Cedric Youngelman - Why $1 Million Bitcoin is Closer Than You Think
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Hey, hey, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix podcast. I'm your host, Cedric Youngleman. In this episode, I had the pleasure of being invited on the Byte Federal podcast and sitting down with my good friend Paul Tarantino for an engaging conversation about Bitcoin's transformative impact on personal identity, global economics and investment strategies.

We explored how Bitcoin challenges traditional finance norms, like the concept of diversification. And I shared my perspective on the mindset shifts required to thrive in a Bitcoin-driven future. It was a dynamic and thought-provoking discussion that I truly enjoyed.

Now, before we get started, I want to tell you about the most locally world famous Bitcoin event of the year happening this January in Naples, Florida. And that is Bitcoin Day Naples 2025. It's coming in one week on Saturday, January 18th, where Bitcoiners from all around the South Florida region will be gathering to share, discuss and debate some of Bitcoin's greatest ideas for the new year.

Speakers like Larry Lippard, Bob Burnett, CJ Constantinos, Maddie Ice, Nico, and Carly Benson will be there, and others like Michelle Weakley, Charlie Shrem, Paul Tarantino, and me. Your ticket is an all-inclusive access to connect and hang in real life with some of your favorite Bitcoiners that you see on all the best podcasts, including this one.

You can get $21 off your ticket by going to bitcoinday.io and typing in promo code MATRIX at checkout. Go to bitcoinday.io and enter promo code MATRIX. Hope to see you there, and I'll be there all weekend. So I hope you enjoy this rip. Again, the only thing I'm going to ask of you is if you can please go and subscribe to the RSS feed and our YouTube channel. And if you do want to get in touch with me, it's Cedric at thebitcoinmatrix.com.

And now let's enter the Bitcoin matrix. What is real? How do you define real? You can't jump into cash. Cash is trash. What do you do? You get out. My guest today, Cedric Youngleman, if you don't know him, he runs the Bitcoin Matrix podcast. And he gets to talk to lots of people in this space. He's been doing it for a number of years. And so he's he's

uh got a lot of things on his mind and i've enjoyed getting to know cedric over the last couple years because he always uh opens my eyes to new potential uh outcomes um i like to think of you dude as like like the guy on the wall right like i find the guy in the basement putting all the strings and pinning them up to the pictures and then you come down to the basement with me and you're like oh paul you got it all wrong and you just start moving the strings around and you reconnect everything for me and then i'm like i never thought of it that way but

I could see the potential. What are you saying? That's like my entire relationship with you. And I think you have that impact on a lot of people because you think way outside the box in a positive way, because it's always good to hold multiple potential outcomes, right?

So I appreciate that in you, and I'm glad you're here with me today. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's awesome to be here, especially with you. We've become friends over the last, I don't know, two years now? Yeah, probably. It's great to be here at Byte Federal. Thank you. You guys are doing awesome things, and the space is really cool. You know, I do like to be the fly on the wall, not just the guy at the wall maybe, but like hearing what's going on and kind of tapping in.

Speaking maybe of the guy at the wall, sometimes maybe... I do like to think outside the box and contrarian, not just to be contrarian, but to kind of float what could happen. And I could kind of have strong opinions that I could hold loosely and move on. But I was...

kind of having one of those moments where I thought I was having a lot of real thoughts and I was getting crazy and I was telling my wife, I'm like, wow, it's like a beautiful mind in here. It's crazy. And she's like, you haven't seen the movie. And I'm like, I know, but you gotta picture it. I'm at the wall and this is going on and that's going on. And she's like, that's nothing like the movie. And I'm sure there's nothing like that in your mind. But yeah, it's fun to kind of get into that stuff. It's kind of

Interesting to try to tap into what's going on in the world. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, see what's going on and figure it out and try to maybe prepare yourself or especially mentally these days. Yeah, that's a great place to start. I was literally doing that this morning, thinking about all the change, geopolitical, financial, fiscal and monetary policy, presidential policy.

administration elections, wars. There's so much shit changing rapidly that, and Trump's about to step into that. To me, it's going to be an absolutely chaotic first six months to maybe a year. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's really, I think a lot of weird things are getting normalized. Like just this United Healthcare CEO thing

I mean, murdered on the streets of New York, and it takes five days to find the guy, and they find him at a McDonald's. The whole thing's kind of weird, but forget about the particular incident. It's normalizing sort of vengeance and violence against people, CEOs or the elite, whatever you want to call it. Political assassinations, economic assassinations are getting normalized.

And so that's kind of scary. That's like fourth turning stuff. Yeah, it is. And I just, I don't know if you've noticed it. Maybe it's just my feed, but the last month on X, the amount of violence I'm seeing, like just watching on X, maybe it's because I'm so in shock and I'm actually watching it that they're feeding me more of it, but it's... Well, it got really bad for me about six months ago, where it was a lot of...

pure sort of things that were trying to drive racism, I thought. A lot of racial violence, just a lot of violence in general. Somehow for me, my feed that toned down a bit. But it is strange how there's like a water cooler moment to the feed that probably shouldn't be there in terms of like we're all looking at maybe some issues the same, at least maybe in our spheres or bubbles.

And even like, I'll talk about it with my wife and like, we have the same feed. Really? Yeah. It's like, we'll, she'll bring up a tweet and I'll be like, yeah, no, I was, I just sent you that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that makes sense because you know, it's listening to you talk too. Sure. I guess. Uh, but,

It's kind of, we should have very different, we should have a lot more variety in our feeds, I feel like. Okay. And the issues that, there shouldn't be as many issues I feel like bubble up maybe or stay there for so long. Right, right. That seems, the algorithm definitely seems like driven towards some goal. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. And driving conversations and maybe it's misinformation or disinformation or just distraction or whatever.

Maybe there's more to it. And I wonder how many entities are fighting over that algorithm. Like, you know, trying to, you know, game it for those purposes outside of Twitter. Yes. You know, and have moles in Twitter and stuff. I mean, I don't know how far it goes. I don't know either. That's a really important algorithm. That's incredibly undervalued. What is it, like a $100 billion company now since? I don't even know. And we bought it for like $44 billion, which is really nothing. But it feels totally different in there now.

It does. It feels a lot better. Yeah. But at the same time, I think that this is going towards being like the WhatsApp platform where they're IDing everybody on the platform. They're incentivizing the platform for you to be verified. He's going... I mean, he comes from the PayPal world. Yep. So he's going to roll out money on some rails there with some sort of currency. Yep. I mean, I think he would be best if he went with the dollar. And then...

Or, I mean, obviously Bitcoin would be the best, but I think he's not going to do that. And so maybe it's the dollar, or maybe it's Dogecoin, or maybe some coin, Elon coin. I don't know if it gets that far, but that's the scary part of it, I think. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. I mean, Trump is...

You know, obviously pro-Bitcoin, but he's also very pro-crypto. Right. Which could be CBDCs and stablecoins. Could be all sorts of things. And surveillance. And I have no idea. He could be the guy that just says, make your own money. Go for it. Do whatever you want to do. Well, I think there'll be a lot of that. You know, in some ways there should be.

Sure. Like, I mean, we had private money in the 1800s. It was successful. I mean, there's an argument to be made there. There's more risk. A libertarian perspective of let the market decide. And I can appreciate that. As long as it's not like rug pulls. Yeah, exactly. And outright fraud and scams and predatory behavior. Right. And I think that...

You even look at some... I mean, securities don't have to all be shitcoins. I think in a Bitcoin, there'll be a financialized world. There'll be credit and there'll be equity and there'll be securities and there'll be bonds. They'll just be structured differently. Right. I mean, think about it today. Think about all the financial products that are available today that have a huge treasury component to them. Sure. Yeah, of course. Right? Right. Because it's your base life. So in the future...

Why would not BTC be a part of so many of these financial products? Right. And loans would just have to outperform the rate of Bitcoins with natural return. Right. But back to like say Trump and Musk and like I'm not sure. You know, I have an optimistic view. It feels way more optimistic now than it did six weeks ago. I kind of feel that the world feels a little different, more orange, bright orange future. I'm still really weary. They still have like several steps to take.

I think Free Ross day one is, I mean, if we don't see that day one, I'm going to start questioning a lot of promises and everything. I'm trying not to get too into the details of appointments and who has this position. I just want to see results. And in the economy, there's the Federal Reserve and everything they do there, but do they make Bitcoin legal tender? Do they get rid of capital gains tax on Bitcoin? I mean, these are real steps they can take.

That probably would benefit themselves. I'm assuming they're positioning themselves. I mean, you know, they're self-incentivized to. Yeah, we can only guess. Right. But I think we've got a really good chance that we're going to see them try all sorts of things, meaning we're going into a new monetary paradigm. The United States is going to go there.

And it has to go there because of the debt spiral. So with that transition, we're going to see things tried, we're going to see things fail, and we're going to see things retried, fail, retried, etc. Until they get something that's working towards their desired goal, which is going to be more dollars in the system, a lower purchasing price of dollars, so a weakening of the currency.

and massive economic growth. To me, that all signals, no matter all the steps it takes to get there, that all signals weakening the dollar, purchasing or at least getting out of the way of purchases of Bitcoin. So as Bitcoin price drives up, it's going to drive the use of stablecoins.

So just like the issuance of more treasuries drives more dollars in the system, you're going to get the price rising of Bitcoin generating the desire for more stable coins globally being the primary trading pair, USD and Bitcoin. And so I think like however you want to look at all these different things that could transpire in us getting there,

That's the desired goal and how they get there is going to be a rough ride because there's going to be a lot of fights to get to that point. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I do agree that it'll be a rough ride. I mean, it's very optimistic in a great way. Like, you know, struggling with the thing about the strategic Bitcoin reserve. They have such an opportunity here to recapitalize America's balance sheet. Right.

I think there's sort of that thing will get politicized down the road one day where there'll be a future politician who'll be like, "Wow, we have all these Bitcoin reserves. We have 40 trillion in Bitcoin reserves." Maybe someone like AOC is like, "Why don't we liquidate that so we could pay for free housing for everyone and destroy our reserves and dish out the wealth to the current generation?"

But I would love to even get that far and have that problem. Yeah, right. I mean, we could recapitalize Social Security. I mean, I like this planned sailors rolling out where we just...

you know, recapitalize America and demolish and demonetize gold and our enemy's ability to like economically fight against us. Yeah. And put them all behind us. And this is that moment where other countries are obviously watching what we're talking about. And we are talking about that as a nation. These are all things that are on the table that as a Bitcoiner for the last, I don't know how many, you've been in a long time. It's hard to fathom that we're here so fast. Yeah.

it's like all these things we've been talking about that are that were at some point in the future and they boom they're all right now but you know based on our all our conclusions already like we all kind of expected this and that's these are grand things to say and that's a broad generalization but like you know if you believe in like everything divided by 21 million that means you have to blow through 10 000 a coin you have to blow through 100 000 coins right you have to blow through a million you have to blow through 10 million like

You know, unless you're just being sort of obnoxious or like, you know, if you believe in that math and that true sort of like this is a denominator. So all these things aren't they're shocking that we're going through it, but they're kind of expected. No, that's what I mean. I didn't mean that's not shocking that we're going through. It's shocking that it's all coming right now to me, at least, because like when you hear about, you know, when I first heard Samson talk about the Omega candle and going to a million, I was like, you know, maybe the next cycle.

But now I'm seeing all these data points. I'm going, Samson probably knew this before I knew it. And that doesn't seem too far fetched. There's definitely a few different outcomes that could get us to a million like real fast.

I think we have to go to a million real fast. Right. That's what I mean. In a lot of ways, whether it's this cycle or next. Like, there are going to be vicious swings up that I think a lot of people are expecting lower returns going forward or less volatility. And I don't think that's necessarily the case at all. You know that. We have such a small sample size behind us. Yeah. And you have that S curve, right? You have to go up at one point, straight up. Straight up. And if you look at something like even, you know, you can look at something like Fidelity's report.

where they said that in 2038, it's going to be $1 billion per Bitcoin. To get there, it's violent and straight up. And I was talking to a very predominant, you could say famous Bitcoiner, who's one of the most bullish Bitcoiners you could ever meet. He was like, how bullish you are? And I was like, well, you got this article from Fidelity. He's like, oh, come on, that's hocus pocus numbers. No one could even like, it's just like in a bar wasted numbers.

But like, I don't think they're like out of line if you really believe everything divided by 21. I don't know who I don't know what her title was, but I just saw Fidelity. She's like a cryptocurrency analyst on CNBC from Fidelity that said this cycle 500 to a million. Hey, Bitcoiners, invest in Bitcoin with confidence. Why do I recommend River? River is the best place to build your Bitcoin wealth and they offer zero fee on recurring buys.

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Yeah, I mean, again, I think it's like there could be unforeseen events. Like no one foresees China banning mining for the ninth time. No, I'm sure there's stuff coming. No one foresees FTX and Celsius and Luna. And so there could be sort of black swans, really weird things. Like, again, I'm not rooting for or against it, but what if Trump got assassinated and the, you know, Powell lowered –

What would it be? Like he would lower rates? No, raise rates dramatically and back the currency for the next 10 to 20 years with gold. I mean, like there could be events or just markets get decimated because of World War. There are bare cases that are, you know, outside of maybe what we expect to happen. But the more we all expect one thing, maybe again, you have to be a little contrarian. It's like something else could happen. And even if we go up

very fast it's gonna happen in a way we can't expect yeah for sure and and that that's the thing about like everyone thinks that bear markets are harder than bull markets but like you'd uh it's harder to ride a bull than it is to a bear like a bear is a less viciously mobile animal i'm not saying you have a better chance against the bear i'm just saying like you could ride the back of a bear probably longer than the back of a bull and a bull literally tries to throw you off by going lower

And the difference with the bull and the bear is in a bear market, your losses are capped. It's like options. You put in what you put in, and then you can only lose that amount. It's finite. So you could be like, yeah, I'm going to zero. I'd only lose that amount. But in a bull market, your losses when you sell are infinite in terms of what you miss out on upside potentially. No, I know. This cycle is going to be really hard to sell. This cycle is going to be really hard to sell. Well, think about it. If you go from like...

$200,000 to $750,000 in a very short period of time. It's going to be brutal. And what that's going to do to people's sort of their own wealth. Whatever you are worth at that $200,000 point of Bitcoin. So let's say you're lucky you got to one Bitcoin. You're really fortunate. So now you're worth $200,000 with this one Bitcoin. I'm not saying you don't have other things in your life going on. And then it shoots up to $750,000.

Now, at that point, you could sell 200,000 and you have all the... But you're really facing this thing. It's like you're worth 750, right? And now maybe you have a wife and kids, you have people dependent on you. And then that thing drops down to 175. You're going to look like a schmuck and feel horrible.

and maybe still be better off at 175 than you were at $15,000 Bitcoin. But those are psychologically really hard. And all Bitcoiners who have been around a while have gone through this. But the higher the numbers go, I think the harder those things get to ride maybe in ways that we all don't expect yet. You know, the choices that people have to make. I've been lucky enough or unlucky or unlucky enough, however you want to look at that, to not sell any of it ever.

But, you know, it is always a, it's unbelievable the amount of emotional pressure you have at those peaks where you just, once you hit like, I remember when we hit 17,000 back in 2017. December of 2017. And we were talking about ETFs back then.

- Right, 'cause it was inevitable. - We were like, ETF is gonna happen like eminently. - Right, why wouldn't they? - And we would go to 100K. We were thinking 100K back then. - Gemini was applying. There were also some, somebody say, you know, it was like Chinese New Year was gonna, Wall Street bonuses. I mean, there were a lot of other-- - And then futures came out. - Yes, which demolished the market a lot of ways. They were cash settled and there was a way to manipulate. - But you could see how like every cycle, when you get into that emotional state,

where like, let's say we get to that 500,000, you're going to be going, oh my God, it's literally like three bars and we could be at a million.

You know, I mean, it's like... Right, but you also don't know if... So back to the whole thing, like you're at 500,000, are we going to a million this cycle or back down to 90K? Right. And that's going to be really difficult for a lot of people to ride that bull. Yeah, exactly. And the uncertainty of that. Yeah. And face the people that are responsible. I'm sure you're experiencing this, right? Like I talked to a friend yesterday, I've been talking to him about Bitcoin for a long time. And I've never sold either. Good for you. And...

He's asking me about Bitcoin now, ever since we broke all ties, you know, and says, hey, I want to talk to you. Let's sit down. And so I was talking to him yesterday and, you know, he's going on like, where do you think it could go? And I said, well, you know, we're certainly, you know, within the next four to five years going to be at a million dollars a coin. And he just looked at me like, I know it's hard to believe, but.

I don't even want to tell you this, but that's kind of like the start. Like it's just the start. Like you just want to buy as much as you can right now and have it be money that you don't worry about for the next 10, 20 years. And he just kind of looked at me like just that mentality of shifting somebody away from, oh, here's a hot stock tip to this is the new monetary system that

This is becoming the pristine collateral of the future financial system. You have to hold this forever. That's how it changes your life. If you sell it, you're going to regret it. Like the shift in the mindset of that blows people away. And then I'll get the, I literally, literally 30 seconds later, he goes, well, but what do you think about Doge?

He's like, well, you know, he just at that moment, he traded against you. What's that? He's trading against you. What do you mean by that? So he's saying, okay, like, wow, like Bitcoin might still go from 100K to a million. I would 10X if that happened to me. That's what he's saying to himself. He's like, all right, maybe I'm going to put 10 grand in this.

And a lot of people, when they don't have any Bitcoin, they can only consider new money allocations to this thing. Like, how much would I go to the casino and spend on this Bitcoin thing that might 5 or 10x from here? I'm a little too late. I'll never catch Paul.

And they're not trading with their future self because they're not saying to themselves, whatever I have, wouldn't it be nice to 5 or 10x that? In a very sort of what I see as a risk-free way if you study this asset. But they're saying, no, this is the most riskiest thing I could do. I'm going to put as very little into it as possible. But

If I could buy this thing with very low price point that Paul's not in, especially. Yeah. Then not only could I do well, but I can might beat Paul. Cause that's really the whole game at this point. What small amount can I put into something else that I don't care about? That might be Paul. How do we change that game? And the other thing I saw, the other thing I saw that is, because they're also like, well, you know, I mean, if like, if this thing is true, then I'm gonna go around sounding like Paul and I don't want to do that. I don't want to be in a cult. Yeah.

And, you know, I just want a million X because I'm a nihilist right now. Like, I'm not doing well. And no one, very few people at that point think like Michael Saylor with like, what can I reallocate to Bitcoin? Yes. Right. Like, what do I want to think? Oh, that thing's better. I put in the work and it's better than the things I have.

Because the point you're talking about, they like the things they have. They're up 10%, 20%, 30% in fiat terms. It's doing well. They feel like that's great. They would never sell. This is what they're investing in. Their guy told them to buy that. And then the other thing I noticed, you call it the normie land. I talked to a lot of boomers over Thanksgiving, like a little on the older side of boomers. But for so many people, 100K feels like this natural, organic, limiting barrier. Yeah.

We're at another natural top. The thing is 100K. You've achieved, now for them, it's not a million dollar thing, but it's like a Lamborghini costs half a million. It is the thing now.

And the only way they can go is really up like 10, 12% or down from here. And again, it's not pristine collateral. It's not money they could spend. To them, it's newfangled, something they don't understand. It's like, why is this thing worth 100K and it's over? Are you getting the emails and the texts, congratulations?

I'm getting at the dinner table over Thanksgiving like, wow, it's up a lot. I never thought it'd be this price. I've been getting the messages of like, well, congratulations.

It's the same sentiment. Right. It's over. You made it. You made it. It's the end of the race. It's over. Yeah, yeah. You should get out. I hope you got to .1 coins and go get yourself some ice cream and a Disney World vacation. And again, I think the point you made when you came on my show, which is,

I fundamentally believe in it. It goes back to unit of account, but just having a few sats. You don't have to have a lot of Bitcoin to be empowered by that, by what this new paradigm shift is. And also one day you will be wealthy because of everything divided by 21 million. 100x your life, right? But you have to have patience. You got to have patience. And if you enter the cycle now, I'd say to a lot of people, it takes like...

I think it takes three cycles, I think, maybe to retire yourself on Bitcoin if you do it in sort of a frugal way. Like you're just setting aside new money. A good friend of mine, and I know you know her, I think in 2000, I might have the date wrong, 17 or something like that, she's doing 30 bucks a day. Which is amazing and awesome. And now it's...

Close to $900,000. Right. $87,000 invested, $900,000 roughly when it hit about $100,000.

and 30 bucks a day. - And what do you think that's, how many years? - Several years. Yeah, I think it was about 2017. - Okay, do that for the next eight years now. And I think you'll see similar numbers, if not greater. But at worst, what are you gonna see? 10% of that? - Yeah, 500,000. - 500,000, right. And I think it's really hard for people to see it as a purchasing power increasing machine versus how do I 5X or 9X and is that going to be enough?

And so if you use it as a purchasing power machine, you think of it as more defensively, like whatever I have, I want to convert into that machine. It's like literally what can you afford to just put away every day and do it and come back 20 years from now because you're just going to be a game changer. Then the switch flips. What can I afford not to put into this thing?

Like, what do I have on the sideline? Well, after you go through one cycle. And you reallocate. You start to reallocate. Yes. Once you hit that cycle, you'll be like, oh, I'm not putting enough in. But you've got to get started. Yeah.

You got to get started. Also, so the people who have the no coins that you're talking to, they're doing that math in their heads, right? So they're like, okay, if I put in $1,000 today and we fly this year, then I got to put in $10 a day for the next five years to maybe get... And they get disappointed and they're like...

And it's demoralizing and it doesn't sound fast enough in a weird way. Like that's crazy because their plan is to wait another 30 years at their day job. But so five years in Bitcoin is not fast enough, but 30 years at work is going to be great at a job they hate. Right. And so they don't put in any effort. You beg them to put an effort. And so,

the guilt rides up. They're like, wow, like I didn't put in the effort when they said, now we're here, it's probably over for me. And they want to go find something else that they could go. And unfortunately you have things like maybe micro strategy now, or, you know, if you could get, talk some sense into them, um,

Well, I can't believe, dude, if I get one more question about XRP, I'm going to freaking shoot myself. It's weird that that's the big thing right now. The Garling House always ramps up the marketing every cycle. It's amazing how effective they are. Oh, my God. The proof of marketing is massive over there. They're up like 200% and they're not higher than where they were at their prior peak. I've been telling everybody, and you should all do this, if you're considering any shitcoin,

price it in Bitcoin, don't price it in dollars and see how it's tracked against Bitcoin. If you look at XRP, XLM and Cardano, which is a three I just did for somebody, uh,

Every cycle is a lower peak. Every cycle is a lower peak. And it just keeps driving towards zero. Everything goes to zero against Bitcoin. That's a meme because it's true. And the best thing you could do is just buy the Bitcoin right now because that is where everything's going. I like what Trace Mayer got me doing, which was track your net worth in...

dollars in gold and Bitcoin. And of course, they should all be trending up. Sure. But you'll notice that the Bitcoin is going the slowest and trending towards the amount of Bitcoin you have in your portfolio. So if you start off with, you know, like...

one Bitcoin. And so Bitcoin's worth 100K and you have 100K in your 401k. After a year, you're going to have like 500,000 in Bitcoin and 110,000 in your 401k. You'll be up in fiat terms. You'll be up nothing in Bitcoin terms if you didn't add. And so you're trending towards like your whole portfolio. You could have

a million in your 401k and 100,000 in your... And you're going to trend towards 100% Bitcoin. Exactly. And you'll see that it's going to be harder and harder for you to grow your stack over time. Yeah. Which I think, you know, is I think also...

Kind of demoralizing, I think, for a lot of people coming to Bitcoin now. Again, I think dollar for dollar, they'd be better off putting any dollar they could into Bitcoin and improving the purchasing power and getting their money out of the system and all things like that. Even a 401k, you might have tax advantages, but they might raise taxes over different regimes and administrations. Your money's trapped in there. You can't utilize it. You can't use it in emergencies. Yeah.

Think about all the things you could self-finance if you can access all your money. You could self-fund your own healthcare, your own car insurance maybe, your own, probably just get rid of mortgage insurance bullshit, but like property insurance, well, can't get a property tax, but a lot of things you could self-fund.

if you had your own money and access to your own money, and probably even just live a better lifestyle if you had access to your money now. And even redeploy it differently if you could take it out of the system. And then you take so much risk out of your life. So speaking about one of those financial calculations I hear a lot of people making today is like real estate versus Bitcoin. Yeah. Right? I have a couple of friends, millennials, that are like just buying their first home and would always ask me like, you know, about down payments and things like that. And

I would always tell them, I said, you know, if you just compare the compounded growth rate, you'd probably be better to take that down payment and put it in Bitcoin and wait, and then have a bigger down payment to get a better house and not sell all your Bitcoin or borrow against your Bitcoin to get the bigger house, whatever you want to do, you know, but the economic calculation between real estate and Bitcoin, that's a hot topic. I think for millennials, because so many of them have been priced out of the housing market for so many years. Um,

And it continues to get tougher and tougher with rates rising. So what are your thoughts on that?

My first thought, and I love this topic though, and I think it's very timely. And I think there's two different ways of looking at it, just to frame it up, is people who don't have a lot of Bitcoin and are thinking about buying a house, and people who have Bitcoin for a while and maybe thinking about buying a house. And then there's people who have a house and thinking about selling their house for Bitcoin. Let's start with the people that are at zero. No Bitcoin and no house. I think to kind of give some love maybe to the real estate people, because I

I think before Bitcoin, a lot of people, and I think about this myself, I was a securities person, an equities guy before Bitcoin. If I was going to invest, I was interested in stocks from a very young age. And there were some people who were just interested in real estate over stocks.

And the differences are, I think, primarily around sweat equity and leverage. So if you like leverage, there's more accessible in real estate. You can leverage in stocks, but harder when you have less of a portfolio and starting out. And in real estate, you can put in work, physical work, to juice the asset or protect the asset or enhance profitability. Right.

So I think a lot of people come into Bitcoin already loving real estate or loving their stocks or, you know, and whatever evolution they have. And I think also around a home is so much about beyond the financial. Unfortunately, homes have been priced beyond their utility value. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the hardest dilemma. They're overpriced for their utility.

But there's an emotional component to housing that is separate from the financing of it. For some people, I think housing represents stability, security. Maybe you have children and you want to position yourself in a certain part of town, whether it's public school or private school or homeschooling. You want to know that you're going to be there for eight to 10 years. You want to

And you can debate, okay, you can maybe rent in perpetuity in a place, but it's harder to know the landlord's not going to want to move in or kick you out or sell. And you can do more improvements when you're at home. You might not do as well with your money as a renter. I love not doing any of the home repair. I think that should be a whole out. Like you have a car mechanic. I love renting and it's like, I'll get in like leasing a car. Like I'll get a new house every three years. Well,

We'll try to do it in the same area. And I'll let the other people who manage these properties learn how to deal with windows and plumbing and electricity. And I could focus on podcasting and Bitcoin and books and philosophy, you know, and like just special, you know, but.

There's so much to that. So I think that there are a lot of people now who maybe have been in Bitcoin for a while or like, when do I maybe provide that for my family, that stability? When you do rent, maybe you're not going to put reverse osmosis on the entire house. Maybe you're not going to improve the driveway and the look of it, but maybe it'd be nice to have a better looking driveway and spend that money or better landscaping and pay for it. But

You don't when it's not yours. That's true. There's different things. Maybe you have a pool and you want a jacuzzi or whatever it might be, and you don't want to add that because you're renting. So I think it's a really personal decision. I just did a show with Leon Wankum about Bitcoin versus real estate. I mean, I think economically, I think if you're investing, if you have very little Bitcoin, I think it makes way more sense to stack sats.

And like you were saying, to not put a down deposit into a home. But I think if you're on the other side of that equation and you're like, when does housing look cheap enough in Bitcoin terms? When do I, you know, and there's also this like fiat mindset, I think, of like, to some extent, like never, ever selling, ever, ever, ever, never, ever selling your Bitcoin is a little bit fiat.

Yeah. Right. You're never going to, I mean, it is money. It is savings. Well, so, you know, can be used to enhance your life at some point. This is where I've struggled with it with these. You might not live forever like a shark. When I've talked, we'll get there. We'll get there. I, where I've struggled with people is that I think when they hear me say what I'm about to say, they think I'm, I've lost my mind. And I tell them like, don't buy the house, take your down payment, put it in Bitcoin.

And then just set up a DCA and start... Take a HELOC out of the house. No, but I mean, be the guy who doesn't know Bitcoin, right? And just they think I'm out of my mind when I tell them this. Put however much you can put in per week and just let it grow. In four, five, 10 years, you're going to have enough there that you're going to be able to do a transaction to secure a home that you never thought you could have. And in that meantime...

property prices are probably going to be demonetized because Bitcoin is stealing that monetization. And interest rates are going to get lower because you have the Bitcoin. So they're going to look at you as a prime borrower. They're going to give you the best possible rate. And you may not even have to sell your Bitcoin to get the mortgage. That's such a vastly different world than they could have ever imagined. And then they hear that coming from the guy down the street.

Who goes fishing and surfing and they're like – That's a lot of killer messaging. I think I'll just buy the house. Well, a lot of people – I mean I've gone through this conversation with neighbors in my community who we all – some of us moved to Florida in the last two, three, four years. We're renting to start. Some have gone on. They were chasing the market at its peak almost it seemed like.

um but there's a lot you know there's a they don't put in the work with bitcoin um but it's uh there's it's a really emotional factor i think housing that's a little bit beyond economics um and uh

I think those things are coming way quicker than everyone realizes, you know, but for a lot of people like building that bridge to that world, even if you are a big pointer is not easy. And I think, you know, the other thing around, like you're the guy who down the street who fishes and all these things. And they say, might say like, Oh, he drives this car or like that thing. And they don't see it as like, Oh, maybe like to save and afford sack. If you look at my car, you have,

no idea. But they're also like, they're saying to themselves, like, I can barely survive. It's not Paul specific, but they're saying like neighbor X, my friend Paul Tarantino did not find the new global reserve currency in the world before MSNBC and CNN tell me that. Like, there's no way he found it first. And they would want to see more signs like in like what they think about crypto rich,

for you to like, and so like they have to almost go through several cycles with the scoreboard where like you told them at X number and the first time you told them a Bitcoin, they probably looked at the price and they don't remember the price. So sometimes the price has to go up several orders of magnitude before they even notice the price.

And then it goes to several orders of magnitude before they start. You have credibility with them. And that's where they feel too late. And they also think that this thing is not real and that Paul can't be on to this thing that's still going to go up in value. It's so disappointing because I just want to help people.

Yeah, but most people don't know that most people are not looking to help others because they see every trade in their life as against you or you against them. That's fiat. Because that's fiat. So there's no trade that has ever existed where we both can— Where we both win. Right, where we both win, unless your cousin Bobby who cut me in on the deal. A deal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And we cut other people out of the deal. Right. Right? And that's how everything has worked. That's also why anything that goes up a lot and price looks scammy. Yeah. It sounds like... If you even bring up... You should buy Bitcoin because it goes up in price. It's like... But I hear like...

People like, you know, I'll get like people were like, oh, um, said, uh, I heard you're the Bitcoin guy. You're the Bitcoin boy. You're the Bitcoin guy. Go do orange pill. Do it, do it. Orange pill now. And I'll be like, nah, man, I'm cool. I just want to like, and then someone else will try to orange pill them in front of me and try to sound like a Bitcoin. I'm like, it's going to a million bro. And it's going straight to a million and you're going to miss out. And it's like, whoa, that's, this is not okay. And like, cause like think about any other context. If you were like, went up to someone and told them I was stock is going to be the

best stock in the world or some checking account got 19.2% or you could get them in construction bridge loans at 67% over three months. I mean, like these things don't sound real. - And there's always a catch. - Right, and people in the fiat world are doing so much more than their day job. They're spending 30% of their time already trying to recreate money in their portfolio, right? That's all a portfolio is.

Is your portfolio manager trying to recreate money and maintain purchasing power in a fiat world? Like, let me get a basket of goods that's going to outperform the dollar by a little bit. Not too much because we don't want too much risk. It's got to be stable. It's got to be like money. We're trying to create a currency in this thing. Right. They're trying to engineer a store of value. But that takes up a lot of time. And we've already got the best one that's ever existed. Even if you have a guy. Right.

Like, you're sweating those decisions. You're sweating the decisions of your guy. And what's also amazing is everyone's guy, you know, down at Fidelity or Charles Schwab, has never made money in their lives for themselves. Right. And I'm not trying to diminish those jobs or whatever, but they studied Keynesian economics in college, and they're handed a playbook by management, and they have very little money of their own in the market. Unless they've made any real money in the market, they're not managing your money. Right.

It's a much more exclusive network. You're not getting a great broker down at the mall's Fidelity branch. But a lot of people are like, oh, I remember over the years I've tried to help people and people were like, whoa, you're not helping grandpa. We have a guy at Morgan Stanley and we'll talk to him. And the guy at Morgan Stanley says he's doing okay and he shouldn't sell his apartment and buy businesses.

Bitcoin and prepare for the future because of social security. It's all good. So many people pay for just a pat on the back. You're doing good. You had a good year. And they want to be told what to do because it's stressful out there and it's overwhelming.

I think, you know, Bitcoin is... We sound like such arrogant assholes. Yeah, probably. But I think, well, because, you know, Bitcoin before, maybe you have these thoughts, but before Bitcoin, I started to put all my questions on the back burner because I could prove nothing in fiat land. Like everything was a fugazi.

Right? Like how money works. How those stocks should perform. Like everything's a fugazi. Everything's manipulated. Everything's corrupted. Right? And so you're just like, all right, I'm not, I can't, you grow up like wanting to fucking rage against the machine. And by like 25, you're like, all right, I just, I'm going to work. I'm going to drink this, you know, I drank tea, I didn't drink coffee, but I'm going to grind through the day. I'll go to the gym. You know, I got other things to do. You're not going to fight the world like when it's all fiat. And then you find Bitcoin and,

And you're like, wait a minute, there's this thing that I can find a real truth. Like you can't, no one can debate that they'll never, like the way the code is written, if you run your node, that your node will never accept more than 21 million Bitcoin. It doesn't have to be written into the code. It's how you run your node, right?

And no one can debase your units in the system. And no one can, like, again, back to the example, like, you want to get in business and, like, you want to give up your corporate job. And you're like, I'll open a bar. Are you going to be able to get a license? Like, does the mayor know you? Like, are you close enough to the mayor? And any of these games, like, everything has business risk. Like, you know, you got your life savings at what, Amazon? Yeah.

What if Jeff Bezos gets a blowjob on video and that leaks and your retirement's gone now because you thought you were in the best stock? You could read their 10K and be like, okay, I know they're going to come out with this amazing product. And they could fail to execute. You're going to put your life savings in that?

And the more you diversify, like, and this is someone who grew up, I mean, finance and accounting degrees is like, they teach you to diversify, right? It's like the, like, no one builds wealth through diversification. And literally, when you boil it down, you're like, okay, like, I'm going to get more involved in things I know less about.

Every bet you get from your main bet is a deviation from how much you know about the main thing. And how much do you know about Amazon stock? Are you really reading the 10K every year and the quarterly and the minutes and going to the calls? You know nothing about these things. And you're going to put your life savings into these things? And so Bitcoin finally gives you this thing where I could stop arguing at the parties about everything.

even national politics. Like, fuck it. Like, I don't have to get involved at all at any national politics conversations with anyone I don't want to because I now have this tool that defends me against enough of it. Right. Right. And like, maybe I had a vote with my feet and I moved from Illinois to Florida, right, to change some things around me. But like, Bitcoin was a big part of that journey. I'd like to think I would do it without Bitcoin, but like,

You know, it's a financial tool. Yeah, it's fuck you money. Right. And it's... So all of a sudden, like, you have this thing where, like, no one can argue with you. Like, you... It's not debatable. And that empowers you to go back to all those other things that you put to the side and said, like...

Remember when I was five years old and I was like, hey, dad, those clouds look weird. And like, yeah, I mean, that's what planes do. And you're like, no, I don't think planes do. And like, shut up. And like 40 years later, you're like, no, I was right. I was right. You know, and I was like, oh, like, remember when like I was like questioning like food in my 20s? I did. I became a fucking vegetarian or pescatarian for nine years. Like, why?

Why was I looking at sort of the mass nation industrialization of food? And, you know, I might have went down some wrong rabbit holes, but I was still trying to figure out like what I should be doing better. Right, right. And I was still finding that. And I couldn't find any truth there until like Bitcoin. Do you think that's like just the curious mindset that,

got people into Bitcoin earlier. I think that's all it is, is truth seekers. Truth seekers. And then not just truth seekers, but having the humility to admit you're wrong about all the things you hold dear and dear. And change your mind. Right. The willingness to change your mind. So there are a lot of people that might be truth seekers that are a little too arrogant because they believe in the truth they already hold. Yes. And that's where the humility thing comes in. Right. That's why I love what you said earlier, you know, strong beliefs held lightly. Right. Because... Which I got from Mark Yusko, I think. If you're not able to change your mind quickly...

in the face of new information. - Right, 'cause I know I'm lacking information. - Then you're just fooling yourself. - Right, I know everything I'm thinking about, I'm lacking a lot of information. I'm trying to gather as much as I can. I'm gonna spend more time on the things that I need to know more about. But even Bitcoin, I don't, I mean, I know nothing about Bitcoin in terms of knowing everything. - That's right. - Right, and so there's always so much more to learn. Now there's other subjects I know nothing about that I don't feel the desire or the necessity maybe. - So how did, as an accountant,

How did you, what clicked for you with Bitcoin when you first found out about it? Was it your accounting background that cued you in? I definitely think that was part of it. I mean, I was drawn to like Pierre Richard, Stefan Le Verre, Robert Breedlove. I mean, these are all former accounts. But I was like-

And it's running the numbers. I think when I started hearing about it as a ledger, I think one of the things I fell down wrongly into was like triple ledger accounting. Why do you say that was wrong? At the time, because I think that made blockchain more than it was in the technology. Because it made it sound more applicable to other things outside of money. And that's one thing. Gotcha. Right. So it's sort of like a red herring at the time. Maybe that'll come back into play in a different way.

But, so yeah, I definitely think it was accounting. It was this ledger. It could run the numbers. Like I said, like you can't, the numbers are what they are and you can't change. Like I said, yeah, no, there's 42 million coins. No, there aren't, bro. Or whatever you want to like think about how you calculate money or total market value, like how you use unit of accounts. That's really,

like fundamentally uh change as an account very important though because like you know you're already used to converting things from different currencies into this currency so i never really thought about currency something as a store of value or to invest in i think that's why i missed bitcoin early on yeah right like i didn't need black market money but that was cool for people who need even if it was white market money like whatever they were buying what i thought was cool they had currency and rails but i didn't know something you could store money and i i never went

oh, I'm going to scale into the yen over the next three years because I really feel like Japan's got great central banking policy. And as a 23-year-old accountant at Ernst & Young, I'm going to take my $4,000 in disposable income and go hard into currency. And with limited investable income or savings, I wasn't looking at more esoteric plays like options and

I was like, let's just stick to the basics until I grow some wealth. But Bitcoin, yeah, I mean, really as a ledger from an accounting perspective, sure. One of the other things that really drew me, though, was sort of like that –

Well, truth-seeking, but sort of that really toxic, the toxicity of Bitcoiners. And when they would say things that sounded like you could prove it right or false or right or wrong. So they would say things like there will only be 21 million Bitcoin and everything will be divisible. So I'd have to learn what does that mean? And can I argue that?

and kind of refute what they're saying. And I found out I just couldn't, like what they said sounded like, I would love to fight with these people online and prove them wrong. This sounds retarded. Max Keiser is awesome at that, right? Like he'll dump truth bombs on you and you're like,

And as a Bitcoiner, like- And you have to go test it. Right. So you're like, I'm going to test that out. And I would be like, I kept coming up to like that. I can't get to a place where I'm like, that sounds like I can get to where they're wrong. Right. Right. So then when they would say things that were very like, well, Bitcoin's going to the moon, Bitcoin's going to a million a coin or 10 million a coin. Well, all these other things were proving out to be right. So it seemed like just from a, wow, like-

I know what drew me in the beginning. I was fighting inflation, and I was like, this seems like... And I'm not a speculative person. That's what's really... When I talk to people about Bitcoin, they sound like a speculator. And I'm moving to Bitcoin. A trader. De-risk my life. But back then, I was looking at it as speculative. And I was like, wow, maybe if I put a small...

amount of money. The way they're sounding, like maybe this thing is going to a million this cycle. And they started learning about this after that, the crash. Because I got into Bitcoin like November 2nd, 2017. Went over and down. And I did better with Chitcoins for those first six weeks. Sure.

But then you crash and you go from genius to idiot. And you're like, do I sell it all and go back to fiat or do I stay in this thing? Do I stay in it and leave my position or even increase my position and see this as an opportunity? I mean, I got started a little earlier than you, but I remember those same emotions because it's like,

the money grew so exponentially fast and then give it all back in 18 and 19. Right. You feel like an idiot. You know, eventually the price went below my initial... Am I still excited about this thing? Do I still want to learn about this thing? Do I want to put all my money on this thing? I mean, Bitcoin went below my initial purchase prices. Right. Oh, way below my initial. So I was sitting on a negative bag. Yeah. And... But...

You do. You have all those questions. It's like, was I wrong? Because I was, I believed strongly that I- Well, how much did I know? Did I know? Was I ever right? Right. You question everything. Was I right? Now we're wrong? But I guess that's, like you said, though, that question, instead of just giving up,

And questioning and questioning and questioning and questioning got me to the point where it was like, oh, my God, I just need to be buying as much as possible. You've got to do some work during that period. Oh, my God. Dude, it was like five podcasts a day. It was like nonstop. Yeah, it was a second job for sure. But you get to the point, and I remember making this decision like, I just have to buy a lot. I have to buy a lot. And then it went down to 3,000, and I was like, maybe I'm wrong, and I was afraid to touch it.

And then it came back up to like, I don't know, six or seven or 10 or whatever. And then it went, and I'm like, I got to buy, I got to buy, I got to buy. And then boom, back down to 3,800. I was like, maybe I'm wrong. Well, I remember. So, you know, you're not alone if you're having these kinds of emotions and which is why guys that have been in a long time, like Cedric, just say like,

buy it, to hold it, to never sell it. The best time to buy it, the best time to buy is when it makes you puke. Yes. And I don't know how many opportunities we're going to have like that going forward from...

you know again like it's not making you puke anymore but for somebody else there might be things somebody buys i don't know 500k and it goes down to 100k they're they're gonna feel pretty ill yeah 100 no but at 100k is when they should buy and it should make them puke i remember american huddle like so around 2019 you know i've done work now but like then there's so then there's like

uh, conviction through numbers. And then there's like learning about other people's rollercoaster rides and hearing the anecdotes. And someone like American Hottel was just really influential from two perspectives from maybe like, like smash buying during lows. So like he, he was like, he was like, he did a tweet. He was like, wow, I just,

bought a shit ton of gbtc at the time i guess he had money stuck in an account and he was like and i just had to walk around the block from not to not puke you know and he's like that probably means it's a good buy yeah you know and that over and so you you realize like when you don't want to buy is when you should and you know but um the man just hearing those things and so the knowing that you you maybe missed that moment but then the next time it goes from like

32 to 21, you're like, oh man, maybe this is my American huddle moment. Maybe this is my opportunity. And so it's good to hear from other Bitcoiners so that you can kind of learn the ropes in advance of touching. So you don't have to touch the stove and make mistakes, but you can make the most of your opportunities. I always feel like everybody's going to touch the stove and get burned the first time. So that's why I always try and set people up to just start small.

Let that confidence build over time and educate yourself as much as you want them to, you know, YOLO in with everything they have because you know, well now we're in a weird place with wall street, like the ETF being the most successful ETF of all time.

I mean, the Powell's comparing Bitcoin to gold. Like, you know, when I was at 65, when Bitcoin was at 65K and I was standing with a neighbor who's just a guy in IT. The last cycle, you mean? The last cycle? I don't know. The year ago. Just recently. Five months ago. Okay, okay.

nine months ago, whatever it was, when we were at 65K. And this was after the ETFs. And I was like, I check in with him because I first told him about Bitcoin at 15, 16K when I first met him. And because it seemed like we were, you know,

Kind of getting to know each other. And he's, you know, another father in the neighborhood. He's in IT. You would think he'd get it. And so at 65K, I was like, so I just wanted to do a poll. What do you think? What do you think of Bitcoin now? And he's like, Bitcoin now? What do I think? I just don't know.

So you could see there was just no work. All you see is the movement in price. And he turned to me and he said, you know, he had just bought the house, you know, and I think at peak. And he was like, I wish I bought this house in 2016. Yeah.

And you could see the mindset of always being behind, right? And so, like, if you're bringing me something, I must be behind. Like, there's nothing I can get in front of in this world. And that's a mindset. Like, the first, like, Kahlil talks about, too, the first thing you have to do in Bitcoin is love yourself. Like, start there. Like, believe that, like, what you find and what you believe in is true. And so, Bitcoin, like, helps people move from belief to, like, it's just fact.

Okay, it's better built money. Like it's literally like it's hard to like, this is designed to go forever. What does that mean? But you don't, you're not going to get that unless you're playing with it. I agree. And for me, like I wouldn't, I mean, my first buy was like 500 bucks. And then it became 3,000. I was like, why the hell did I not just YOLO in with everything? I thought it was an unbelievable tech. Like, you know, you start having all these self-doubts and, uh,

So it takes time to learn it and you can't be hard on yourself. I mean – But the beauty is – That takes you to love yourself and believe in yourself and that you can miss something and still not miss out in time. I mean, there's just so many factors to that. Right.

You have to not want to be like everyone else in a lot of ways. Yeah, right. Benefit yourself. Do what you can do and benefit yourself. Right. Because I think a lot of people are like, wow, if I go into this weird thing and I lose my money, everyone's going to make fun of me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'd rather go down on a ship with everybody? And now Cedric knows that...

He'll know and someone will know. And I'd rather go down with everybody and not take a chance and hope that we all, you know, all boats rise with the tide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's like, you think about, so the tide for them is the S&P 500 and,

And I love saying this and young people kind of get a kick out of it, but like, and I consider myself young, so I'm not saying it like, like that, but I'm saying like, uh, anyone with a young set of mindset, but like, I'll be like, you know, standard and poor, like, what does it stand for? It stands for standard and poor. I mean, like literally like that's the name of like what you're putting your life saving. I haven't ever thought about that. Standard and poor. It's like, like that's, it's built for you to be one of the standard and poor is like, I mean, that's what it's designed for. And like,

I don't know. You know, there's like no one who's been like, yeah, man, I got rich from investing in the standard and poors. I mean, we need the exceptional and rich index. So it's hard. I mean, I don't know. And then there's a look back. I mean, it's just there's so much that they have to be not happy that they are thinking of beyond Bitcoin.

i mean even just if they got kids they got brothers and sisters parents i mean lives are so busy now yeah and it's like wait a minute you're telling me my money is that's that's the uh because the whole game is to get more that was the foss pitch right for the kids do it for the kids

And that is a good way, I guess, to frame people's minds if they have kids. Sure, low time preference. Low time preference. Especially in build. I think it's very fiat to be like, all I have to do is... I'm not saying everyone's doing this, but some people might just be like, all I have to do is stack sets, man, and I can just ignore all the problems in the world. When I said I don't have to get into...

And the conversation about politics doesn't mean I'm not concerned with these issues or want to help do things locally where I can have an impact. But I just don't want to talk to someone ad nauseum about something that we can't solve and they're never going to kind of agree on some sort of North Pole of truth. Right? Speaking of geopolitics, excuse me, what do you think about the ramping up of the war right now?

I try not to think about it. I know. It's horrid and disgusting. But this is what I'm getting at. So what I see, I see geopolitics, the debt spiral, this new monetary frontier all meeting in the next three months. And it's like fireworks. It's Bitcoin's moment. Or maybe everything just kind of keeps going.

I don't think so. It's possible, though. Or it's possible. Everything's possible. And Bitcoin rises in price dramatically. I'm just outlining my highest probability is shit's about to get really chaotic. I think we're kind of like in the eye of the storm right now. Obviously, I mean, I felt like I was on the edge of a hurricane literally and figuratively going into the election. But now I feel like we're kind of in the eye of the storm.

And we're just starting to feel the winds blowing again. And it's going to get freaking nuts in the first six months of his administration. And I think that is literally like Bitcoin's time to shine, to show the world that it is a safe haven asset. This will be like the first opportunity where Bitcoin says it's a safe haven asset. And it becomes a safe haven asset because so many global fiat currencies are going to be under stress and decay.

So many governments are going to be under stress and decay. And this is literally the time when Bitcoin becomes the life raft for sovereigns. So if you can get in there, if you get into the boat now, I think a year from now, it'll be a whole different world.

I think it's like literally the setting of the new playing field, the setting of new rules, the Bretton Woods 2.0, if you want to call it that. But we're going to have that level of change over the next six months to a year. And it doesn't feel that way right now. I feel totally hopeful. But when I look at the little cauldrons that are spinning around the globe and in economics and in the financial system, I'm like, oh, this is going to get, this thing's about to blow. Where is the gold?

I don't know. I know what you mean. I don't mean like that in a conspiracy. I know there's a lot of gold in America. Right. Where is more gold? Apparently, there's three more trillion in El Salvador as of yesterday. Known gold. Where are vaults? Where were the biggest vaults of gold? Oh, Switzerland. Switzerland. Anywhere else? I mean, I know there's others, but I don't know exactly. I think there's some in like in Argentina, right?

I don't know if they hold it with the Bank of England. I don't know where the gold is. And I wonder- I mean, there's vaults, obviously, in lots of parts of the world. But I mean, the big vaults that store bullion, the big, big, big vaults, I believe, are all in Switzerland for the most part. So like Iran, Syria, like Taiwan, they don't have any gold? Yeah, are they buying and storing there? Because, well, my question is- Is that what you're getting at? Well, what I'm really getting at is if there's actual ground war.

Yeah. And assets are actually being at risk of being stolen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This really is a case for Bitcoin to perform really well during war if you got to sell the gold out the back door before it gets taken from you. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Right. Or even your IOU, maybe your gold is in America, but it's not being repatriated ever. This is why Switzerland wants to be neutral all the time. Right. If you have gold in America and you're not an ally of America and you'd want to sell it or get it out or... Right.

Or you lose it. That's why China is trying to move as much gold into their own country, right? I would think so. And then how at risk would their gold be? Could we get their gold? Or not we being like, oh, it's root for that. But I mean, if actual gold is at risk, then most people need to move away from physical assets that are at risk towards digital assets that are not, that are highly more defensible. I was thinking more in terms of as war accelerates,

over the next six months and I think that is going to happen like kinetic war though you mean yes yes like I think Ukraine heats up Syria gets worse Libya um all the all the stands you know everything's the the Israeli front I think it all heats up and as that happens that's going to put immense amount of stress on Fiat Fiat's going to get debased

Sure. To pay for war. Pay for war. Also, the risk of having your dollars in a financial system that is under the stress of war. And if that does what I think it's going to do, I think there's going to be a flight to Bitcoin like you can't imagine.

Right, and the national winner of that race, the state winner of that race gets to set the new Bretton Woods. Yes. Right, I see where you're going with this. That's like a two to four year process before we even get to that moment. But I think the race starts in the beginning of Trump's term. Right, because they have to amass the stockpile before you go to the next agreement. This is why we blew out to $100K and we're probably going to $120, $150 before...

Trump gets into office, Trump gets into office, and then it's a formal game on. And at that point, I think it becomes such a mad dash for the exit that the fiat globally starts to feel the pressure. So you could do a lot of like he could do tariffs and he could do other things that are pro dollar strength. But people around the world could be dumping dollars to buy Bitcoin. Net net, we could have a dropping dollar. It's in our best interest to have a dropping dollar.

if he wants to reshore manufacturing, if he wants to drive economic growth, he needs a weaker dollar. But normally in a time of war, you would see the dollar as a safe haven asset and you would see that dollar rise. I think the dollar is going to get sold along with everything else. And the flight to gold and Bitcoin is going to be real. That stress actually kind of supports the long-term Trump administration goals

of rebuilding America as a manufacturing base, re-employing people, creating an export market that goes beyond exporting our debt. So I think that this is like the point in history that we've been waiting for where Bitcoin just all of a sudden becomes like, oh, it is a safe haven asset. And then coming out of the back of that, like you said, if we have the strategic reserve or the Bitcoin stockpile or however it gets defined,

and we're actually adding Bitcoin to our balance sheet, then yeah, I think we have a seat at that table or maybe the strongest seat at that table. I want to invite you to the first Bitcoin event of the new year. And that's Bitcoin Day Naples One Day Pleb Fest, Saturday, January 18th. You can meet other Bitcoin and Bitcoin Matrix fans and hear content from some of your favorite Bitcoin voices like Larry Lippard,

Bob Burnett, CJ Constantinos, Paul Tarantino, Carly Benson, Charlie Schrem, and me. You'll get access to high-signal discussions where we can do deep dives on the macro outlook as the Trump administration takes office, strategic reserves, the monetization of Bitcoin, and even learn how to influence your friends and create your own Bitcoin community. Your ticket will also get you access to exclusive events like the Naples famous After

party, head over to BitcoinDay.io and use the promo code MATRIX for $21 off your ticket. We'll kick off the new year in style, celebrate that 100K milestone, and hang out with some of the best Bitcoiners on the planet. I'm excited to see you guys there. And now, back to the show. I mean, I would love to see Bitcoin get extremely more non-correlated with the rest of the market.

and demonstrate that value that you're saying. I mean, I just get nervous thinking about what you're talking about. Let me ask you this, though. Do you think that that correlation is... I think that just is a factor of the four-year cycle, right? Because you could look at Bitcoin in any part of the cycle, right?

But that four year cycle is so, so consistent. You can be like, oh, yeah, well, in this part of the four year cycle, we are trending with the expansion of the monetary system and therefore everything's bullish. And in this part of the cycle, we're trending down because, you know, we're pulling monetary units out of the system and Bitcoin is dropping and so is everything else.

I don't think that's Bitcoin being correlated. I think that's Bitcoin just being a monetary sponge. Right. And we're at a point in time in history where the debt spiral is so big that it's everything up, everything down, everything up, everything down. Everything's one, right? And so you just, you know, Bitcoin being the asset that goes up the most. Right, right. So in a world where everything is correlated,

And you look across that world, it's hard to invest in anything but Bitcoin. I would agree. I mean, it's a simple A-B test. And so surprising now, just discussing with people Bitcoin, I mean, just the evidence we have in front of us of what's happening geopolitically, what's happening economically, the financialization of Bitcoin, the conversation. It's surprising more people aren't just catching on. But I think a lot of that is just, I don't know if it's nihilism, I don't know if it's arrogance or lack of humility, but it's

still surprising to see it just not being a no-brainer for more people. And like you said, I think we're getting very close to the suddenly part. Yes, the suddenly part. Exactly. That's another way to say it. Yeah. And I think even if... I'd love to say... We all hope for things like retail, our friends and family to get on the Bitcoin standard. And I think anyone who gets on now is still early. I think we still have greater returns in front of us

But I think just quite frankly, the real money that's going to move us is not going to be retail. Like retail, I don't think it's going to come back in a stampede. And even if retail did come back in a stampede,

I think if institutions come in and stampede, they just have that much more capital and will drive the market that much more. I think that's absolutely where we're at. Yeah. And we're seeing it now with, I mean, Microsoft is voting on it today. I don't think they'll pass. Right. But like Amazon, I think has to vote on it. Like it's just becoming way more of like, that's now going to be standard protocol. Yes. And it's going to be, you know, the Microsoft thing, if they don't take it, is going to be one of those sort of like Paul Krugman fax machine moments. Yes. Right. And it's good.

And the real irony and the laugh is going to be when MicroStrategy buys Microsoft. Oh, my God. You know, at the end of this cycle. Right. You know, because MicroStrategy is like, yeah, we could use a little software business. Yeah. Right. And also, we have the FASB rules come out in 25. Yeah. And FASB is really a game changer, right, from an accounting perspective. It's beyond the scope of, like, game changer. Yeah.

Maybe explain to me how you think that's going to impact. Do you think that just means a flood of corporates are coming because of that? Well, it makes it a lot easier to carry Bitcoin on your balance sheet and benefit from the price appreciation. So right now, the way Bitcoin is carried on the balance sheet, you can only recognize price depreciation.

So you take a hit and the only- So you basically mark the market on every low? Is that- To the low, right? And then you don't mark to market back to any highs or any increases in price. The new rules with FASB will allow you to market to market and take, I believe, the earnings to maybe even realized earnings. Oh, wow. But so over the last year or so, I mean, MicroStrategy has been showing negative earnings every quarter.

So in Q1, which will be like when they report, like will be in April of April 2025 or May of 2025, they'll have to restate the prior year and capture all the losses as earnings in Q1.

But they don't have to pay tax on that, do they, if it's just capital gains? That's getting a little bit above my pay grade. No, I don't think they're going to pay tax on it because I don't think it's going to flow through net income like that. Okay. It's not earnings per se, but it's a- Yeah, so it's not taxable earnings. It's their balance sheet growth. Yeah, but it'll flow through EPS, I believe, is my interpretation of it. Okay.

So that's going to change how that stock is looked at by analysts. I mean, right now, any analyst... It'd be like if a company owned a bunch of brick and mortar and the value of their real estate was going up. Right, but you only, like, you marked it down when, like, there was a real estate crash. Now you own all this real estate. I mean, most small businesses and even corporations, how they really have made money over the last 50 years was from the real estate assets. You know, the plumber, like,

He bought the shop. He made his salary every year. You hear all these stories nowadays on Twitter. I don't know if they're all true, and I don't think it's going to last of all these PE guys, private equity buying these plumbing shops and just enhancing marketing. But I think that's a lot of bullshit. But think about what you just said, and it just struck me real quickly. These guys would, I mean, all of us, right? We'd go work for our salary, and it was the assets that made us wealthy. Yes, exactly.

And if you made just... Which wasn't the core business. If you could just extract 5% out of that income and you put that into assets, that's how you got wealthy. Or leverage the asset that you own. The existing asset. No. Because you didn't need repairs and maintenance on your building. So you need maintenance reserves. Put those in Bitcoin. Take the cash flow from the tenants or whatever and put that in Bitcoin. Right. This is what I was getting at. Imagine a future...

where you're still the plumber, you're still the electrician, you're still the guy mowing lawns, you're still making your 10% margin. You're going to use 95% of that to pay your bills and you take that little 5% that's left and you're going to invest in Bitcoin. Or imagine you just get paid in Bitcoin. Right. And you're getting paid in the asset.

So now you take that 0.5%, you don't even have to convert it. It just sits on your balance sheet and that builds your wealth. So running a business where you're earning Bitcoin, I don't know, Peter McCormick did this, right? I mean, that's just running his podcast and saving his Bitcoin. Well, biblically speaking, you'd want to have a third of your wealth in your home, a third of your wealth in your business. Maybe you have a garment business and you have to have inventory. You don't want a third of your wealth in money.

At the time it was gold. So that's your savings. You have a third of your wealth in liquid savings, a third of your wealth probably in the business you run. Maybe you're W2, so your balance sheet looks different. But if you own your business, your own inventory, then maybe a third of your balance sheet is your home. Property taxes sort of change the conversation about owning a home. But just from the perspective of stability and owning a home, maybe some of your wealth is in there. And that makes sense when your home has just been sold to you at utility value.

By the way, I've been talking to a company, Orange Bridge. Bitcoin-backed loans? No. So what they're doing is they're doing a non-interest line of credit. I mean, the interest accrues, but you don't have to pay monthly interest. Line of credit against your home that has to be used to buy Bitcoin.

And then when you buy the Bitcoin, they record the value that you paid for it and they're watching the value and then they start messaging you when it's up 300%. Like you should pay off your loan, you should pay off your loan, you should pay off your loan. They try and get you to sell and clear out that loan. But it's like a 10-year loan. Right. Where you don't have to make a payment. Right. But the interest just accrues. Right. And as long as your Bitcoin is growing faster than that accruement, it's basically double secured, right? The loan is secured against the Bitcoin and the real estate. Right.

Right. And every vertical from life insurance to health insurance, it all should be backed by Bitcoin to be in the reserves. But right now, life insurance companies or insurance companies can't buy spot Bitcoin. Right. FEMA needs to get off their butt and buy Bitcoin to pay for all these hurricanes. Or maybe stop causing the hurricanes. I don't know. Yeah, right. Exactly. Maybe spend less on the hurricane production. That's our other podcast. Right. That's it. Right.

But I mean, there's a whole market for people who like what MicroStrategy is sort of brilliantly engineering is refining Bitcoin for the market that can't buy spot Bitcoin and wants price exposure to Bitcoin. So, I mean, that's brilliant. I wonder when he went from like, I'm using Bitcoin as a store of value to like, I'm going to

be a Bitcoin evangelist and get other companies on board and get my store value to be better. That was fast. To I'm refining Bitcoin. Refining Bitcoin. The refining Bitcoin moment to me is sort of like Jeff Bezos knew he was attacking, he probably knew he was attacking all retail verticals before everyone else because everyone else just thought he was attacking books, right? Yeah.

But he's like, I'm doing every vertical. It just hasn't happened yet. But he didn't see AWS and cloud computing coming. Even he didn't know that was going to be 66% of Amazon's business 20 years from when he started. So I don't think Michael Saylor necessarily saw Bitcoin refining

The way he's describing how Rockefeller refined oil from the gas market the way. I don't think he thought of that four years ago. I wonder when he had that light bulb moment that it was much bigger than just stacking his own balance sheet with reserves. I mean, do you think he's building essentially a Bitcoin financial services firm over the long term? Yeah, I think it goes way beyond that.

I think it's like a Berkshire Hathaway type entity. It's just a massive conglomerate. Like what I'm trying to say, there's so many things he's... So you think they're going to buy other businesses? I don't know what they're going to do, but as the largest holder of Bitcoin, there'll be things that we can't even dream of that they'll be able to exploit from a monetization, financialization perspective. Whether it's loaning out the Bitcoin or... And I don't know.

But they're going to use that in ways that would be very profitable. Right now, it's just profitable buying the Bitcoin and giving the bond market exposure. I mean, that's a $100 trillion market or $200 trillion market that every company is copycatting him. And that's the thing. It's back to what we talked about at the beginning of the show. He can do this and he can open source what he's doing.

And two things. One, it's a win-win for everybody. He's in a special situation because he's the first mover. So, you know, even in Bitcoin, it's a win-win, right? But there is first mover advantage to buying Bitcoin in 2010 than there is to buying in 2020. You might have bought in 2010 and sold in 2014. And maybe the guy in 2020 who buys has a second weird mover advantage over you. But like it definitely would have been better to hold from 2010. Yeah.

So like MicroStrategy could fumble this somehow, but like no one's going to catch them, no private entity. Right, right. So whatever like any entity is able to do with sort of a large size of Bitcoin, they will be able to do to the greatest extent. Like other companies can copy Berkshire Hathaway, but if you don't have the capital pool, like there's only so many deals you can make and you have less of a deal flow.

Less people coming to you. Let me think about it. He buys a country. It's going to get crazy. It's going to get crazy. And I don't know what he's going to do. And I think new ideas are going to be brought to him. He's going to be like a kingmaker because ideas are brought from the smartest people in the world. Because it's kind of like if you want to build somewhere where it's going to last forever, then you've got to build on Bitcoin. Does he own more than Satoshi now?

Does the company own more? Yes. Yeah. No, I don't think so. That's also something I thought about on the way over here. Like it's been extremely quiet. His buys. Like we always hear every week now, micro strategies buys, but like we haven't heard a peep about his personal holdings. And I think a long time. And you'd have to think from a personal standpoint, even whatever his end goal is to give it all away. Like ego wise, like he has to be buying, he has to be buying a shit ton personally. Um,

Because he doesn't, even his shares in MicroStrategy are not real Bitcoin. Right. So, and you know, he's not the largest probably shareholder of MicroStrategy. So he probably wants just from his own personal standpoint, his own stash, but we don't hear about it. Oh, I wonder if he even can be in charge of that. His personal stash? Or like the release of the information? Yeah, like can he deduct the buys and...

be working at MicroStrategy saying, yeah, we should buy more Bitcoin, like engineering debt to buy more Bitcoin at MicroStrategy while simultaneously buying it for himself? I hope he's allowed to at least maybe algorithmically buy and just say, I'm going to buy every minute. He might have somebody doing it for him. Right, on his behalf, like a blind trust or whatever. Yeah, something like that. Right, sure. I don't know. Then I'd also wonder how someone... Maybe it's not because it's a commodity. Maybe it's not even an issue.

I don't know. But I really, I also think like, so he's in a position where he just sees even from a personal, like, I couldn't see things as a miner's perspective truly until I started being part of a mining farm.

Like you could read an article, you think esoteric, you could philosophize about it, you could intellectualize about it, but you're going to discover new things as a miner than you would have before. And so like I think for Michael Saylor, he's brilliant, but he had a $500 million melting ice cube, right? So he had a problem to solve. And so it's interesting how, I wonder what he's trying to look at now and where...

where he's angling to figure out new things. But I think having those problems help you develop new solutions or come to solutions sooner than people who don't have that problem. And the size of the problem brings it to the forefront of your life, I think, faster. He seems very pro-America also. Do you think there's any plans there to gift America Bitcoin?

I mean, I'm... I think there could be... I mean, why couldn't America be looking at his stash, his massive honeypot? No, I know. Like, putting the 6102 aside, like, thinking in terms of, like...

His own personal stash. Could he gift some of that to the Treasury? I mean, America might just come to MicroStrategy and say, we're going to give you $100,000 per share. Right. We're literally going to print some number that you're going to be okay with, and we're going to buy all your shares, and then we're going to keep the Bitcoin for America. And then have a shareholder vote, yeah. Or just take the share. I mean, they could just do things. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think your question hints at, is Michael Saylor aware of anything ahead of time?

Like, is there a handshake that I'm acquiring all this on behalf of the government for future use? And I think that's where I think regardless of whether that happened or not, I still think it's the most brilliantly engineered security in the history of the stock market, not just for what he's already accomplished, but for what is going to be accomplished. But it also points out very clearly, it's not Bitcoin.

You're not getting any of the attributes of Bitcoin. You have counterparty risk. You have managerial risk.

You have custodian risk. You have all of it. So it's not for people who want the qualities of Bitcoin. And maybe there are Bitcoiners who have money trapped in the system. But he's not trying to sell you and me, MicroStrategy shares. He is really going after an institutional market. It's not for retail. Retail might capitalize on it and want to get involved in it. But yeah, you can get rugged pulled. You have to think defensively with him just like, or not him personally, maybe, I mean,

You should, but just anybody personally and any company. And so it's not real Bitcoin and all those fears and concerns would be there. Right. I think it's like a weird thing because I think like also for Bitcoiners is the sort of the trying to figure out the balance of like, OK, I have this wealth and this new paradigm and I now have custody of it.

But now you become your own counterparty risk, right? Like how do you manage your Bitcoin and your counterparty risk to your maybe relatives and your heirs, right? 'Cause just like if you lose your money at the bank, you go to the bank and you get back from them, well, your family's like, well, now you're the bank, right? Dad, mom, like if you lose the Bitcoin, like what do we get, right? You're our counterparty risk. And so you have to learn how to manage. Like I wonder how Michael Saylor manages his personal stack.

Like, how does he get comfort with the guy who owns the blind trust and manages a stack for him maybe? Like, does he have a key of three? You know, is he at Unchained and Coinbase and him at Unchained to get on a call? And he's like, I got my key. And if I lose my key, you guys got me. But like, only one of you could lose a key. Like, so can I see your system? Like, you know, is he at OnRamp and it's at a hundred different places? Is he with the Bitcoin advisor? Like, what is he doing? Has he just got his own little like cold card system?

And what does MicroStrategy do? - I think MicroStrategy, if I remember right, I think his, didn't he buy originally at Coinbase?

I don't know if they still do. Yeah, I think they still have. But what does that look like? And how do you gain comfort, right? And how does Coinbase gain comfort? And it's a much different thing. If you have $1,000 in Bitcoin, your security system is different than if you have $10,000, than if you have $100,000. And there are numbers that you and I can't even fathom what it's like to protect that.

Because we're at nowhere near these levels, right? Do you have a billion dollars in a multisig at Unchained? Who's in the multisig? Is it an N of 12? What are we doing here? We got 97 keys. Is there an article that 97 keys is worse than a three? I saw that. Didn't BlackRock just split their entire pile up into wallets with 400 coins each?

I think they're diversifying into multiple multi-sigs. I'm sure you can find some guru on Twitter who's like, that's the worst way to go. Right, sure. Right. And then Coinbase has their guy who's like, we thought about this very deeply and we have our reasons why we don't like your solution because we can't do that and we're a public company.

So like we just we literally cannot do what you just suggested, even though it's better. Right. So good luck, Parman and grow your stack up to $400,000 coin and utilize your plan then. I mean, that's and then people who say like, oh, this might be bad for the network or that Bitcoin's for enemies. Like it's a neutral network. Bitcoin doesn't care who holds the coins.

And whether it's an IOU or there's shares involved or whatever. But there's no way to fathom the way he's looking at these problems. And there's no way to fathom the solutions that are being brought to him and weighing through that.

And could you imagine you think about it for three months and then after you're like, all right, we're going to go this way in the next six months. You're like, fuck, no. We did it wrong. We should not have done that. Or even like, where are the proof of reserves? I'd like to see that on MicroStrategy coins. Yeah. That would be good to see as a...

a public company that's at the forefront of Bitcoin. Yeah, I think it's just disclosed. It's just disclosed in there. They should disclose more, I think, there. Maybe they can't for some reason. Maybe not with their current setup. I don't mean like they can't because of laws or something. I don't know. But you don't know the issues they're facing and the risks they're trying to avoid or decrease or minimize. Yes.

Like, yeah, we could do that. But then we open ourselves up to this conversation and that. And maybe we'll do that in six months if we can. How does El Salvador protect their coins? How do they know this guy doesn't get on a plane one day? At the Central Reserve Bank? I don't know. How does Bukele get comfortable that it's not going to be taken from the country? That it's not going to be taken from him? How does the country get comfortable that he's not going to take it?

I mean, and it's not like they can have a real open forum discussion on this. Right? But their solutions would probably be of interest to people trying to figure out the pros and cons of different... Because there are always pros and cons of your choices. And you're never getting to no cons. That's an interesting question because there is a central reserve bank holding Bitcoin.

Right. I mean, do they have a key in Antarctica buried where like three guys know about it? I hope not. That's where all the Rotilians are. Right. So yeah, fair enough. But he knows about them, right? But like, yeah, I don't know how they manage that. It'd be interesting. It'd be interesting conversation between Bukele and Saylor. Like if they felt they weren't recorded.

Fly on the wall. What would they talk about? Right. Hey, bro. Hey, bro. How are you holding your keys? Yeah. What's your plan? And just what they would share. What people in that position would share if they could speak off the record. Right. Because they're having experiences that most people can't relate to. Yeah. Even if it's just scale. Yeah. It's wild that Coinbase is the one that's getting...

So much of this custody. Yeah, I don't like that. I mean, they must be good at it. I mean, they must be good at it. But I wonder if it's just because they're publicly traded. Hopefully it's not. Hopefully it's because their security practices are so good. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's because... I think it's because they got first mover advantage and they're the largest, I think.

But I would think that if any company took it further to do their due diligence, it would be MicroStrategy. I could see a lot of companies like – Because Fidelity is the only one that custodies their own.

Right. And that's another company, like, I hate to use the word trust, but like, you argue there's an element of trust in everything you do, besides maybe you and your stash of Satoshis. But Fidelity has been a company that's been around for hundreds of years. They manage trillions of dollars. It seems like a very reputable, incredible institution. Do you think they'll be, this is just a gut feeling, that they will be the first ETF that will have an in-kind distribution? Yeah.

Like out of the fund? Let you take the Bitcoin out. I don't know if any ETF is ever going to do that. Do you think that's... I think Fidelity is going to do that to be more competitive. Maybe if that's part of their wealth management business and getting people to hold Bitcoin in their custody business. I know that they offer real Bitcoin. They offer real Bitcoin to their high net worth individuals. And they're very pro-Bitcoin and have been for a long time.

So maybe that's a way to migrate people to high net worth status. But oh, you know, you've been in our ETF for so long. But that window could still close. Like maybe they do that for a year and they say they're not going to close it. But then after a year. I wonder if they could offer it just to people that have X amount of dollars. Sure. Some sort of limiting factor. Yeah. And it might even be like you can get Bitcoin, but you can't take it out of Fidelity.

I would think that would, you know, I don't know. I mean, no, because I mean, my friend who's a high net worth client at Fidelity, he can take it straight into self-custody. No, but I mean from the fund, from the ETF? No, no, no. Right. So I don't know if they'll allow that. I mean, who knows what kind of. I've only heard through hearsay, but basically he has a multi-sig with them where they have two keys, he has one, but it can be shifted to where he maintains two keys and they have one or he can take it all the way out.

Right. So when you have the two keys and they have one, though, you are at the point where you're like, you are your 100% counterparty risk because you can screw yourself. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think the next step for that, too, is just in terms of inheritance and legacy planning. I think that's just in a completely unexplored area in Bitcoin and one that's getting more popular.

in people's faces as Bitcoin goes higher up the suddenly part. Yeah, that is coming in a big way. Yeah, because I think for a lot of people, the wives and

Maybe didn't care or maybe it wasn't a big enough part of the portfolio to be concerned about. But I think for a lot of people now that if you're basing your family on it and your legacy and your planning, it's like you've got to make it there. I just hosted a – well, I don't know. Were you there? We're at the Naples Wealth Symposium. No. I hosted a few people. Matt McClintock was one of them.

on a panel and talking about estate planning for Bitcoin. And the stuff he's doing is just phenomenal. I mean, if you guys can find clips of him online and listen to the way he's structuring stuff. I think Matty Ice just did an interview with him not too long ago. You should definitely have him on your show. Yeah, it's a good topic too. You know, he's working with mega whales, but the strategies, the structures, the

can be somewhat simplified for plebs. And it's just, it's a good listen and

he's really kind of leading the charge in that front. So I'm sure there's a lot of people coming behind him. Yeah. I think for a lot of people, that kind of thinking was a little cross that bridge when we get there kind of thing. And I think for a lot of people, they're crossing that bridge and they're like, what do I do now? And how do I handle this? I just had that discussion when I was in El Salvador two weeks ago. I just kept bumping into this couple everywhere I went. And so we had lunch together and, you know, just came up and we were just talking about estate planning and

What needs to be done is sort of basic structures for that. My favorite stories on Twitter are the guys and girls who are like,

You're talking about how the little money they put into Bitcoins really changed their lives now from just even paying for a new refrigerator for the household. Or some of the more fortunate people who are like, I'm thinking about quitting my day job that I really hate. Or they just did quit and they're like, I'm going to do the side gig that I've always dreamed about and do it for me. Yeah, it's awesome, man. And that's been really amazing to see those stories. I really love that topic because...

Well, Zach, our producer, and I were just talking about his trip to Europe, right? And how amazing the architecture was. And how much of that architecture was built in the golden era, right? Of hard money. And that we're going back to that future where you could endow a child with X amount of Bitcoin that could sustain them for life. Whether they just borrow against it, they can earn interest on it, whatever that might be. Mm-hmm.

and allow them to truly pursue a passion, a master of whatever thing motivates them, whatever their mission is in life. And that's how we got such great innovation and such beautiful architecture and amazing art during the hard money era. And if we're going back, I think we're going back there. I think we're going back there from a vision of or with the power of technology also.

So I think the things that humans are going to create over the next hundred years are going to be mind blowing. And again, I think this all starts next quarter, like the transition, meaning the disruption. Donald Trump's massively a massive disruptor. And if anybody could handle the heat of everybody hating on him because it's not immediately fixed, he's the guy. So he's going to be totally comfortable reconstructing America.

And then I think coming out of that, we're going to then be on a course for 100 years of innovation and progress into a future that we can't even imagine, all funded by this new hard asset. So it's like the golden age 2.0, America 2.0. Right. And I'm so excited for my kids, right? It wasn't that way 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I was like, you know, fuck, have fun now because who knows what the future looks like.

But now that's totally changed. That perspective has totally changed. And I think we're on an awesome trajectory. And I tell them all the time when they get worried about all these things that are happening in the world, you're actually be happy you're dealing with this now, because that means we're bottoming and we're going to be going into an amazing future.

So hopefully that gives people some hope. - Yeah, I think we all dream of multi-generational wealth and creating a legacy and being able to, I mean for me, the real dream, the fantasy is multi-generational wealth. The real dream is just being able to be there for my kids in very practical and pragmatic ways and help them and give them opportunities as best I can.

I do wonder though, like if great wealth is achieved by Bitcoiners, right? And some Bitcoin children might get like a great inheritance when they're like 28 or 34 and be able to like focus after they've been well-raised and all that, they focus on maybe things that they're more passionate about. But I wonder about kids who maybe get great wealth at like 18, right?

And like, do they really go follow their, like, or do they just like, because most wealth that gets passed on, like, you know, first generation works really hard. Sure. The second generation saw that. And so they kind of work as hard as they can, but a little less, but they saw. And then the third generation didn't see any of the hard work of the first generation and wants to extract all the wealth and use it. I can tell you from having worked in, in financial management and wealth management and trust company,

meeting with families with their kids in attendance. Every family is different. Every kid is. Yeah, right. Right. And so you can have two identical I mean, you have the parents raise two kids exactly the same way, but two totally different personalities. One kid could be different at different ages. Yes. Yeah. It's like it's so you can't plan that, but you can. I all I can tell you is that from what I have seen,

and what I've seen be successful is people really taking the time to get their children involved. I think the, and what I mean by that, get them involved is like, okay, hey, we have this responsibility. This is a family responsibility. You need to be present. You need to be thinking about this. You need to start making decisions, giving them sort of ownership and control

you know, a vote, a say, getting them involved because the people that don't, that just, just like, Hey, I don't want to tell you anything. I don't want my kids to know how much I have. I don't want the kids to know this or know that. And then they'll just get it. It's a 50, 50. It's what, who is that personality that's receiving this money versus, uh,

having them being involved in the process for 20, 30 years before you die. And then maybe it becomes evident to Joni and Jodi that Joni is better with money. And so Jodi goes, you know, yeah, I mean, you had the opportunity. We're all there. We're all witnessing it. Like mass transparency, dealing with hard realities. And they're in a family that's just like very honest with what that is.

So that you don't get because I mean, these kids that inherit some of this money where there's so much hatred and resent between the two. Oh, you know, so and so has all the control and they're not giving me my money and I know they're screwing me and that that that goes beyond the money. Right. That started years ago. So I don't know. It's it's it's an undertaking.

Running your family is like running a business. Yeah. Or running a business is like running your family, one or the other. They start off as cost centers before they become profit centers. It takes a long time. That's your goal. It's like R&D. Yes. Exactly right. G&A expense and HR. That's the goal, how to turn your kids into a profit center.

You sit down and you're like, okay, we're going to get lunch for the company today. And if it was just you, you're like, I'd get a lobster roll, but we got HR here. We're getting pizza today. Well, that's a good point because some kids are the HR kids and some kids are the executive committee and other kids are the builders and other kids are the compliance officer. So it's like, what is your kid good at? What's their personality type? Where can you fit them into the family structure?

structure so that they add value? And then how can you make each or have each separate child realize that the other one's providing value they can't provide?

So that it becomes like a business as opposed to like, well, you're always just fucking off and you're always surfing or you're always doing whatever. And I do have to do everything for you and creating all that resentment. Yeah. That's not easy. Yeah. Well, it's tough if like one kid like got the skills of a janitor and no disingenuous, but he wants to be the CEO. Yes. You know, that's the egos get involved, you know, with the kids. Yeah.

But that is what it's all about. I do agree. And raising good kids and having a great family, I think, predates Bitcoin. It's more important than Bitcoin. I think of my wife, kids, as my first Bitcoin, my first lifelong trades, and the most valuable, scarce things I'll ever have in my life. So I think the only things that are scarce and the three most things that are important in your life for your own time

you know, your family and Bitcoin. - Yep. - You know, and those are the things you have the most control over of hopefully you make choices where you like the outcomes, you know, and that's where I would spend your time and invest the most in. - Great advice. Let's end it on that, my friend. - All right, man. - It's been dope. - Awesome. Thanks, brother.