TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Tales from the Crypt #12: Crypto de Medici

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

Join Marty as he sits down to peek into the mind of Crypto de Medici, a crypto investor and Crypto Twitter must-follow. Throughout the episode Marty and Medici touch on investment process, controlling emotions, the current landscape of crypto, and our archaic education system.

what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt it's your host marty bent switching it up this week uh beverage of choice is coffee we're recording on a saturday morning here on uh 27th and broadway uh very excited uh for the conversation we're about to jump into I think you all will be, too. We've got somebody in the studio that's been fascinating me for years on Twitter. He's got some very insightful tweets, very thought-provoking tweets in the crypto space. I'm sure a lot of you who are on Twitter and following crypto have seen some of them. I want to introduce you all to Crypto De Medici.

Hello. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Welcome to Tales from the Crypt. Thank you for coming on this Saturday morning. I know you're getting to the city just to hang out for the day. I'm very thankful that you decided to spend some time with me. Yeah, very excited to talk crypto and see where it goes. Yeah, so we were doing a little prep earlier, talking while we were getting coffee down the street. Like me, you found crypto in college?

Yeah, so I stumbled upon crypto just kind of doing research. And this was shortly after it had hit $1,000. So I decided to go and do some research into what this digital cryptocurrency was about and digital money. And, you know, it all sounded very interesting. So I looked into it. I saw that Bitcoin had gone from a couple of dollars to almost $1,000 and more. And that was when I really, really got interested in looking into it. And then I saw that it was only 21 million Bitcoin ever available.

And that was when I realized that it was going to be huge and that this drop was just going to be a very short kind of glimpse into the story of Bitcoin. And so I started buying some Bitcoin at $600 and $500 right at the end of, it was probably beginning of 2014 as the price was going down from $1,000. didn't have much money but um decided to get into it because it was just it was too it was um too exciting of a project to to not get in um fast forward a couple of months didn't really do much it was just a college student you know kept partying and doing everything that a college kid would do uh so forgot about forgot about crypto for a while the bear run was was was pretty bad. Yeah, you got to get close. The bear run was pretty bad. And then a couple of months later, I got really interested again into crypto because I knew that it was going to stick around and that

it was going to get bigger than it actually was. And so that's when I really kind of started diving deep and researching projects and figuring out what investments would start really growing once people got interested in uh crypto yeah i mean you fell down the rabbit hole like like many of us did what were you studying in college so uh i was studying i actually i studied political science okay um i was first interested in business i've always been interested in business but um i i'm someone that has to learn something that i enjoy or else i i don't put any effort or would get really, really bad grades. So I decided to go with political science because I've always been interested in politics. Not really kind of the, you know, the Republican Democrats type of

politics, but more about how humans are organized and kind of how countries and the whole world really can progress in a way where it's beneficial for everyone. But at the same time, it's moving us in a direction that keeps developing, you know, the world and all of that. So that's really kind of why i got interested in political science and and partly why i got really interested in crypto because i saw that it was you know the continuation of this progress uh for humans and and i think it's something as big or if not bigger than than the internet and in the way of of how it's going to kind of change the world yeah that's one thing i've been trying to do on this show is put the context of the magnitude of this technological change like in history like so if you were to put

like like how big of an innovation is bitcoin like on a scale of history uh it's i mean it's in your opinion i mean it's crazy because we you know we don't even like if you looked at the internet back i mean obviously i wasn't around and i was too young to really know what was happening but if if you looked at back in the internet and like all these machines that held you know a couple megabits of of data and now you could hold you know terabytes of data um we we just we never could have imagined that we would have you know these supercomputers in our pockets and and be able to you know search something on google and find it immediately i mean it's just it's it's crazy what has transpired from the beginning until now when it comes to the

internet and so that's kind of the same way that i look at crypto in the sense of right now it's it's a decentralized um type of currency uh platforms um that but we don't really know where it's with where it's heading but we at least myself i i do think that this is going to bring about uh the type of change that the internet created in the sense that you know it was first the email and and you know then you know kind of text messages and then you had sites like social media um and even now with internet we still i mean we're always amazed year after year about what what is created from the internet and and um so i i think that's kind of the same way with crypto in the sense that um it's so exciting and there's going to be so much coming and we just

have no idea the magnitude and the scale but it's it's going to be huge yeah it's crazy to think the iphone was only invented 10 years ago um it's nuts i mean it's and i mean and i always look at my phone like uh the first phone that i got was a blackberry and i love the blackberry but i i the phone after that was was an iphone and um and i would always look at the new iphone to be like this is insane like how can it get better than this like this is just amazing and amazing and then every year every two years it just they keep upping the game more and more and more and you're just like how can it get better i mean i don't understand where it's going and that's yeah it's crazy because the the pace of change is something i've been saying for a while is like our our

monkey brains can't sort of can't comprehend the pace of change that we're experiencing in our lifetimes like we were born at a point in time where like things are just going like hyperbolic in every sense of the way population technology innovation production consumption and uh as as an animal at our core our core level at a reptilian brain level like we're trying to adapt to this change and it's just like it's insane in my mind it's and it's hard to keep up thank god we have twitter for that yeah yeah i mean it's well and that's that's the i think that's the beauty i mean it's the beauty of of all animals but it's the beauty of of humans and the way that they're able to adapt to to all these different situations and yeah you look at technology and

what we've accomplished in the last let's say 500 300 200 100 years and it's everything just keeps getting smaller in the sense of how fast it's changing and yet we as humans keep i mean obviously there's a lot of negative downsides to all to all of this in the sense of you know you have you have little kids getting online a lot earlier technology ipads all this but obviously as as we keep progressing we're going to see that we're going to create kind of barriers and systems that help humans get adjusted to this new kind of wave but the way that we've been able to adapt to it is is pretty crazy yeah it's very very interesting how we're doing it and we're doing it actually quite well and we're kind of you know we're that person we're like uh we're like an

artist that's like just free hand painting and just kind of figuring out as they go and uh and hopefully we don't make any big mistakes but um but yeah it's it's pretty crazy it's a fun journey um well and that's and that's kind of partly what i do with with my investments and crypto is is that i i really try to one understand the technology and the effects that it's going to have but also understand that we are animals at the end of the day and we act and make our decisions based on those animal kind of instincts um i'm a big proponent of of the tribe and understanding how the tribe works because even though we're not really in tribes as as we used to be in the past we are still dominated by those tribes and we are in tribes i mean you know

we we have our own groups uh online we have our own groups um in real life we have friends and and this is all kind of predicated on specific tribal instincts that we have and um and so when i when i do my investments um in crypto uh it's it's always figuring out how the animal side of humans are gonna are gonna react and and um and kind of how tribes fit into all of that yeah so that's one thing you talk a lot about on Twitter and trading specifically is emotions and sort of trying to control your emotions. And in trading, that's one thing I learned early on in the crypto game is that I cannot control my emotions. So, I have a long-term sort of huddle mentality. I do not try to play the swings in the short to medium term. That's just sort of a situation

where I try to know what I'm good at and realize I lack the ability to keep my emotions and check what money's on the line to a certain extent and that's and what you're doing is i mean i think that's what everyone everyone doesn't matter your expertise or not that's what everyone should be focusing on is is one figuring out what your strengths are yeah and what your weaknesses are and then creating a game that only focuses on your strengths instead of your weaknesses and i do something similar as well um because well one is the maximum gains if you're in a in a good project is the long term um trying to like you say play these waves is is one extremely risky because you you can't predict it um and two it's one it's very volatile just because of

of the liquidity and and just because the market is so new uh and that's really where most people essentially get you know they're as they call it wrecked because they they try to play the market one too much and then two they don't know how to play the market um when instead they should be focusing on learning as much as they can about the assets and the industry and and and having that whole huddle mentality but knowing what asset you're getting into um because this industry is very new and and we don't know where it's going to be in two to three years and which projects are still going to be around um which is very exciting but also it's it's scary to um well i I mean, so, you know, it's scary in the sense that you don't know what, I mean, you know, we saw this recent drop of more than 40, 50% for most of these assets, which was scary, but it's normal for crypto.

I mean, this is, and this is what's so beautiful about crypto is that the volatility is just so insane that like you need to be emotionally strong. Yeah. Even with the hodl mentality, like it hits you. Yeah. uh and so you need to understand how you work as an individual and and how your emotions are dominating you um and and yeah so that's that's something that has allowed me to to do well in crypto in in that um i'm a very i'm able to kind of separate myself from my emotions and and and still feel them because i think feeling emotions especially in the market is extremely important

because you understand what everyone else is feeling like but you're not allowing them to dominate your thought process and kind of how you react to the situation yeah so let's dive into a little bit your process like how how long did it take to sort of develop that and like when did you sort of have your aha moment when i was like all right i need to learn how to control these emotions i need to figure this out um and what was like sort of your journey down the creation of your process your investment process so uh so i started i think just like everyone starts uh with the whole day trading mentality uh and this was well so i so like i said before i got into crypto with with a few purchases of bitcoin back back as as it was dropping into a bear market and

then i got back in a couple months later knowing that it was that this was crypto was going to be big and and so i got into it um with the day traders mentality in the sense of let's make money every couple of days let's let's try to play these waves and i knew absolutely one nothing about the market and two no technical analysis no fundamental analysis i mean i was i was the definition of a noob uh which which is which is why i love to talk about noobs so much in in in my twitter because we all were there and and it's not something to bring people down but it's to to to let them know like you are new you know it's okay to make mistakes ask dumb questions but don't the thing that gets me about these people is that they don't know anything about

the market they have barely any experience and yet they they're so confident in what they say and it's like just know your you know you know your place in the market and and if you're new to the market i mean we're all we're all new but if if you have zero experience in the market how can you come and you know start talking shit and and also you know be so confident in your in your investments but anyways uh so veering off for that uh so yeah so i tried to do day trading um but i was essentially shooting in the dark and you know sometimes i'd make one percent 0.5 and so i made the calculations after like a week figuring out okay if i want to grow so i had very little money probably just max maybe two thousand dollars so i was like if i want to grow

two thousand dollars into a sizable amount within the next year or two let's figure out how much percentage i need to make you know monthly or whatever and and the trades that i was making and and kind of the whole strategy that i was making was just i mean this is it's going to go nowhere uh and so i realized literally within a week of of this day traders mentality that it was just this wasn't my game and i wasn't going to win and and i didn't have the skills or nor the the wanting so like technical analysis is very big in crypto and i think in most markets but it's it's it's very very big in in crypto and and i hate technical i i i look at a graph and i can understand it better now just because of kind of my experience but when i start adding all these

lines and i start trying to figure out where the marketing is heading that's where that's where like i just it just it doesn't work every everything kind of starts to shut down yeah the mike the mike tyson philosophy comes into play with ta like everybody has a plan to get punched in the face so seth korea shuts down the exchanges or something yeah the fundamental analysis fundamentals will always trump technical analysis but i mean obviously technical technical analysis does have a lot of value but for me that's just wasn't my game so right off the bat i realized that day trading wasn't wasn't my thing so shortly after that i then focused uh exclusively i've always been interested in warren buffett and and during that time i kind of started reading a lot

more because i wasn't really a big reader uh and and i also read the intelligent investor by benjamin graham and that's kind of where he talks a lot about focusing on long-term investing on on getting on one doing research and understanding companies and when you find that opportunity where a company is very undervalued compared to what the you know the current price is to to buy it or buy it when it's at a good price and then just hold it until the fundamentals have changed or or the market has changed and so i i looked at crypto and i looked at the market cap for all cryptocurrency and i and and i knew that it was going to be huge and i knew that it was going to grow really fast and so i focused on let me find the assets within the current market which was

very small back then that are going to rise once um once the market really you know once people start entering the market and all that so i so right there i mean it was it was the whole the day trading thing was a very short um it was a very short time and and i realized then that my my focus was really going to be on the long term um and so that's where i invested heavily in like one and dash because i really like those projects and and so that's kind of how i started with the whole long-term investing was because i realized that like like i said before with the strengths you know knowing your strengths and weaknesses my strengths are being able to find assets that um one are undervalued but also that are really strong projects that kind of use that

whole um psychology you know the tribal instincts so so when i look at a crypto project i try to see try to see everything but also try to see not as much because i think people get too stuck into the specifics of these projects when in reality i mean like right now with the speculation this it's more about seeing what the narratives will be um to picking a project instead of actually figuring out which are the most you know technically sound yeah because it's it's such a new market that getting lost in the details is is where you kind of go crazy yeah that's one thing i mean i've been open about this i sort of trend towards maximalism i'm a maximalist to an extent because i'm a strong believer in in the fact that at the end of the day this comes down to code and

we're securing money and it's protocols that secure money at their core and you cannot fuck around with that like in the long run in my in my opinion some of my emotions leaking into this but um so yeah so i'm one of those people like it's i probably get lost in the sauce of the technical details to an extent um what uh so what are your what are your thoughts about like the the viability of these projects long term and and how much is like the code aspect and and these these blockchains being actually secure scalable decentralized how do you think that plays out in the long term because i know you were tweeting i think it was earlier this week or last week about projects that might start uh start centralized and then move towards a

decentralized nature and stuff like that as there's there might be different paths to these blockchains being successful yeah it's uh so this so the long-term um well what's interesting about crypto is that long-term in crypto it could be very very short-term and as we've seen it you know just last year if you bought in january to to now it's it's been insane yeah we're back up around 12.6 right now and and so the so i i think this goes back to um one is so i look at i look at this recent rise and you know the last year and it's it's risen so high and so quickly that these buying at these levels when it comes to long-term investments is very very difficult um in the sense of you you always want to buy when it's when when sentiment is very very bad

and right now it's very very positive and and obviously as you see kind of the fundamentals of people coming in and all that it it looks as if it's going to keep going up um so this and because it's such a new asset class it's very difficult to figure out um where kind of where these projects are heading but uh the the way really that i look at it is as I focus on are these projects going to stick around for for at least three to four years okay and at the level that they are right now when I bought them are they going to be far higher than than you know in in three to five years because it's very very difficult to figure out which ones are going to be around even longer I mean obviously we could we can assume that something

like ethereum and bitcoin is going to stick around for for that longer and obviously that can happen But for me, you know, I want to I don't want to max. I want to obviously maximize as much upside as I can while also minimizing, you know, the downside risk. So that's why I do move more towards other other assets that are kind of I wouldn't say they're sketchy, but it's the their their futures a lot more uncertain, especially in a market like this. Um, and I mean, yeah, so it's, it's very difficult to, to, to know which assets are going to be around for, for, for the next few years. But the, the, the way that I research when it comes to understanding the, you know, the human psychological part of, of the projects and also the market, uh, that's, that's kind of what gets me interested in, in these projects. But I mean, so so with something like with a rise like this market, I am thinking about getting a significant amount of the assets out of the market before kind of. So I think I think this is going to crash. I don't know when it's going to crash. It could be it could be, you know, tomorrow. It could be a couple of weeks, a couple of months, even a couple of years.

but i i do think we're rising at such a rate that doesn't kind of show for the actual value that it's it's creating for the world i think the world isn't ready for crypto and crypto is not ready for the world yet world yet which is why we've seen kind of this huge speculation wave uh so i'm i'm more of waiting uh in the sense of of putting in money in the market once once we see a really really bad um i would say something like a crash um and then that's where my research that has been compiled and and based on how these assets have performed in this crash and if fundamentals have changed at all that's where we go back in and invest heavily um but with with with a market like this it's very i think it's i think it's not that good of idea to have a really strong

investment thesis i think it's it needs to be a thesis that is very able to adapt valuable exactly because it's it's it's more something like you wake up today and the game has changed the game can change completely you know you can have some a government like united states that either shuts down the websites or censors i mean it's there's so much going on in such a new market that you have to be constantly on your toes to figure out what's going to happen yeah and that's uh that's uh one thing you've been tweeting about recently is trying to get donald trump to talk about crypto which would be which would be hysterical yeah well yeah i could that could have that could have like a massive pump effect yeah i'm i'm thinking about i mean i'm still

thinking about whether i should do it or not um i mean obviously he's going to do it regardless i I think it's just a matter of time. But yeah, I'm still thinking about whether it is actually a good idea. I mean, I think overall as an economy, we should be talking about crypto in the sense of we should be investing in mining operations. We should be focusing on ways to integrate blockchain and crypto in general into business and smart contracts and all that. But I think it also goes back to the whole crypto is still too new. and it's it's not really ready for the mainstream so i think that's partly why we haven't seen the government kind of um go as as heavily as as i would like but also um it's very

disruptive and and so i think it's going to take some time for the government to really start talking about it but yeah no that's i mean that's the one like like if you if you really do the thought experiment of playing out how this technology will change the world in my opinion governments could get rendered obsolete to an extent their their current forms at least and that's definitely something that people in power are not going to like the current structure is not going to like they're not just going to fucking let it take over it's not going to it's not going to be a smooth transition by any means i mean i hope everybody knows that out there and like you said crypto is not ready for the world and the world might not be ready for crypto it's

a huge learning curve you got to really it's a paradigm shifter so you got to literally change the whole world your worldview to an extent you have to have that hard conversation with yourself what is money like that's one thing i'm trying to do in this podcast is have people question that like what is money people don't think about it they don't really understand it at the end of the day like five out of ten people i'll ask like as one of my favorite questions i ask like what is money like what is the u.s dollar and five out of ten people say oh it's backed by gold and i'm like no it's not like really is it backed by gold that's hilarious i get that a lot you'd be surprised like or maybe you wouldn't be um but you were talking about you're waiting for a crash

to come in the markets do you like yeah so a crash would come in my opinion when people sort of wholesale come to agreement that these projects sort of don't live up to their marketing um to an extent i've been arguing that that bitcoin and potentially monero um maybe add z cash to it but like there's only very few blockchains that are that are doing what they market to do censorship resistant transactions that's why i love bitcoin because it's just simple and has a very simple function to do one thing very well and i think it does that thing very well and i think people get caught up in the fee debate and all that right now um i think people got to think more long term when it comes to fees and sort of how how we can lower them and and and make make the

protocol level more efficient i think a lot of people are impatient right now but in a crash do you see anybody any anything staying steady like do you think bitcoin goes down with with the tide or or do you think it'll just be a uh like a wipeout set and surfing where it just wipes out the trash coins uh so i would actually so i mean this my my thinking changes daily just because it's uh i think both sides of the argument are very very strong in the sense of whether everything would go down or whether only the the really bad projects i hope everything goes down yeah um i so i so i so you know right now obviously it's it's it's heavily fueled by speculation everyone wants to get rich and and and you see a lot of these really bad projects

going up a ton um and so i think it's only going to get worse in the sense that it's going to keep going up and up and up and so everyone i think this is where the paradigm shift is gonna is gonna hit where everyone thinks crypto is going to be the next big thing and it is going to be the next big thing but it's not going to be the next big thing tomorrow or a year from now or two years from now it's going to be a big thing in 5 10 15 20 years yeah when crypto really gets integrated into the whole society and everyone starts using it on the daily basis and so i mean i think so i think this is where it's so exciting as a new industry and that's why i tell people to really focus on learning about the industry learning about the assets about the companies

about the trends that are heading because it's just beginning uh and so this current wave of speculation is just because everyone is because crypto is the new the new kid in town and and everyone's really excited to get into it and and so a lot of people are drinking that kool-aid and and thinking that this is this is it and you know next year you know your grandma's gonna start using crypto and all that and you can start you know paying your bills and all in crypto which you could which you can right now but it's just not feasible for for the overall market and yeah And so once this realization that once reality hits, I think it's going to be really bad. And that's and I presume I think that I'm leaning more towards I think everything is

going to crash in the sense that the market makers and the people with big money that do see something like, let's say, Monero or Bitcoin or these really strong projects that are going to be around will take this as an opportunity to crash that even more so they can you know load up even more on on their on their bags as as they use the the the panic of the market to you know to push the prices down yeah so i so because i because i don't think these these big guys want to buy bitcoin i mean they've been buying bitcoin at these prices but it's also like when they say with the government um you know in a in a tragedy like never goes to waste or something like that never waste a tragedy or something like that and so basically saying

like if a tragedy hits like you have to take advantage of that tragedy yeah um and so a panic like this where everything would crash would be a perfect perfect opportunity to start buying up yeah the panics really if the panic does it will come advantage markets come in cycles and they come in emotional cycles there so there will be a panic one day someday it will be something really going to test the metal of the hotter hodler mentality and we and that's you know the The thing is, because crypto is so new and we have so little information when it comes to like the past, we can only assume that, you know, something like 2013 where everything went down, that that's going to happen. But I think especially with you see with with it's going to be interesting to see how Bitcoin preserves its dominance and not the percentage of dominance, which is always talked about, but really its dominance within the market. In the sense of when Bitcoin goes down, down as we saw these last few days, it brings everything down.

When Bitcoin goes up. So the relationship is still not clear yet. But what's clear is that Bitcoin is still the big guy in the room. Top dog. And so it's going to be interesting to see if we eventually see more of a split up between these relationships. And some assets are going to be able to go up as Bitcoin's going down or vice versa. and also in these types of crashes there will be assets that won't get affected but i think in this in in this next crash whenever it happens the bitcoin dominance is going to be so high that

it's still going to affect the overall market okay which is very exciting for anyone that does want to get in um and prepares for it so so what i would recommend is uh as you're making money and i think 2018 at least for the majority of 2018 it's going to be it's going to be huge um i think the bull run is just going to continue people are entering the market really quick but i would also start creating a strategy of how to um one take out money from the market and put into fiat and prepare for the eventual crash which i do think is going to happen the difficulty is when yeah um and obviously you don't want to sell too early and also you don't want to sell too late uh but have a having a good strategy you know taking out i don't know five percent ten percent

every few months or every month or whatever i think would be a good idea to start doing mm-hmm maybe not now but um you know once prices kind of pick up a little more yeah that's one thing i recommend as well is like sort of figure out like a like a a mental process and a plan like just don't run into this and like you wind up holding a bunch of money and you're like all right what the hell do i do with this like figure that out before you get in And so predicting a crash at some point, but first it'll be a huge run up. So would you recommend people get skin in the game via dollar cost averaging right now? Or obviously learn about what you're getting into first, but for people who are ready to

put money in, would you say, how would you recommend they go about that? i would so i would focus on um yeah so i would let's say you have you know a thousand dollars to invest i would i would put in maybe like a hundred or two hundred dollars into uh something like bitcoin or ethereum um well so one i would if you if you really really want to understand what you're buying um i would recommend people look at the top 10 cryptocurrencies and start doing some research in the beginning do do a very quick research of of understanding kind of the essence of of the project uh maybe a paragraph long or less knowing what the project is is going to do and what they say it's going to do and exactly kind of how it's going to work so you

have a good understanding of the top 10 and kind of have a good idea of of what are the big market movers and all that uh but but i would i would recommend i mean you know it's it's it's difficult because uh because we don't really know i mean i'm very very um i'm very bullish on on these bigger ones like bitcoin and ethereum i think ethereum in particular with the ecosystem and the strength of it and and the lack of media presence in the sense of of ethereum itself i think it's going to do very well and bitcoin obviously just its dominance and and its natural power in the market is is going to keep going up and and i mean the fact that it's i think right now there's 13 million bitcoin available probably even less just because you know everything has

been kind of stored away in the sense of uh you know millions of bitcoin haven't been kind of moved in in years but the the supply for for something like bitcoin is tiny so i think we haven't really seen the big FOMO that i mean obviously we've i mean we've seen a huge FOMO but the i mean it's going to be crazy once people start fighting over a few million bitcoin um and I think that's going to happen in 2018, but I would, yeah, I would put some money in, in, in Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin cash as well. Ethereum, maybe someone like coin, you know, like coin, I have a love hate relationship with them.

They were my biggest, my biggest investment. Um, but I sold recently. Uh, but I think they're also going to do well. So I, I would put, um, a big portion of, of the money that you're putting in into something like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are kind of the big guys and then more smaller buys and selling Bitcoin Cash and maybe Litecoin. So you dip your toes in, it's money that you can afford to lose and you just let it stay there for a few months as you're doing research. So I think anyone that's entering this market should put at least an hour a day just doing research and understanding the

assets. And research is not reading articles from Coindesk and CNN and CNBC and all these media companies that is not research research is going to the website going to the reddit going to you know the discord or slack or telegram reading the white paper understanding the roadmap so you look at something like ethereum understanding when the scaling is going to come out what the scaling is about icos you have to really understand the overall asset in order to be able to then start putting in big money that you're confident about and also understanding what the market is like.

But yeah, it's going to take some time and that's why I recommend an hour a day, maybe split into two 30-minute sessions because after a month, you're going to realize how much more you know because of that hour that you spent. Yeah, no, read as much as possible. That's the great thing about this space

is everything's open source so you can literally find anything you need on the internet and then let's segue this into the twitter conversation i mean that's where the crypto conversation is happening and if you if you know who to follow and sort of what conversations to hop into on twitter you can learn a lot as well and the beauty of twitter is that you can find people working on these projects and people that have been around for a while and ask them questions and every once in a while they'll answer you with some pretty good information um so we were talking about that when we're in line getting coffee is just sort of the beauty of twitter and what it has provided for us in particular with this crypto mania um so yeah i think it's the best

communication tool we've ever we've ever created uh up to this point it sucks they can't monetize it sucks they literally they have the best product in the world and they're such a shitty company it blows my mind to an extent it drives me nuts i've got friends that work at twitter too i love you all i love you all i don't no just kidding i don't like the management but yeah like what you were saying with i mean one yeah twitter is amazing it's it is um like you say yeah it's unfortunate that it's just you know the people at the top i i don't know i mean i think there's you know there's some political um there's some power plays being being put into twitter and and i think anyone in power knows how important twitter is and that's why they've you know tried to censor um

opposing views and views that they don't really agree with um but that's with all social media all social media it's it's a beautiful thing but it's also very scary for for people in power in the sense that people can talk and all this um it's really like when i had santi on santiago siri we i have to say this every goddamn podcast name drop him i gotta stop doing that um but we saying like it just proves the emperor wears no clothes like you can get on there and it's the biggest crater of empathy in the world i would i would i would argue and you can literally hop into somebody's shoes to get their point of view via now 280 characters um but that and people can get on there and like something will happen politically or in the news and i'll start

having a conversation i'll be like wait it actually didn't happen that way and like maybe there's more to the story and you can just dive down rabbit holes of conversations about very niche topics and sort of and learn yeah oh yeah twitter twitter is amazing um and crypto twitter in particular is great if you want to learn about crypto so uh that's if anyone if you know if anyone's obviously interested in crypto or learning more about crypto like twitter is the place to be um because that's where you where you know all the news that's happening where you follow people that are trading investing talking about the philosophical aspect i mean everything you find everything about crypto um and so anyone that's not in crypto anyone that's not on twitter and

that is in crypto is just missing out a lot yeah and so what i would recommend people you know create your own separate um twitter account i mean you can you know you could do normal twitter but i think uh with something like crypto especially if you want to really dive deep you're going to be talking about it all the time um so if you have kind of an account that's devoted to that it makes it easier and you don't annoy your friends too much uh that is happening i've done that i've i've already wholesale just accepted it yeah i mean hey that's the way to go everybody comes out to me like hey your twitter always interests me i don't understand any of it though well that was i used to um well that's kind of why i went anonymous well you know semi-anonymous

because, yeah, I don't really care if people know who I am and all that. Yeah, that's what I was curious to know. I don't know, like... Yeah, no, I don't... I mean, it's something like, you know, if you really wanted to find me, you could easily find me. Yeah, yeah, that's the same with me. Like, my name's not Marty Ben.

And, but what... So, in the past, when I had my own personal Twitter... Well, so, and I think that's what's interesting about Twitter is that when I joined Twitter, you first join with all your friends and people that you know from school, and you quickly realize that everyone has such different interests that you know let's so like i would i would be talking about like conspiracy theories or like political stuff or or you know

just crazy things i mean and you and you see it on twitter just crazy things that i just think about just randomly that i i might other people might find value in and so i would have all these people just always commenting and wondering like what the hell are you talking about like why are you why are you you know why aren't you talking like a normal human being it's like what is a normal exactly yeah and so uh so i was like i just i want to separate myself from you know that kind of life and so i created an anonymous um anonymous twitter account uh first it was one that was for self-improvement and and because i'm really big in self-improvement and you know kind of picking up habits that will kind of lead you in the direction that you want to go and then i stumbled

upon uh crypto twitter and this was around uh probably mid 2014 uh maybe a little maybe earlier i don't really remember but uh that's so i created a new twitter account and that was focused on cryptocurrencies and in the beginning i just was observing um other traders investors it was mostly traders back then uh people talking about the market and and for the first few months i just did nothing but observe and ask questions and i think that's what most people enter in crypto should focus on is just observing understanding who who are the people that really know what they're talking about who are the people that are just kind of talking shit and then also asking questions um to figure out you know answering the questions that might take you a

couple of hours to find that you could actually get from from one one conversation and uh so i did that and it was you know i've been in twitter since um but and so one thing to get people because i get a lot of questions from from twitter accounts um and and the problem i have with these twitter accounts is that they they don't even ask the question they like state confidently a very wrong idea and so you know there's no there's no way that i'm gonna i'm going to you know answer you in in that in that way i mean it's just you know people should be coming asking questions you know you just ask the question you know what do you think about this this this and that just ask the question but yeah these people come with like a very argumentative and well and so that's one

strategy to be able to get these people that are really kind of high up when it comes to all these followings is you so i hate it but it does work because because you do answer them and so so you come in with with a very dumb statement and you like attack the person and you say something like um you know let's say i was saying that litecoin is a great project because x y and z and then someone comes in and says you know litecoin is a scam because x y and z and so that gets the person riled up and it gets them to answer which it does work partly but you know if you really want answers you know you just ask a question and you act like you're genuine yeah um but yeah anyways you know from that ramble uh yeah crypto twitter is is a great resource and and i think anyone that's

that wants to learn more about crypto should focus on that yeah no and uh no it's funny i get i i get my dms blown up as well and i try to answer as many as possible as politely as possible um but it's funny it is funny how confident some of the the noobs and the idiots are out there but it gets me so mad because because these are the same people that are that are convincing others to get into all these assets that one both don't know anything about and then they get you know they get wrecked because they don't have a strategy they get their dicks pushed in we talk about getting your dick pushed in a lot on this podcast we try to avoid it we're trying to give you the signal through the noise here so yeah and it's another there's a lot of themes in this

podcast one of them being crypto is a journey like you you're stepping you're taking a step on a journey once you dive into this rabbit hole it's going to take time you're not going to learn everything overnight but if you dedicate time to it and you're really committed and you do enough reading and you do enough research and you talk to enough people and you sort of pick things up and become more confident as time goes on and it's it's about basically knowing the whole landscape and this landscape is growing at such a crazy pace that that it you sort of have to dedicate more time as we're getting as we're getting further into into bitcoin's blockchain like as more blocks are created and more projects are created like your attention is needed in more

areas. It's crazy how vast the crypto space is at this point. One thing you talk about a lot, too, is separating these assets into sectors. There's different types of blockchain projects out there. Bitcoin, obviously, being sound money. Ethereum being a platform. Anon coins with Monero and Zcash. Masternode projects like Dash and stuff like that. What are your views on the sectors like how do you break it up and how do you sort of delegate your time between between these sectors um yeah so sectors is just a very kind of easy way of separating um just figuring out you know i mean there's just so many projects coming out and so many existing projects and and so sectors kind of allows you just to see which are the competing projects um and and figure

out if there's specific sectors that are very undervalued in the sense of the importance of it in the overall industry and so uh so one i think it's it's it's you don't want to um you know you don't want to try to research as many assets as you can so i think the more you do sometimes the more confused you get especially if you're new to the industry uh and so i recommend people really focus on the the big sectors or the ones that they find more so i think it's more about following your curiosity so if you're very very interested in in crypto in the sense of how it can help you transact money privately then you then it would be a good idea for you to focus on the privacy sector because that's something that you naturally have an interest in uh and so so i think

that's why i tell really people to to focus on on on learning about crypto um finding what you're most curious about that you think is gonna is gonna kind of be improved or changed because of crypto and then just you know start kind of going down that journey like you said uh because crypto really is about not only the ability to make money but also about using the skills that you're that you're that you're receiving from crypto and actually building yourself into kind of the individual that you want to become uh and so and so we see with these drops and in these these prices going up and down it really really helps the way that you deal with your emotions not only just in crypto but also in in life yeah and and so all of these skills that you are inadvertently

picking up from from crypto are very very important but they're even more important once you know that you're actually picking them up and so once you know that you're picking them but them up and also once you're making kind of calculated moves to help improve those specific skills that you want to pick up or that you want to improve the game just gets more fun uh and so these drops i love these drops because these drops test me and these drops kind of bring those stress response um signals and and it's the experiences that i think everyone needs to go through many times uh as well as doing research you know figuring out what's bullshit what's not bullshit i mean i think so crypto so people should look at crypto as like a resume builder

it doesn't matter how much money you're making or not making just focus on getting really good at understanding the industry and then just follow your passion and start building up your skills as you're kind of going through because uh the industry is so new and and if you really focus on building those skills up within a year or two i mean even just a few months like you you can be a huge contender for for any you know you could be a an expert at the privacy sector and whatnot and so i think that's why people should really focus on the learning aspect um but yeah so with the sectors i i focus on so so my big ones are privacy platform and then masternodes which is not really sector but i i like to see it as a sector uh and so a privacy i think is extremely

extremely undervalued oh yeah i do as well yeah i mean it's that's what people don't realize like the dark if you don't realize how big the dark web is and how valuable privacy is to some people and and when you use something like bitcoin or ethereum or any of these other assets and you're actually like paying people and you know you're moving your money around it's it's just insane how it's all public and so anyone that knows your address knows what you're doing i mean you know obviously they don't know if you you know paid for a hooker or not but they know that you sent the money you know this amount of money at this time uh you know how much money you have like yeah just checking your wallet and now with these with these companies um that are getting really

good at analyzing uh the blockchain it's it's getting less and less private so the privacy sector is going to grow and extremely i mean it's going to keep growing and growing and growing and so that's the sector that i would recommend people start looking into and so you have something like monero zcash that those are kind of the big boys and then you have smaller projects um one of them which i like which is zcoin uh and so so you you yeah you figure out which which are the sectors that you kind of like and and which ones you think that are still undervalued and then you kind of just focus on doing as much research in these assets as you can and so like as you're doing research in the sector and the privacy you figure out okay so monero is a big

boy and this is the technology that he has you know exactly how does it work that anonymous how anonymous is it actually anonymous because a lot of these projects say they're anonymous but they're not actually anonymous and so it's it's that's where you start separating the the the signal from the noise um and so that's why research is so crucial and so now you let's say you did five ass five privacy cryptocurrency so after five or after two or three you should already know which ones are going to stick around um at least for for the next you know a couple of years and and then you know obviously if your hypothesis is that the privacy sector is going to start doing very well in the next few months then you start looking at okay which asset is probably going to

gain the most if my hypothesis is right and why you know you you figure out the narratives you figure out okay um these the development team is focusing heavily on asia or they're focusing heavily on north america and kind of this is the narrative that i think they're going to start to play because what happens is as the prices start going up or as as they um as they look like they're going up people start creating these stories of of why so like bitcoin why is bitcoin going up and so people say you know store of value um gold then you know digital gold and so these are the narratives that you need to understand for the asset that you're investing in to figure out exactly how it's going to work and if it's going to be a good narrative yeah um

and and this goes back to kind of the whole human psychology is understanding how these tribes tell these stories humans love narratives oh and to convince themselves of the price so like you see something like i mean any of these assets that are high up you talk to anyone that is is is fully in line with the narrative and it's a narrative that's what it is that's i mean you know that's why we we do so well in in society and all that because it's just we're telling ourselves stories that we all kind of believe and that's goes with the dollar yeah you know the fiat it's it's just a narrative it's the narrative that the dollar is backed by um you know the the u.s government the military um and it's just paper but um the narrative the narrative is what is what works

and that's why i'm a maximalist because i think the the founder narrative of satoshi is going to win out in the long term humans humans love religion they love mystery and i think the satoshi narrative is gonna who's gonna win out in the long run and and bitcoin has the strongest tribe yeah out of all of them i mean by far yeah definitely um and again going back to the to the fundamental at like a at a tech at an engineering level like i think it's the safest blockchain i mean it's got what i would consider the smartest people in the space if you do research on the cypherpunks and the technologies they built leading up to bitcoin and what the core developers were working on before bitcoin like you know these people are worth their metal they're fucking

they know their shit to an extent they know i mean and again this is the narrative i i i believe in it comes down to belief at the end of the day i believe that the narrative of slow and steady security over over everything is is the right narrative to follow um i could be wrong i could be wrong well and the narrative that you're saying is narrative that that has worked and has put bitcoin where it is right now yeah and so the the key to these investments and figuring out uh where they're going to be in a year or two from now is is seeing the price right now and seeing if that narrative is strong enough to not only keep the price but also continue to increase it in the next two to three years because i think so which with most of these assets you could buy

it at this level and let's say we do see a crash and it you know it all goes down but if if let's say big bitcoin what is it at right now if it's at 12 12 7 okay so uh let's say 13 000 um let's say let's say we see a crash tomorrow and it goes all the way down to let's say 6 000 or 5 000 it doesn't really matter i mean obviously it matters because short term you're you you lost a ton of money paper wise but like if you know that in two to three years it's going to be worth fifty thousand dollars or sixty thousand dollars like why are you worrying obviously you you messed up in the sense that you could have bought even lower but if you know the if you know the true value at least in the sense of the next two to three years because it's very

difficult to figure out even longer but if you know that this industry is going to stick around and that you're very very confident in in the development in the future of of the specific asset then there's no reason to worry and i think that's the problem with most people is that they don't do the research and they don't have strong convictions in these projects so if it does go down 50 or or whatever it is they freak out and they sell at a loss the weekends sfyl and there was i mean it's just it's crazy the impatience that a lot of these people have it's like they want to make 100 gain tomorrow not realizing that if you just wait a year or two you're going to make you know 10x exactly and so like it's like the more patient you are and the more you understand

these assets the more likely you're going to make even even higher gains and so like you see all these people trying to trade daily or weekly or monthly and it's like you know you could have just bought really good projects back in january and done extremely extremely well and done nothing for the whole i mean that's literally what i do i i research these assets i invest heavily and i just sit on my ass i mean you know it's i mean it's pretty crazy how how it works but that's when you have kind of the long-term mentality in the sense that i don't have to wake up every day and try to trade to you know make money it's about putting in the effort in these assets and and kind of focusing on the long-term gain yeah and and the the profits just you know they pile up and

that's like the whole the whole warren buffett mentality just understand what you're investing in have some conviction and sit sit on your ass like like and sitting on your ass is the hardest part which is you know everyone says oh that's that's easy but no it's it's not easy because you know through you know this this last if you look at this last year i mean there were many drops like i mean i just there were seven thirty percent drops last year i mean well that's that's why i love twitter because everything is there even if you delete it it's in my head yeah and so like you see a lot of these uh twitter accounts that sold at a thousand dollars you know sold at two thousand dollars three thousand dollars and it just keeps going up and every drop a ton of

people are selling or or they're very bare and they think it's going to go lower and lower and and that's why um and so it's it's being able to sit on your ass and know that the asset's still going to go up or that even if it does go down that the asset's still undervalued and um but yeah i mean it's it's not easy to sit on your ass and and i think that's something that's why you have to build these skills and also have the strategy and the know-how and the research to be able to kind of weather those events out yeah and with all that being said though my favorite sector of crypto twitter is trading crypto twitter there's a bunch of dgen anon accounts that are fucking hilarious it's it's crypto trading twitter is one of the funniest twitters

out there oh yeah it's great it's a bunch of dgens um some of them are doing really well very well i mean some of them are good traders and that's one thing i'm not a good trader um but i'm happy for those that are and are crushing it and entertaining us on twitter crypto cobain shout out crypto cobain i think he's hilarious well and you know they it's funny because uh it's like that quote i mean it's not a quote but it's like a saying it's a you know everyone in crypto twitter is doing great uh and the thing is that they're it's not no no deep down inside some of these people are like fuck yeah i mean well because it's not it's not easy i mean it's it's it's a very difficult market and and you have to really have a strategy down

and understand the market well enough to do to do well because it's not it's not easy at all um obviously if you're going to look back and you know when you have kids and in 10 years or whatnot and you start talking to your kids about crypto they're gonna be like how did you not make how did you not become a billionaire it was so easy to become a billionaire but then and and so like you look at these graphs and obviously you look something like bitcoin it just keeps going up And it's like, obviously, if you bought in January, you're up. But if you really start looking at the details and you focus in on the specific candles and the specific price movements, it's very, very difficult. Yeah, you get lost in the sauce.

You're easily swayed to make rash decisions. Very, very difficult. And it's such a new market that you don't know where it's heading. And so one of these drops could actually be going down. Yeah, it could be the last drop with no recovery. It's possible. Know that possibility. So, yeah, crypto Twitter is funny because, you know, it's a lot of people that everyone's trying to be right.

Guilty. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, we're all trying to be right. And obviously, you're putting your neck out there every time you talk about an asset and talk about where you think it's going to go. And I think that's the beauty of crypto Twitter is that, you know, obviously you're going to be wrong. but if you really put in the work you could build a reputation where people actually listen to what you say no and i think you've done a very good job of that uh and just by taking the approach that you've been describing uh in the last hour uh and that's why i wanted to bring you in is

because like i think the the process of understanding feelings and sort of understanding what you're investing in and and being able to to wrangle your emotions is is very important to to realize like, like you, we live in a society that loves instant gratification and people need to learn the art of patience. And, and, and you, like you said, like you can do better in the long term if you just understand, have some patience and have some conviction to an extent. And that's why I talk. So, you know, I don't do, um, a lot of signals or kind of, you know, obviously from time i do talk about specific assets and where i think they're going because i think that is important to let people know one that you know what you're talking about and two that you actually

provide some some some help in in figuring out the market whether i'm right or wrong obviously uh but i think the most important thing is is is helping people understand kind of my own journey uh because really i tweet for myself um so everything that i talk about and all these kind of um you know lists of things to do and and emotions and all that that's all really talking about myself but i put it out there because i know that it's going to be a value to someone else and that's really what's most important it's it's building the skills um and also helping people along the way and uh and i think we're going to be seeing more of that where people really because it's it's kind of like you know teach a man a fish and he can he can eat for a

lifetime or whatever and i think that's what's most important about the game is that it doesn't matter which assets go up today or tomorrow what really matters is are you building that foundation where you can be able to not only survive but also thrive in a market like this which is going to be around for decades and even longer yeah possibly centuries to millennia um which is crazy to think that we're at the the very beginning stage of this stuff it's said it before i'll say it again it's such a fucking crazy time to be alive and oh yeah i mean it's just and and that's what's crazy it's like it's not even just crypto like you look at what's happening in the world and you're like this is insane like we're literally like and i was talking to my family

about this i was like like can you imagine that when we were born like technology was barely being i remember when we fucking got caller id for the first time we thought that was insane we would literally use the computer and like you wouldn't be able to use your phone i remember that i have this weird vivid memory of living in northeast philly in a row home and for some reason uh we get i remember getting calling id caller id in our house and being amazed like we can see who's fucking calling us like holy shit you know who not to answer to like exactly as a six-year-old for some reason i always associate that with the uh the emergence of cinnamon mini egos as well for some reason uh those egos everyone ate those i associate the the cinnamon

egos with caller id you know it's those funny associations where you're like how how in the hell did those associations come out but they just do yeah exactly that was probably one day you were eating breakfast i goes and then like the caller d came up and you just i'm like nope not this girl and lisa we're not talking right now but no but yeah just like so that was probably what 1997 1998 around there no probably even earlier probably like 90 95 96 i was really young but it's crazy like now i have a fucking super computer in my hand uh about to send uh this recording from a macbook to to my gmail account and we're gonna download it and fucking post it on itunes none of which existed when when i was five or six and you can't imagine life without

everything that you have right now no and the thing was that a few years ago you know 10 10 plus years ago there was there was life without and now you're like how like like so like you know uh maps you know google maps and all that like how the fuck do people get around yeah i mean did you really walk around with maps like are you kidding me i actually i remember my parents would have books of just like written down directions that they would have like how do we get here and they like literally map quest all you know i mean before map quest like it's like we don't know how fucking fortunate we are like and and people you know especially the older people but it's funny because so the older people always say like oh you know young kids like you

don't you're not thinking and and you know you know and with using maps you actually use your brain and whatnot and and then now you see them all on facebook you know i mean it's just uh they're it's it's funny how uh the how the older people obviously i mean they're doing everything that we're doing in the sense of we you know we first got onto facebook and then now because everyone all the older people are moving to facebook we're moving away from there into snapchat and and all these other sites um and so like i i mean i see my parents all the time and and they uh whenever they're on their phone which is like all the time i'm like this is just it's so weird how like these adults that are supposed to be adults are literally acting like us well let's get let's

get in it i love like it's it's inevitable to a sense because you have so much information on these fucking phones like you like it's it's impossible not to be enthralled with them it's like i can learn literally anything just by sitting here or you could waste your time playing like candy crush or like looking at instagram models but the opportunity is there to learn whatever the fuck you want and that's for some people it's enthralling and consuming oh it's i mean it's it's beautiful it's just it's beautiful that i mean we're living like kings in every sense of the word um now you know obviously if you live in a shitty apartment or whatnot you're still living like a king in the sense that you have a connection to any knowledge that you want i mean

the the you know people rich people back in like when the 13 colonies was around and even when america was really founded and it was around like all these rich people would pay a ton of money to have books shipped from england uh and and it was a luxury to actually have books that you could read and even reading was very scarce you know not many people did that and and now you have any book that you want for free or you know just for a couple of dollars i mean it's just it's insane how much knowledge we we can possess and and i think that's where the importance of building those skills of of self-improvement and and and and reading and you know whatever it is that your strengths are um they're out there in the internet and and you can learn them on on youtube google

whatever it is but it's out there and that's that's the beautiful part is that we are and and naval talks a lot about this meritocracy where we're moving into a society where it doesn't matter you know if you graduated from princeton or it doesn't matter if you you know if your parents are wealthy or not all that matters is you know do you have the drive to do and to accomplish what you want because everything's out there exactly that's and that's what like i tweeted about this a couple weeks ago like it hasn't hit people in earnest yet that that it is out there and you can literally bootstrap yourself for virtually free right now like if you can go to the library get access to the internet you can start i started my newsletter on mailchimp with a

free subscription and grew a following small humble following but a following nonetheless and it was free i just started it in my apartment if people knew how many how many of the first newsletters i wrote my underwear they'd be a little they'd be a little surprised but like you can literally if you have the drive like you said you can you can make something of yourself and it's incredible like that that this opportunity has not existed for all of humanity ever i mean it's not i mean it hasn't at all of humanity yet there's still millions to billions of people that need access to the internet but it's coming and it'll get there i believe but um and and also it's having like what you said the deferred gratification and like like you building your

email list uh it's you know it's very difficult to build a following um but you you keep going at it and you're determined to do and you keep pumping out value and and in the beginning it's very very slow and but you're going to hit a stage where where it just runs yeah and then that's and that's what i think that's what most people have a difficulty with is is keeping on track because they get very excited in the beginning yes i'm gonna build this into you know i'm gonna be the next you know philly d or you know whatever it is i'm gonna be the next you know oprah uh but they don't realize that the first few years are gonna be shit yeah no that's one thing with the newsletter specifically um i just tell myself i gotta show up every day i'm just gotta write

every day and that's and it'll and has led to stuff and just by showing up and actually putting an effort towards it like holding myself to it is has paid dividends and it's only been six seven months so just showing up and and having that drive and and again i'm innately curious about bitcoin and blockchain i love writing about it and it's it's i'm very happy i've gotten to a point where i can i write about something i love and people actually like it and are and want to read so that's been a humbling and very very awesome experience over the last seven months and like you said it's going to take time like you have to realize like i started out with 15 subscribers that were family and friends and i was under 100 probably for the first month and you get three

months in i'm at like 500 i'm like oh this is cool then you get tweeted by like ryan selkis or santiago syrian it jumps to a thousand it's like holy shit like what the hell's going on why are people reading my shit and um but yeah it's it's a process show up my mentality with with what i'm doing is show up every day and love the process i mean gary vaynerchuk is great at this i would recommend people look at him uh because he's like i like the grind i like the dirt the the hustle the failures all that because that's really what builds you up into a into an individual and gives you the skills and the experience to know what you did well and what you didn't do well and how you can change it and and and people are just they're very afraid to to mess up but they're and so they

don't even try because they're afraid to mess up yeah that's the one thing that like once you get over that hump or it's like i don't fucking care like i've said some dumb shit i've written some dumb shit but like get your reps in like what gary says get your reps and reps are our key and also we're all so young i mean you know it's like you look at i like to read a lot of the biographies of the great people you know all these titans and all that and the majority of them you know they did really they started doing very well in in their 40s and their 50s i mean 60s you know i mean you have someone like warren buffett still running uh his berkshire hathaway yeah and he's like i don't know 70s 80s yeah he's up there and so and so people just they get very impatient

and they think that you know in your 20s you have to be this this person that you saw and it's some hollywood film when really it's it's your 20s and and even later like you just keep putting in the effort focus on building skills uh be patient uh because it's going to come to you um exactly and and that's something that i love about gary is that he he tells people how to play the game and um people just don't really know how to play the game but you know the game is is whatever you make it um and just don't get impatient and also i think this goes back to the whole so i i have a i have a bait a beef with uh with college i i i've i i really didn't i mean i enjoyed socially my experience at uconn but i um pretty quickly i realized that it wasn't what i

wanted um and and the main thing was that it just wasn't it's the education system is not set up in a way to reflect what's currently happening in society in the sense of every individual learns differently and every individual has different interests and what's cure like curious for them so like something for me like math you know if i'm not interested in it why do i need to learn about math or obviously you as an individual should be well-rounded and understand all these types of subjects but the way that it's being taught it's just it's horrible yeah yeah like the factory mentality behind it is i i mean i fucking hated school i was zero i would fucking coasted through college with a 3.0 like didn't even try i mean i'm not gonna say i didn't try

but like i wasn't like as enthralled in the work like i was focusing on bitcoin when i was in college like yeah i mean i wasn't taking classes on bitcoin i was but i was reading about it every day all day and college really has just turned now into uh into a certificate you know you it's it's it's really a status signal yeah to say oh i went to college but you know right now first of all everyone's going to college so it the and i think so what's what's happening now is people think college is like the only way to get ahead in life and it's it's not if anything i think it actually puts you down in life um because one you get out of college especially in the u.s with a ton of debt most people can't pay can't pay it off and then in your 20s where you should be building those

skills and and working your ass off but also you most likely are not going to be making a lot of money and so to be to graduate college with you know twenty thousand thirty thousand or even more which is which is what a lot of people are graduating with with a ton of debt you don't have as much choice to just say you know fuck it let's do this business or fuck it let's let me work you know uh getting paid ten dollars an hour interning for you know a ceo or whatever it is like you you don't get these chances to really kind of grow at the level that you should be growing at um so that's kind of what i really hate about college is is that you know if you're looking to the future of the united states in particular you know i mean i love the u.s i am

a huge patriot and all that and so how how can we see a good future for for for our kids if we're one giving them really shitty education because you see these kids graduating college you know what are your skills like what did you learn exactly we don't we're not building skills we're just telling people what to memorize just telling people to take tests yeah i fucking hated tests and so and you graduate with no skills because the system isn't built to give you skills it's built to you know keep you kind of in line and memorize and all this and then and on top of that you have a ton of debt that you need to pay off that it's increasing you know yearly because of the interest like like this is not the america that you want to have no you want to have an

america where uh people focus on really you give people the tools which is internet to learn and and you have these kind of internship apprenticeship type of programs where you you know you let's say you want to you know you want to be an investor so you should go into companies that already have investors or obviously the you know the whole education system being revamped is going to take a while and figure out exactly how it works but yeah the current system is just i mean it's horrible and and so i a lot of people ask me if they should go to college and and really i mean for the most part i tell them no you shouldn't i mean if so you know if i had an opportunity to go back to college or not i i wouldn't go

um and i mean obviously i learned a ton but um but it's just it's not it's a very very bad system and um yeah it's just unfortunate because the people that the people that really kind of go into college and you know they get their master's phd and obviously most people it works out but they do it just i wouldn't even say most people yeah well for some yeah yeah because you know they they so they jump through all the hoops and then they graduate they're like what the hell okay so what's going on yeah well and that's why you need to question everything yeah everything that society tells you about everything because society doesn't have your interest at heart so you need to you know start to think for yourself and also your family you know your your family

grew up in an era where college was extremely important like you don't get a job at a company unless you have a college degree and obviously it's still prevalent now but like it's it's losing its influence and now what companies care i mean the companies that are going to be around and that are going to succeed and do well are companies that really care about the experience and what you bring to the table because you you can go into most of these companies obviously there's some that that you couldn't but most of these companies and and within it within a few months you already know everything that you need to know you don't need a you know a college course um yeah no and that's uh that's one thing i was happy to go to college in chicago i decided to

take night classes my senior year year and like work during the week like during the day i learned i learned a lot more at work than i did at school um but that was very i'm very happy to have had that experience and that opportunity and i think it it has paid off dividends because it's taught me like you've got to create the skills yourself so i worked at a head for a quasi hedge fund i worked for a managed futures fund out of school like during school and then after school for a year and i understand like i love learning about finance markets future markets in particular um but i just had a fucking like thirst and hunger to learn more so i decided i wanted to learn about apps and ux and the psychology behind apps and why people use them and how to design experiences so i

quit and did a design bootcamp to learn about that and i was like all right i learned about the design side now how the fuck are these apps made on the back end how do you code them so i went to go work for a software company and learned about that and then at the same time still diving down the bitcoin rabbit hole and i was like all right how do i bring this all together and right now my like i'm i'm not a good coder i have i can't code i'm not like a great developer at all by any means but um i think i understand code and sort of how the psychology behind these apps like the the full product process from designing an experience to to coding it on the back end is important to know and so now i'm just trying to figure out how to put that all together with

bitcoin and how i can help people there and what i decided was most needed in bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general at this juncture of the market is education that's what i'm doing with the the podcast and the newsletter. And hopefully I'll iterate on that with the product. So just trying to figure that out. It's fun. It's fun. And like you said, you got to have patience. Like it's not going to come to you all at once. Like you got to go through the experiences. You have to have experience to an extent. And you never know when you working at that fund or, you know, doing this or that is actually going, I mean, it's all going to come together, which is the beautiful part of of kind of the puzzle of life where you have all these pieces you don't know

like what what the hell am i going to do with all these pieces and then you find an opportunity where you're like damn like everything has led up to this moment and like everything that you thought was just irrelevant just just fits perfectly uh and and that's just that just comes with you know following your curiosity and and not really worrying too much about kind of where the journey leads because it's going to lead somewhere as long as you follow your curiosity and build those skills because it's you know that that's i mean that's a beautiful part of life is you don't know where it goes but um once you end up there you're like how did i end up here but i love it yeah yeah how did i end up at barstool sports that's what i want to know

if you were to tell me three years ago i'd be working at barstool sports i would have told you to go fuck yourself yeah i mean that's that's a beautiful part of life you just don't know where you're gonna end up yeah no it's uh it's a beautiful journey um and with that i think this might be a perfect end point for a conversation. Great. Well, I appreciate it. You know,

and it was, and it was always, uh, it was a fun time. It was, yeah, no, it was a very,

that's like I said, just tales from the crypt. I want to hear the tales, the story behind the people that I'm seeing on Twitter. And your story is very fascinating and you're proud of your, how you got to the point you are right now. Um, I was very,

very thankful that you came to tell your story. Thank you. Well, I appreciate it. Where can we learn more about you? Well, uh, So you can follow me on Twitter at CryptoDeMedici.

That's CryptoDeMedici. That's where I talk a lot about the markets and crypto in general. That's probably the best place to reach me. Yeah. If you're not following CryptoDeMedici yet, get on it because you're missing out. And yeah, follow Marty Bent. That's my Twitter handle. Subscribe to the podcast if you like it.

Please share it with anybody that's looking to learn about Bitcoin or crypto in general. um tell people about the newsletter subscribe to the newsletter and uh enjoy the rest of your week freaks peace and love that was fun yeah that was great