Epic Real Estate Investing - Maximum Gains! Mixing Real Estate and Cryptocurrency - Mike Dillard | 1149

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

“The key to success in crypto is just to buy and hold.” Mike Dillard In today’s episode, Matt is joined with Mike Dillard, an early investor in cryptocurrency and a mentor who helps new entrepreneurs to start and grow the business of their dreams. Stay tuned and find out all the answers to your crypto questions and how you can combine digital and housing assets for maximum gains! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit R-E-I-A's.com.

Here's Matt. Hey there, rock star. Matt Terrio here from Epic Real Estate, where we show people how to invest in real estate using more of their mind than their money, using creative real estate investing strategies with an emphasis on retiring early. And we're going to get creative today. So if this is your first time here, really glad that you found us. If you like what you hear, make sure you hit the subscribe button before you go.

And if this is not your first time here, welcome back. And thank you for sharing this with your friends and family. you're the absolute best for doing that. And I really appreciate that about you. So thank you. So I've got something a little different for you today. I'm going to share with you how I'm working the velocity of money in multiple ways to build my real estate portfolio. I'm going to get really creative, which includes the incorporation of cryptocurrency.

And then I've got the news for you this week. And with regard to this week in crypto, that we end each of our shows with now. I've got a very special guest that I've wanted to connect with for quite a while. He's a really smart marketer. He's a good businessman. And he's an early investor in cryptocurrencies. And I'm going to get to be able to ask him all of my own burning questions,

as well as all of your questions that have come my way. Might not have had the best answers for. So I'm going to ask him those two. And you get to listen in, all right? But first, today's sponsor of the show wants you to know that you've got the dream, now get the funding and get it fast. Getting funding for your business as easy as one, two, three. Step one, get pre-approved.

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And I just find myself not being able to stop talking about them. And now here, even on the show, we have a special segment right at the end of the show called This Week in Crypto. And I put it at the very end in case you have zero interest in it. And I understand that. You just want to listen to this show for what it is provided over the last almost 12 years now. Can you believe it? pretty remarkable. Thank you for being here. And this crypto thing is not, I'm not into it just because it's this new exciting asset class.

I mean, I'm interested in it. Although that is true, it is a new and exciting investment class. But, you know, I started doing this back in 2017. So I've been doing it for a while. And, you know, up until recently, the last six months or so, I've really just kind of treated it more like an automated savings account where I set up a recurring purchase. and actually recurring purchases of dozens of the different types of coins that they're available. Some are weekly purchases.

Some are biweekly purchases. And some are monthly. Sometimes I'm just doing $25 a month. I'm starting that small. And others I'm doing maybe $100 every two weeks. And some of me, there's a couple that I'm doing $500 a week. And so I've got them all distributed that way just based on what my own preferences and the little information

that I've been able to acquire. and that's just kind of how I made my decision. Not a whole lot of science behind it. That's for sure, though. I haven't really known what I was doing, nor nearly as much as I should know, to make the regular investments over the last four years like I have.

My strategy, it has strongly been based in FOMO. Fear of missing out. That's been my whole strategy. I have a few friends that started a couple years ago before me, or they started a couple years before me, not ago. But I started in 2017. So a lot of my friends got started in 2013, 2014. and they're quite wealthy now because of it.

So I wanted in on that. I just felt like I was missing something and they don't work too hard. They were just the right place, right time, I made that decision. And they've told me that even I getting in as late as I did as I felt I did, when they look back on this, I will be considered one of the very early adopters, one of the very early investors. And they were breaking it down to me how even just right now

where it might feel like you're behind and you've missed out He says, we are so in the infantile stage of this. It's ridiculous. So even if you right now listening to me feel like you're behind, you're not. Ready? So this is how I began. I began by just downloading the app, Coinbase. It's just a basic app right there in your app store.

Coinbase is probably the most popular one. They just went public, by the way. So it's probably got the most scrutiny on it as well. And what I did is I just connected my bank account to it. And I just set up a recurring buy of the two most popular coins. That's what I did in the beginning. They just did Bitcoin and Ethereum. Those are the two most popular.

They're the two most established, I guess. And I think they make two of the strongest cases for the utility of cryptocurrency. But there are thousands of coins to choose from, like thousands and thousands. And, you know, I didn't know which ones were good ones and which ones were not. I had heard about maybe you have as well, like some of the scams that were coming out in 2016, 2017, and there's probably still scams going on today. But at the time, since Coinbase only carried, I think, maybe 10 or so coins, when I downloaded the app, that's all they had available, was just 10 out of those thousands and thousands.

My logic was, hey, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. I was just thinking, hey, they probably vetted this out, and they decided had some sort of system to pick the ones that they were going to represent. And to tell you the truth, I was just too lazy to read up on it myself and too busy as well, that I figured I would just leverage their Coinbase's. due diligence. That's how I chose. So FOMO and trust. That was pretty much at 100% FOMO and Trust and Coinbase was my strategy from the very beginning. And sounds pretty insane, right? So that was from the beginning. And that was just what I stuck with for the next few years.

And today, I look like quite the genius. I haven't lost on a single coin. And during COVID, the crypto market really took off to where I'm right around a 600% return. turn on my recurring purchases. Far beats the stock market and beats any real estate that I own as well. Now, I've sold some to take some small profits off the table, only to find myself buying back in as they continued to appreciate. So more FOMO got me back in. And because I got back in at a higher price, there was a gap there where I lost money.

I have regretted every single sale I've ever made. of my cryptocurrency. So that makes it a very interesting investment being that you just want to buy and hold. And you just buy, hold, and watch it. Because there's no opportunities really for cash flow or for depreciation, all the stuff that comes with real estate.

It's still a very new investment class. And there's still a lot of uncertainty or, I guess it depends which camp you're talking to. Some people are very certain about its future. The outsiders are very uncertain. uncertain about its future. Understandably, though. I mean, people want to know, is this thing real or not? People have made a lot of money. Like, is this a Ponzi scheme? Is it going to collapse? Is it just a big bowl of hot air? Like, what is it? And not to mention the extreme volatility that

comes with it. I mean, it can downright cause heart attacks by the emotional roller coaster crypto investments can be or that they can put you on. So I went in still knowing all of that. You know, that part I did know. And I've put it. nothing more than I was willing to lose in it. And I've been totally prepared to lose. And I always know that that's a risk or I feel like it's a risk. So my recurring purchases have been really, really small. But they have now grown, those investments in those purchases over the years,

have grown to a size where I think I'd be pretty sad if I lost it now. There's more in there than I really want to lose. but it's really all just house money anyway, but what was once just discretionary money to me has grown to be significant money. So that's left me with the question. And the question comes from Mercedes quite frequently as well. When are you going to cash out?

When will enough be enough? Well, I really believe in the future of it. I've really immersed myself, I would say, in the last 12 months and become more of a student. And there's certain YouTube videos that I watch or YouTube channels. There's certain podcasts I listen to. to I listen to some of the outlandish crazy characters that represent it. But then I also listen to

some of the very, you know, smart, wealthy and credentialed people that are into it as well. So I don't want to cash out. You know, I think about my friends that started a couple years ago before me or a couple years before me. And if I had started with them during that last runup when it went on its last bull run in 2017, they all made minors. millions of dollars. You know, they were purchasing Bitcoin back on was like $100, $50 each. And during 2017, it went up to $20,000 for one coin. And I can't help but think with something like that.

If I were in their shoes at that time, not knowing what I know now, I probably would have cashed out once I 10xed my money. But it 200xed before it ever corrected. So I'm thinking maybe that was a good thing that I didn't get in there. I don't know, maybe not. I don't know. But that was a really good lesson, especially now since it sits at $40,000.

And it sits at $40,000 after it just had this remarkable correction, this remarkable collapse and it's still at $40,000. I mean, it's doubled again since 2017. And it seems kind of like this might be really close to where the new bottom is. I don't think it's ever going to $20,000 again. But who knows? I mean, just last month, though, it hit $64,000. And predictions are that it will hit $1 million.

within the next 10 years. One Bitcoin will be worth at least $1 million in the next 10 years. And I've heard more than one person say that. I've heard that come from more than one source. And with that kind of potential, you definitely have to want, or you definitely want to have something in it.

You want to have something in there. You know, I was talking to my trainer, and I've been working out there for a year, almost a year and a half, I guess. and I would consider us friends. Like, we're very friendly. We talk four days a week and we're, you know, we're together for an hour, four times a week.

And we talk a lot. And I was just thinking, like, the future of the cryptocurrency to me, I really see it spreading or widening the gap between the has and have-nots even further. And it's not going to be the has and have-nots right now of, like, who we know in our society who has and who it doesn't have. it's going to be the has and haves not certain. Like you either have crypto or you don't, and that's going to be the big separation point.

I really see that happening, particularly if just one Bitcoin becomes worth $1 million, and you don't have a million dollars, and you don't have a Bitcoin, I think it's going to be really difficult for you to catch up. And so I told her, I was like, just put a thousand bucks in it and just set it and forget and leave it.

Just don't even worry about it ever again. and in 10 years, you're going to be really grateful that you put that $1,000 in it today. And that was like, I don't know, three or four months ago when I had that conversation with her. And I really believe that. And I kind of have that conversation with everyone that I meet now because I care about them and I care about you. So I'm telling you this as well. And so I just with that type of asymmetric return, with that type of potential, I think the upside far exceeds the risk. Don't get me wrong.

There's still risk. I mean, she might lose that $1,000. I don't know. I would lose a lot more if she lost that $1,000. So I felt very comfortable in recommending it because I'm not telling her to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. I'm not telling you to do anything that I haven't done myself. So, and I'm not even telling you to do it. I'm sharing this information with you and you get to make that decision for yourself.

So with that in mind, I'd like to put a whole lot more into it than I have. But I can only put in what I know that I'm not going to need. because if it's just a buy and hold and let it sit, then I can't put everything I got into it like I want to because I know I'll probably, I'm going to need that. I got a payroll and I got a house payment and, you know, I've got multiple house payments now. I've got, you know, I've got the pay, I've said payroll already.

I got company operations. I got marketing. I got advertising. You know, I got to eat, all that kind of stuff. So I can't put any more into it because I, I'm going to have to leave it there and I need money. That's basically what I'm saying. You got the point.

All right. So I'm really limited by the discretionary money that I make. So I thought until about six months ago when everything changed, I didn't realize that you, or I didn't know that you could borrow against it. There's this thing like, part of the big part of the cryptocurrency is this thing, decentralized finance. And it's banking that's going on. online and it's taking the banks out of the equation. There's not that middleman of Bank of America

or Wells Fargo. Boom, they're out of there. So it's just between the lenders and the borrowers. Kind of like, I guess, peer to peer lending, but with a lot more safeguards in place and a lot more accountability in place and there's different types of banking services. And one of those services is that you can borrow against. And there's a dozen of them out there that do it. You need a quick Google search. Like, how do I borrow against my crypto and you'll probably find bunch. And so I realized that I could do that. And then my wheel started to really turn when we had John Dwyer on the show a couple of months ago where he was talking about infinite banking. And that's something I've known about for a long time, using a life insurance policy as a bank

that you can then borrow against without selling any of the stock that your policy is invested in. And then you can take that to go buy another asset. So the whole theory and the reason that's such powerful strategy is because you can take $1, you can invest it in your life insurance policy. So it sits in your life insurance policy and say it grows at 5%. Not a big deal, right? 5% is nothing to write home about. But 5% is a lot better than what we do in a savings account today. But most people hear life insurance and they think that you'll only get to benefit from it after you're dead. And who wants, like, that's no benefit for me while I'm here.

But there is a life benefit as well while you're alive is you can borrow against it. But you're not taking the money out to use. You're taking the money, you're borrowing, you're using that as collateral and you're taking that money to go buy something else, preferably or ideally another asset. So what that does is you put the dollar in the life insurance, you can borrow that dollar back and go put that dollar into real estate. So now you have $1 working in two different investments. It's working in your life insurance policy and it's working in your real estate.

So that $1 is working as if it were $2. So that's how that infinite banking idea is really, really powerful. So I got to thinking, what if I put my crypto borrowing in that little chain, in that little sequence? And so I take the crypto and I use it to buy income. property and I could do so without selling any of my crypto. And so I could get that same benefit without the life insurance policy. But what if I threw the life insurance policy in there also? So now instead of that $1 working in two spots, it's working in three spots. So I use it to buy

by income property. I could use it to buy crypto and I could use it to put it in the life insurance policy. And what's nice about that is that $1 would be working in all three places. And they're completely uncorrelated investments. There's no relationship between the three, meaning I'm hedged against a real estate crash because I have the other two working for me. I've got the life insurance policy and I got the cryptocurrency working for me. And then I'm hedged against a stock market crash because I have the other two working for me.

I've got the real estate working for me and I got the crypto working for me. And then I'm hedged against a crypto crash. If the crypto totally collapses and it turns out to be a big giant fart, no problem. I've still got my life insurance policy and my real estate working for me. So not only is this an extreme game of offense where you're three X in your dollar. It's also an extreme game of defense. And, you know, I've been waiting to share this with you. And if all three crashed, by the way, then I think that's because something really huge is going on in the world.

And we all got bigger fish to fry. probably we're going to make sure we have our money invested in bullets at that point because something else is going to be going on. But they're completely uncorrelated. So an extreme game of offense and an extreme game of defense. So I've been waiting to share this with you because I wanted to complete the sequence first. I've been teasing it for a little while and I just couldn't keep it in. I'm so excited about it because I feel like it's a huge breakthrough.

And so I just did. I just finally completed the sequence. So this is how it worked. I borrowed against my cryptocurrency. So I took out that money, but I don't have to sell the cryptocurrency. That cryptocurrency still grows and builds and does what it does.

I took that out, and then I funded my life insurance policy with John Dwyer. So I got that in there. And then I borrowed against my life insurance policy, and I bought an income property. I just paid cash for it. I just borrowed it out of the life insurance policy and went and paid cash for it.

And now I just refitored it. finance that property and pulled the cash out of the property. And I'm taking that cash to go buy more cryptocurrency to complete the loop. And then I'll use the cash flow from the property to buy more cryptocurrency as well. And when my cryptocurrency balance replenishes itself to where it's a point that I can buy another income property, I will do that again. And I will just keep this going around and around and around. So that $1 is working three times harder than it would be all by itself.

Now, this feels pretty darn smart to me. But I still realize, I mean, I realize I don't know what I don't know still. Because I don't know. No one ever taught me this. This was just kind of I put the pieces together from, you know, everything that I've been doing and all the people that I've met and the people I've interviewed here and what I've learned. So I just put it together myself.

And so I still don't know what I don't know. and I would say I'm still very much a newbie in the crypto thing. I'm really flying by the seat of my pants with it. But I haven't been able to poke any holes in it. And I've ran it by some very smart people. And they couldn't poke holes in it either. So so far, so good. Now, I did find a crypto veteran to join me on the show today, as I announced earlier.

And I'm going to ask him all of the crypto. questions that I have and all of the crypto questions that I've been asked of me that I haven't been able to answer or not answer adequately or to my satisfaction. And I'm considering telling him about my strategy, but I have to admit, I'm a little nervous that he might find a hole in it. And it's worked so well for me up to this point, that would really burst my bubble. And I'd have to come back and look at this episode and gosh, look at it. what a fool you sounded like. Or maybe he says, look, boy, you're a genius.

You should keep doing that. I don't know. Anyway, we'll get to our guest during this week in crypto. But we're going to move on to the news now, and we'll do that right after this. When you go to work for your money, does it return the favor? If not, no worries. You do not have a money problem. You merely have an idea problem.

We're cash flow savvy.com. And we'd like to share a new idea with you around income real estate that can transatlose. transform your financial future and accelerate its arrival. Go to cashflow savvy.com and download a free investors package. Cashflow savvy.com. You do not have a money problem, merely an idea problem. Cashflow savvy.com. More ideas, less worries.

Cashflow savvy.com. All righty, in the news, this past week marked the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's death. You know, I pray we as a nation really come up with a solution so that we can put a end to such senseless, avoidable deaths. As it turns out, though, I mean, defunding the police, that's not the solution as crime nationally is up across the board. Homicides alone are up 22% in New York, 38% in Philadelphia, 22% in Chicago, 50% in Austin, 113% in Minneapolis, ground zero for George Floyd's death.

But get this. Homicides are up eight. 100% in Portland. And I don't know if you recognize this, but all of those cities, they're all cities that have cut funding to their police departments. So this reimagining policing is not working. At least our first go at it is not working. We need to re-reimagined something else.

And hopefully we do. Because there's a solution there somewhere, but what we've tried so far, that ain't it. But I don't want to make light of that either, and I don't think it sounded like I did, but just to confirm and make sure that no one is misinterpreting this. It's a serious issue, and I hope we get it solved. And prayers to all of those that have been victim to this surge in crime. The media this week does an about face on the COVID-Wuhan lab theory.

What was once considered a fringe conspiracy theory by the media, it's now growing legs as there have come up with zero evidence that this has been found that this virus was born naturally. Even Dr. Fauci thinks the story is growing credibility and thinks that we should all really consider that it was a man-made virus. And poor Senator Tom Cotton, who was ridiculed this time last year, he was ridiculed by the Huffington Post, the New York Times, CNN and the Daily Beast and all of mainstream media for his man-made virus in the Wuhan lab theory.

Again, just like last week with Dr. Atlas, who was basically canceled off of Fox after his assertions about the virus. But just like that, the truth will come out. Even Facebook this week ends its ban on posts asserting COVID-19 was man-made. I wonder if they'll go back and reinstate all of those Facebook profiles that they, canceled and deleted. Anyway, and on that note of social media, the Hunter Biden story, another story banned by social media,

is growing legs as evidence of his father, President Joe Biden, did have dinner with Hunter's business partners. That's coming to light. And it doesn't look good that Hunter's Ukraine salary was cut in half just two months after old dad took office. So more truth coming to light.

And stay tuned. That light is going to, shine really bright and brighter and brighter on the truth. I mean, the good might lose lots of battles, but it always wins the war. And what do all these stories, these first three stories have in common? And there's probably several things that they have in common. But what I really want to point out and what it just bothers the poop out of me is just the massive amplification by the mainstream media. The media interfered with. with the truth, with the facts, for their own agendas, whatever they were, with their own narrative,

whatever it took to get their ratings. And they're all suffering with the ratings right now, by the way. CNN is completely plummeted. But the media interfered and didn't even allow anyone to even question these stories. I mean, if you just questioned the story, you're canceled. You know, the media is really powerful. It's really powerful. They've got 60% of the country believing everything that they report. But even the media isn't more powerful than the truth. And I hope we all start waking up and pushing back a little bit and get back to being curious, getting back to asking questions, getting back to speaking our mind without fear,

and just refuse to be condemned for it, refuse to be canceled for it. I hope we get there. That's a big prayer. And I would ask for you all to pray with me on that one. Because, you know, the United States, we're not perfect. But it's a darn beautiful place to live. And one of the more beautiful places in all of the history of the world to live. There's no more place that we experience the freedoms than we experience them here.

And I want to get back to that. I want to get back to pride in our country. I want to get back to where it's cool to salute the flag, where it's cool to wear red, white, and blue, and not be. judged for it. Can we all do that? Let's try. I think that'd be a good place to start. All right. So in COVID-19 news, lots of COVID-19 news, the seven-day average of new cases, that was 25,300 just last Sunday, has fallen 24% week over week, and nine states now have 70% of adults with at least one dose of the vaccine.

Moderna will apply for FDA authorization next month to administer its coronavirus vaccine to kids as young as 12. Half of U.S. adults are now fully vaccinated. And then President Biden asked his intelligence agencies to look more closely at the origins of the coronavirus. Imagine that. And ironically, just 48 hours after he put a squash on their investigation, now of a sudden he's given them 90 days to come up with something.

And yeah, we'll see. It seems like that old orange man wasn't so crazy after all. I mean, he was crazy. Don't get me wrong. But just it was too bad that some of the things that came out of his mouth were dismissed because of his craziness. Anyway, we're going to get past this. We're going to get through this. Like I said, the truth will prevail.

Bank of America's Merrill Lynch wealth management's advisor training program is banning cold calls and pushing its 3,000 trainees to use internal referrals. or LinkedIn DMs to attract potential clients. This is right out of the Wall Street Journal. So that's kind of refreshing that maybe that phone is going to stop ringing so much. But look out for your DMs. They're coming for you. Peloton is investing $400 million into its first U.S. manufacturing facility in Ohio,

which is projected to churn out bikes and treads by 2003. Made in America. The Charlie Bit My Finger YouTube video was sold as an NFT, a non-fundable token. We talked about that a few episodes back. But that video was sold as an NFT for more than $760,000, three quarters of a million bucks. And it's leaving the YouTube video platform sometime very soon if it's not gone already.

Real estate news, housing news. According to the latest U.S. housing data, sales are in April. They fell almost 6%. New home sales in April fell almost 6%. more than analysts expected. Every region saw a decline except the West, which was up 8% approximately. The median price of a new home jumped 11.4% in April to $372,400. That's like $70,000 more than it was just six months ago, I think.

The last time we reported this, or not the last time, but I remember that number where it just broke the $300,000 mark. And now we're at $372 on our way to break $400,000. for the median price of a new home. So those are connected. The number of homes for sale remains low, and expensive lumber and supply chain shortages are delaying new homes from being built. And the backlog of new homes sold in April,

but awaiting construction rose 16.5%. The most since 2006. That's right out of Bloomberg. The big picture, Redfin CEO, Glenn Kelman, rounded up some anecdotes from this bizarre housing market yesterday, saying that 63% percent of surveyed buyers said that they put in a bid without seeing a property in person.

Blind offer. 63% of buyers are making blind offers without even seeing the property. Sales are closing an average 1.7% above asking price, despite home prices already rising 24% annually. They're still closing at 1.7% above that. And the best for last, one would be home buyer promised to name her first born after the seller. Sadly, she did not get the house. Guy Fieri's new deal with the Food Network will earn him $80 million over three years, according to Forbes, making him the highest paid chef on cable TV. And it's still a good deal for the network.

Fieri's show, diners, drive-ins, and dives generated more than $230 million in ad revenue just last year. And after weeks of rumors, Amazon finally laid its gold finger on MGM and a deal worth $8.5 billion dollars. It's Amazon's second largest acquisition after Whole Foods and the first time a tech company has bought a major legacy media firm. Dick's sporting goods in first quarter, their profit hit a record with all those youngsters heading back out to their ball fields. Nothing could make me happier than to see my son back out on the baseball field, although he is quite the hockey kid now and I think baseball is gone for good. But anyway,

he loves the hockey too. Black Lives Matter co-founder, down amid questions about her finances, Maryland candy store struggles to keep up with high demand for chocolate-covered cicadas, and Tasmanian Devil Joey's born on Australia and mainland for the first time in 3,000 years. Seven baby Tasmanian devils were born into the New South Wales Sanctuary, and that is the news. Now, for this weekend, Crypto. Our guest today started his business career as a network marketer. The early years of his career were a rough road until he changed his marketing game. He developed his skills and learned to sell products online and earn millions within a year. His book, Magnetic Sponsoring, was the best seller of its time. He spent time being into

buying expensive cars and living an extravagant lifestyle, and it wasn't long until he realized that he should not be spending wealth, but rather learn what to do with it. And with his knowledge, he made a financial educational website to teach others regarding. financial management. With his website, his business went on to generating millions until it shut down after being the victim of a scam. He knows how important it is to look past one's failures and when to change lanes. He did not allow his failures to stop him. He learned from the ups as well as the downs of his life and is teaching hundreds of people with his self-made man coaching programs and podcast. He continues to inspire and help the future generation of entrepreneurs. Also,

He's an early investor in cryptocurrency. I asked him to be on the show today to help us get answers to our crypto questions. And then we'll just see where that takes us. No other agenda other than that. And I have no idea where this is going to lead. I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while. And I'm really happy to have him on the show today and introduce you to him. So without further ado, please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Mike Dillard.

Mike, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Matt, thanks for having me. me, excited to be here. Yeah, no, I'm excited to have you. And I got so much stuff that I want to talk to you about. But first, I just, I wanted to really acknowledge you. I've been following you for a very long time. I was introduced to your first learned of your name back in 2007, I think, with magnetic sponsoring.

And that was a really pivotal moment for me because I was able to, I was in a network marketing company at the time. And I kind of saw how that flow went. and how that marketing went. And it just kind of introduced me to marketing and copywriting. And I just thought it was ingenious how you did that. And I don't know where I would be today if I didn't have that introduction to marketing. So thank you for that. Awesome.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, you bet. So I've been talking to my audience about crypto. We have, I kind of finish each show with this little segment this week in crypto. I just kind of run down the five top headlines. And I'm starting to introduce them to different strategies of how I've incorporated crypto into my real estate.

But I recognize I might have been moving too fast and I'm maybe I'm, and I don't know a whole lot myself and I take a lot for granted. And so I just kind of want to go back and share the basis with people. And I got your introduction to crypto course, which I thought was great. And it shed a lot of light on stuff for me. Probably got it two or three years too late. But it answered a lot of questions. So anyway, yeah, thanks for being here.

And as far as cryptocurrency goes, when did you first learn about it? And what was it that inspired you to, you know, be, to take it so seriously? I bought my first Bitcoin in 2013 for $75. And I knew about it a little bit before then, probably 2011, 2012, which is unfortunate. But I was very much in 2008 to 2010 into gold and silver. So I was very much into precious metals and the libertarian movement. Ron Paul, you know, all of that good stuff. And, you know, that was sparked by the housing crash of 2008, all of the helicopter money that Bernanke had dropped and the devaluation of the dollar.

And so that really sent me down the path of learning about the financial system. And Bitcoin, you know, was birthed out of that same exact time period. And I remember going out to New York and seeing the Occupy Wall Street. So I always kind of had an interest in that. And then I think Bitcoin came across my desk again, probably in 2010 to 2012. But it was really shady to buy. Like you had to go on a forum or a website and basically send someone money. And maybe they would send you Bitcoin back.

And I just remember looking at it, but I didn't pull the trigger until 2013 when Mount Gox was available and kind of what looked like a legitimate exchange. So I wired $30,000 in. I bought 400 Bitcoin for that. And then a year later, it was stolen when Mount Gox was hacked. I've heard your story a couple times in different interviews and stuff on your podcast. It's tragic. Yeah, yeah.

But it's a good learning lesson. And I started getting my interest peaked and involved again in early 2017. I started buying Ethereum when it was $7 right as it got listed on Coinbase and then have been, you know, basically all in on crypto since So I would say 90% of my net worth is and has been in crypto since then. It's something I spend an hour or two a day on and I'm super passionate about it and love the industry. 90% you said of your net worth? Yep. Yeah.

I'm not there yet, but I'm certainly much more aggressive today than I was when I got started. You didn't go all 90% in. It's just kind of gone over time, right? No, it's just gone up that much. You know, it's growing into 90%. Oh, I see what you're saying. Got it. Got it.

What do you, what are your thoughts about, I guess, the cynics and the skeptics talking about how maybe there's a lot of risk. You hear the word Ponzi scheme thrown around every once in a while. If someone brought that to you, how would you answer that? You know, it's interesting. I think it's a matter of a glass half a half because on one hand, there's an argument for what they're trying to communicate as far as the speculative nature, that the crypto market, you know, has right now. And on the other end, they're completely dismissing the technological revolution that

blockchain and Bitcoin represent. And so I think there's a little bit of, a tiny bit of, you know, validity to what they're saying, but what they're saying again is a drop in the well compared to the revolution and the value that crypto is creating and the disruption that is taking place around the world because of it. So for me, time, someone needs to get proven wrong over the course of 11 years to keep betting against Bitcoin and crypto. It's kind of like, you know, betting against the automobile or the internet at this point. And so I really don't listen to those people.

And for me, it's just a red flag that they haven't really done their homework. Right. You know, you sent out an email just recently. You know, the market has been kind of volatile over the last couple weeks. And you sent out an email that said how you still. see, I think it was the blockchain impacting like every industry in the world. So, you know, when people hear cryptocurrency, they're thinking like it's just going to disrupt currency, but I kind of get the impression that you think it's going to be much bigger than that.

Absolutely. It's, it is going to dominate everything from replacing the dollar in, turning into a central bank digital currency to all forms of record keeping, all forms of contract. It's going to take over every single component. it and feature and product in the financial space. It's going to revolutionize gaming. And most importantly, it's going to allow each of us to tokenize any asset in the world, right? Whether it is our personal time like Gary V just did with his NFTs and what those, what, you know, what the perks that you get from owning those or tokenizing our car or our home or our business, where you and I have small businesses, we're never going to have them listed on the New York Stock Exchange,

but they could be quite profitable and so could, you know, the storage unit complex down the street or the car wash and you're going to be able to tokenize those assets and, you know, own pieces of those businesses just like you own shares in large companies these days. So the revolution is just getting started. This tech is going to change every aspect of our society over the next 10 years. So we're just getting started then? Yes. Totally.

I think that too. And I've got a friend who's been watching me for last three years. Should I get in yet? Should I get in yet? Should I get in yet? And I always think like, wow, it's $40,000. And he's like, I don't know if I want to get in now because now I think I missed it. Now, Bitcoin will hit a million dollars within 10 years.

Yeah. It's interesting. And another misconception was actually my misconception because I heard about it back probably right around when you got started as well. And I think it was like $1,100 at the time. And I was thinking like, Gosh, $1,100 and I only get one. I only get one coin. But you don't need $40,000 to buy a coin today.

You can buy a dollar's worth if you want. Yeah, you can buy the Satoshi's, right? That's what they're called. Yep. You can buy little fractions of it. Very good. So the market has been very volatile lately, and that's kind of the history of Bitcoin. It's got its bull markets and its bare markets.

And it's pretty extreme between the two. Do you think that's going to calm down anytime soon? or is that just something we need to expect? You know, Bitcoin is interesting because it is the only asset that's ever been created that has a predetermined distribution cycle, or I should say deflationary distribution cycle, meaning the halving that takes place approximately every four years. And if you look at other markets or other industries, they might have bull markets and precious metals,

but those cycles might take 10 to 20 or 30 years. and here in CryptoLand it's running on four-year cycles. And it's going to be really interesting to see if that trend continues because what it is doing is it's teaching people who are paying attention to this industry a game. Basically, it is gamified Bitcoin in a way to where you can play these bare markets and bull markets in a very predictive way. And the more people that learn these games, two things happen.

Higher the market cap gets, which means it takes more and more money to move the price one way or the other. But because the game is becoming more and more known to more people every single cycle, there are more participants in it and there's more money in it. So it could keep going the way that it has gone for another cycle or two. So it'll be interesting to see. I think the one big X factor here is what the U.S. ends up doing with the dollar if they maintain it to a living or not. I think that'll have a significant impact on Bitcoin's price. But aside from Bitcoin, if you look at protocols like Ethereum and Cardano, which are not viewed as necessarily a store value or a competing currency, you know, those platforms are applications,

no different than, you know, what Microsoft and Apple create. And so their price action, even though I think it will follow Bitcoins, this cycle may break away from Bitcoin's price action in the next cycle because they will be significantly more established three to four years from now. And I think that next cycle is going to be different than this one as far as how they relate to Bitcoin. You talked about or you just mentioned what the government might do with the dollar, how that's going to work out. And I've learned this new term over the last few months. It's probably an old term to you, but this term fud, right?

Your uncertainty in doubt. Correct, correct. So I've heard this. And so now I know what it is. And we're frequently hearing now, I mean, there's a different headline every day seemingly. that one country or one government is opposing it or supporting it. And how do you feel about the future of government interaction? Can they interact or is it just a threat or is it completely?

I think China is in a special position because they already have every part of their economy and their internet completely locked down. Right. So they have the means to control what happens there in a pretty effective. effective way. So they're going to do whatever China is going to do, as they always have. The United States specifically, I think, has already made their determination when they started to allow the legalization of cryptos and acknowledging them as real assets. We have the office of the comptroller who's legalized it. We have legalized a bank's ability

to be custody, buy, sell, and store cryptos now. Obviously, we have these massive U.S. regulated exchanges. We have futures markets. And we have the IRS who are all on board. And now we have U.S.-based companies like Tesla putting it on their balance sheet, which to me is one of the final big pieces of the move here, because now if they were to try to outlaw Bitcoin, it would have a significant impact on general investors in any of those companies. And I don't think they're willing to do that. So in my personal view, the U.S. has already put both feet in and we are on the crypto chain and I train and I don't think that that is going to change. As far as other countries around the world, again, I think Bitcoin is going to be viewed

by all of them as gold. I think the argument that a lot of people use is, you know, Bitcoin's going to try and replace the U.S. dollar and governments aren't going to allow that. They don't need to do that. No one's going to spend Bitcoin. No one is going to use Bitcoin as a currency. That would be in the world to do when an asset is compounding to $2.2.00. 100% a year. So I think it is going to take the place of gold. It's going to become the new reserve asset and take that position. And I don't think countries need to necessarily see that as a threat.

Because again, it's just to store value at that point. It's not trying to replace the U.S. dollar. And if you can tax it like property and tax those gains, well, great. It's a fantastic new tax stream, revenue stream for the government. So that's kind of how I view it. I see happening in the U.S. specifically. I just saw the headline. It was just this week or maybe last week where they said the taxing was going to be like

property and not like a currency. And I didn't read in deeper to that. Is that like property tax? Like you have to pay tax on it annually or is it just like when it's a realized gain? Just realized gain like gold or silver is now. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Got it. Good to know. Another question I've been thinking about and someone asked me this the day and I didn't really have an answer for them. But you know, when you send your money into an exchange to buy a currency, like, where is the money sitting? Like, where does the money go? Goes into wallets held and controlled by the exchanges.

By the exchanges. Okay. Yeah. And then we can trust that that money stays there and it backs the currency. Is that? We know that used to be in the 2017 cycle and the 2013-14 cycle. That was the biggest issue. 2017, there were exchanges getting hacked left and right. There was probably at least a dozen

exchange hacks during that bull run. And in most cases, you know, that if your crypto got stolen, it was lost, right? So those exchanges went away. I remember there was one cryptopia out of New Zealand or Australia that I had some assets in that got hacked. But the ones that have survived and the ones that are around today, Coinbase in the U.S. Cracken, Gemini, and then Binance and Bitrix and these other large ones, Ku-coin, they've got the security thing figured out. And

they do pack. Finance had quite of a small incursion a year or two ago. They keep reserve funds and insurance policies to cover those losses so that they can make their customers whole because they know if they don't, they're going to lose everything. Their business is going to be gone.

So I'm quite confident, I'll put it this way. I'm more confident in Coinbase Gemini or Cracken or Binance keeping your funds safe on their platform than I am of any individual keeping their funds safe on a wallet on their cell phone or their computer or a treasurer or whatever. I think there's more risk in user error than there is on the exchange end at this point. So you're one of the people I was listening to your podcast, you know, I'd have for about last year or so. And I want to talk to you about what's happened to that.

But you're one of the people that kind of eventually I came to this conclusion that, you know what, I think it's more risky not to be involved than it is to be involved. Would you agree with that? 100%. Right. But like any investment, there's still risk. And you might have just answered the question. But where do you think the biggest risk is?

you know, the first risk that I teach people is security, right? How do you have proper security and account management when you're dealing with these assets, meaning you are only as secure as your weakest link? And for most people, they use the same email address and same password, you know, on their crypto accounts. They use everywhere else. And they don't understand two-factor authentication. Either they're not using it or maybe they used cell phone-based two-factor.

two-factor authentication, which can be hacked. It is done all the time. It's called sim swapping. And essentially, hackers pay off employees at cell phone companies to give them access to your SIM card account. And when they need your two-factor authentication verification number, it goes to their phone instead of yours, and then they switch it back. But by then they're in your account and it's over.

You can mitigate that by using something like the Othi app or the Google Authenticator app. But above and beyond that, the, the single biggest risk is where you store your backup seed recovery phrase, right? So this is usually 12 to a 16 word phrase that when you set up a wallet, it's going to tell you to write it down and save it somewhere because if you lose that device or your computer or lose access to that wallet, well, your crypto is gone at that point. At that moment, you can download that same wallet again, enter that recovery phrase, and boom, your crypto magically reappears because it is basically the password that gives,

you ownership of those crypto assets. And so a wallet is simply recognizing the ownership record, you know, on the blockchain of who owns it through that, through that recovery phrase. So now the question becomes, well, where do you store that recovery phrase? Do you write it down on a piece of paper and put it in your closet? What happens if there's a fire at your house or, you know, somebody finds it? Do you put it in a safety deposit box in a bank? I don't know about that either. Or do you save it on your computer? And if it's on your computer, well, if your computer gets hacked if you're on public Wi-Fi somewhere, if your computer gets lost, there's issues there as well. And so I don't think there is a perfect solution. There is risk to

all of this. The safest way that I know to keep crypto is to use insured custody services through either Coinbase or Gemini. And they will basically take your Bitcoin, take it offline, store it in a physical vault, you know, through their password recovery phrase. And The benefit to that is that it's fully insured and that it's offline and it's probably in the safest place on the planet when it comes to managing crypto assets. The bad news is it usually takes two to four days to get access back to your crypto because they literally have to bring it from an offline vault back into an online hot wallet, go through their security process and protocols.

And so it's not like you can just hop in and sell your crypto if you need to whenever you want to. And in addition to that, there's a small fee that they charge on a monthly basis, just like you would pay if you're storing physical gold and silver in a vault somewhere. But that, if you're, you know, if you're a whale, if you've got eight figures, nine figures, and crypto assets, that's the safest way to store, in my personal opinion. God, I actually did not even know about that. So I'm glad I asked. I'm glad you shared that. So you're sending it to Coinbase or Gemini. They have this insurance. So it's a 100% insurance?

I believe so. They're the ones who are storing hundreds of millions, if not billions of crypto for companies like Tesla and micro strategy and, you know, these other large institutions who need federally approved custody. And that was a big piece of the puzzle that was required in order for Wall Street to enter this market. And custody solutions were approved probably three years ago. And now that.

that has allowed these big players to put in billions of dollars into Bitcoin. And I think the final piece of the puzzle that we're missing at this point is an ETF. We do have two or three that are now active and live in Canada. We're still waiting for the first one in the United States, but that will certainly take Bitcoin to the moon. So hopefully that'll happen this year because that would be amazing. Right. Right.

And I've been thinking about that. I mean, with so much mainstream adoption and or maybe mainstream adoption, or maybe mainstream acknowledgement even more so. I mean, I just moved to Vegas a couple years ago and I noticed when I went to, this is where my light bulbs really started going, oh, my gosh, I'm on the right track. It's because all the terrible Hertz gas stations around here, they got the Bitcoin ATMs. I was like, those are like really big, expensive machines. They take up floor space.

Like they wouldn't be there unless something was actually coming, right? And so that was like, okay, I could take this a little more seriously. And, you know, I was just putting like discretionary funds in there before I started putting anything significant in there. Yeah. But the, the ETF thing, right? This is like going to be the big thing. Yeah, I think, you know, in 2017, the bubble popped the day the futures market,

Bitcoin futures went live, right? So I think the same thing might happen this round. If they start to leak news of an ETF approval here in the United States, I think the market is just going to skyrocket and go vertical. And I think the day it actually goes live with a, 24 hours is when the bubble pops, just like it did last time, you know, buy the room or sell the news type of situation. So, but after that, the next cycle with ETFs are, you know, that's what's going to push Bitcoin to $500,000 to a million dollars of Bitcoin. So you think it's going to, it'll

pop once that does go, once those are approved? You know, it was surprising to watch that happen in 2017, but that's exactly what did happen. And I don't know if that's because, you know, institutions or parties who who wanted to pop Bitcoin's bubble now had a way to do so on the futures market, meaning it had the ability or if that, you know, that large of a news, just the anticipation of that caused the price to run up. And then the moment it was live, people again, sell it off just like they do in any kind of big IPO announcement or whatever it may be in the stock market. But it's something I would certainly be leery of and watching for if that were to happen.

so interesting cool so do you do a lot of buying and selling you just buy and hold buy and hold every time i've tried to buy and sell i end up i end up losing losing some of my crypto and i'm not i don't have any training when it comes to technical analysis or or trading of any kind and so i have found that if i just buy and hold and don't touch it then i'm going to do really well And with the exception that I do plan to sell at the top of this bull market cycle, and I will probably sell 80 to 90% of my position. And then I'll buy back in 12 to 15 months later, which is the average time that has gone by in previous cycles before it is gone from the top of the bull market to the bottom,

12 to 15 months. And so I'll start averaging in at about that time frame as well. Great. So what type of signals will you be looking at? looking forward to think that we're at the top. There's a there are a lot of technical charts and models that you can that you can go through and watch. There's about eight or nine of them that a lot of people in this industry do take a look at. I won't go into them and off the top of my head or attempt to do that off the top of my head here.

But none of, there's only been one this cycle. It's called the Pye cycle top indicator that the trigger to top right when we hit $63, $64,000. And that has been accurate every time so far. So now the question, the challenge with that, though, is that the other eight indicators were not saying that we have reached the top. And so the question is, was that a local top at $64,000? And are we going to see a double top like we did in 2013 and 2014?

Or was that? Was that the top? And for me, I don't think it was. It didn't look like a top. It didn't look like a parabolic blow off top. There was no, the mania that we experienced in 2017 was starting to build, but we certainly did not reach the same point this time. And yeah, it just didn't feel like the top.

The timing is off from the stock to flow model as well, which is predicting a top in Q4 of this year, which I do believe in and am anticipating personally. So it's tough to say, but I think when two or three of those indicators, or four of those indicators start showing and signaling atop, then it's time to really start paying attention. It's time to start moving your tokens from your wallet to your exchange. And that's what people don't understand if you haven't been in this industry for a long time is that when things get exciting and when a mania is in place, it can take days to get

your crypto from your wallet to an exchange because the networks are so clogged. I remember it could take a day or two coin transaction for it to finally go through and the top of 2017, same thing for Ethereum. And Coinbase, when things get heated, goes down all the time. Things really start to slow down, crack and went down once during the top here

a couple of months ago, which is pretty rare. And so right when you need to move your crypto and sell the most, you're not going to be able to unless you have anticipated that and already made moves ahead of time. So if we start to see things heat up, you know, I'm going to start moving my crypto from my wallets to my exchange accounts a month ahead of time. And I'm going to start averaging out, you know, maybe 10% a day over the course of 10 days. I'm going to try and grab the top 10% up and the top 10% down and kind of average out at 80% of the top. I think is the best

anybody can hope for. But those are all little nuances to this game that people, you know, aren't expecting or are aware of unless you've actually lived through it. You know, in 2017, when it was going up, it hit the 20,000 mark that, you know, there's a lot of craze. It was on, it was on all the business channels and the investment channels, and everyone was talking about it. And then it collapsed, and everyone just kind of left it alone. And I feel like, I don't know, you tell me, maybe everyone always feels this time that every time it had a new bull run, it feels different. But it feels a little different now. Just because there's, you know, you've got names like JP Morgan acknowledging it now.

You know, you've got a Mark Cuban who was against it. You got a Mr. Wonderful who was against it from Shark Tank. You got MasterCard and both Visa announcing plans. Do you think the drop will be as far as it has been? You know, it's interesting. If we look at what just happened, right, we saw roughly a 50, 55% drop in a week. And everybody kind of said that, right? Like, there's no way that's going to happen anymore.

The market's too big. There's too many buyers. but exchanges out there that you can get 100x leverage on. And it doesn't take a lot to cascade things into the kind of drop that we saw, meaning, again, if you've got 100x leverage, you can sell one Bitcoin and have it move the market like you just sold 100 Bitcoin. And a lot of people can do that with thousands or tens of thousands of Bitcoin. And so what it's going to do is move the market down and it's going to trigger everybody

else's cell stops, which is going to then move the market down and trigger the next layer of cell stops. Which is going to do the same thing. And it just causes a chain reaction until there's so many buyers at a certain level that it stops it. And that's what we saw happen here with this 50% decline. And so as long as you can long or short at 100x leverage, I think we're going to see this extreme volatility.

I think that's why the U.S. went after, oh gosh, what exchange was it? that was notorious for leverage trading. The founder's now in jail. But another one or two exchanges like ByBet have popped up and replaced that one. God, I wish I could remember the name of it. And we have that taking place in the markets again. So it's hard to say. It really is hard to say until I think we hit about a $10 trillion market cap where there's just not, it's going to take so much money to move the market in that way.

it's just not going to be as likely, but right now it clearly still is. Mm-hmm. You just said the guys in jail, right? Yeah. The, you know, there's there's so many coins out there, right? I mean, Bitcoin and Ethereum kind of being the big two. But gosh, then there's what, 5,000 others that you could all choose from. 10,069 to be exact.

How many? 10,000 and 609. Oh, wow. I was like almost there. Yeah. I was way off. Anyway, all right, so there's 10,000 coins. And then the most recent thing, like when it comes to legalities,

like I guess that's hit the most mainstream is like the issue that XRP, the Ripple organization is dealing with. Can you shed some light on? Like, why are they, have they been soloed out? How are they different? I don't want to pretend that I know the specifics of the details because I've never really been a fan of Ripple. So I've owned some, but I've owned it purely to go for the gains and then to sell

and to buy more Bitcoin. But the primary argument for traditional crypto people like myself around Ripple is that Ripple was centralized. It was centrally owned and centrally controlled, which is why it was so fast, right? Oh my gosh, you can do 100,000 transactions a second or whatever the number is. That was the main argument for its benefit, but it's a central currency. It's fully controlled by a company and a corporation with founders and owners, unlike Bitcoin, which is decentralized and doesn't have any of those things.

And so that I think is at the heart of the lawsuit against Ripple is the centralization and how the founders have benefited to the tune of billions of dollars in profit personally. And we'll see what happens. I think just kind of based on the price action and the news that's going around that they're going to win that case. And when it does, I think you're going to see Ripple's price go up three to five X in a day. the moment it does. The challenges right now is it's been, at least in the United States, delisted from all the major U.S.-based exchanges. So if you want to buy some now, you have to go to

foreign exchange to buy it, which is usually easy enough to do. But it does represent a significant opportunity right now because of that lawsuit where you buy some today and you put in a sell order at a certain price to protect yourself on the downside, your upside, I think, is 3 to 5x. you know, once that lawsuit is dismissed. Got it. I've just been sucking as much as I possibly can out of your brain, so I appreciate your being so gracious. You said you spent one or two hours a day on your crypto.

What are your favorite sources for information, reliable, trustworthy information? Twitter and YouTube, which is, you know, which is funny to think about. All right. But, you know, there's really good people on both platforms, and there's really bad people on both platforms. So you have to, you have to kind of be discriminatory, if you will. But, yeah, there are some good, honest people on both. I like Willie Wu. I like, you know, he's an old school bit coiner.

He's got some fantastic technical analysis, non-chain analysis that he does. And there's quite a few channels on YouTube that I subscribe to and follow as well. And, you know, I watch all of their updates on a daily basis. and the channels I subscribe to are really, they're following macro trends and they're also following, you know, short-term technicals. But for the most part,

everybody's tracking this bull cycle and we're all trying to guess what's going to happen and when it's going to top because we've all gone through 2017. None of us sold. We all wrote it down 90% to the bottom and we don't want to do that again. And so the folks from 2017 are kind of the war vets who, who are anxious to play the game better than we did last time. And those are usually the channels that I'm following as far as the guys who have the same goal.

Sweet. Speaking of YouTube, you've had a YouTube channel. You had a podcast. I think you've taken a break. I haven't checked in to see if you're live again. What's the reason? And will it come back? Yeah, it'll come back.

You know, for the last three years, I've been recovering from a health, challenge that almost took me out. And, you know, when you're sitting on a couch one day and building a business and then you have a click in your brain and you can't work again for two and a half years the next day, that causes some significant shifts in your life, especially it happened to me at the age of 40. So it was that perfect midlife crisis, basically. And now that I've gone through that three-year recovery process and all of the work that I did to make it through there, I'm a very different person than what I was. I have very different priorities. And, I don't really care about building a $100 million business anymore.

I don't really care about internet marketing anymore. And I'm not interested in the same topics that I used to be interested in. And so stopping the podcast and taking a break is a way for me to end that chapter of my life and my career, create some space and some time to do what I do want to do next, and then to give me the space and the ability to create that next chapter and start writing it. And so I will do a podcast again, but it's going to focus, I think, on deeper conversations and more important topics rather than just business, which the old show was solely focused on business for the most part. And again, I'm just that kind of, that chapter in my life is over at this point. And I'm ready to talk about some new stuff.

Got it. Got it. Yeah. Yeah, I really liked your, I talked about you a little bit last week on the show of just how you're just like a normal guy. and, you know, there's no hype, there's no fluff. I sense a lot of authenticity and sincerity when you speak. And that just really resonates with me. And the diversity in your guests was fantastic because I just never knew what I was

going to learn that day. So I appreciate that. Hopefully you'll do that some more. But, you know, having done so many episodes and talk to so many people, what is one thing that you'd like to talk about more that you don't get a chance to? ironically it's a lame label for it but I think it's going to be most appropriate for people to understand what I'm referring to but is personal development meaning the last three years to heal my brain and heal my nervous system I had to go through every type of trauma that you

I mean therapy that you can think of from EMDR therapy to transcranial magnetic to neurofeedback to psilocybin to ketamine to MDMA therapy, different plant medicines, different psychedelics, and different somatic therapies. But I probably did a lifetime of therapy in three years to heal. And the interesting byproduct or unexpected byproduct of that is that it made me very much aware of all of the internal stories that I have had informed throughout my life that had held me back in one way or another. or that had allowed me to succeed. And I think most entrepreneurs are motivated by moving away from a painful period in their life. I think 99% of entrepreneurs I've ever met did not have a completely rosy childhood.

They had some form of challenge or trauma. And starting a business and succeeding was a way for them to either prove that they were good enough or to move away from that type of pain. And I think that's what's required in order to go through the challenges and the risks that are involved when it comes to starting and growing a successful business. I think Elon Musk is a poster child of this. It talks very openly and candidly about the trauma and abuse he went through as a child and how it motivated him throughout his adult life.

And that works for a while until it doesn't. And I think most people reach a point around their 40s when those motivators from, whether it's middle school or high school or college or whatever, kind of run their course. And you then have to change your identity and find a completely new set of motivators to move you and inspire you to move forward. And that's really, I think, the inflection point that the mold kicked off for me. And it was coming at some point no matter what, but the mold really was what pushed me enforced that transformation to take place.

And so from a topic standpoint, talking about that type of stuff, how do you heal from trauma? How do you have a really sacred relationship with your partner? How do you learn to trust enough to experience real intimate with or even with colleagues or friends? How do you maybe overcome bad habits in your life, whether it was from drug use or alcohol or risk-taking, gambling.

And how do you get over and through those things? Because now that I've become aware of them and how the brain works, neurochemistry works, and trauma patterning works, I can, I saw it in myself and I healed it in myself, and now I can see it in other people and I can see and know how to heal it in other people. And to me, that's an infinitely more appealing way to spend my time effort than teaching people how to build a capture page. So that's really what the show is going to focus on is deeper, the deeper aspects of humanity and life in general. Awesome.

Looking forward to it. And I'm grateful you pulled through that pain. So I'm glad you're here. Yeah. Yeah, I bet all of your friends and family are as well. What do you, what's your day look like now? Day to day, the primary focus is, you know, luckily. took me about a year, year and a half to figure out what I did want to focus on next. And

that really became money. Having not being able to work for two and a half years and you have bills that are roughly 50K a month, even if you've got a lot of savings, it goes pretty quick. And so I realized that making money and having your money make you more money are two completely different things. I think if you have a cash flow business like I have for the past 15, 20 years, you look at that as your financial security. And at 40 years old, I had no expectations that I was going to wake up one day not be able to work again. And so I didn't have streams of passive income like you would with real estate or any of these other asset classes. And my primary goal became to really dive into passive income investment strategies and to replace my active

income with purely passive investment income, with real estate, with high-yield crypto savings accounts, with small businesses, whether they are laundromats or RV parks or storage units. And what is interesting is that what I learned going through the mold therapy and that work is that I could look at my previous patterns when it came to money and see why I would always get rid of that money. I would either spend it or I would risk it. meaning I would buy a Ferrari or two or I would invest in a buddy's startup or in an oil and gas man camp or in a gun range or in all kinds of stuff, right?

But I never enjoyed for some reason money or millions of dollars sitting in a bank account. I always felt like how to do something with it. And when you take an entrepreneur's wiring, which is usually wired for risk and for fast action, and you apply that to investing your money, it usually ends in disaster. And so having gone through the therapies that I did, I could see that that pattern was there and myself. And for my entire life, I have chased adrenaline. From the time I was four years old, I started competing in BMX cycling, won two state

mountain biking championships, the Baja 1,000, the Mint 400, car racing, the Pirelli World Challenge. I've just literally been an adrenaline junkie. And I think entrepreneurship falls into the category of extreme sports in many different ways. And so once I recognize that pattern, I was like, oh, this is why I was going to keep repeating this financial cycle over and over and over again in my life until I fixed that. And so what we are focused now is we have a problem that's really divided into three pieces. And the first one is making people aware of their neurochemistry.

What are your neurochemical addictions? And I'm talking about dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, and cortisol. we all have these hormones flooding through our body on a daily basis. They're all being stimulated every time we look at our phone or the internet or, you know, social media. And those devices are usually designed to spike our cortisol levels and to cause stress and anxiety, which our body then wants us to go get dopamine or serotonin, which is the antidote to cortisol.

And it's what makes us calm down and feel better. And the fastest ways to get dopamine or serotonin these days are through alcohol, through food, or through shopping. And guess what? Our entire society is designed to cause stress and anxiety in the media and then to have commercials that then sell us these three different categories of things to go relieve that stress and anxiety. And that's all marketing is today is that cycle. And once you're trained in it, well, your body gets used to it. it becomes the default program. And what I call that is an inverted dopamine response.

And the average person, I would say 95% of Americans have an inverted dopamine response, meaning they will go get a dopamine hit whenever they spend money, which then makes it impossible for them to ever build wealth. If you look at someone who is actually wealthy and who's amassed millions, tens of 100 millions of dollars, they get a dopamine hit whenever they save or invest money and they get a cortisol spike whenever they spend it or risk it. One of those outcomes leads to wealth no matter what. It's kind of the default end result of that behavior and the other one leads to poverty by default.

And most people are not aware of this patterning within themselves. And if you're not aware of it and if you have an inverted dopamine response, you are never again going to be able to build wealth. It's just not going to happen. So I learned how to unawind that and reprogram that and create new associations between those neurochemicals and my decision-making processes and the actions that I take. And the second piece of the puzzle is once you get these motivated emotions and feelings from these hormones, well, then you have to make a decision.

Am I going to go buy food? Am I going to go by shopping or am I going to go to the fridge and open a bottle of wine? That is determined by your subconscious programs, right? And we all have these subconscious programs from our youth. We're completely unaware of them unless you get a third party to help you through plant medicine, psychedelics, or hypnotherapy are probably the three most effective ways to identify what your programs are. But if your program is, I'm not good enough because you were bullied in middle school or elementary school, then you're going to, when you feel uncomfortable, want to go spend money on something that demonstrates that you are good enough for or handbag or some prod of shoes or whatever it may be, a Rolex watch. and that pattern will once again continue. Anytime you make money or feel stressed,

you're going to want to go shopping and buy something that proves you're good enough, and then you'll feel better temporarily in the cycle repeats until you feel bad again. So until you address those first two components, the third component, which is the actual investment strategy, is completely irrelevant because if you don't fix problem number one and you don't fix problem number two, and then you take your money, you apply it to an investing strategy,

which is what I used to do, you end up taking investment opportunities that are going to implode in one way or another. And the best example of this is what we see with lottery winners. Someone wins $50, $100 million. They're set for life. And 95% of the time, they lose all of that money within a couple of years because they have neurochemical patterns that they're unaware of. They're going to force them to spend money.

And they have subconscious programs that have a lot of. kept them in a situation of poverty their entire life. And that subconscious program is always 100% of the time tied to your level of perceived safety. And so your body and your brain wants you to stay safe above all things, even getting rich. And so if your body pursues, all of a sudden perceives having a lot of money as unsafe because maybe you're going to lose friends and family, maybe you're going to lose relationships and get kicked out of the tribe, it's going to make you get rid of that money subconsciously because it wants to go back to its point of of what it knows as safe. And so that's that's kind of our passion project these days and

what we're helping people to become aware of and reprogram. That's awesome. That's awesome. Very much looking forward to it. I don't want to press you on it, but do you have an ETA for release of anything like that? Yeah, we are going to do a limited release to my audience. to the first half of June. And we're going to... Pretty done soon. Yeah. So we launched it three or four months ago as a beta test to our audience at a big

discount. We're going to do that one more time to my existing audience. So if you're on my email list, you'll get the notification about this in the next few weeks. We're going to offer it one more time at a huge discount just to give people a final chance to buy in. And then after that, we're going to raise the price substantially after that. But this round is really making sure. that we've covered everything.

We need to cover in the course, getting testimonials and feedback from people. And so it's kind of a way to become a beta tester and save 80% as opposed to when we launched to the public. Fantastic. So if someone wanted to get on the email list, what would be the best place for them to go to? Yeah, I would go to Mike Diller.com,

and there's a little pop-up there on the bottom right of the screen. You can just kind of enter your name and email address, and you'll be on the list at that point. Oh, yeah, we also do have a waiting list. at richer everyday.com right now so you can also join right there and you'll get a notification when we go live. Perfect. I'm looking forward to that. I'll be first in line. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, you bet. It's certainly the most valuable thing I think I've ever produced in my career. Yeah, based on what you just shared, I can see the value of it. I mean, I think that'd be

the most valuable thing most people would ever share. So awesome, grateful for you. God bless you. If people wanted to get, take advantage and learn something about the crypto and what you have available right now. We set up a link, my first crypto course.com. And that's Mike taking you right from the beginning of crypto investing. And he went right to the beginning. And I so needed that because I skipped over so much stuff. And I was like, okay, let me go back and fix that.

I found some big mistakes that I had made. Yeah, I don't know what else to talk about. I could talk to you about all day. Like the one thing about crypto is kind of like the opposite of fight club, you know, never talk about fight club. And then crypto is like always talk about crypto. And it's funny how you're hearing those conversations all over the place now. And it catches my ear.

And all of a sudden I've made a new friend, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, thanks for having me on. And the biggest piece of advice is don't invest money that you can't afford to because the key to success in crypto is just to buy and hold, meaning that even if you had bought it $2,000 in 2017, you've still made a profit.

And so if you're willing to hold it for four or five years, I think it's a slam dunk, no-brainer. If you are an emotional person and you get stimulated again and that cortisol gets stimulated by reading articles or social media, fighting crypto, it's going to be a fantastic way for you to lose your money. you're going to learn some valuable lessons in the process, but you're going to lose your money. So that would be my kind of general rule of thumb is just pretend it's Vegas money, invest what you can afford to lose.

That way you're not going to stress out. You're not going to fall for the foot on the media. And you'll be able to just turn off the news and hold until the price hits a million bucks. Right. Super. You know what that said really quickly? Because I followed that advice, right? Yeah.

I treated it like a weekend at Vegas. like what would I be willing to lose and come back and not be all disgruntled about. But it's grown into a significant amount that I would be rather upset if I lost it at this point. I guess the one thing I guess I would just want to leave with is, you know, when do you get out? Do you have a defined line of like, this is my moment when I've had enough and I'm good? Well, there's, yeah, I mean, there's two right. You could have your number, meaning, hey, if I can exit for this amount of money, that would set me up for life, I should probably do that. My number is 10 mil. I should, I'm very close to that

here in this cycle, so I should, I should easily surpass that, assuming we have not hit the top yet. And for me, that that buys complete financial freedom to the point of seven figures a year and passive income, because you can then sell your Bitcoin or crypto into a stable coin and put it on an account like Blockfire Celsius and make 10 to 12% a year return on that money, which is unbelievable when you consider that there's no stock market exposure and there's no more crypto market exposure. It's literally no different than having U.S. dollars in a Wells Fargo account, but instead of earning 0.1% of interest, you're earning 10 to 12% per year in interest.

That's unbelievable, you know, from an opportunity perspective. So you're either going to have your numbers that have your reject, button and or you you follow the metrics and you try to time the top of the market. We talk about that in the course video posted it or added about a two ago, which goes through all of the top A metric and dashboards and it's free for you to watch and I call people how to how to use those and where to find them. And so for me, I'm going to do my best to hold, hold until the top of what I think this cycle is because the biggest gains happen in the last 30 days. And my portfolio could go from

$10 million where I could exit and it could go from $10 million to $30 million in the span of 30 days the last 30 days. So for me, that opportunity there is significant and I'm probably going to hold on to it until I think we're closer to a top. But I certainly will take profits this time instead of holding all the way through for another five years until the next cycle for sure. So, yeah. Great. Everything you say at least one more question. Yeah. The, you know, if you go to 10 million and you've been doing this for a long time, and even if you went to 30 million, that realized gain once you do pull out is going to be significant. Do you have any tax strategy around that? Yeah, I mean, you know, for the vast majority of it,

except for what I've bought this year, it'll be it'll be long-term cap gains. So, you know, bearable, certainly not 40%, which would which would really suck. But the biggest strategy, now is taking out a loan against that. But you have to understand that the moment you sell it, you're taxed on it. So if you sell your Bitcoin and Ethereum into a stable coin like GUSD or Tether, you've just had your tax event at that point, right? So the only way you can't be taxed is to keep it in its final form, which would be Bitcoin or Ethereum for the long term.

I think it'd be way too risky to hold altcoins outside of the top 10, even the top five. but Ethereum Cardano and Bitcoin are here for the long term and will continue to go up in their cycles. So the one thing that Michael Saylor talks about often and that he recommends that he's doing is he's just going to take out a loan against those assets. And there are plenty of platforms out there like Blackfine Celsius where you can take out alone and use your Bitcoin or Ethereum as collateral. So there's no approval needed. All you have to do is send your crypto to their wallet. and you're approved. But you can take out that money in the form of a loan tax free at that point.

And that would be the only way that I'm aware of to actually pull that money out without paying taxes on it legally. Got it. I'm glad you just said that because that's exactly what I've been doing and I've been buying income property with it. Awesome. Yeah. So because it's not a taxable event and I've got that $1, kind of like the infinite

banking type model. You know, you keep your dollar working. in two different spots. And I was kind of afraid to ask that question because I thought you were going to tell me I'm stupid to take loans out against it and that's super duper risky. Yeah, it is. You know, I did that in 2019 and I got, I lost 10 Bitcoin. I got liquidated when we went down from like 10,000 to 3,500 in a flash crash.

I had a loan out 10 Bitcoin as collateral and got liquidated. And that was super expensive. And it's going to be infinitely expensive, right? Far more expensive when Bitcoin hits. it's top the cycle than the loan that I got for it. And so I won't do that again unless I am way over collateralized or I'm liquid enough to be able to pay down that loan in an instant, you know, to the point where it's nine to one, meaning I've got a million dollars worth of Bitcoin in my account and I take out a $100,000

loan. And I've only got 10% leverage because this industry is that volatile to where you can get liquidated, even if you have 50 to 60% margin. I've been burned by that. So I'm staying away from it unless it again is and has kind of that amount of to where I'm sure I'm not going to get liquidated at that point. I've thought about that and I was trying to think of like the worst case scenario. I mean, if you did get liquidated, you know, that would suck. It's nothing that any of us want. but it would have just paid off your loan, right? Yeah.

I had an asset outside of crypto. I feel like that's a decent hedge not to lose at all. Yeah, you won't lose it all. The problem is, the challenges is that it came, wicked down to $3,500, and then within a day or two, it was back to $6,000, right? So it's okay if you have extra money where you can buy back in. It pays off your loan and you can just buy back in and get back to your $10 Bitcoin or whatever.

But the price moves up way back whenever it has a move that extreme in the other direction to where I couldn't buy back in at that. And so at the end of the day, I was going to have to end up paying more to get back to my 10 Bitcoin that I had in that account, basically. So, yeah, leverage is a dangerous, dangerous thing for newbies. You have enough life experience and real estate experience to manage that. But for the average person that you're getting on these leverage exchanges and doing 5, 10, 15, 20x leverage, or they're taking out loans. and they're going to lose the vast majority of their funds. No, I'm only pulling it out to buy another asset. Yeah.

Yeah. And what you just said about how bounces so fast, and I just heard this expression that I'm learning, and now I'm more involved on paying attention everywhere. A dead cat bounce. Is that what that is? A dead cat bounce is typically when you see a market entering a bare market, right? And so if this was the top at $64,000, we would be, right now, May 26th, entering a dead cap bounces. The market has recovered, probably half of its

losses all over again and then make new lows. Well, then we're in a bare market at that point. The dead cap bounce is tough because after the top of 2017, nobody sold because we didn't know how high it was going to go and why would you sell when you're making more gains than you've ever made in your entire life? The cognitive bias and the confirmation bias just overrides all of your your risk-taking circuitry. And it really makes it the hardest thing in the world to sell when you're making more money than you've ever made. Like there is nothing harder to do than that.

But that is what is required to actually get out of the market. And so even when the market dropped after December of 2017 and then it had its big bounce up and recovered half of its losses, well, we thought it was just going to go up to $30,000 at that point. But it didn't. It rolled over and made new lows. And nobody knew it was actually over until three months. later when it was actually over. And so at that point, you don't want to sell. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a tricky,

beast for sure. And the only way to, the only way to make sure that you, you win is to take profits along the way, which is a smart thing to do, but I don't do it. Or to just hold for the long term, which again, I just held for four or five years. And now I'm, now I'm, my portfolio is up, you know, 4x higher than what it was at the peak of 2017. And so if you miss it, then just wait. Got it. Yeah. Super. Well, I'm going to let you go.

Last question. What a liquidation is that, would that be a taxable event? I'd assume so. Yeah. Just, you know, it's being sold for you instead of by your own will. Right. Yeah, exactly. The IRS wouldn't care about the difference.

Don't care. Yeah. Sweet. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome. Wealth of information, Mike. I really appreciate this. And I kept, this is probably my longest interview ever.

I don't think I've ever kept anybody an hour. And it's been. Oh, cool. So I think that's. been one of my more enjoyable interviews ever. So I'm really glad we got to meet. And if you want to, after what you've heard and you are intrigued and you want to go deeper into cryptocurrency, go to my first cryptocourse.com, my first cryptocourse.com. And Mike personally will lead you through as a short little video. I really love the way you laid out your course. It was easy to consume

and it was easy to grasp. It was very easy to understand. And I think if anybody wants to get started, that's the ideal way to do it. So go to my first cryptocourse.com. All right, Mike, let's stay in touch. Yeah, you bet. Let's be in touch. And if you need anything, the door and the phone is always on for you. Likewise. Thank you very much.

Take care. Bye-bye. Take care. And that's this week in crypto. And that's the show. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might too? There's a good chance you do know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share with them.

And ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. That's it for today. God loves you. And so do I. Health, peace, blessings. success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Live in the Dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know, home, boy, we got the cash flow. Podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.