year but i had a 27
accounts banned in total and the total
amount of gold lost was around 10k and
it's just painful you know it's just
if i would still have the money that i
lost to band gold oh dear god like i
would buy myself a lamborghini right now
so a couple of years ago i did a video
with a group of guys that was imposter
and gold selling websites to go around
and like change their name to intercept
trades as they happened i wonder if you
like had any run-ins with them you
mentioning that actually makes my heart
race because yeah this was a major issue
that we had to deal with especially
because we're not keeping stock and
because we're literally brokering so we
were especially a target for those
people like we had to refund so many
orders of crazy because obviously if
people get scammed on our watch i'm not
gonna be like okay this is your issue no
obviously we either you know refunded
the money or in most cases we gave the
order again
and did a double verification it was
hell yeah we were definitely targeted by
that
and so i'm curious because i've never
had a gold website's perspective on this
but what was your solution to that
problem i i made a spreadsheet for our
agents and it consists out of i would
say about 50 different spots and
locations in the game itself and i hired
another person
specifically to change our live chat
commands every 30 minutes to 45 minutes
so that we would consistently and
actively change spots and trading worlds
in the game because most of these people
would actually follow us around for
example they know from okay from from 6
a.m till i don't know 8 a.m they're
trading there
uh that site is there this seller has
this name like i i'm 100 sure they kept
track to that so we actively try to
actually change our position in the game
and in the world as well also yeah also
changing trading spots to literally
spots that no one comes like karamja for
example that also helped okay it was a
bit weird to the customer like okay i
need to actually pay a ferry now or i
need to teleport there or i mean we also
trade in a foul door for example for a
long extensive period of time and that
i've also helped like actually spots
where gamblers wouldn't even think to
look like i said i don't agree with the
ethics but i do understand what it is to
need money because i started my business
with 50 euro that i stole from my mom's
purse so that's literally where it
started and now i mean i have um i don't
want to boast or anything but i have
free cars i have two houses i have you
know
i'm living really good right now so but
yeah
there there were days where we didn't
really we literally didn't have water to
shower because they turned our water off
and i had to go shower with the
neighbors and stuff like that so i i
mean i know what it is to need money
yeah so i feel like this can make or
break any business that is selling
digital assets anything where once it
goes to the customer there's no way of
clawing it back because it really makes
you quite susceptible to fraud so how is
dealing with it and how do you deal with
it
it is an issue in in multiple factors
because one you have the in-game fraud
and the in-game scammers like you
mentioned earlier where they would
actually pose as a seller or a buyer and
they would change their name and we
tried to scam the game that's one then
you have the actual problem of fishers
that would actually hack a bank account
and then you know use that to to buy
gold because you can't do this anymore
like usually fishers go and hack a bank
account they would go and buy bitcoin
that would be the perfect solution it's
untraceable it's whatever right but this
like if you want to buy down on kraken
or on binance you're going to ask for
your customer verification
most gold sellers i mean they're going
to ask for a picture of your passport
but that's gonna be it back in the day
you know that's what we used to do we
used to ask for a picture of passport
buying a picture of a passport really
doesn't cost that much you can literally
buy this off the dark web scammers know
this
so then we had to up our game to where
we started asking for phone then they
started using spoof phone numbers and
then all that other kind of work around
then you have to do biometric scanning
and this is actually
the best way to go about it i think if
you actually have a good know your
customer base uh solution and
verification system that you can get
around the scammers but it's hard
because a lot of customers just don't
want to do it because they don't trust
it because that's another issue there
are bad apples in the society of gold
sellers there are actually scamming
websites there are discord sellers who
literally scam you so to ask a customer
to put trust with their real life
identity document is hard and not a lot
of people do it so that way we also get
hit because we lose customers there's
another issue to this as well for
example you are a regulated business we
do have contracts with banks we do work
with payment processes it's 2022. like
the golden days of paypal are gone
because paypal just literally locks your
account and once they figure out that
you're selling in-game currencies they
lock your account it's done it's really
hard these days to find a decent payment
processor that can actually process visa
and mastercard payments for you if you
do find one
they're very strict about it if you have
a too
high charge back rate they kick you out
the door so you're going to have to make
sure that your chargeback rate is low or
you lose your payment process they
walk your counter they keep your money
for six months if your chargeback rate
is too much and obviously you lose the
money that if you have a chargeback so
let's say customer orders a thousand
dollars worth for gold you lose that you
lose another 20 to 40 dollars for
chargeback fee
they complain they want to see your kvc
protocol and so forth it's helped it's
just like a never-ending story of
scammers getting smarter and then you
trying to combat their techniques but
then they get smarter again and then you
need to adjust your system and it's
literally a never-ending game it's crazy
so if we look towards the future now
obviously you've been in business for
years but people are curious if you
believe there's a viable long-term
career in this going forward and if not
do you have any sort of backup plan
first of all if you would have asked me
this in 2017 i would have said yes this
is a long term career
if you would ask me now i would say
probably not because rw2e is going to
end
somewhat does that mean i don't have a
stream of income anymore no because i
actually have free companies i have a
company that is focusing
for real estate investment um i have a
social media branding company that
actually does you know seo google
analytics we make websites we write
blogs we do all that kind of good stuff
and then i have this company so i also i
have an investment portfolio and crypto
so no obviously if rwt would actually
die would i be sad yes obviously this is
my first baby this is my first business
but am i going to go under definitely
not because i've learned so much from
this yeah so it sounds like you'd be sad
to see the cash cow go but you've
diversified in the meantime yes okay so
this next one is just kind of like some
speculative bs but i wonder if you can
give some rough insight into how large
the
gold market is in terms of money traded
i can really say it's huge like i'm just
one website but we're in revenue we're
at a couple of million every year when
you think of other websites that are
close to your size how many are out
there
it's at least a couple i mean we we do
talk figures with each other and i've
seen proof of websites that revenue-wise
close to a million every month so
i mean i wouldn't consider myself
the biggest obviously not but we are one
of the biggest websites like half a
million in revenue for one website per
month you have like i don't know 10
websites that are bigger there's
obviously websites that are smaller but
if you combine that it's insane amounts
of money that gets transferred every
single month like every single day
it's crazy it's way bigger than games
like world of warcraft or anything like
that the team literally thrives on it
the whole thing that's going on with rwt
if they would actually remove the dual
arena in full which they are going to do
and if they would actually crack down on
gold buying as a whole i don't see
runescape surviving for
another couple of years it's going to go
downhill more and more and either
they're going to let it die or they're
going to revert changes and actually
have this open hand conclusion to gold
buying where they're actually going to
you know not punish gold buyers anymore
and they're actually just going to go
back to the old system where they just
you know they'll have harsh punishments
to uh to sellers so i think that's
what's good it's uh i feel like it's a
hard problem for jagex i feel like
they're looking at bonds as the solution
because obviously they've said it
themselves fifty percent of the player
base does real world trade and i think a
lot of them won't play if they can't
real world trade but the problem they
have now with bonds is that there's no
real increase in demand for them people
buy them for membership and they buy
them for name changes and that's about
it and we can see already with like the
announcements they've made the price of
bonds is already tanking and
realistically the farther that price
falls the less incentive people have to
actually buy bonds because they get less
value for their money how much is a bond
now do you actually know so it's seven
dollars usd per bond and right now they
sell for uh about 4.3 million gp each so
that's what uh a little less than two
dollars a mill like a dollar seventy or
something a mill that's crazy i mean
come on i don't i don't see anyone doing
it like that the quantities are also way
too small like they're our average order
is like
fifty dollars worth so that's at least a
hundred mil if not more
so if you're gonna have to start doing
that in bonds i mean good luck with that
it's too time consuming it's too costly
and no one's gonna do it even the
botters don't buy bonds through gold
they they get the cheap mexican
membership codes
yeah i know i know it's crazy
and so this one is more of a hunch i've
always kind of had did many gold sellers
manage to ride the bitcoin wave
i think so yes i mean eventually you get
rolled into btc whether you want it or
not because in this community it is a
payment method that is used a lot i mean
we all keep some kind of btc or
experiment stock because we need it to
send payments because most of the people
that sell gold they want to get paid in
bitcoin so obviously we need to keep
bitcoin on and to actually pay our
suppliers but on the other hand it goes
double you know i remember the bull
market from 2017 2018 when it all went
to hell and then obviously you have the
the other effect i mean now now times
are good but for example bitcoin wise
times were bad
2017-2018 so it's it's a double-edged
sword you know so that wraps it up for
my questions i wonder if there's
anything i missed that maybe you want to
add not specifically i think you covered
it pretty full i mean we've been talking
for a while so
so i hope you guys enjoyed this really
long interview if you made it to the end
let me know i'm always so fascinated by
this stuff that i just didn't want to
cut any of the questions from it just
great insight into how the gold industry
works on runescape and now more recently
what jagex is doing to combat it this
was recorded in early december so a lot
of these changes had just kind of come
into effect but maybe we'll do a
follow-up interview in maybe a year's
time and kind of figure out like what's
going on so i hope you enjoyed this and
i'll catch you guys in the next one