Latest / Simply Bitcoin / How Much Bitcoin Do You Need to Retire? | Morgen Rochard

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How Much Bitcoin Do You Need to Retire? | Morgen Rochard · Simply Bitcoin

• 0:00
  How much do you think the average person needs?
• 0:03
  Like how much Bitcoin do they need to retire?
• 0:06
  I think of people hate to hear this because they have to do
• 0:08
  some math, but the reality is that.
• 0:10
  Interesting. If you're spending about $80,000
• 0:13
  a year, you should have somewhere around four and a half
• 0:15
  $1,000,000 worth of Bitcoin basically on a very conservative
• 0:18
  scale. What's really interesting it to
• 0:20
  me is not the strategy story, it's actually the Tesla story,
• 0:23
  because Tesla actually holds a lot of Bitcoin.
• 0:26
  They've actually profited. I believe it's $700 million from
• 0:30
  just holding Bitcoin. All of a sudden these very large
• 0:33
  players are coming in and getting involved.
• 0:36
  Hedge funds are getting involved, right, because they
• 0:37
  don't want to be left behind. They need to find their alpha
• 0:39
  from somewhere. Institutions now could put this
• 0:41
  on their balance sheet. For anyone who's not holding any
• 0:44
  Bitcoin, though, like I would say that's that's like it.
• 0:46
  That's a huge mistake. Do you believe that you can have
• 0:50
  a reasonable portfolio without having some type of exposure to
• 0:54
  Bitcoin in 2025? No.
• 0:58
  You want to elaborate? Yes.
• 1:02
  We're elaborating, OK. You're about to listen to an
• 1:07
  interview with Morgan Richard. Morgan Richard is part of the
• 1:11
  BTC Financial Advisors network. They help with the state
• 1:16
  planning, family planning, tax planning.
• 1:19
  They're basically your go to advisors if you want to
• 1:23
  incorporate Bitcoin into your portfolio.
• 1:26
  Before we get into the conversation, I've noticed that
• 1:28
  41% of you guys that are listening to these interviews
• 1:31
  are not subscribed. If you guys want to help support
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  the channel and you don't want to miss the next interview, hit
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  that subscribe button. All right, no more delay.
• 1:39
  Enjoy the conversation. Hello everybody, welcome to
• 1:42
  another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL.
• 1:44
  I'm joined here today with Morgan Richard.
• 1:47
  Thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:48
  Nico, thanks for having me. It's good to see you.
• 1:50
  It's been a while. I think last time we saw each
• 1:53
  other was I believe it was bitlock boom.
• 1:55
  Was it that long ago? Wow.
• 1:57
  And I think I even had my baby with us when we were
• 2:01
  interviewing. She's much bigger now.
• 2:05
  Lots of Bitcoin babies in the community, which is really,
• 2:08
  really good. You know, Bitcoiners are are
• 2:10
  bullish on the future and that's a good sign in my opinion.
• 2:14
  I totally agree. So Morgan, first of all, you
• 2:18
  know what, what drew, what first drew you to, to Bitcoin and has
• 2:23
  your conviction evolved since then, especially cause like a
• 2:27
  lot of things have changed, right?
• 2:28
  You know, the early days, I remember it was kind of, it was
• 2:32
  like the Wild West, like no one really kind of it was there was
• 2:36
  no software wallets, there's no hardware wallets.
• 2:39
  It was just, it was just kind of like we knew what Bitcoin paper
• 2:42
  wallets, like we knew what Bitcoin was, but we we didn't
• 2:46
  have the infrastructure or the conveniences that we have today.
• 2:50
  So what was that first thing that attracted you to this
• 2:55
  Airdyne shifting technology? Yeah, it's a great question.
• 2:59
  So I was a libertarian loving gold bug, as I would call myself
• 3:04
  back then, and loved Ayn Rand, wrote a lot of Mises, read a lot
• 3:09
  of Rothbard. Rothbard is the reason why I
• 3:11
  even am married today. Thank God for Rothbard and I
• 3:16
  just I was drawn to to gold because that was the best or
• 3:20
  value that I could think of and that all of the, you know,
• 3:23
  economists that I was reading thought of as well.
• 3:25
  And I read about Bitcoin on the Mises Institutes blog when it
• 3:31
  was like it had gone from a dollar to $2.00, which is kind
• 3:35
  of crazy. I think this is back in 2011, I
• 3:37
  want to say. And I thought it was really
• 3:40
  interesting. I read the whole article.
• 3:41
  I was really, really interested in it.
• 3:43
  I thought, wow, this is really, really cool and I want to check
• 3:46
  it out. But alas, I couldn't figure out
• 3:48
  really how to do that. As like a single girl living in
• 3:51
  New York, I didn't want to meet anyone on a street corner.
• 3:54
  I felt comfortable doing that, trading cash for Bitcoin.
• 3:56
  And with my traditional financial background, I didn't
• 4:00
  actually feel like comfortable wearing money to Japan either to
• 4:03
  go buy at Mount Cox. So I just kind of forgot about
• 4:05
  it and didn't really think about it again really until my now
• 4:09
  husband when I went on a date with him, first date, obviously,
• 4:12
  because what else would Pierre Richard talk about?
• 4:15
  He talked about Bitcoin and it was really like, it was, I
• 4:19
  thought it was really eye opening for me because I had, I
• 4:21
  had heard of it, but I had not done anything with it.
• 4:23
  And so I was listening. But I wouldn't say that like I
• 4:26
  think that people have this preconceived notion about me
• 4:28
  that I just immediately got it and then I was interested than
• 4:31
  Bitcoin the second that Pierre told me about it.
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  And that's not really the case. I'm really kind of slow and it
• 4:37
  takes me a long time to do things, probably why I'm in
• 4:38
  traditional finance to begin with.
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  And so it took me a while. It actually took me like a whole
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  three years to really be like, OK, this is this is the thing.
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  And so I would say like to, I guess this is not really your
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  question, but to those of you out there who have sort of a, a
• 4:53
  spouse that's hanging around and hasn't, hasn't said no, but
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  hasn't said yes, I would say give her time because sometimes
• 4:59
  time is the answer. Listening in time does help.
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  And for me, it really was that like I had to get used to the
• 5:06
  idea. I had to get like my toe in the
• 5:08
  water and then my ankle and then my knees, right, right before I
• 5:10
  was like, OK, this is what I want to do.
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  I would say that my conviction has certainly changed over time.
• 5:16
  I mean, back in, you know, in 2013, it was kind of like you
• 5:20
  were saying Wild West and we went to like little Bitcoin need
• 5:23
  ups and things, but it was nothing like the community of
• 5:25
  today. I mean, contrast that with the
• 5:27
  Bitcoin 2025 had 35,000 people, like we would go to a meet up in
• 5:31
  New York City and five people would show up, you know, and we
• 5:33
  were two of them. So it was small community even
• 5:37
  for New York City. And like, granted, you know,
• 5:38
  every now and then maybe 100 people would show up for
• 5:40
  something like really important like a Christmas party.
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  But it was, it was definitely, you know, the community wasn't
• 5:46
  as well established. The infrastructure definitely
• 5:48
  was not well established. And things I think are moving in
• 5:52
  a direction such that this is actually what like becoming what
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  we want it to be, right? Which is a mainstream same like
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  used currency. And so if anything, I think like
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  the difference between now and then is that my convictions
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  never been higher. Definitely.
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  But also like, I see this as like we're still at the
• 6:09
  beginning and there's so many people who are getting involved
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  in that. We're really at the precipice of
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  something really special, I think.
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  And that things are moving, I think swiftly now in the
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  direction that we've been, I guess, fantasizing about over
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  the last 12 years. Yeah, and I completely agree
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  with with that last, I agree with everything that you just
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  said. But that last part kind of
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  buried the lead there, which is we're on the precipice of, you
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  know what we've been talking about.
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  You know it, it really does feel like we're actually winning
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  here. You know, we, I think we as as a
• 6:42
  community, as an industry, we've spent the last four years under
• 6:46
  relatively hostile administration.
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  That was, you know, trying, trying to destroy our industry
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  by, you know, death by a, a 1000 regulatory cuts.
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  And we survived that. And we have a pro, you know,
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  it's not perfect, but we have a pro Bitcoin administration and
• 7:03
  you see the cases being dropped. You know, the treasury dropped
• 7:06
  the case against tornado cash. A lot of pardons were issued as
• 7:11
  well against for people that worked in the industry.
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  So it seems like that law fair aspect, you know, I, I wouldn't
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  say it's completely over, but let's just say that hopefully
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  the worst has has passed us. And it really, really does seem
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  like not only Tradfi is embracing Bitcoin, but also the
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  most powerful government on the face of the planet. the United
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  States government is embracing it as well.
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  Now, Morgan, you, you do focus your career is on helping people
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  financially plan, right. So how does Bitcoin fit into
• 7:48
  someone's modern day portfolio? Because the way that I see it,
• 7:52
  right, the way that I've been doing it since 2016 and my wife
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  thought I was crazy for the first two or three years.
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  I just went basically 100% in, right?
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  But that doesn't fit for everybody, right?
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  And I learned this the hard way, you know, trying to orange pill
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  my parents or my parents in law and you know, they're different
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  level, you know, the different and different economic classes
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  and you know, every different situations, right?
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  So it's a different approach to it's a a very individual, it's a
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  very individual approach based on that person, right?
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  So how do you approach that? What have you learned along the
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  years 'cause you've been doing this quite a while?
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  How do you incorporate, you know, the idea of Bitcoin into
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  financial planning for someone? Yeah, it's a great question.
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  So my financial planning practice has been around, thank
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  God, since 2014. And I've been advising on
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  Bitcoin since 2016 and I've been consulting on Bitcoin also in my
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  other companies since 2018. And I would say that like the
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  thing that makes finance like personal finance kind of amazing
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  is the personal part. And so it really can be tailored
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  to the individual. You don't have to go all in like
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  Nico did, right? Just you don't have to be all
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  like that just because Bitcoin exists, right?
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  I think from when people say, OK, how do I optimize my
• 9:15
  financial situation? I often kind of laugh at that
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  because it's like, OK, well, you eat ramen, right?
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  You buy a tiny home, you minimize expenses as much as
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  possible, and then you go 100% all in on Bitcoin, right?
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  I think that for most people, that's not really the right
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  situation for them, right? I think when we're often
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  thinking about optimizing, we're, we're not necessarily
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  really thinking about our own specific situation.
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  Whereas when we think about personal finance specifically,
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  we can think, we can really kind of dig into what's important for
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  a particular person, what goals they have, what goals they have
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  over the short term, what they have over the long term, and
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  then assess accordingly about where they fit on the spectrum
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  of how much Bitcoin would actually be appropriate for
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  them. I think the difference now
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  between like, let's say 15 years ago when people couldn't
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  allocate to Bitcoin versus now is that you can now decide
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  between a currency allocation or an investment allocation.
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  Previously, we all had to be part time portfolio managers
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  after work and go and decide where we're going to allocate
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  our money in order to beat inflation, right?
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  And now we don't have to do that.
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  Now we can say, OK, actually I just want to have, you know, 50%
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  or 100% of my money, just in money.
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  And then I could decide whether or not I want to make
• 10:20
  investments decisions. And I don't have to do it super
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  quickly because I have time on my side when I'm holding Bitcoin
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  rather than vice versa. And so that makes it a totally
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  different conversation of like, OK, what, Like why are we
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  holding money? What's the purpose of it?
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  If it's long term, then we can keep it in Bitcoin for a long
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  period of time and then make decisions about whether or not
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  that's the right allocation or the wrong allocation.
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  And so I think sometimes when Bitcoiners hear that they're
• 10:43
  like, well, bitcoins always going to be the right
• 10:45
  allocation. What are you talking about?
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  And for some people that will be true, right?
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  For some people, they'll always just want to hold Bitcoin for a
• 10:51
  long period of time. And for other people, they might
• 10:53
  hold it for a long period of time and then make a decision
• 10:55
  that's based on their family goals.
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  Or they might hold it for a long period of time and then like an
• 10:59
  investment decision for whatever reason, right?
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  They might want to run a business or own some farmland or
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  whatever it is, right? You don't necessarily have to
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  hold Bitcoin all the time just because quote UN quote it's the
• 11:07
  most optimal. Yeah, and that's an excellent
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  question, right. Again, it's it, it really kind
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  of depends on what that person is trying to accomplish.
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  And you did a very, very and I I really enjoyed this interview.
• 11:21
  You did it with, with Stefan La Vera and I got a lot of traction
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  and I'll, I'll jump straight into it, which is basically
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  like, how much do you think the average person needs?
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  Like how much Bitcoin do they need to retire?
• 11:34
  And of course, that's a very big demographic, right?
• 11:38
  But let's just focus on majority of our audience right between
• 11:42
  the ages of 35 and 55. What would what would you say is
• 11:48
  the goal that what what people should aim for?
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  In terms of how many Bitcoin they need or just like from a
• 11:54
  withdrawal rate. So I mean, how much, how much do
• 11:57
  they need? It's really going to depend on
• 12:00
  your spending. And so I think if people hate to
• 12:02
  hear this because they have to do some math, but the reality is
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  that you have to decide. You have to go through your
• 12:07
  expenses. And even if you're not an
• 12:09
  overspender, I generally recommend that people do this
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  because what you can do is you can go line by line and you
• 12:13
  don't have to do it all the time.
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  If you're making sure that you're saving, you know, an
• 12:16
  appropriate amount, you don't have to spend a lot of time in
• 12:18
  the weeds, but really once a year you should sort of assess,
• 12:20
  OK, this is where I spent money. And then from there you can say,
• 12:23
  OK, these are line items that are not expected to continue.
• 12:26
  And these are other things that I would like to add in if I
• 12:28
  become retired. So, for instance, like right
• 12:30
  now, you and I both have young kids, right?
• 12:32
  And so we maybe wouldn't have need as much child care or
• 12:36
  diapers or whatever else it is that's in the budget right now.
• 12:38
  That's, you know, dealing with young kids.
• 12:40
  You don't expect that to persist.
• 12:41
  But maybe when you retire and you do less Bitcoin podcast, you
• 12:44
  might want to travel more or you might want to, I don't start a
• 12:47
  different business. Or you might you know, there's
• 12:49
  a, or you might want to pay for something for your kids specific
• 12:52
  or you might want to help aging parents, right.
• 12:53
  There are other things that might you might have to throw
• 12:55
  into the equation. And so spending time in your
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  expenses where you're removing things that you don't expect to
• 13:00
  continue and then adding things in that you do expect that you
• 13:03
  want to be able to spend in on in the future is the best way to
• 13:06
  come up with a spending number. And then from there you can back
• 13:08
  into how much Bitcoin you need to get there.
• 13:10
  So I, I don't know, I would say like on average, you know, I
• 13:13
  think the median income is somewhere around 88 or $89,000 a
• 13:18
  year. So, and then you can figure in
• 13:20
  an after tax basis that most people are probably spending
• 13:22
  somewhere in the 50 to $60,000 range if they're being
• 13:25
  responsible. And then from there you can back
• 13:28
  into, OK, well, if Bitcoin is, I don't know right now we're at
• 13:31
  120. So you need about 1/2 Bitcoin
• 13:33
  per year right now to live on. And if you're 30, then you need,
• 13:36
  you know, the runway for them. Maybe I'm starting to go out on
• 13:39
  a ledge here and not be able to do as much math in my head to,
• 13:42
  to back into a number here, but you can sort of see where I'm
• 13:44
  going, right? You can hit, you can figure out
• 13:46
  also what your price target would be by doing that, right?
• 13:48
  Like, let's say you only you've saved 5 Bitcoin, right?
• 13:50
  And you've done a great job and you scratched and saved to save
• 13:53
  the five. OK, now you can say at what
• 13:55
  point will my will this Bitcoin cover my expenses?
• 13:58
  And you can I have actually on we have the Bitcoin Financial
• 14:01
  Advisors Network website and on there I actually put accurate
• 14:04
  actuarial tables so people can look at their age and see how
• 14:07
  much they can withdraw. I've got a lot of Flack about it
• 14:09
  'cause they're very, very conservative.
• 14:11
  But the reality is that Bitcoin is not a compounding asset.
• 14:14
  It compounds in dollars, right? But you don't get more Bitcoin
• 14:16
  just because you hold Bitcoin. And so if you want to be very
• 14:18
  conservative, you need to think about how much of Bitcoin you're
• 14:21
  going to withdraw on a steady scale.
• 14:23
  And so if you go on there onto that website and hopefully you
• 14:26
  can link to IT, people can see what the actuarial table would
• 14:29
  be for their age and then they can back into the amount of
• 14:31
  Bitcoin that they would need based on their spending.
• 14:34
  Interesting. OK, so let's go.
• 14:37
  Let's break it down based on and what's the?
• 14:40
  What's the URL of that website? Yeah, it's Bitcoin Financial
• 14:44
  Advisors Network, I think. Oh gosh, hang on, let's see
• 14:48
  Bitcoin on it. Yeah, the Bitcoin, Bitcoin
• 14:52
  financial advisorsnetwork.com. Financial, Andy Flattery.
• 14:57
  Is going to be mad at me for not knowing right off the top of my
• 14:59
  head. He runs the website.
• 15:01
  So, and let's let's kind of do like a ballpark by age.
• 15:06
  And you said you approach it from a very kind of conservative
• 15:12
  viewpoint, which by the way, I I think is the way to do it.
• 15:16
  Because I think if you're overly bullish, you know, you might be,
• 15:20
  you might be disappointed or you might make, you know, kind of,
• 15:24
  you know, bad decisions. But I think that if you, but if
• 15:29
  you do it from a more conservative aspect, you know,
• 15:33
  it allows you to plan accordingly, right.
• 15:35
  So, so if you are in the age group of let's say 35 to 45 and
• 15:41
  like you said, you're spending between 60 to $80,000 a year,
• 15:46
  what would the amount of Bitcoin you'd need?
• 15:50
  What what, what would it be? Yeah.
• 15:51
  OK, let me do the math here. Let's use 1.67.
• 15:57
  So if you're spending about $80,000 a year, you should have
• 16:02
  somewhere around four and a half, $1,000,000 worth of
• 16:04
  Bitcoin basically on a very conservative scale.
• 16:07
  So like this is me using basically a 1.67% with
• 16:12
  withdrawal rate rather than like this typical 4% withdrawal rate.
• 16:16
  And then if you're going to put that in today's Bitcoin prices,
• 16:20
  so I can use 120. So I mean that would be
• 16:22
  somewhere around 40 Bitcoin. 40 Bitcoin for you to retire at age
• 16:27
  35. Today, though, with today's
• 16:29
  prices with. Today's prices and then I'm
• 16:32
  assuming as time goes by, you know it, the amount of Bitcoin
• 16:36
  that you'll need will start to decrease.
• 16:39
  They'll start to get lower and lower and lower and lower.
• 16:41
  Yeah, So that's the idea, right? I think, and also alluding to
• 16:44
  the fact that we talked about this a little bit earlier, but
• 16:46
  we're at the process of this something really special, right?
• 16:48
  And so to me, all of a sudden, companies are putting this on
• 16:50
  your balance sheet right there. We can talk ad nauseam about
• 16:53
  whether or not people should buy that.
• 16:54
  And I would say for most people, they shouldn't.
• 16:56
  They should just own Bitcoin. But the reality doesn't change
• 16:59
  that. Corporations want to own this.
• 17:00
  The reality doesn't change that. Now governments want to own
• 17:02
  this. And now there's going to be some
• 17:03
  sort of game theory that happens as a result of that, right?
• 17:05
  All of a sudden these very large players are coming in and
• 17:08
  getting involved hedge funds are getting involved right because
• 17:11
  they don't want to be left behind.
• 17:12
  They need to find their alpha from somewhere.
• 17:13
  Institutions now could put this on their round sheet, right?
• 17:16
  There's so many different places that we can pull from.
• 17:18
  And while on the one hand, right as like a Bitcoin plea myself,
• 17:22
  who is sort of grassroots and, you know, wants it to be like
• 17:25
  this, you know, cool, you know, by the people, for the people
• 17:27
  money at the end of the day, right?
• 17:29
  It doesn't become a global reserve currency unless
• 17:32
  everybody gets involved, right? Bitcoin really is, I would say
• 17:34
  for everybody in that regard. And actually we want it to be
• 17:37
  for everybody. The more people are using, the
• 17:39
  more they're even just using it as a store of value, even if
• 17:42
  they're storing it in a way that like, you know, the average
• 17:44
  Bitcoiner wouldn't think is appropriate, right?
• 17:46
  Maybe they don't hold their own keys.
• 17:48
  Maybe they're just holding the ETF.
• 17:49
  Whatever is that they're doing, they're still getting involved,
• 17:51
  right? And so that's why I'm saying
• 17:53
  that like, yes, maybe today you need 40 Bitcoin, but if Bitcoin
• 17:56
  double s, right, you need 20. And if Bitcoin, you know, goes
• 17:59
  10X, right, all of a sudden you need 4.
• 18:00
  So I mean, it's like it's a very different situation than if, if
• 18:05
  like let's say you're just holding, let's say the S&P 500
• 18:08
  and you're expecting a real return of 6% per.
• 18:10
  Year not accounting for inflation.
• 18:12
  Yeah. Well, that would be, yeah, a
• 18:14
  real return. So yeah.
• 18:17
  So let's talk about the precipice, right, because I
• 18:20
  think we all feel it, right? And I'll, I'll, I'll kind of tee
• 18:23
  it up here a little bit, right. So again, we saw the end of
• 18:28
  talking to Caitlin Longs. It might not not completely over
• 18:31
  operation choke points you put out, but let's say the the most
• 18:33
  difficult things we've we've overcome them right Then of
• 18:38
  course, we had the embracement, the embracement the race of
• 18:42
  Bitcoin by Wall Street. You have the popping up of
• 18:44
  treasury companies not only in the United States, but it's it's
• 18:47
  a worldwide phenomenon. Strategies basically
• 18:51
  outperformed every company, including NVIDIA, right?
• 18:55
  The sailors making the case, listen, guys like you, you guys
• 18:59
  have billions of dollars of cash or cash equivalents.
• 19:01
  Like, you know, imagine just taking a fraction of that and
• 19:04
  putting it into Bitcoin. And the more he continues to
• 19:08
  prove that that is a viable option, the more companies are
• 19:12
  gonna and eventually follow suit due to market forces.
• 19:16
  And what's really interesting it to me is not the strategy story,
• 19:19
  it's actually the Tesla story. Cause Tesla actually holds a lot
• 19:22
  of Bitcoin. And I was checking it, I was
• 19:25
  taking a look at, at they've, they've actually profited.
• 19:28
  I believe it's $700 million from just holding Bitcoin.
• 19:34
  So government approval, government even might buy some
• 19:39
  with the the official announcement of things coming
• 19:42
  out July 22nd, what they're going to do with the reserve and
• 19:44
  all that stuff embracement by Wall Street, right?
• 19:48
  You have the world's largest asset manager in the world,
• 19:51
  Larry Fink, basically putting the rubber stamp of approval
• 19:54
  going on legacy financial media basically saying, you know,
• 19:57
  Satoshi was probably on to something.
• 20:00
  So yes, I, I, I agree the, the, the precipice is there.
• 20:04
  I think the big question is unlike every other cycle,
• 20:08
  Morgan, what I've, what I've noticed this cycle is it's been
• 20:12
  by far the most bullish cycle in terms of news, which as a
• 20:16
  content creator makes my life incredibly easy.
• 20:18
  But from a price action perspective, it's actually been
• 20:23
  a little bit muted. Does that surprise you a little
• 20:27
  bit, you know, or do you believe that, you know, we're on the
• 20:31
  verge of this, to use Samson Mal's own words, Omega candle.
• 20:37
  Once you know, we go off the precipice.
• 20:40
  I mean, I don't have a crystal ball, but what I would say is
• 20:43
  this, as larger players are getting involved and right now
• 20:47
  Bitcoin is a like it's a much bigger asset class than it's
• 20:50
  ever been before. You need that many more large
• 20:53
  players to come in to increase the market cap of Bitcoin.
• 20:56
  And so that I do think that that is something that is going on.
• 20:59
  But again, we're still at the beginning of it, right?
• 21:01
  I mean, the reality is, is that the majority of companies, I
• 21:03
  think with the exception of Tesla, who are putting Bitcoin
• 21:06
  on their balance sheets are doing it because they're
• 21:07
  Bitcoiners, right? And they're doing it because
• 21:09
  they want to hold this asset or their company is failing.
• 21:11
  And this is sort of a last resort, OK, It worked for
• 21:14
  Michael Saylor, like maybe maybe this is something that could
• 21:17
  work for us too, right? Or I don't think that we're at a
• 21:19
  point yet where companies are thinking, OK, I don't have any
• 21:22
  long term projects to invest in. And therefore I think I'll just
• 21:25
  hold money and the right money to hold for a long term savings
• 21:28
  plan would be Bitcoin. I don't think that we're there
• 21:30
  yet. I think that we're starting to
• 21:32
  be there, right? And so when we think about those
• 21:34
  things, right, I, I think in, in some ways, it might mean that
• 21:37
  the four year cycle is over, right?
• 21:38
  It might mean actually that we get less volatility now in the
• 21:40
  market and that we get sort of more of a drift up as more and
• 21:44
  more people are just getting involved, more corporations are
• 21:46
  getting involved, more governments are getting
• 21:48
  involved. Like it might look very
• 21:49
  different than previous cycles. And I think that that's a good
• 21:52
  thing. Actually.
• 21:52
  The less volatile that Bitcoin is, the more likely that people
• 21:55
  are going to see it is not just the store value, but also medium
• 21:58
  of exchange in the unit of account, which eventually makes
• 22:00
  it a global reserve currency, right?
• 22:01
  And so when it starts to have all the aspects of money and I
• 22:04
  think it already has that right, but obviously not everyone
• 22:06
  agrees on that. And so, but the more we start to
• 22:09
  see it edge in that direction, I think actually volatility will
• 22:11
  come down. And this is, this is actually an
• 22:13
  opinion of mine that I think has changed.
• 22:15
  Previously, I did think that the volatility was really more of a
• 22:18
  factor of, of just human behavior and that because of
• 22:22
  that, like because it's a growth currency and people are getting
• 22:24
  involved, that the volatility will persist for a very long
• 22:26
  period of time. And I think I'm actually wrong.
• 22:28
  I'm starting to to rethink that. And I think I'm actually wrong
• 22:31
  about that and that volatility should decline over time.
• 22:34
  And that might be bad news though, for some of these these
• 22:38
  options strategies and other things that have popped up,
• 22:40
  right? If implied volatility does come
• 22:42
  down in the market now all of a sudden, like the Misty holders
• 22:44
  and the Imus and so forth, all of a sudden have a bit of an
• 22:47
  issue with their dividend checks.
• 22:48
  So just something to keep in mind.
• 22:50
  This is not me, you know, I don't know anything, right?
• 22:52
  I'm not giving you investment advice.
• 22:53
  But I also think that people should know the risks associated
• 22:56
  with what they're doing at the end of the day, right?
• 22:58
  Holding money is going to be a less uncertain venture than and
• 23:01
  venturing into some of these other aspects of the financial
• 23:03
  world. Do you?
• 23:04
  Believe that at this moment holding and this is a message
• 23:09
  just for the general audience, like do you believe that you can
• 23:12
  have a reasonable portfolio without having some type of
• 23:16
  exposure to Bitcoin in 2025? No.
• 23:21
  Do you? Want to elaborate?
• 23:23
  Yes. We're elaborating.
• 23:26
  OK. So yeah, no, I don't think you
• 23:28
  can. And I think that this is really
• 23:30
  hard for people to hear because there are a lot of people out
• 23:32
  there who have gone really comfortable with their index
• 23:34
  funds and their bogalness and whatever else that they're doing
• 23:37
  or, and that they need to have some form of cash flow in order
• 23:41
  to have a return and so forth, right?
• 23:43
  And so, and that Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value.
• 23:45
  And I just think that that's, that's simply false, right?
• 23:48
  Bitcoin actually does have intrinsic value.
• 23:49
  People just aren't thinking about why it has intrinsic
• 23:51
  value. And stocks have intrinsic value
• 23:53
  for a different reason, right? It's just discounted future cash
• 23:56
  flows. And so we're not applying that
• 23:58
  though to Bitcoin, right? And so I think for people when
• 24:00
  they're just thinking about their portfolios, I think that
• 24:03
  if you're just going to hold the global market and you're, you're
• 24:06
  looking back at 100 years worth of research, which is basically
• 24:09
  what people are doing. Yeah, 100 years is a long time,
• 24:11
  but it's not the history of money, right?
• 24:13
  It's not. I mean, and, and granted,
• 24:15
  obviously Bitcoin hasn't been around as long as the history of
• 24:17
  money, but the history of money sort of dictates that people
• 24:20
  generally gravitate to a money that's better than than monies
• 24:23
  that are not, right. And so therefore, like, because
• 24:25
  Bitcoin is a superior money and yes, it's taking time because
• 24:29
  it's a growth currency and so forth, the people are going to
• 24:31
  gravitate towards this. And for all the reasons that
• 24:34
  we've been talking about, we're at a point now where if you're
• 24:36
  not involved, you're going to be left behind.
• 24:38
  And I think the last thing to mention is we are a $2 trillion
• 24:41
  asset class at this point. So if you're not holding 2% of
• 24:43
  your portfolio in Bitcoin, you're effectively taking a
• 24:45
  short position, you're underweight.
• 24:47
  And so anyone in traditional finance would say that you need
• 24:50
  to hold and market weight of portfolios of all these things.
• 24:52
  And there are proxies and ways to do it, right.
• 24:54
  And the proxy right now would be holding the ETF.
• 24:57
  But if people are not even taking that 2% ETF position,
• 24:59
  then de facto they are short. Yo, I want to tell you about the
• 25:03
  best place to build your automatic self custody Bitcoin
• 25:07
  stack. I'm talking about
• 25:08
  bitcoinwell.com. What makes bitcoinwell.com
• 25:13
  different is that it's a completely non custodial
• 25:16
  platform, meaning as soon as you buy Bitcoin and the funds clear,
• 25:20
  it goes straight to yourself custody Bitcoin wallet address.
• 25:24
  And that perfectly aligns with simply Bitcoin ethos of the
• 25:26
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• 25:30
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• 25:34
  bitcoinwell.com today. Takes 2 to 5 minutes to sign up
• 25:38
  and bada Bing, bada boom, you're ready to buy Bitcoin.
• 25:41
  Do you think one of the things that I, that I saw this last,
• 25:44
  like, you know, two or three years was when you mentioned
• 25:48
  basically because there's different types of exposure,
• 25:50
  right? You can get exposure to the ETF,
• 25:53
  but you could also get exposure through the Treasury companies
• 25:56
  and MicroStrategy Metaplan are two great examples which
• 26:00
  actually outperformed Bitcoin itself.
• 26:04
  What would you say to a, a potential client?
• 26:07
  Again, not financial advice, of course, but what would you say
• 26:11
  to a potential client that says, Hey, Morgan, like, like, you
• 26:14
  know, this Bitcoin stuff is cool, but you know, there's a
• 26:18
  lot more, you know, the, the, there's a lot more volatility
• 26:22
  in, in MicroStrategy and Metaplanet.
• 26:25
  Should you know, should I buy those stocks instead of Bitcoin?
• 26:28
  And technically if I buy those stocks or am I not buying
• 26:31
  exposure to Bitcoin itself? What would you say to that?
• 26:34
  Yeah. So I've been calling them
• 26:35
  Bitcoin tangential investments, for lack of a better word.
• 26:39
  Maybe I should come up with something else.
• 26:41
  But basically the the short answer is that for most people,
• 26:44
  it's not going to be appropriate, right?
• 26:46
  For most people, it's going to be more risk than it's worth.
• 26:48
  And holding money is going to be better for them because holding
• 26:51
  money reduces uncertainty. The whole reason why people who
• 26:54
  hold money is to do that. And they do that right.
• 26:56
  You'll hold Fiat over a short period of time to reduce short
• 26:58
  term uncertainty and you would hold Bitcoin over a long period
• 27:00
  of time to reduce long term uncertainty.
• 27:03
  Investments don't do that, right?
• 27:04
  And even though right trailer sailors had a very good track
• 27:07
  record with MicroStrategy, and I'm not knocking him by any
• 27:09
  stretch and I'm not giving investment advice.
• 27:11
  Also, I would say for the average person, right, the
• 27:14
  volatility is going to be hard to stomach.
• 27:16
  There could be mismanagement or whatever else, right?
• 27:18
  There could be a margin call, so to speak.
• 27:21
  There could be a a way that he can't actually issue additional
• 27:25
  debt or that he misses a dividend payment or whatever
• 27:27
  else it is that causes trouble in the capital structure.
• 27:31
  I would say that at this point, given how long he's been doing
• 27:34
  it, like the, the probabilities are lower than they've ever
• 27:37
  been, right? So it's become less risky over
• 27:39
  time, as Mike as Sailor has shown his strategy to work and
• 27:43
  been proven it out over time. But that said, it doesn't mean
• 27:45
  that that risk is gone. And so for most people, I would
• 27:48
  say that it's not going to make sense.
• 27:50
  For anyone who's not holding any Bitcoin, though, like I would
• 27:53
  say that's that's like it. That's a huge mistake, right?
• 27:55
  If you already hold quite a lot of your portfolio on Bitcoin,
• 27:58
  you know you want to make an investment, right, which is kind
• 28:00
  of what we were talking about earlier.
• 28:01
  If you want to have a currency allocation or investment
• 28:03
  allocation, that's a very different story of taking a
• 28:05
  proportion of your stack, a small portion, and moving into
• 28:07
  MicroStrategy and being like, OK, I want to take a little bit
• 28:10
  more risk than what I'm doing with Bitcoin.
• 28:11
  Fine. If you're saying, OK, I don't
• 28:13
  want to hold any Bitcoin, but I want to hold MicroStrategy, I
• 28:16
  think that there's something a little off in the wiring here
• 28:18
  and it needs to be discussed. And what it what?
• 28:21
  And by the way, I, I unpopular opinion with it within the
• 28:26
  Bitcoin Twitter verse slash X verse these days, but I'm seeing
• 28:33
  a lot of the same patterns that I saw in 2017 with the ICO boom,
• 28:39
  but with these treasury companies.
• 28:41
  And I don't think sailors companies at risk or that, you
• 28:45
  know, the top three like Nakamoto or or 2121 as the
• 28:50
  backing of SoftBank and Tether. Like I, I don't think he's going
• 28:53
  anywhere, right? But you know, what's going to
• 28:55
  happen is all these copycats, they're going to start cutting
• 28:59
  corners and they're going to start taking on more leverage
• 29:02
  because how else are they going to get access to capital, right?
• 29:05
  And I think that's when it starts to become, you know,
• 29:08
  that's when that could potentially start a domino
• 29:12
  effect. And I don't want to say the
• 29:14
  House of Cards because it there at least there's an underlying
• 29:17
  asset backing strategy. The the ICO boom, that wasn't
• 29:21
  the case. There was no ice, there was no
• 29:23
  underlying asset. It was just, it was just a
• 29:26
  mania. So I think this is going to play
• 29:28
  out a little bit differently, but I do, I do believe we're in
• 29:31
  some type of, you know, Bitcoin treasury mania at the moment.
• 29:37
  And that's right. Oh, sorry, no, the issue really
• 29:40
  lies with debt, right? And I think this is something
• 29:42
  that people don't really consider in general.
• 29:44
  And I often hear this like people on the Internet like to
• 29:46
  say, never sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it.
• 29:48
  Do all these things, right? Increase your leverage ratio
• 29:51
  because you can borrow at a lower rate than let's say
• 29:53
  Bitcoins returns, right? And in a in a rosy scenario
• 29:56
  where you borrow and Bitcoin goes up, obviously you do better
• 29:58
  in a not so rosy scenario where you borrow and then Bitcoin goes
• 30:01
  immediately down, right? It looks a lot worse.
• 30:03
  And so I think that it's going to be the same situation for
• 30:06
  these companies. Difference between, I would say,
• 30:07
  a company and an individual though, are going to be the
• 30:09
  borrowing terms. So for some people, they're
• 30:11
  going to have better borrowing terms, in which case then
• 30:14
  they're going to make out better than, let's say, companies that
• 30:16
  have much worse borrowing terms. And you can get into why
• 30:19
  somebody would have less like that, worse borrowing terms, but
• 30:22
  it would basically be the same as an individual, right?
• 30:23
  If you don't have a long credit of history, if you're not going
• 30:26
  to repaying, right? There's all sorts of things that
• 30:28
  go into your interest rate, why somebody would have, let's say,
• 30:30
  a 40% rate of the on their credit card versus somebody who
• 30:33
  would have, let's say, a 20%, right?
• 30:35
  These things are going to look a little bit different and same
• 30:37
  thing for companies, right? Like a company like Micro
• 30:39
  Strategies, been doing it for a really long time.
• 30:41
  They've got really low borrowing rates and they actually can
• 30:43
  extend out the life of how long they can take these loans out.
• 30:46
  I mean, for instance, right, sailors issuing preferred stock,
• 30:49
  he never has to repay that preferred stock.
• 30:52
  And granted, it is technically stock, right?
• 30:54
  It's much lower in the capital structure and let's say the
• 30:55
  bonds that he's been issuing, but the terms are really much
• 30:58
  better. And obviously he's paying a
• 30:59
  higher interest rate to do that. But again, he doesn't have to
• 31:02
  repay that. And even on some of these, he
• 31:03
  doesn't even have to pay the dividend if he doesn't want to.
• 31:05
  It can accumulate over time and then he could pay it out or he
• 31:08
  doesn't. If he misses a dividend, he
• 31:09
  doesn't even have to pay it. So I think like when we compare
• 31:12
  that to let's say some of these newer companies that are coming
• 31:14
  up and also doing all these borrowing, we have to, it's not
• 31:17
  an apples to apples comparison. And people have to take into
• 31:19
  account the the additional risk that what these newer companies
• 31:22
  are going to be taking as a result of that.
• 31:24
  Yeah, Well, 100, I 100% agree with you.
• 31:27
  It they're not, they're not going to have as cheap access to
• 31:30
  capital as Sailor has. And it's going to be harder and
• 31:33
  harder and harder. But I think everyone's, you
• 31:36
  know, everybody wants to jump on the train.
• 31:39
  They're seeing the success of Metaplan that they're seeing the
• 31:41
  success of strategy and obviously they want some of
• 31:44
  that. So you're seeing treasury
• 31:46
  companies pop up left and right, but but what if, what if you had
• 31:50
  a client that really was like, Maureen, like I hear you, I
• 31:54
  understand the risk, but like I really want to, what would you
• 31:57
  say to that person? Yeah, I mean, at the end of the
• 32:00
  day, right, as a financial advisor, we're not there to keep
• 32:03
  people from making the decisions that they're going to make,
• 32:05
  right. I mean, ultimately I do hope
• 32:07
  that when I make a recommendation that somebody
• 32:09
  follows it. But granted, my hands are tied,
• 32:11
  right. Like I, it's like if you are
• 32:13
  going, if somebody's going on a diet, right, if the trainer or
• 32:16
  the, the dietitian or whoever tells them, you know, only eat
• 32:19
  meat and don't need anything else, right?
• 32:20
  The dietitian's not there at night, like making sure they're
• 32:22
  not going into the fridge and grabbing whatever else that they
• 32:25
  are keeping around, right? Or they're not with them at the
• 32:26
  grocery store. And so it's the same thing for a
• 32:29
  financial advisor, right? We make the recommendation, we
• 32:31
  show the clients the like the pros and cons to the decision.
• 32:34
  And then ultimately the decision is up to the client.
• 32:36
  So if this client wants to then go and buy Bitcoin treasury
• 32:38
  companies, I obviously can't keep them from doing it.
• 32:40
  What we generally try to do, and what I've been pretty successful
• 32:43
  at doing is limiting position sizes because generally when
• 32:45
  somebody has their mind set on something, they usually want to
• 32:48
  like go much harder with that then they, they otherwise maybe
• 32:52
  should. And this is not limited to
• 32:54
  Bitcoin. I've had clients, you know,
• 32:55
  approach me a startup, investments or whatever else,
• 32:57
  and we take them, We, we're able to talk them off a ledge where
• 32:59
  maybe they still make the investment, but we, we control
• 33:01
  the position size to the point where like, OK, it's manageable.
• 33:04
  It's not going to tank the whole plan.
• 33:06
  Things can still move forward. Maybe it'll even be a bonus if
• 33:09
  it actually works out and so forth.
• 33:11
  Gotcha, got it. Basically like, you know, we'll,
• 33:15
  we'll we'll scratch that itch, but we'll we'll minimize the
• 33:18
  exposure, the potential, you know, downside exposure.
• 33:21
  It's very smart. So where I have a question for
• 33:23
  you. So in terms of, of your
• 33:25
  clientele, in terms of people that are like looking for your
• 33:28
  services, like, so you have, you know, the traditional people on,
• 33:32
  on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Twitter, like myself or like, like my Co
• 33:36
  host or like basically, you know, all in Bitcoin.
• 33:39
  You know, of course you, you need Fiat to run a business.
• 33:41
  There's no way around that, right?
• 33:44
  But basically, look, I have my Bitcoin, I have my Bitcoin in
• 33:46
  cold storage. You know, this is the way that
• 33:48
  I'm approaching it. Who, who would your traditional
• 33:52
  client be like? Is this someone who is older?
• 33:56
  You know, they've they've found success in life, but perhaps
• 33:58
  they sold a company. They have a couple investment
• 34:01
  properties, you know, they have some, some money and you know,
• 34:04
  the, the equity markets. And is that your traditional
• 34:08
  client or is it perhaps a Bitcoiner that you know, has
• 34:12
  been around for four epochs? How would you would you advise
• 34:17
  them to, to sell some of that Bitcoin out of cold storage and
• 34:22
  and to kind of diversify a little bit?
• 34:25
  The floor is yours so. Loaded question, huh?
• 34:29
  So I would say the majority of my clients at this point,
• 34:32
  because I'm on Bitcoin podcast, I'm doing Bitcoin work, I'm at
• 34:36
  Bitcoin conferences are basically bitcoiners coming in.
• 34:39
  Whether or not those, the bitcoiners that are coming in
• 34:42
  have just done it because they have earned a good salary.
• 34:45
  They've saved more than they've spent and they've accumulated
• 34:47
  Bitcoin over time over for epochs, as you mentioned.
• 34:50
  Or if they got, let's say, you know, someone passed away, God
• 34:52
  forbid, and they got a windfall, right, and they were able to
• 34:54
  invest it or someone, maybe they got all sorts of equity comp.
• 34:58
  That's pretty like a pretty traditional situation where
• 35:02
  somebody working for a company, they had all this equity comp
• 35:04
  all of a sudden come do it vested.
• 35:06
  They get a huge windfall payment as a result of that.
• 35:08
  And maybe they been do they've been in Bitcoin for a while, but
• 35:10
  they never had this kind of money come their way and they
• 35:12
  want to make a decision. So like we've seen that kind of
• 35:15
  thing happen. I have a few trust fund kids
• 35:18
  where we're investing the trust fund in Bitcoin.
• 35:21
  And so like I have a have a pretty good slew of, of
• 35:24
  different, like different people who are coming in.
• 35:25
  I would say the common, the common theme is probably that
• 35:28
  most people are going to be in their 40s for the most part, 40s
• 35:32
  and 50s I would say, and that they, they're pretty good
• 35:37
  savers. They're pretty interested in
• 35:38
  Bitcoin. They don't want a financial
• 35:40
  advisor telling them to sell all your Bitcoin.
• 35:43
  So to get to that, part of it is that like generally, if someone
• 35:45
  comes in and they don't want to sell any of their Bitcoin, I
• 35:47
  don't, we don't make them sell their Bitcoin, right?
• 35:49
  We just talked about why maybe they would want to consider
• 35:52
  things considering their specific situation.
• 35:54
  And I'm not saying that this means that anyone who comes in
• 35:56
  with 100% Bitcoin that we say, hey, you might want to consider
• 35:59
  selling. But there might be a situation
• 36:01
  where they have shorter term goals where it does make sense
• 36:03
  maybe to be holding short term bonds or cash.
• 36:05
  And also Bitcoin, if they don't want to have any stock
• 36:08
  investment, that's totally fine. Other people want to hold a
• 36:10
  little bit of both. They want to actually hedge.
• 36:12
  OK, maybe I'm not totally right about Bitcoin being the only
• 36:15
  thing and I want to have some in the Fiat system still, right?
• 36:18
  We do have clients like that as well where you want to balance
• 36:20
  the 2. And so I think to go back to
• 36:23
  sort of what we were talking about earlier is that it's
• 36:25
  really going to be on a case by case basis.
• 36:27
  And it's really going to matter, like what's important to the
• 36:29
  client and what they have as far as like what's coming up on the
• 36:31
  short term horizon versus what they need for the long term.
• 36:34
  Because the reality is, is that if you have really high fixed
• 36:37
  expenses, even if you've got a big windfall or whatever it is,
• 36:40
  we need to be able to cover that even if we want to be 100%
• 36:42
  Bitcoin. And so the volatility of Bitcoin
• 36:44
  is such that, yeah, we really do need to have some sort of cash
• 36:47
  runway, cash bonds, whatever it is to make sure that, hey, we're
• 36:49
  not dipping into Bitcoin if it does take an 85% drop.
• 36:52
  And like, if that happens, right, then we have what's
• 36:55
  called sequence of returns risk. And when that happens,
• 36:57
  basically, if we take out at the wrong possible time, then all of
• 37:00
  a sudden we have much less leftover.
• 37:02
  And so people don't like to hear this, but if you over allocate
• 37:04
  to Bitcoin, you end up with less Bitcoin.
• 37:06
  That's just how it is. And over allocation doesn't mean
• 37:08
  that you're 100% of Bitcoin. That might be like perfectly
• 37:11
  fine for someone who's not over allocated because they have
• 37:13
  income coming in or whatever it is.
• 37:14
  But if you're living off of it, or you're spending more than you
• 37:17
  earn and you've got you're spending from your Bitcoin
• 37:19
  stash, now all of a sudden you have to make some decisions
• 37:21
  about currency allocation. Gotcha.
• 37:23
  Makes perfect, perfect sense. I kind of want to double back to
• 37:27
  the the beginning when you're talking about your career.
• 37:31
  So how many years exactly have you been helping people as a
• 37:36
  financial advisor? Like what is the exact figure?
• 37:39
  Because I remember you gave me two numbers you gave me, I
• 37:42
  believe it was 2014 and 2016. How many years is that?
• 37:46
  OK, well. It's actually longer that I've
• 37:47
  been helping people in, in, in personal finance.
• 37:50
  So I started my career as an equity options trader and I did
• 37:54
  that for a couple of years. And then I worked at Merrill
• 37:55
  Lynch on a large team. So when I was on the large
• 37:58
  private wealth team, that was in 2010.
• 38:00
  So I guess it's 2025 now. So that would be 15 years in
• 38:04
  wealth management. And then I worked on another
• 38:07
  large private wealth team at UBS after that.
• 38:09
  So and then I started my own firm in 2014.
• 38:11
  So I've been advising like as a personal financial planner in my
• 38:16
  own firm since 2014 for the last 11 years.
• 38:19
  And I started even though I knew about Bitcoin, I was really
• 38:21
  uncomfortable with the regulatory environment and I
• 38:23
  didn't, I did not open my mouth. I didn't say a thing.
• 38:25
  I was a new firm. I didn't want to have to like
• 38:27
  deal with any regulators or whatever else.
• 38:29
  I was very afraid. I said nothing.
• 38:31
  And it wasn't until 2016 then I was like my lips got a little
• 38:36
  looser. I started talking about a little
• 38:39
  bit more and clients asking things. 2017 again, more
• 38:42
  questions, 2018 even more questions because there was a
• 38:45
  bull run. And then we came down and we
• 38:46
  were like, is this going away? What is this?
• 38:48
  I need to know by 2020, I was like, if you're not involved,
• 38:51
  I'm making you get involved. We had, we had pushed back from,
• 38:54
  from 2 clients on that and one of them actually left as a
• 38:58
  result of it. And one client they've stayed
• 39:00
  and they're fine that they're not invested.
• 39:02
  They, they're, they don't have any Bitcoin.
• 39:04
  And you know, we talked about it periodically and they're like,
• 39:06
  hey, I'm not ready yet. And that's OK, right?
• 39:07
  That's kind of the way it is, right?
• 39:09
  I think that they're still entitled to financial advice,
• 39:10
  obviously. And I and they're lovely and I
• 39:13
  like their family, so I'm happy to help them.
• 39:16
  So 15 years. And what was really interesting
• 39:18
  to me while we were talking about that is you worked within,
• 39:24
  forgive my language, Morgan, but I, I, I, I don't come from that
• 39:27
  world. I come from the world of media
• 39:29
  on YouTube. You worked within that, the
• 39:32
  belly of the beast, so to speak, within traditional finance.
• 39:36
  I mean, and then offering, you know, and then I, I, I kind of
• 39:40
  want to tie this in, tie this up with what you were saying
• 39:43
  earlier, where Fiat essentially has forced people to become part
• 39:49
  time investors just to maintain your purchasing power.
• 39:52
  If like, let's say you're, you make good income or let's say
• 39:56
  you're a wealthy individual, you either have to outsource that to
• 39:59
  a third party or you kind of have to figure it out yourself.
• 40:02
  And you know, it could kind of gets complicated a little bit,
• 40:05
  right? But how was that like?
• 40:08
  How 'cause you saw the internal workings of that sector, of that
• 40:13
  industry? And now you're in the Bitcoin
• 40:17
  world and you're offering, you know, financial advice, you
• 40:20
  know, as a Bitcoiner, right? And your husband's a hardcore
• 40:23
  bitcoiner, too, right? One of the funniest on the
• 40:27
  planet, too. Deadpan comedy is fantastic.
• 40:30
  And how is that like? Like, what did you see on the
• 40:35
  inside that, you know, perhaps taught you some lessons or
• 40:40
  perhaps, you know, made you disillusions with how you know
• 40:47
  that industry works? Yeah.
• 40:49
  So I actually love this question because on the one hand, I
• 40:52
  learned a lot from my experiences at Merrill Lynch and
• 40:55
  UBS and I don't want to discount that in any way.
• 40:58
  It really gave me a good idea of what what high net worth
• 41:03
  individuals really needed, right.
• 41:05
  And we can debate about whether or not Merrill Lynch and UBS
• 41:08
  were able to deliver that. My answer to that is no, which
• 41:11
  is how I went and started my own firm.
• 41:13
  But I would say the pivotal moment for me was really that
• 41:15
  when I worked on a team at Merrill Lynch and then my team
• 41:17
  moved to UBS. And for me, that was like, that
• 41:20
  was such a pivotal moment for in my career because it was like,
• 41:24
  oh, a light bulb went off. I don't know why.
• 41:27
  And you would think it's so obvious, but to me it wasn't
• 41:29
  that. They're all the same like in my
• 41:31
  mind, I was like Merrill Lynch is the problem and the culture
• 41:34
  here is such that the return accounts and we push research
• 41:37
  papers, we push all these things on clients that they don't
• 41:39
  necessarily need because we're trying to get some kind of
• 41:42
  Commission and that Commission pays us and the team and all the
• 41:45
  things and all the Merrill Lynch bills, right.
• 41:46
  And technology is bad and there's all sorts of issues and
• 41:49
  you're in your, and like, people didn't seem to care, even though
• 41:52
  like that's, that's not really true.
• 41:54
  They cared about their client a lot, but they didn't know how to
• 41:57
  care about their client the way that they're supposed to because
• 42:00
  they had their Merrill Lynch toolbox.
• 42:02
  And for me, it was the problem was Merrill Lynch.
• 42:04
  But when I got to UBSI realized that's actually not the case.
• 42:07
  It's these large wire houses. This is how they operate.
• 42:10
  And if I want to stay helping individuals with their finances,
• 42:13
  my only option is to go and start my own firm because that's
• 42:16
  the only way I'm going going to be able to do it the way clients
• 42:19
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• 42:21
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• 42:23
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  today. So essentially you, you're,
• 43:35
  you're trying to align incentives and I, I've had a
• 43:38
  little bit of exposure to this Morgan, but they're just parents
• 43:44
  and, you know, parents and laws and just them dealing with
• 43:48
  wealth management banks. And, you know, you start kind of
• 43:51
  digging through a lot of these products that they're offering
• 43:54
  and you're kind of like, what do you mean you can't withdraw the
• 43:57
  money or five, isn't that your money?
• 43:59
  Like, I don't understand that. And then what did you say the
• 44:03
  return was? And then they're like, would so
• 44:06
  they make a fee regardless of what happens.
• 44:09
  And then you kind of start discovering kind of like the
• 44:12
  misalignment of incentives. And what I love about Bitcoin is
• 44:15
  the alignment of incentives, right?
• 44:19
  So as a, you know, as a financial advisor that's a
• 44:23
  bitcoiner, your, your incentives are now aligned with your
• 44:27
  clients in a way, right? I think that the, within the
• 44:31
  traditional financial system, that's not the case at all.
• 44:34
  The case is it's, I hate using this word, but I, I, from my
• 44:39
  experience, what I observed, it was a lot of rent seeking type
• 44:43
  of behavior that I saw from the traditional, the traditional
• 44:50
  firms, They weren't really putting the best interest of
• 44:54
  their clients at heart. They were just kind of again,
• 44:57
  you know, like how, how, how do I pat my bottom line at the end
• 45:02
  of the year? But as a Bitcoiner, you know,
• 45:04
  it's awesome. The, the thing I love about
• 45:06
  Bitcoin, Bitcoin itself. And Max Keiser says this all the
• 45:09
  time. He says it as a joke, right?
• 45:12
  He's like Michael Saylor is the Bitcoin employee of the year.
• 45:15
  Donald Trump is the Bitcoin employee of the year.
• 45:17
  So it's a 2 sided question. What do you think the Bitcoin
• 45:21
  employee of the month is and and #2 is?
• 45:25
  Do you, do you know what I'm talking about?
• 45:27
  Do you see what I'm talking about?
• 45:28
  Or am I just, am I talking madness?
• 45:30
  No. No, I hear you.
• 45:31
  I mean, I think to get to your point about the banks, like they
• 45:36
  even have it in their code of ethics and they don't like to
• 45:39
  admit this, but your duty is to the firm 1st and then to the
• 45:43
  client. There's a huge issue with that
• 45:46
  every. I mean, I, I previously had ACFP
• 45:48
  designation, I don't have that anymore.
• 45:50
  But in their code of ethics, you put the client first, you don't
• 45:53
  put the firm first. Same thing with the CFA, which I
• 45:55
  do currently hold. I'm a charter holder.
• 45:57
  The duty is to client first, not to firm first.
• 46:00
  Because the whole, the whole crux of the of the system is
• 46:04
  that if we're constantly putting the business before the person
• 46:07
  who's actually helping the business, right by being a
• 46:10
  client, then we're not actually giving them value.
• 46:13
  And then we're not either. Maybe the client stays around
• 46:16
  because they're, you know, they haven't figured it out and
• 46:17
  they're, they don't know where else to go.
• 46:19
  But the reality is that actually they're going to leave
• 46:21
  eventually and there's no long term game.
• 46:24
  And actually in serving your client poorly and prioritizing
• 46:27
  the firm over the client. And I know that's kind of like
• 46:30
  it. It doesn't really make sense
• 46:32
  'cause we still see all these banks are still around, they're
• 46:34
  still scamming and doing whatever else that they're
• 46:36
  doing. But the reality is, is that like
• 46:38
  in my own firm, personally, I have always put the client first
• 46:42
  above my own fees, above everything else.
• 46:44
  I have always tried to make sure that we were operating in the
• 46:46
  best interest of the client and also that I charge in a way that
• 46:49
  doesn't have any conflicts of interest.
• 46:51
  So like for instance, a lot of advisors, they charge based on
• 46:54
  assets under management. That would be a really big
• 46:57
  issue. If I was advising on, if I
• 46:59
  wanted to advise on Bitcoin in 2016 and I was only charging an
• 47:02
  assets under management fee, that would mean that I would
• 47:04
  tell clients that they shouldn't go buy Bitcoin because I didn't
• 47:06
  want to lose those assets because I wasn't going to get
• 47:08
  paid. And so right, like right there
• 47:11
  like that, just the way that you get paid can totally influence
• 47:15
  your decisions. And we're all human beings and
• 47:16
  we're gonna make mistakes, right?
• 47:17
  And we're gonna want to prioritize ourselves.
• 47:19
  But if we try to reduce those conflicts of interest such to
• 47:21
  the point where we can't right, we can just give objective
• 47:25
  advice, then we're in a much better situation.
• 47:26
  And so I would say that like that's, that's how I have tried
• 47:29
  to have my firm and I tried to, I base my firm on integrity and
• 47:32
  so forth. And that like the, my duty to
• 47:34
  client is above all else. And I really take my fiduciary
• 47:36
  duty to heart. And I really don't think that
• 47:38
  the banks are doing that. And in fact, it's, you know, my
• 47:40
  hope is that when we do go to a Bitcoin standard that they will
• 47:43
  have to, like, revert to good practices, best practices and
• 47:47
  good behavior. Yeah.
• 47:50
  And again, the alignment of incentives I think is such a big
• 47:55
  deal and and and you buried the lead there there when you said
• 47:58
  that you know, it's it's to put the firm and ahead of the
• 48:03
  client. And again, it reminds me of the
• 48:06
  testimony of, you know, some of these executives during the
• 48:10
  2008, 2009 financial crisis. And when, you know, one of one
• 48:14
  of my favorite movies I saw my I made my wife watch it the other
• 48:17
  day and she really enjoyed it. Margin call, right, you know,
• 48:22
  and basically you know, it's like Kevin Spacey and Jeremy
• 48:25
  Irons are like having a conversation.
• 48:27
  He's like, you know, like this is crazy.
• 48:29
  And then Jeremy Irons is like look, this has happened so many
• 48:31
  times and then as a bitcoiner you're looking at that and
• 48:34
  you're like man, that is so Fiat that is Fiat that is that is the
• 48:39
  an encapsulation of Fiat. Now, Morgan, my question to you
• 48:42
  is, do you think as time progresses, you're going to
• 48:47
  start to see a de financialization of assets?
• 48:50
  So, but do you believe that real estate prices are going to start
• 48:54
  going down? Do you believe that less people
• 48:57
  are going to start putting money in Apple or Google or the big
• 49:01
  seven? Because again, if you price it
• 49:04
  in Bitcoin terms, I believe NVIDIA is the only thing that
• 49:08
  has actually outperformed Bitcoin, right?
• 49:11
  Like what's the point of purchasing?
• 49:13
  You know, you see this all the time, especially with what the
• 49:15
  ultra high net worth individuals, they have like 4 or
• 49:17
  five properties, right and they're just sitting on them
• 49:22
  right? You know, some, maybe some
• 49:25
  they'll get lucky and they'll be able to rent them right, But
• 49:28
  they're they're they're using it as a way to park their capital,
• 49:31
  right, which is insanity, right And then that takes away the
• 49:34
  opportunity for younger families to, you know, purchase their
• 49:38
  first home. Do you believe in that theory?
• 49:41
  Do you do you believe that Bitcoin is gonna create create
• 49:44
  this de financialization? I.
• 49:46
  Think there will be less for sure.
• 49:48
  I mean, I think that what we're seeing is not what I expected
• 49:51
  though. Like I kind of expected that the
• 49:53
  whole system and and I didn't like this idea, but I did expect
• 49:57
  that the whole system was going to kind of catch on fire and
• 49:59
  burn and Bitcoin was going to replace it.
• 50:01
  But the reality of what we're seeing is that kind of bit by
• 50:03
  bit, Bitcoin is coming in and changing things about the
• 50:05
  system. I think that's a that's a good
• 50:07
  thing. I don't think I don't think
• 50:08
  people really do. I mean, reality is even
• 50:10
  Bitcoiners, we don't want that, right?
• 50:11
  We want to live in a society where there's law and order,
• 50:14
  right, and where people can trade with each other and live
• 50:18
  in communities and so forth. And that like all that the
• 50:20
  world, it's not on fire, right? And so I think in some ways,
• 50:23
  right, we're got, we are going to see de financialization, but
• 50:25
  I don't know necessarily know what that's going to look like.
• 50:28
  But I agree with you, right? I don't think that there's going
• 50:30
  to be, I mean, for instance, when I lived in New York, there
• 50:33
  were it was very popular, especially for, for like Chinese
• 50:38
  folks who were trying to make sure that they're that they had
• 50:40
  something as a store of value. They would go and buy like the
• 50:42
  penthouse apartment in New York City in these large buildings
• 50:45
  that were coming up. And so they were all these empty
• 50:48
  apartment buildings that had amazing views, right, that were
• 50:51
  just being used as a store value.
• 50:53
  I think that right as as Bitcoin becomes more of a natural place
• 50:57
  for people to store their wealth, yeah, I do think that a
• 50:59
  lot of these things go away. And then ultimately, yes, of
• 51:02
  course, if there's less demand for these properties and
• 51:04
  ultimately the price should come down, hopefully for people to be
• 51:06
  able to buy them, who can afford them, to be able to live places
• 51:09
  and have, you know, young families coming up and starting
• 51:12
  and being able to afford homes. That would be a a great, you
• 51:15
  know, a great way for Bitcoin to be helping in that regard.
• 51:19
  I do also think that some of these structured products and
• 51:23
  other other like really ultra financialized parts of the
• 51:27
  system are going to start to break down because ultimately
• 51:30
  people don't want to be putting their money in some sort of
• 51:32
  black box that has all sorts of, you know, stipulations on how
• 51:36
  long you have to hold it in order to get some sort of
• 51:38
  return. The returns not guaranteed and
• 51:40
  the return is based on options pricing and all this other stuff
• 51:42
  that the average person doesn't understand.
• 51:44
  I do think a lot of that is going to become removed because
• 51:46
  people at the end of the day, they do want liquidity, right?
• 51:48
  And they do want to be able to say, OK, I just have some money
• 51:50
  and I'm going to put it here and if I need that money, fine, I'll
• 51:53
  go use it. They don't want to like, you
• 51:55
  know, all of a sudden be struck with OK, you can't, you can't
• 51:58
  withdraw and you've got all sorts of stipulations or
• 52:01
  blackout windows or whatever it is in order to take the money
• 52:03
  out. People don't like that kind of
• 52:04
  stuff or taking a haircut on their money.
• 52:07
  Like whole life insurance policies come to my own where
• 52:09
  you put all this premium in and the policy doesn't actually grow
• 52:12
  for even the 1st 10 years, right?
• 52:14
  And some people or underwater for a very long period of time
• 52:16
  and they've been told by all these life insurance salesman,
• 52:19
  oh, you can use this as a retirement plan.
• 52:21
  And it's like, OK, is that like, do people don't need life
• 52:24
  insurance for retirement? The whole reason why this came
• 52:26
  about is because of all the financialization in the system.
• 52:28
  What people need is money. They don't need some sort of
• 52:31
  strange wrapper around their money where they may or may not
• 52:34
  have lost it for some time. And that's going to grow at, you
• 52:36
  know, 4% and not like indefinitely until they die,
• 52:39
  right? They need, they need to be able
• 52:40
  to access their cash in a way that is like that's palatable,
• 52:45
  that doesn't involve, you know, a a million page contract in
• 52:48
  order for them to have it. And I completely agree.
• 52:52
  And I, I love the way that you, if you initially saw that it was
• 52:57
  going to be a great de financialization and now you're
• 53:00
  coming to the conclusion that it's going to be some, somewhere
• 53:03
  in the middle, right, some, some type of hybrid.
• 53:07
  And I agree with that as well, right?
• 53:09
  Because I, I, I don't think anyone foresaw the success of,
• 53:13
  of Sailor. I don't think anyone really
• 53:15
  foresaw the success of what Sailor has been able to utilize
• 53:20
  the traditional financial system and create all these products
• 53:23
  out of it. Now I don't know how that's
• 53:25
  going to end, right. You know the MSTY dividend
• 53:30
  payments are you know and that's pretty crazy.
• 53:35
  What is that like 130 something percent in a year?
• 53:38
  I. Think it's gone down.
• 53:39
  I think that we're at like 80 or 75% to add though.
• 53:43
  So we were talking. That's still.
• 53:44
  Insane, you know that? That was totally, totally, yeah.
• 53:50
  So I want to address 2 things. The first thing when we were
• 53:52
  talking about the Bitcoin treasury companies, what I
• 53:53
  should have mentioned about was the incentive of like aligning
• 53:56
  incentives. I think that if people are
• 53:58
  starting Bitcoin treasury companies for the wrong reasons,
• 54:00
  which I'm sure a lot of them are to basically enrich themselves
• 54:03
  to like at the behest of the shareholders.
• 54:05
  And this can happen in any company.
• 54:07
  It doesn't have to be a Bitcoin treasury company.
• 54:08
  It's really any company where management is paid
• 54:10
  inappropriately. And basically you're diluting
• 54:13
  shareholders to basically enrich the the board of directors or
• 54:17
  the C level executives. Then you're going to have a
• 54:19
  problem. That stock is going to have a
• 54:21
  really big problem. And so like I, I wanted to add
• 54:24
  that in there because I kind of thought of it when we were
• 54:26
  talking about aligning incentives and then also in
• 54:27
  regards to msty so and these products.
• 54:30
  So I think why this is kind of hard for Bitcoiners to wrap
• 54:34
  their head around is that normally we say when you don't
• 54:36
  understand the yield, you are the yield, right?
• 54:38
  That's kind of like the meme in the system.
• 54:40
  But the, the reality here is that when you don't understand
• 54:43
  this specific yield, it's actually not because you are the
• 54:46
  yield, it's just because you literally don't understand it
• 54:48
  because it's complicated. So like, and I, and I want to
• 54:52
  explain it because I think it's really important and I maybe
• 54:54
  you've had other guests on here that's explained it.
• 54:55
  But basically right, when volatility is high in the
• 54:58
  market, if there are options that can express that
• 55:01
  volatility, then those options are going to be worth more than
• 55:04
  when volatility is low. So if you've got a company
• 55:06
  that's just sort of, you know, bouncing between, I don't know,
• 55:08
  $10 and $11.00 and that's kind of what it does, right?
• 55:11
  Volatility is really, really low.
• 55:13
  And then therefore, any options that are on the specific company
• 55:15
  are also going to be really low because you're not expecting
• 55:18
  anything to happen. Whereas if you are looking at a
• 55:21
  company like MicroStrategy, which has huge swings in either
• 55:23
  direction, it's a lever bet on Bitcoin, right?
• 55:26
  There's going to end. So therefore the implied
• 55:28
  volatility of Bitcoin is already high.
• 55:29
  And therefore a lever bet on Bitcoin is going to have implied
• 55:32
  volatility. It's even higher.
• 55:33
  There's going to be an options premium there that's just much
• 55:36
  higher and expected to persist more so than let's say like S&P
• 55:41
  500, for instance, is a good example, right?
• 55:42
  When the VIX goes up, when volatility spikes, it spikes for
• 55:45
  like a month or whatever it is a day, right?
• 55:47
  And all of a sudden there's a lot of options premium and
• 55:49
  people can come in and sell that and make money, but they don't
• 55:51
  expect it to persist over time. You wouldn't have success with
• 55:55
  an S&P 500 options strategy the way you will with the micro
• 55:58
  strategy one. That said though, if volatility
• 56:01
  does start to come down, and there are reasons why it could,
• 56:03
  right, if all of a sudden, like maybe Bitcoin just does tick up
• 56:06
  for a while, or maybe it just does trade in a range or
• 56:08
  whatever it is, if it has a slow drift up, then MicroStrategy is
• 56:11
  going to have the same thing. And actually that's the worst
• 56:13
  possible case for options. All of a sudden the options
• 56:16
  market says, hey, things aren't really going to happen here and
• 56:19
  therefore these options are priced incorrectly and the all
• 56:21
  of a sudden the value of them are going to start to go down
• 56:24
  and those divvy checks are going to start to go down as well.
• 56:26
  Yeah. Yeah, once the once the
• 56:28
  volatility starts to decrease and it makes perfect sense.
• 56:31
  So it's kind of maybe it's like if, if you have the risk
• 56:35
  appetite for it, maybe it's this this short term thing that's
• 56:39
  happening now, but you know, it is that going to maintain into
• 56:43
  the future. And I just, I, I doubt it, you
• 56:45
  know, it's it's. Too, it's.
• 56:47
  It's too it's, it's just too good to be talking about 100%
• 56:51
  returns a year, you know, like. I do think though, that you can
• 56:54
  expect there to be a higher than average dividend from that then
• 56:57
  let's say another one of the yield Max products.
• 57:00
  I think that you can expect it to persist.
• 57:02
  I don't think that you should expect it to persist at the
• 57:04
  level that it's at. And also I think that you should
• 57:06
  keep in mind that option strategies have a lot of cost to
• 57:08
  them. And therefore the NAV itself is
• 57:09
  actually going to take, it's going to take a toll on the NAV.
• 57:12
  So while like you might be getting those dividend checks,
• 57:14
  you might also see your NAV drift down, in which case if
• 57:17
  your NAV starts drifting down, then all of a sudden they have
• 57:18
  less capital to sell options on. And even though you still have
• 57:21
  the same number of shares, the dividend per share is going to
• 57:23
  go down and you're going to get less dividends.
• 57:24
  So I would say like if the dividend does persist, let's say
• 57:27
  for even another like couple years, the majority of your
• 57:30
  returns are going to be earned in the first year or two, right?
• 57:32
  But then all of a sudden you're going to see like the end.
• 57:33
  The NAB is going down. If you look at a chart of it, it
• 57:35
  has been going down. I think it's already down like
• 57:37
  30% or something like that year to date, so.
• 57:39
  Morgan as a as AI? Appreciate that answer.
• 57:42
  Morgan AS As a financial advisor, do you advocate for
• 57:47
  people taking Bitcoin into cold storage?
• 57:50
  Oh, definitely, yeah. So I think that the best way for
• 57:54
  clients to hold Bitcoin and really for anyone to hold
• 57:56
  Bitcoin is that, well, first of all, they understand what it is
• 57:59
  and what they're taking possession of.
• 58:00
  But ultimately that they have a cold storage set up that works
• 58:03
  for them. And that might mean for some
• 58:05
  people it's single, say for some people it's multi sig and that
• 58:07
  they're storing it properly and they're taking good care of
• 58:09
  their C and they're periodically checking their keys.
• 58:11
  These are things that we work on with clients to make sure that
• 58:14
  they are actually taking sovereignty of their funds
• 58:17
  ultimately, right. Like I really do think that
• 58:18
  everyone should have at the very least kind of go bag where, you
• 58:21
  know, just in case you've got your passport, you've got your
• 58:24
  Bitcoin, you got whatever it is, and that you could just grab it
• 58:26
  and go. And if you need to go, right, I
• 58:28
  don't think that maybe you should store all of your wealth
• 58:30
  like that, but you should at least have something that it,
• 58:32
  should the situation arise, God forbid that you have, yeah, you
• 58:35
  have the ability to do that. I would say, though, that if a
• 58:38
  client can't do that, that doesn't mean they shouldn't own
• 58:40
  Bitcoin. And I think that this is where
• 58:42
  like Bitcoiners can get a load tripped up when they're like,
• 58:44
  OK, well, holding the ETF is the wrong way to do it or holding
• 58:47
  whatever product is the wrong way to do it.
• 58:48
  And the reality is, is that they should still have exposure.
• 58:50
  And what I've seen is that people who get exposure and
• 58:53
  we've used, we used GBTC before. It was an ETF that that actually
• 58:57
  LED them to being more willing to go and buy actual Bitcoin and
• 59:00
  put it in cold storage. Yeah, of course, sometimes the
• 59:03
  only way to learn to to really appreciate cold storage Bitcoin
• 59:07
  is just to, you know, have a, have a, how do I say this in a
• 59:13
  correct way? Have a have a subpar experience
• 59:19
  with a third party custodian. Yeah, that's fair.
• 59:24
  That's fair. I think also though, right, for
• 59:26
  some people it's just totally alien, right?
• 59:29
  They haven't haven't touched money, right?
• 59:31
  Like maybe they don't they. Yeah, and Morgan, sorry to
• 59:34
  interrupt you. It's insane, 'cause I, I, I
• 59:37
  experienced it with, with, with, with my parents and my parents
• 59:42
  in law. And then like, you know, you're
• 59:44
  telling them this and then they're, they're like, what the
• 59:47
  F are you talking about? Like that is crazy.
• 59:50
  What do you mean a metal plate? Like what are you talking about?
• 59:53
  Like multi, What do you mean? And then like in your head as a
• 59:57
  bitcoiner, you know, you're like, this is easier than having
• 1:00:00
  a regular bank account once you understand the fundamentals.
• 1:00:03
  It really is. I think.
• 1:00:05
  Really too, if you're like the kind of person that gets cash
• 1:00:07
  and stuff's in your mattress, you're much more likely to want
• 1:00:10
  to do Bitcoin than somebody who has literally never touched a
• 1:00:12
  dollar in their life, right? Like maybe you're you've been
• 1:00:14
  AW2 employee. It's always been direct
• 1:00:16
  deposited. You almost never go and take out
• 1:00:18
  cash, right? You pay for everything on your
• 1:00:20
  card. There are a lot of people like
• 1:00:21
  that who literally never even like they don't hold any money
• 1:00:24
  ever. And so I think for those people
• 1:00:26
  it's a lot more difficult than for somebody who is like, you
• 1:00:29
  know, I kind. Of want to have a little cash?
• 1:00:30
  Or whatever, you know, I really want the government knowing
• 1:00:33
  everything. Yeah, a little paranoia is not
• 1:00:35
  the worst thing, and it does help people move.
• 1:00:39
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• 1:00:40
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• 1:01:33
  So Speaking of governments and Speaking of, you know, of
• 1:01:37
  savings and, and all this, and we, we had some recent news
• 1:01:41
  coming out of, of the European Commission about basically
• 1:01:46
  confiscating people's savings. You know, they phrased it in a
• 1:01:49
  way where it was politically correct, But you know, you could
• 1:01:53
  read between the line and it's basically like, OK, wait, so
• 1:01:56
  you're going to confiscate my savings and you're going to
• 1:01:58
  invest it for me? Like how, what, what would your
• 1:02:02
  advice be to someone? You know, how, how would they be
• 1:02:05
  able to protect their savings from that?
• 1:02:07
  Because if that's just government policy that they're
• 1:02:11
  just going out there and blatantly saying like, look like
• 1:02:13
  we need to get people's savings to work.
• 1:02:16
  Like, I'm looking at that as a bitcoiner and I'm sure you're
• 1:02:19
  looking at that as a bitcoiner. And just like, where are you to
• 1:02:22
  tell me what to do with my savings?
• 1:02:24
  Like what makes you entitled to that?
• 1:02:26
  I already pay income tax. I pay, I pay the money tax,
• 1:02:30
  which is inflation. I pay the property tax.
• 1:02:32
  Like now you want to take my savings too?
• 1:02:35
  Like what's going on here? Well.
• 1:02:36
  Also really short term memories, I mean like I would say COVID,
• 1:02:40
  like when everything came down in 2020 as a result of COVID,
• 1:02:43
  people basically realized that everyone was living paycheck to
• 1:02:45
  paycheck and they are either either living paycheck to
• 1:02:47
  paycheck or they were invested such that they had to pull out
• 1:02:50
  the market. You know, a really short term
• 1:02:52
  memory about that. And that was only five years
• 1:02:53
  ago, right? And, and so I think like, it's
• 1:02:56
  obviously a huge mistake on behalf of the government to say
• 1:02:59
  that people shouldn't be holding money, right?
• 1:03:01
  If people want to hold money because they want to hedge
• 1:03:02
  against uncertainty, putting that money into investment isn't
• 1:03:05
  going to help them with that, right?
• 1:03:06
  It's only going to help the government with whatever project
• 1:03:09
  it is that they're forcing people to invest in.
• 1:03:11
  And ultimately, like the short answer is you probably have to
• 1:03:13
  move. The long answer is I don't know
• 1:03:15
  how you would get like if you, I guess if you've got some Bitcoin
• 1:03:18
  in a hardware wallet, then maybe you can avoid that.
• 1:03:20
  But again, I'm not an expert on by any stretch of what's going
• 1:03:23
  on in Europe. So I don't want anyone to take
• 1:03:25
  what I say to heart. If you're a European and I just
• 1:03:28
  told you to put it on a hardware wallet and then you get
• 1:03:30
  arrested, I swear I had no idea. So earlier on when we were
• 1:03:36
  talking, I was, I was talking about your, I was asking you
• 1:03:38
  about your background. You're talking about, you know,
• 1:03:40
  Rothbard and you're talking a lot about like Austrian
• 1:03:43
  economics. Do you?
• 1:03:44
  Do you, do you incorporate that into personal financial planning
• 1:03:50
  for your clients? I would say less so than you
• 1:03:53
  would think. I would say more so what's
• 1:03:56
  important are really just kind of basic financial planning
• 1:03:59
  principles of helping people with all the major categories
• 1:04:02
  that whether they want to look at it or not.
• 1:04:04
  So for most people that's going to be cash flow management.
• 1:04:05
  What's coming in, what's going out?
• 1:04:07
  Do you have, have you created a savings?
• 1:04:08
  OK, what are we doing with that savings?
• 1:04:10
  Are we tax optimizing, right? Just looking at what people's
• 1:04:14
  situations are and making sure that we're dealing with any
• 1:04:16
  legal, like legal way to reduce taxes.
• 1:04:19
  Not tax evasion, but tax avoidance, right?
• 1:04:21
  In places where it makes sense. I'm dealing with the estate
• 1:04:24
  plan, which is anywhere from how you're storing your Bitcoin and
• 1:04:27
  how it's going to pass to just every other aspect of, of a
• 1:04:29
  person's assets, whether or not a trust is warranted versus like
• 1:04:32
  depending on what state you live in, it might, may or may not
• 1:04:35
  make sense. Retirement planning, like we
• 1:04:37
  were talking about earlier, we do a lot of that.
• 1:04:39
  We help people know how much house that they're going to
• 1:04:41
  afford. These aren't kind of things that
• 1:04:42
  I would say you would find in the average Rothbard textbook.
• 1:04:46
  Gotcha, gotcha. No, it makes sense.
• 1:04:48
  It makes sense. What is what?
• 1:04:52
  What do you think is in your view?
• 1:04:54
  What's the most misunderstand, misunderstood aspect of long
• 1:04:59
  term Bitcoin Hodler psychology? Oh yeah, this is a good one.
• 1:05:06
  So there's actually it's kind of funny.
• 1:05:08
  It's like a reverse bell curve. It's like AV or UI, guess where
• 1:05:14
  people either think we're living in the future and like moon math
• 1:05:17
  has already happened and it's inevitable.
• 1:05:19
  And so Bitcoin like in their mind is $1,000,000 a coin, even
• 1:05:22
  though it's not. And so they don't need to deal
• 1:05:24
  with whatever reality of their financial situation is because
• 1:05:27
  Bitcoin's gonna help them grow out of it.
• 1:05:29
  I see that. And then I see also see the
• 1:05:30
  other side where people are overly conservative and who are
• 1:05:34
  like, you know, saving excessively and really probably
• 1:05:38
  could make changes in their life as a result of that.
• 1:05:40
  But because they, you know, they're in this mindset of, you
• 1:05:42
  know, low time preference and stack as much as you can, that
• 1:05:45
  they might be missing some of the joys of life today that
• 1:05:49
  would actually be worthwhile for them and trading that for
• 1:05:52
  Bitcoin. So I see like both sides of it.
• 1:05:54
  I think like that healthy balance in the middle is really
• 1:05:57
  great and people should should try to get there where like you
• 1:05:59
  are living in reality, but also like you are prioritizing things
• 1:06:03
  now that are important. The reason why is because we
• 1:06:06
  live in these kind of five to 10 year periods in general, right?
• 1:06:10
  Or mine can't really think past, let's say 18 months in advance,
• 1:06:12
  I would say for most people, but also like we had these just eras
• 1:06:16
  in our lives that generally last about 5 to 10 years and you
• 1:06:20
  don't get them back, right? So, and that doesn't mean that
• 1:06:23
  you should like, you know, Yolo and do whatever you want, right?
• 1:06:26
  You still need to be responsible, I think, but
• 1:06:28
  there's a way to do it so that you can make sure that every one
• 1:06:31
  of those 5 to 10 year periods that you live in is really done
• 1:06:34
  with like with my mindfulness and meaningfulness.
• 1:06:36
  So that you don't look back on your life and say I saved all
• 1:06:39
  this money. But you know, I didn't spend
• 1:06:40
  time with my kids, I didn't help my community.
• 1:06:42
  I didn't, you know, whatever it is on people's bucket list, I
• 1:06:44
  never traveled to Italy or wherever it was that they wanted
• 1:06:47
  to go, right? So I think for, for some people,
• 1:06:50
  right, that part is really hard. And then for other people, they
• 1:06:53
  do too much of that where they're like, well, you know, I
• 1:06:55
  only got this 5 to 10 years and I'm just going to go for it and
• 1:06:58
  hopefully Bitcoin gets to $2,000,000 a coin and I won't
• 1:07:00
  have to worry about any of it. I love I that that answer that
• 1:07:05
  you just gave is what are the most one of the most profound
• 1:07:09
  during this entire conversation that I think that is going to
• 1:07:13
  resonate with people the most, right, because this is where you
• 1:07:16
  see, you know, the hardcore hodler, you know, you see the
• 1:07:19
  memes on X of the mattress and just no chair.
• 1:07:25
  Your husband really invented this.
• 1:07:28
  No chairs and just saving as much as they can.
• 1:07:32
  And then, you know, the other aspect, which is like, I'm gonna
• 1:07:36
  move to Central America and, you know, live off $500 a day and
• 1:07:40
  eventually Bitcoin's gonna go to the moon and I'm just gonna, you
• 1:07:43
  know, do whatever I want. But I love how you mentioned
• 1:07:46
  that. It's like a reverse bell curve.
• 1:07:47
  It's it's this in between where I think you're going to find the
• 1:07:51
  most satisfaction from a career perspective, from a financial
• 1:07:55
  planning perspective. Now the part that I want to
• 1:07:58
  focus on right now, Morgan, which is me and you are both
• 1:08:02
  going through this, right? You know, we have, we have small
• 1:08:05
  children. The family aspect of this, like
• 1:08:08
  how does Bitcoin incorporate into financial family financial
• 1:08:14
  planning? And I'm sure you give out tons
• 1:08:16
  of advice to people on this specific subject matter.
• 1:08:21
  Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because I also, I do
• 1:08:25
  see the kids who have been given trust funds and I have seen that
• 1:08:28
  kids who get trust funds where they are doled out money, like
• 1:08:32
  there are some kind of government employee, it does a
• 1:08:34
  lot of psychological damage to them.
• 1:08:36
  And I don't think that like that was because the parents had
• 1:08:40
  their like don't have their kids interest at heart.
• 1:08:42
  I actually think that the parent thought and they talked to the
• 1:08:45
  attorney and the attorneys decided that, hey, it actually
• 1:08:48
  is in your bed, your child's best interest to make sure that
• 1:08:50
  this money lasts for as long as possible so that your child has
• 1:08:52
  everything they need over the course of their life.
• 1:08:54
  Should you not be there. And that's generally like the
• 1:08:56
  decision that the grantor and the the attorneys make, but they
• 1:08:59
  don't actually think about the psychological effects that it
• 1:09:01
  has on children. And so I think like if we're, if
• 1:09:04
  we're thinking about how we can still keep parts of the
• 1:09:06
  traditional financial system, but apply them to Bitcoin, I
• 1:09:10
  would say trust do make sense, but also don't be so rigid in
• 1:09:14
  how you do it. And also the, my other thing
• 1:09:17
  that I've been thinking about quite a lot, and I'm actually,
• 1:09:19
  I'm writing a book about Bitcoin personal finance.
• 1:09:21
  And I've been thinking a lot about like the estate planning
• 1:09:23
  chapter. Because I think that on the one
• 1:09:25
  hand, yes, people should know about trust.
• 1:09:26
  They should know what's available to them and so forth.
• 1:09:28
  And making sure that like that is all buttoned up if that's
• 1:09:31
  where the direction that they want to go in.
• 1:09:32
  But also the thing that's the most important I think is the
• 1:09:36
  values that you're passing on to your children 100.
• 1:09:38
  Percent, yeah. Like the families who have done
• 1:09:41
  really, really well have passed on these values over and over
• 1:09:44
  and over again. It is a family core value.
• 1:09:46
  And they make sure that their kids understand.
• 1:09:48
  And so it's not like, you know, in three generations, all of a
• 1:09:51
  sudden, you know, they've got a silver spoon in their mouth and
• 1:09:53
  they're wasting all this money and so forth, right?
• 1:09:55
  And so the idea is like, how can you create resilient children
• 1:09:58
  who can, who can make good decisions, who can value what
• 1:10:02
  you value, right? And obviously they're going to
• 1:10:04
  do it in a different way, which I think it's hard for parents
• 1:10:06
  because parents are like, no, I want my kid to be a carbon copy
• 1:10:08
  of how I did things because obviously I did it all great.
• 1:10:10
  And the reality is that, OK, fine.
• 1:10:12
  But God doesn't need 2 of you, right?
• 1:10:14
  If God needed two of you, he would just create 2 of you.
• 1:10:17
  He would have created you and then your children.
• 1:10:18
  And so, and I, and if you don't believe in God and fine,
• 1:10:20
  whatever, but the reality is that you're still different
• 1:10:23
  people from from your children. And so your children are going
• 1:10:26
  to have a different way of expressing that.
• 1:10:27
  And parents need to be open to that idea as well.
• 1:10:30
  So teaching the values, but also being open to the fact that the
• 1:10:32
  way that your kids express those values are going to be different
• 1:10:34
  than the way that you express those values.
• 1:10:36
  And then from there, I kind of think of it more as like, OK, if
• 1:10:38
  you don't want to go to trust fund route, like maybe we're
• 1:10:40
  going like a family corporation route, you know, where like, OK,
• 1:10:45
  the corporation's expected to persist.
• 1:10:46
  So what are the values of this family corporation and how can
• 1:10:49
  we make sure the kids are involved?
• 1:10:51
  And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to set up this
• 1:10:52
  company and do all this stuff really.
• 1:10:53
  Like, I mean, it's sort of figuratively that like the
• 1:10:55
  family operates as a unit and the kids are involved.
• 1:10:59
  And I think that like you have to gauge your child based on
• 1:11:02
  like their age and their level of understanding, right?
• 1:11:03
  For some people, they're going to be able to start a lot
• 1:11:05
  earlier, and for some people, that's going to have to be
• 1:11:07
  later. And for some people, they're
• 1:11:08
  going to have to educate themselves first before they can
• 1:11:10
  even pass on this education. So it's going to take longer.
• 1:11:13
  So you kind of have to give yourself grace, meet yourself
• 1:11:15
  where you're at, and then also start and like imparting these
• 1:11:17
  values on your kids. But the reality is that, like in
• 1:11:20
  our household, we're just dropping Nuggets all the time.
• 1:11:22
  You know, I feel like with our kids, it's like kids in general,
• 1:11:25
  right? You want to plant as many little
• 1:11:27
  things in their brain that that like, you can, you know, And
• 1:11:29
  like, sometimes people get mad about this because you're like,
• 1:11:31
  OK, well, you were like indoctrinating your child to
• 1:11:32
  become this, you know? Crazy.
• 1:11:35
  I'm not ashamed of saying that. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:11:38
  But like, that's the idea, right?
• 1:11:39
  Because their brains are still like they're, they can absorb
• 1:11:40
  anything. So you just, you wanted like
• 1:11:42
  take that time to like not fill it with garbage, but fill it
• 1:11:45
  with really precious information.
• 1:11:46
  And then from there you can like hang things on those pegs as
• 1:11:49
  they get older and you can sort of, you know, reason with them
• 1:11:52
  more and they can make better decisions.
• 1:11:53
  And you're just sort of reiterating on what you planted
• 1:11:56
  when they're young you. Made a You made a fantastic
• 1:11:59
  statement that I don't think you would hear from Morgan Stanley
• 1:12:06
  or Goldman Sachs, right regarding trust fund kids
• 1:12:11
  because what I've experienced and I grew up in Miami so this
• 1:12:14
  is like very, you know, you see you're around this a lot, right?
• 1:12:19
  You know, it, it creates A psychological safety net and it
• 1:12:25
  essentially it, it disincentivizes, it
• 1:12:30
  disincentivizes kids from from pursuing a, a career or path
• 1:12:35
  because they know that, you know, they have, you know,
• 1:12:39
  daddy's Amex, right? Or they have, if everything else
• 1:12:43
  fails, they're going to be fine, right?
• 1:12:46
  That pressure, I would say is a good thing.
• 1:12:50
  I would say it creates that incentive to, you know, go
• 1:12:54
  venture out into the world and, you know, become your own human.
• 1:12:59
  And then that doesn't mean that you're going to step away from,
• 1:13:02
  to use your words, your family's corporation, but it it also
• 1:13:07
  allows you to become your own person, right, rather than
• 1:13:11
  living under the shadow of your parents empire, so to speak,
• 1:13:16
  right? So that answer was a really,
• 1:13:19
  really good answer because I don't think you would get that
• 1:13:21
  from traditional financial advisors.
• 1:13:24
  They would say, oh, trust fund, we'll take care of you guys,
• 1:13:27
  right? Yeah.
• 1:13:28
  Well, the reality is that like the trust is expected to
• 1:13:31
  persist, right? And so if let's say like Morgan
• 1:13:34
  Stanley or whatever, whoever is the trustee, they're the trustee
• 1:13:37
  indefinitely. And they're, they actually don't
• 1:13:39
  have the beneficiaries best interest in mind.
• 1:13:41
  They have their own best interest in mind in protecting
• 1:13:42
  the trust and making sure the trust persists.
• 1:13:44
  Because usually what they write in these trust documents is that
• 1:13:46
  the trust is supposed to persist.
• 1:13:48
  And it's not just supposed to provide for the beneficiary, but
• 1:13:50
  also for the beneficiaries, children and so forth.
• 1:13:53
  And so this trust could last like theoretically a place like
• 1:13:56
  Raymond James or Morgan Stanley, they can have this trust last
• 1:13:59
  for 200 years, you know, if they're, if they manage it
• 1:14:01
  correctly. And so there's a lot of fees.
• 1:14:05
  But also what, what I've also seen happen though, is that so
• 1:14:08
  for instance, like, maybe you don't get a huge trust, but you
• 1:14:10
  get enough of a trust where you can supplement like your, your
• 1:14:13
  income with it, which on one hand is good, But on the other
• 1:14:15
  hand, what happens is that we don't form good financial
• 1:14:18
  behaviors. And so if what happens is that
• 1:14:20
  you don't form good financial behaviors and then all of a
• 1:14:22
  sudden you decide to make a career change or you don't want
• 1:14:24
  to, you don't think you have to work anymore because you do have
• 1:14:26
  this trust fund. Now all of a sudden you're in a
• 1:14:27
  position where actually the trust assets can run out.
• 1:14:30
  And now you don't have any good financial behaviors in place.
• 1:14:33
  And you've been living in a way such that it's actually really
• 1:14:35
  hard to change. What I found is that once people
• 1:14:37
  start to have that lifestyle creep up, it's actually really
• 1:14:40
  much harder to go back down. So as much as you can do like
• 1:14:43
  while you're in your savings and accumulation years, if you can
• 1:14:46
  sort of keep that lifestyle creep in check, you're going to
• 1:14:49
  be set up much better for any kind of hard times that you need
• 1:14:52
  to weather along the way. And simply like what ends up
• 1:14:56
  happening to these trust fund kids is that they don't have the
• 1:14:58
  skills. And so the very thing that the
• 1:15:00
  parents were trying to protect them from is actually what ends
• 1:15:02
  up happening to them anyways. And it's, and if anything, I
• 1:15:04
  like, I find it really, really sad because like a lot of these
• 1:15:08
  people, they're not, you know, like they're not the typical
• 1:15:10
  person that you think of when you think of a trust fund, you
• 1:15:12
  think of like, you know, some kid that's like doing drugs and
• 1:15:15
  doing whatever and not doing anything valuable in the world.
• 1:15:17
  And that's not actually what's happening.
• 1:15:18
  It's like what is happening is that now you've got a generation
• 1:15:20
  of people in their 40s and 50s who just know who have like, no
• 1:15:24
  financial landscape. They don't know very much and
• 1:15:26
  they want to know, but they're like at a loss of where to even
• 1:15:29
  start because it's been so many years.
• 1:15:30
  And I think that that like sometimes for people who have
• 1:15:33
  empathy for that is really hard because like, oh, poor trust
• 1:15:35
  fund kid, you know, But no, really, like we can have empathy
• 1:15:38
  for all people's financial situations, whether, you know,
• 1:15:41
  they're in a much better one or worse one than somebody else.
• 1:15:44
  Absolutely. The last question for you,
• 1:15:46
  Morgan, if you had to summarize your financial philosophy in one
• 1:15:50
  sentence for someone new to Bitcoin, what would it be?
• 1:15:56
  One sentence. Goodness.
• 1:15:57
  So I'm like a blabbermouth. Can I even do that?
• 1:16:01
  We could. Squeeze in two sentences.
• 1:16:03
  OK. I would say that my one sentence
• 1:16:07
  philosophy is you need to have income coming in, you need to
• 1:16:11
  have funds that are going out, expenses to pay for things and
• 1:16:15
  you need to create net savings. What you do with that net
• 1:16:17
  savings, obviously it's going to be up to you, but decide if you
• 1:16:20
  want to hold the best money in the world or if you want to hold
• 1:16:23
  something else. Amen to that, Morgan.
• 1:16:25
  Richard, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on
• 1:16:28
  Simply Bitcoin IRO. I appreciate it.
• 1:16:30
  Thanks. For having me, Nico, it's really
• 1:16:31
  fun.