The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Tom and Aidan Karadza - The Canadian Real Estate Rug Pull, Bitcoin, Rates and Risk

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES This week we welcome to Tom and Aidan Karadza to CBP HQ for some poor-quality coffee and a high-quality discussion. Lots to discuss, from the impact of the recent budget on real estate, risk assets vs hard assets, Aidan's view as a yute, and much more. Check out Tom and his brother Nick on the Your Life, Your Terms show (which we're fans of, and have appeared on multiple times), we think you'll like it. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠ Discord: ⁠ ⁠⁠ https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Friends and enemies, welcome to camera one, camera two. This is the Game Big Works podcast here with my friends Tom and Aiden. We're at CDP headquarters. We're going to find out what they're up to, how they're feeling, what they're doing.

Aiden just turned me down. I offered him a spot on my bearded football team, so he's like, not instead, so I'm not. But we'll get to that. First, the sponsors. We have two sponsors. Do you guys want to do the reads for the sponsors? Like, do you know enough about Bull Bitcoin to tell me why I think

everyone's a good sponsor? Okay, go ahead. All right, so the first sponsor, Bull Bitcoin. Bull Bitcoin is a Bitcoin exchange, and it's my favorite feature. Everyone's Bitcoin's a good sponsor. Okay, go ahead. All right, so the first sponsor, Bull Bitcoin. Bull Bitcoin is a Bitcoin exchange. And I guess my favorite feature, everyone's favorite feature about Bitcoin, is that they don't custom your Bitcoin when you buy it. You need to put it in your wallet, in your address. And you buy the Bitcoin, you put it in your address,

and then the Bitcoin hits your Bitcoin wallet. So it's the best Bitcoin exchange in the world. What about KYC Free? Yeah, go to the post office. It's still happening, right? It played out too recently. Okay, so KYC free Bitcoin. All you need to print off your QR code.

It's your wallet QR code, right? Yeah. Yeah, your account. Your whole Bitcoin QR, yeah. You show up with cash and you can buy your non-KYC Bitcoin. Nice. Anything else? You can pay your non-KYC Bitcoin. Nice. Anything else? You can pay your bills on Bull Bitcoin.

Credit card, mortgage, cell phone, wire transfers. You can pay dollar cost average on Bull Bitcoin. Yeah, you can get your paycheck deposited there, which is sick. I would never do that because my employer messed up. This is a big story with that. Can't talk about that on the air. But use the bold Bitcoin. CDP something is the code or IwantBitcoin.ca

Do you know enough about EasyDNS to do the EasyDNS review? I don't. EasyDNS is the best place to post your content and to post your website via website. Do you know how many Bitcoiners for websites? Tons. Say like famous website hoarder, right?

He's got like love.com, hope.com. I don't know what else he's got, but I didn't know that. Yeah. It's a weird, scarce asset. He says there's no second best,

but his actions tell me something different. It's websites that are second best, I think. So you can host your website there. You can do Bitcoin nodes, virtual private server stuff, master relays, whatever. Anything you want to do, Mark will figure it out for you.

Have an email address in your domain. We have katiebitcoiners.com. We use it all the time. We don't have an email yet, though. We're probably going to get one this month. I hope. If we remember. And then on top of that, the book on a sale of it by Mark.

We never talk about this because he told me to stop talking about it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Your stuff will never get taken down just because you think that policy decisions being made are no good and he's hosting your website uh he went through it during the convoy and he's uh he's hardened in the fire let's say okay he's been there he's been there and uh you can go there easy dns.com i think our code is CG Media. You get half off or you buy. So when are you going to start a website? You should start one. Yeah, I should go to the website.

I haven't been back in the day, but I have something to do with it. What was it? It was about mini sticks. I want to review mini sticks. Oh my god. Mini sticks review. I love it. I love it.

Yeah, yeah. That's a great idea. It was a huge idea. It was a huge idea. I think you were reviewing mini sticks. Yeah. I mean, they're all basically the same where they got enough curves different than he said the best curve.

Were you doing the curves on the stove? No, no, these were like the composite mini sticks. These were like the composite mini sticks. These were like already pre-curved. You would over melt it and destroy the sink. Those weren't like those plastic. Those were the best. Those were like those plastic. Yeah. Those were the best. Those were good.

Yeah. Yeah. Composite mini sticks. There was like one, there was like one or two mothers in the neighborhood who really knew how to like work the blade on the stove. And they'll look at it at the back. Yeah.

Like they were, you couldn't use your backhand though. Chef's kiss. You don't need it. It's mini sticks. Tell people a little bit. People know who you guys are. Go ahead. I'm going to, I'm going to put the chat up on. People know who you guys are. You go ahead.

I'm going to put the chat up on the screen just in case people are taking time off to do this. Sure. Tom Carrazza went into tech, worked at Oracle for a little while, then quit, started Rockstar Real Estate to help Canadians buy hard assets to front run the government debasement. And I've been doing that with my brother nick who's not here he's on a disney cruise nice i think everybody should know that he is on a disney cruise hanging out with cinderella and uh we started that in 2007 rockstar was incorporated in 2008 we've been working with canadians you know buying properties rental properties all across ontario for a long

time and that's it that's rockstar real estate and uh I'm Aiden. I'm 21 years old. I'm just about to graduate Western University. Bitcoin is now in its class of 2020. Definitely interest in monetary policy. And we thought it was the best friend. Yeah. Let's just go a little bit. After a rocky summer. I'm going to say hi. But yeah, I've gone down the Brooklyn rabbit hole. Now I definitely have a keen interest in economics, macroeconomics.

And yeah, I've been able to work at Rockstar the last couple of summers as well. Do you like that? Working at Rockstar, more specifically for your dad? I do, but I don't really feel like it's for my dad. Because at the office, I'm not really talking to him every day. It's not like I'm taking like orders or really working like right underneath him so I feel like I'm more like it's more just like helping the family business and I like it a lot that's a good way to look at it yeah that's a really good look at it actually and if anything I probably work closer with my

with my uncle than uh than my dad really yeah wow I don't really do anything. I've never seen you do anything. I've seen you talk to people about stuff in the fridge, give them shit about something they said earlier in the day, coffee, the podcast. I've never actually seen you do, if you say that you help people with hard assets, I assume you mean real estate. I've never seen you.

No, I don't think I really have a real estate offer anymore. I know what it's been. It's been cool though. My mom's in a couple times a week or once a week, I guess. So it's cool for me because, yeah, a lot of families are in it. Sure. That's great. I do like that.

There's something to be said about strong families and the time they spend together producing stuff, whether it's building a deck at home or working together in the family business. I always like that idea. And I will say that in the last I don't know how many years I've been thinking like this But I remember when I was a kid the first thing I wanted to do when I finished school was move out And obviously I didn't I had like no job I was working at pawn shop at university for a couple years going to Teachers College other stuff

but the thing that Kind of changed my mind about wanting to move out is if I look now at the friends of mine who are sort of most successful most balanced it's the kids who stayed with their parents long enough interesting you know why I think anyway because if the parents are willing to support you and can support you they want to help you make what's going to wind up being the three biggest decisions of your life right it's going to be what you do for work where you work and who you marry yeah and they want to have a say and if you're out while in in some you know slow development you know like you're not

gonna have influence and it might be a pain I won't ask you about that but I would say the number of talking to is like between like 23 and 26 and that being worth it yeah yeah I think there's something nice well I'm gonna be moving back at home now full-time yeah from Western and you'll get a change for sure what are you doing for work are you gonna stay at Ross I'll be back across right now full-time full-time rock salary employee benefits yeah I'll let it all take place. May 21st. It's got to be a big pop, you know. But yeah, I'll be full-time at Rockstar. Nice.

I don't know if this is a better situation. Isn't Rockstar a great business anyway? You guys do great things there. Yeah, I mean, Rockstar shouldn't exist. That's like the running joke for our business. Our business is a second-order effect of a broken monetary system, and we exist as a symptom of the system. Really, our business should not

exist so it's the whole thing is a little a little weird for me but to have him coming back i'm a little torn on it i think i've told him this have i told you that yeah and uh i learned a lot going you know working in corporate canada i learned what i don't like yeah i learned a lot of skills they put me through some formal training We're a little bit of an informal place. So yeah, I'm slightly torn on it, but the mission and the purpose is good. So we'll see how this goes. I think our business is a little bit of a crossroads itself, right?

Because we've been doing real estate for so long and really helping people. And we're trying to figure out what do we do with Bitcoin? How do we do it? How do we do it? How do we bring it into Rockstar even more than we have? And we've been aggressively trying to do that. Yeah. So I kind of think you're right.

Well, why don't we, let's talk a bit about the Rockstar business and maybe how it relates to what we saw from Minister Freeland last week in the federal Liberals budget we were talking a bit before we went on air about the sort of what we think is a lack of understanding from people who think that capital gains is only going to affect the quote-unquote wealthiest Canadians the people who are making a boatload of money exercising their capital gains at more than $250K a year.

I don't think that's the case. You guys don't think that's the case. What are people missing there? Why is it going to affect a lot more than just the 0.1% that was bandied about last week? I think there's a disproportionate amount of people in Canada that produce a lot of opportunity for the rest of us. And that productive class sees this as a threat. So when you force a lot of people to reconsider why they're going to be in Canada, by raising the taxes on what they're building, because they're

using corporations to build it. If you have medical doctors, if you have people building corporations now, and I've seen this in the last week, I've seen more pushback on why am I here in Canada? Anyway, these are people who create jobs, who service and provide value to the community. Questioning why they exist here in Canada. If that productive class decides to leave more and more, then the people who don't think they're going to be affected, they're going to have less things available to them. Yeah. And I think it's really just shortsighted.

I mean, I see this on Twitter right now. I saw somebody on Twitter. I don't want to mention the name, but they were just saying deficits don't matter you know how's everybody they almost prominent person yeah yeah i don't want to mention the name and i'm like you know left-leaning person but i've never seen anyone in the productive class look at something like a change to capital gains and think that was good i've never seen anybody who's not employed by getting handouts from the government look at these things and say it's good i only see people who are receiving the benefits of government handouts and that kind of stuff look at this and say yeah it's good or you're just kind of now you're young and you don't

get it well do you get it you're young yeah i think i totally get it and i think a lot of my people in my generation my age kind of get it so now i'm graduating and people my age are seeing the salary that they're gonna be making come to university they see the price of rent they see and i know so i have some friends that are in nursing they're like if i can get out of canada go to texas and go to horeb really anywhere in the states like why would i not do that stay in canada what are they saying about stuff like finding a place to live? Rents are one thing, but, I mean, mortgages and just sort of talk,

even in the budget last week about the first-time homebuyers, quote-unquote, benefits. Tom's going to have a chat. No, I see the audio is echoing or something. Is it? I don't know. Is it just that? Echo.

Your audio is echo, echo. I can't really i mean maybe i figured that part of the camera anyway can you talk yeah no in my head is going back home so like everyone's going to be moving back with their parents and if they aren't doing downtown because of jobs they got down there like the parents are still having fun that no job at a university is going to be supporting like the living in downtown toronto alone i think i'm surprised to hear that your generation seems to be aware of what's going on and kind of how the incomes really that they didn't pay doesn't produce the life that they want to live they seem much more aware i guess that's a side of the time you come to high school

yeah you start coming to university you look around and you realize, holy shit. And I have one friend who had a job offer, one in Ontario and one in Alberta, Calgary, and he chose to move to Calgary. And to take the job in Calgary. Oh, that's recent? Yeah, just now. He drove to Calgary last week. So did he purposely apply for jobs in Calgary? Yeah. He's born here.

Yep. From Ontario. Family's here. Yep. And he applied specifically in Calgary. Why would you not the job was either going to be live in downtown toronto or like move to calgary live downtown calgary and he's like it just makes sense for me to go to calgary i'll be what kind of job engineering engineering job yeah see those that's the thing like you become kind of uh not nomadic

but you don't you're not tied to anything if you have one of these jobs in like stem like business uh i don't know what's another good example of this nursing is another good example totally you have a lot of flexibility people want those jobs in their jurisdictions i don't know i don't know what's going to happen in places like ontario where it seems like we're unwilling to talk about the lack of supply and i'd be curious to hear your take on that and housing but everyone thinks that the fix is like the government taking on more responsibility either by backing loans or by like building houses i'm a little worried when i hear language like we're gonna unlock another

four million homes like i don't hear houses in there and I don't hear build in there, but or skills, anything like, I don't know how, like who's doing it and why do you have to unlock them? Are they locked right now? Is it my house? You want like, there's a warehouse.

There's a warehouse of homes. We can't find the key. There's a whole, you didn't hear about this. There's a huge warehouse up North with all the homes are in there and they're going to unlock them. They're going to drive them down the 400. I just don't know what you're supposed to, like, what do you say to that?

And like you, you're seeing on the supply side, is there like, is there really an unwillingness to build? Like I'm being told by people in the industry, not named Tom Carrazza, or is there some other reason they're not building? I mean, in my head, I'm like, these guys build homes for a living. They want to build subdivisions because that's how they earn their keep. They're not building them. It's not because they suddenly don't want to make money. What's the reason they're not being built? You can't plan. So like the developers we speak to, especially some of the medium-sized developers, if they don't know what the cost of money is going to be 18 months from now, how do they project the sale price? How do they project how much they can spend on labor, material?

What size of home to build? What type of home to build? If you can't make a projection, because you have to depend on the central bank, that they're going to keep the cost of money the same. And now they've all been burned. I know multiple medium-sized developers who have lots in Hamilton, St. Catharines. They've gone through the zoning process. So they buy these lots. They carry this lot for a year, year and a half out of their own pocket.

They buy it. So they take the capital to buy it. They take the risk of owning this. They spend the money to make the payments on that while they're going through a rezoning process. Then they go through the reasons they get it rezoned to build maybe a beautiful duplex on there or even a quad, something like that. But the interest rates then kept increasing on them that if they're carrying six or seven lots now all of a sudden they don't have the money to carry those lots through the build yeah they have to desperately sell a couple lots to just carry the other lots never mind taking more capital to build interest rates went up so fast so quickly on them they can't and now they're trying to make projections

into the future and they're coming to us and like tom what do you think the cost of money is going to be a year from now or 18 months from now? Because I don't understand how to do the projections on these builds. If you're a huge builder, like a Mattamy or a Tribute, these guys are making, they are playing with different amounts of capital. They can make different decisions. But when you're talking infill projects that could benefit all of us in the community, some of these builders, they're just kind of holding back. They're trying to survive right now. So when you play games with the cost of money by changing the cost of money so quickly, so rapidly, then it puts the fear of God into people who say, I don't know what to

expect in the future. Not only am I scared to build, I have to protect the capital I have to survive. So I'm just going to sit on any liquidity that I have until I'm comfortable that I know what the cost of money is going to be 18 months from now. And that's kind of like the, just the downside of central planning. Like when you have a complex system, you can't send. And I know that like, I'm, I'm speaking, I know I'm preaching to the choir. It's good. It's good to hear it again anyways, but this is from multiple builders who are telling us this. They don't know that.

And then on top of that, where do they get the skills? skills yeah how many plumbers are we creating how many electricians are we creating how many plumbers if you want to try and get a plumber to do something in your own house right now you're calling a friend of a friend who's pulling in a favor who's calling anyone yeah i gotta just go on youtube i have no choice i can't get a even if i even if it was something okay so you can't see this on camera but there's like backflow valves here that have to be cleaned every, you know, eight months or whatever. I haven't done it in the spring yet. It'd be my first time doing it probably this weekend. I'm not calling anybody because even getting a guy to come to your house is 300 bucks. Uh, you're going to have a lot of people just learning to your point about the

building thing. I saw a great stat a little while ago shortly after the uh budget it was like so maybe like middle last week or friday there's only something like 15 or 20 000 carpenters in the country those guys would have to be working every minute of every day for the full stretch of the next seven years or six years to get those houses built by 2030 it's just it's not feasible and we're not bringing in conestoga is not bringing in any skilled trades people they're not and there's an art to mixing things like cement how do you mix it in the winter how do you think i don't know that hey come on i'm making the demand in my sleep where are we training this stuff this stuff is generally handed down and the people who handed that down are dying off.

Yeah. Like the, all joking aside, the old Italians I know, who know this like an art form, who pass away, that skill's then not passed down. So then you're depending on the colleges to teach this kind of stuff. And when I look at our education system at every single level, I don't see that being taught. Yeah. So now we have a future that you can't really, if you're a builder, what are interest rates

going to look like 18 months from now? Where do I get the skills? And then who's buying? So who's qualifying to buy? And then where are incomes allowing for the qualification? And this is why I think we're in a future where longer amortizations are going to either UBI or longer amortizations in the name of helping the first time buyer. I can't see how a government doesn't come out and say, Hey, first time home buyers, we want you to have a home. So what we've done is we've introduced the first time home buyer magic formula plan. 75 year. And yeah, let's, we'll put you in debt for a hundred years, but we're not going to say that, but now we've lowered families in debt. So although the real estate market, look, we're in the real estate industry and I'll

be the first to say that real estate prices are way too high, but they are a symptom of the system. Yes. So how do we collapse real estate prices when we all know M2 and GDP must keep going up to service the debt? Yeah. So how do we get the lower real estate prices? And this is, I think goes to Jeff Booth's point or the system

is just acting out and you can see where the end game takes us. And it's really not good. Are you, okay. So I remember when I was in school, there was like a general sort of distaste for the trades, right? People didn't want to be trades people. They, it was go to university at any cost, take whatever bullshit degree they will let you in for at any school and don't look back. Yeah. That can't still be the case. I don't, I mean, maybe in some people's minds, but I don't think so. My friends, the ones that are like the most well off now at my age are the guys that didn't go to university. Didn't take out student loans, started working right after high school, like plumbers and electricians, and now they're killing it. Yeah. So, you know, know i think it's definitely there's been a flip there for sure but like is it i guess that this is a hard question to answer but

the trend you know was let's say 90 you know people wanted to go to university as a first option and now that number is what in your in your view in your opinion is it 80 it needs to be something like 50 yeah max i still think it at least in my like circle or my network, and maybe it's probably, there's like an Oakville bias of their, like those parents want their children to go to university. For sure. But no,

I'd say it's less for sure. Yeah. I'd still say it's probably 80% of people are like trying at least to go to university or their parents are wanting them to. And I think that needs to adjust for sure. I agree with you. And I think those, so many of those people have their heads in the sand. Like I have many discussions with parents, my age who have children younger than Aiden. So like finishing high school, about to go into university. And they're like, we're really going to have to help out our kids

get their first home. And I'm like, really? Okay. Let's do a little bit of math on this. You have three children, so you want them to live close by. So you're saying you want them to live in Burlington. Okay. Great place. So you're going to have a home. Let's start with a townhome. You want to have a townhome. Okay. So we're looking at a million dollars or higher. They're going to put 20% down. So you need $200,000 liquid cash to help your kids each get a townhome. So that's 600,000 liquid that you need to help. And then you're leaving each of those children with an $800,000 mortgage. I go, the days of my generation thinking it's time to help the kids, that ship has so sailed that my generation doesn't get it. They don't understand that that's gone. Yeah. But is it gone or is it just now that those numbers are bigger and the help,

like people still want to help. The thing I would even say is that at $200,000 per kid, the bigger problem in my view is that you're probably doing that at 50 something or 60 something, your kid's first home. I think I said yesterday on the show in 2022, the average age for the first home of a Canadian was 36, probably let's say it's 38 or 39 now. So what are you, 24? 21. 21. Okay. So 15 years or 16 years from now, you're going to be 65 years old. Are you going to take on, let's say you're just like an average, you don't have the business, you're going to take out 800,000 in in equity or more at that point depending on where

the price of real estate is and like what do you do right this is it's such a hard decision and there's massive more my and my point is that it still leaves massive mortgages yeah so you're creating a debt slave yeah yeah so great you quote unquote helped but now this person is tied to that mortgage for the rest of their lives. Yeah. Like, so now what, this is just a work camp. So now we have an area of- Well, that's what they want though. Like part of the budget was like to take out your RRSP up to $65,000 at 36 years old. Like that's how many people got 60 grand? I don't have 60 grand in my RRSP. I mean, I have a pension, but I don't think it's going to be there. I'm not

wasting money putting it in somewhere. It's going to be locked for 30 more years or whatever the number is. Who's got this? When you add longer AM to withdrawing all your retirement savings to real estate that costs a million to get into now, it is a working for the rest of your life thing. It's how it looks to me. Work camp. Yeah. Like we, this is, yeah i i just can't i feel like yeah i i guess it it's just frustrating like the highest and best use of

joey's time to me when i look at you smart intelligent hard-working guy for sure strong yeah yeah decent football player apparently i mean we're so no actual proof but uh but the highest and best use of like for me as somebody in the community and i look at someone like you i'm like honestly i love what you do what you and len are doing i feel like that you are serving the community i absolutely serving the community, but really there's probably many other things that you could be doing that you don't have to be spending your time educating everybody on why the system's a bit messed up and to open their eyes. Yeah. And as a member of this community, I would love that you were putting your efforts in that direction. Yeah. Yeah. But we're living in a system where

you're forced to do this, where I'm, you know, we're forced to have rockstar. Everyone's forced to speculate on everything. It's, you know, and now I'm starting to get mad at this. I didn't, I didn't intend to come here and get pissed. It happens to me every time I get mad in here a lot. That's why the windows open. Cause I just wind up sweating. I don't know. I don't know how to fix that. The speculating on everything is a good point. Like real estate is one thing. At least you can live in real estate and hope that other people will live in the real estate that you own. But man, what's the excuse for speculating on stuff like NFTs, Nvidia stock at all time highs, you know, options trading available to everyone and their brother and uncle on Wealthsimple. No courses, no education required.

Speculation is the name of the game now for everyone. And one of the reasons I think that's the case is, and I would love to hear your comments on this, Aiden. A lot of people at your age and younger, or even a little older than you, because I thought you were a little older than 21, they don't see a way that saving and acting responsibly makes a difference. So what do they do? They just live in the now, like credit card debt's sky high. People are buying all kinds of stuff. They're balling out of control. And you know, I agree totally.

And I think you were talking about this on the land on, on your podcast. Um, it's like, why are people buying these random cryptocurrencies and NFTs? And I think before you understand Bitcoin, people see these like whatever on Twitter, these like 500 X returns, 2000 X returns. And that's the only, that's people like. That's your only hope. What else are you going to do? Until you understand... You can empathize.

Yeah, I can see why. I think this is we were talking about this before we started. What else are you going to put your money in? That's my question. What are you supposed to do? Do you take a 1 in 100 bet and buy like whatever coin epic or or do you like plan has some good ideas or do you put your 50 into the s&p 500 and just still lose purchasing power well

seven percent a year used to be enough and now you know the stuff you actually want i mean if you're just buying golden grams and fucking donuts every week seven percent's fine but if you want a home or a car a ribeye a ribeye i would never it's funny you're saying the seven percent number because that's something like if you look at m2 growth in this country from the year 2000 it is seven percent compound growth since the year 2000 we've all kind of accept or at least i have that like at a bare minimum you have to grow your net worth 7% a year. But to me, it gets worse than that because when I looked at the Federal Reserve's asset base since 2008, and to me, that's the year that capitalism absolutely broke. It was breaking for a long time. But in 2008, if you just look at the St. Louis Federal Reserve's chart on their

assets, in 2008, it just goes haywire. And if you look at the asset growth since 2008 of the Federal Reserve, it grew 14% compounded annually since 2008 till present day. And then if you look at the monetary- Is that it? Is that it? If you look at the- Compounded annually. So then if you look at the monetary base, and this is why I think the 7%, which I've been saying a lot, 7% is the number that we all need to beat, but I think it's way low. And this maybe goes to Michael Saylor's point is that the monetary base is growing 13%. So the monetary base in the U S is growing 13%. And the monetary base acts as collateral to banks who then lend, you know, offer lending, new mortgages are created, new debt is created

that puts demand on things like real estate. So really watching M2 alone to me, I need to kind of go one step deeper and look at the monetary base. And if the monetary base is growing at 13%, I feel like, Joey, you, Aidan, you, we all need to grow our net worth, unfortunately, not 7% a year, probably closer to 15% compounded a year. Yeah. It ends up being a lot higher. And then, no, but this is ridiculous. Now, if you get out a calculator, have you done this? I haven't, but go ahead. You do that. If you get out a calculator, like, so let's say, let's say that you, um, let's say you have a $60,000 a year job, $60,000 a year job.

Yeah. Okay. So I don't know if that's high, low. I'm just fixing it. That's gotta be, that's gotta be like, I think the average starting salary in Canada is probably like a lot less than that. I think so too. So I'm going to agree. Okay. So, so like we can pick any number, sure. 60,000, we'll just stick with it. It's like a middle number. I don't know. Sure. 60,000, you're fortunate enough to get up to 60,000 and you're like, I've made it. Cool. And then now if I go- I made it. If I go times 1.15, so multiply that by 1.15, because that's the number I need to grow annually, that salary, to just basically keep base with the debasement.

So if you do that and you hit equals 10 times, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So in 10 years, your salary has to be $242,000. That's really just to keep pace. Okay. Now let's do another 10 years. I know. I know. You're really cooking after that, right? Like even five years. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, that $60,000 salary in 20 years has to be $981,000 a year. Start a podcast. To break even. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

And this is why the system is actually broken. And by the way, that's no savings. No savings. That's no additional housing, vacations, kids. That's nothing else. No savings. That's no additional housing, vacations, kids. That's nothing else. That's paying for your golden, what did you say? Golden grams or whatever? Golden grams and donuts.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know what golden grams are. Yeah. Isn't that absolutely now not ridiculous? It is bonkers. It's bonkers. Yeah.

And people don't understand this, right? When you talk to them about inflation, the first thing they say is, well, it's corporations doing this. My friends, even if corporations had that kind inflation, the first thing they say is, well, it's corporations doing this. My friends, even if corporations had that kind of power, okay. They wouldn't be able to exercise it. It's the money supply that's causing these issues. I think people must understand that. Do you guys at your age, are you guys in the, not you, but like, are your buddies in the greedy corporations? No, they can't be. They can, they, no, no, they're not. But I still think when you go to the grocery store, everyone's still like, I hate Loblaws.

But no, yeah, no, I don't think it's like, no, corporations suck and they're the issue. I think people understand that it's the dollar. You think? No, I shouldn't have said that. Well, your buddies maybe don't. That's what I'm saying. Maybe like my roommates and stuff. But you're right, I guess.

Yeah, no, not everybody. But I think everyone does now understand inflation. Like we did it before. Like when the next stimulus checks come out and people are going to see the price of goods go up again, they're going to be more pissed than they were last time. You've been able to orange pill some of your roommates. Yeah. Not completely, but yeah. I try. roommates yeah a little bit completely but yeah i try the thing that someone i won't say who i had

guests here um you know a few months ago someone else someone else came to the podcast studio and one of the things that we were talking about before the show is this idea of like orange pulling your buddies and it's funny like you you think that your buddies are smart and they understand and they get it and you're explaining bitcoin to them and they're nodding along and then you ask you are you gonna buy any they? They say, no, or I don't know, or I'll think about it. I am of the opinion now, and this other guest was too, that the reason your friends don't buy Bitcoin is because they actually don't have disposable income. Yeah.

It's a big problem. And no one wants to talk about it. No one wants to go down that road, but I think that's a big part of the equation. Because in their mind, if they say, okay, Joey,ey i believe what you're saying but if i put 200 bucks in there i can't lose it i can't lose it not only yeah i can't lose it but and it goes to 400 bucks okay like great man what has that done for me yeah so that's doubled so let's say the market cap of bitcoin doubles and we're all kind of celebrating that yeah but in their mind they're like joey i took 200 bucks i turned into 400 I'd rather just have some fun with the $200 than kind of pray and hope it goes to 400. It does.

It does suck. It's just hard to save. It's just hard to save. And that's the thing that just is irritating with this system and that nobody kind of sees it. And that's why I really believe at the next, like UBI to me is coming. It is 100% coming. Whether you want it or I want it or Aiden wants it, it's coming. Because what's going to happen is the tax base in this country is going to be so small compared to the debt load.

I mean, it already is so small. And then when you have technology, like you can't fight technology. Like technology, unfortunately, is the enemy of the government's current monetary system because technology is making things so efficient, everything you want to call it, and then productivity and then capital or said differently debt. So for those are the three components, population growth in all of the West is decreasing. Productivity is massively increasing through technology. Some, some. I would say a lot. Yeah. Okay. And then we can, we can debate that, but then debt growth is the counterbalance. So for example, if Amazon wipes out a whole bunch of retailers here in Dundas, Ontario, all around the country, and they have been over the last few years, those are jobs that

are lost. Those are things that the government can no longer tax. So their tax base erodes. Amazon then gets the benefit of this and grows bigger, right? So now we are centralizing into, this is kind of like Jeff's boost theory in the price of tomorrow. We're centralizing kind of power in some of these big companies. The only counterbalance they have to that is to increase debt because they can control

debt directly because they control the money printer. So now for every increase in technology that you have, you have to have a counterbalance in the increase of debt. And if technology is increasing exponentially, which I would argue that it is, and I know you're saying some, I would say that the debt is increasing now exponentially. And as by way of example, the annualized interest payments in the US right now at this current interest rate is 1.1 trillion annualized current day. If interest rates don't change by December, do you know what it is? No. 1.6 trillion. I'm not talking December, 2028. I mean, December, 2024, when we started

Rockstar real estate, the interest payments on the US debt was $350 billion. And we were freaking out. We were like, holy shit. And now we're going from 1.1 to 1.6 this December. And this is the, I think this is why I remember I was saying my attitude's a little changed in the last little bit, because to me now we've entered the dead spiral moment and we're in it. And I feel like the next five years, I'm not talking 10, like the next three to five years to me is very serious and I can feel it. And I know that might sound silly, but everything we're discussing here of Aiden's group, your age group, you can feel it. You can feel it. And I, and I don't like what I feel. And I know that might sound like a little, you know, airy fairy or whatever like feel you're feeling something but it's just like i don't like it and i also think that there's goodness out there in that bitcoin is bringing together people who i really think are going to have a lot of influence in the world yeah and it's possibly the greatest wealth transfer that i'm ever going to see in my lifetime if i'm lucky

so that people like you joey len a, Aiden, yourself, people like Anthony in our office, they have some Bitcoin. And there's going to be a wealth transfer to me into the hands of people that I want having serious influence in the world. And I think that's going to happen, but I just think it's going to be a bumpy road over the next few years to get there. What do we do about stuff like on the side of like automation and technology? I'm with you that it does, you know, it should increase productivity.

I see Canada pushing against this in so many ways. And to me, it's like clear why we want this kind of low wage labor to keep GDP artificially high, right? If we can pay a million immigrants a year, 15 bucks an hour to burn the shit out of your coffee at Tim Hortons, then they'll do it forever. They'll never, they'll never change to a machine or an automated checkout or whatever, right? They'll just keep doing it because that's what Tim Hortons wants.

That's what the country wants. Everyone's happy, right? There's going to be a moment at some point where one of these big corporations is just like, I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm going to start using the tech. And then I worry that you're going to see governments push back and say like, no, we are going to tax the computer. Actually, Floyd Maranescu says this too. There needs to be a tax on AI work because if there's not, the tax base is going to go to zero, just like you're saying. My big concern is if I think about three to five years, the big problem is that your generation, like we're talking about, is already looking at the exit sign. They're like, nah, I could stay or I could go. Because why? Everything here is too expensive, right? That's one problem. It's hard for me to find a place to live. That's problem

number two. But the third problem that we didn't talk about is that it's harder and harder for mom and dad to help you find a house and help you buy a house. And so you're like, what am I staying here for? Not to mention that you guys, I think, are like the most sad, sexless relationship. There's no roots. None of you guys have girlfriends, roots or anything, right? Like most of you guys now, when I was finishing university, I had a girlfriend already. Not the one I ended up marrying, but a different one.

There was like reason to stay in like a province at least. Now there's just nothing tying you guys down. Then when you add on top of that, that you can find a job working remotely or become one of these like digital nomad types, there's no one staying. No one's staying in the tax base. It's true. You're the tax base. And it's weird too.

Cause yeah. When all these entry level jobs are just all automated, those are gone. Like what are you going to do? Yeah. Like you're coming out of when AI is taking your order. Yeah. Well, how do you learn, like, you know, credit to you and to you, Tom, and you know, your wife, I'm sure, you know, you have, you're well-adjusted, you have social skills.

Like when I talk to you, I can kind of, I can see that you've done this before, but there's a lot of people who needed that job at McDonald's to learn how to speak to an adult. Totally. And didn't get it. And so now they're i'm asking the same question what happens like you can't work at mcdonald's there's no more uh they're getting rid of the cashiers which hopefully they bring those back it is nuts actually i know i know yeah um they do suck yeah but yeah no i don't know every time i try to weigh my own bag on that thing which tells you it doesn't tell you something in there. We were looking at videos.

There should be something. What do you mean? Yeah. Like the automated, uh, the French fry, French fry flipper at McDonald's. Like it's nuts.

Yeah. They have an automated fry flipper. Not yet. Oh, one of our clients works for Motoman Canada. They're selling so many of those arms out into California right now that like hundreds of these things that will do all the fry flipping for you. you that's active right listen a good friend of mine used to work for tesla he now works for one of the biggest uh companies in the world that creates the factories

that chinese and american ev you know companies will use to build other factories okay they have you heard of lights out factories no so he's just but I know exactly what this is going to be by the name. Yeah, so he just finished the factory at the extension in Texas where you don't need the lights on because they have three levels of robots that now have the dexterity to pull up the screws. And so you don't need HVAC requirements. You still have to keep it at a certain temperature. And there still are humans,

but you don't need an employee cafeteria. You don't need HR. You don't need an employee parking lot. You need a lot less lighting. Is there still DEI, but you don't need an employee cafeteria. You don't need HR. You don't need an employee parking lot. Yeah. You need a lot less lighting. Is there still DEI for the robot staff? Of course. How dare you?

How dare you? I want to check on that. How dare you? Got to find out. So this is happening right now. So I was just with him last night for dinner. I'm like, you know, is this factory life? He's like, oh yeah, that one's done.

We're on to the next one. You got to see what we're building now yeah and so this is to my point of where the technology is increasing it just is happening now at such a pace that we're not even exposed to it and i think canada's so inconsequential in the global world in the global economy that yeah we can do in this country we want listen we're a pretty small gdp big time that if if we're going to develop these factories in texas and in mexico and you know this stuff is going to affect all of us right here and it's just it's happening i think faster and a speed that's also just alarming me like i had no idea that we're doing this like we have fry robot arms going out into into places en masse did Did you see the Wendy's video?

Did you see that one yesterday? I don't think so. It's AI taking your order at Wendy's. Yeah, I didn't see that. Or what about the Freshie or whatever that is? Oh, yeah. I saw that one. It's like some Indian girl in India on a screen taking your order.

Oh, really? And then someone at the… That's crazy. AI is going to take those jobs too. I know. Even the cheap indian labor you like it's better to just have some robot do it yeah and like by the way i don't i don't want to like shit on um anchor streamer or whatever streamer it's fine anchor i sent a email to last week because they have a bunch of new like ai services like do your audio editing stuff like

that i sent them an email and said i want to try the suite but i want to try it for free for a month because i'm paying for all this stuff somewhere else. And I'll try yours for a month. And if I like it, I'll switch everything over. There's a fucking robot responding to me. Yeah. I can tell it was an AI response. And I wrote back.

I'm like, no, I need a person to look at this. This is not the response I need. Right. And so the other thing too, is that people now are so accustomed to just like getting a terrible level of service and support. Thanks to these AI bots, like instead of like actually doing anything about it, they'll just be like, oh fuck, it's another AI bot. I guess I'll just have my fries with no ketchup. I guess I'm just eating my breakfast burritos with no salsa in the bag.

Just like old times. Like, you know what I mean? Like there's no, everyone just expects the service to be bad. And so the service just keeps getting worse. Everyone is, everyone is making money except for people who really like should be contributing to the economy through those jobs, through that kind of stuff. Absolutely. They're not getting their fair share. There's something really cool that you're doing of work that, you know, you and Len are doing something really cool to, for cool for me is that you're bringing people together who are thinking in this way. Yeah.

And I just think I really want to push you guys to do live events with people all across the country. And the reason that I want you guys to do this. You fund it. The reason I want you guys to do this is because when I was over in england am i allowed to say where sure i'm gonna lend it will unallowed i told you len's protesting he's not gonna be on the show for sure i didn't i didn't have to change my shirt i didn't have to change my shirt to wearing a real bed for sure so i was over last week with with my brother aiden's uncle and it was really cool hanging out with bitcoiners and having discussions and you make bonds at a different level and I think that gives me hope I'm like oh my gosh there is a

community like we all know each other over the internet yeah yeah and it's really great yeah but when you go and you hang out in person it's completely different and honestly that gives me hope you know how sometimes we'll say bitcoin's like a life raft? I feel like the human connections that you make of Bitcoiners together is really just exponentially an even better life raft because you're just making those bonds. Yeah. And I think if we can do that across the country and across the world even more, that's kind of like the safety valve. That's the outlet.

That's the hope that we all need because there's this old dying system that's full of people who are grasping onto it, who are telling us it doesn't matter about capital gains increases and it doesn't matter about deficits because they're benefiting from that or they don't know better to be fair. But there's a whole other group of people out there that have the ability to make change. And for me, if we can get those people all together hanging out more, it really has the potential to be powerful. And it gives me hope. So that's something that you and Len need to do. This is all just…

I agree. Did you hear anything in there about funding? No. Listen, come up with the idea. Look, I… Listen, you guys have been… What do we need to get the Canadian… We got to figure it out.

Because I think a lot of people, whether it's us or other podcasts together, right? Like even the conference last year in Toronto, that the energy in places like that is incredible, is incredible. You were there for a day too, right? Like it's incredible because everyone there is like on the same wavelength. You don't have to worry about, oh, well, the reason that deficits matter is X, Y, Z. Or the reason that GDP per capita is important. Yeah, make it easier when everyone's you know what i mean like i just want to dunk i just want to

yeah i just want to dunk on stephanie kelton and fucking have a beer right like that's all i want to do and let's let's find out ways to make it better now let's we should talk about the conference a bit since it's coming up are you guys going to montreal for the friday you're going for the friday i won't be you're not going at all why where are you again i'm uh i start work on the monday so i'm having oh yeah i'll be with friends that weekend yeah yeah you have a pre god to be young again a pre-work weekend celebration yeah i'm sorry my job yeah yeah like starting in may because he has to go to where are you going dominican yeah dominican yeah putacannon next there's like another trip no that's it that's no trips are good you should take trust in you yeah no a couple graduation things are going on before yeah i mean

that's fine you're graduating you only do that once hopefully anyway the the conference in montreal i think is is going to be super it's going to be super important for the canadian scene for a couple of reasons. If I look at the list of guests this year, a lot more American and international speakers than last year. That's awesome. It's awesome. It's really good. Saifedean is there.

Cool. A few other people who like you will know, but off the top of my head, I can't remember a bunch of them, but it's a nice long list of people. And I think that, you know, this conference, unlike the one last year when the price was whatever, 20,000 or 25,000, this year it's $70,000. It's going to be a lot more hype around what we're doing. You know what I mean? And I want to see sort of the way that people are discussing what they're thinking about for their own Bitcoin holdings.

We talk a lot about what are you going to do with your stack? You got this stack of Bitcoin in fiat terms that's worth X amount of dollars. What is my plan with this? Am I going to take a loan against it? Am I going to spend it? Am I going to use it for services? Am I going to buy a home? Am I going to buy a car?

Am I going to do whatever? Now, those sort of goals are going to be so much loftier. And when people think that they have a chance to do something great, fucking they might do something great. They might do something great. And that's a big deal for a lot of people because people have been buying Bitcoin a little bit every week for five years or six years. Just this, just now, right? They're really like consistently above the, above water, right? Their head is above water for the first time for an extended period.

That's when people start to think about what they really can do to make a difference. And that's why I'm, I'm hopeful about that. Now, in terms of what you guys are doing at Rockstar, right? You work there too now, so I can say you guys. Where do you see, for your client base, the biggest risks in real estate have to be short list, right? Government has got to be number one. Number two has probably got to be, I don't know, interest rates or something like that, which is another arm of the government. What else am I missing?

A lot of Bitcoiners, by the way, refuse to call houses houses. They call them liabilities. Like when I have people over to my house, they'll say, wow, I really like your liability. They won't say, I really like your house. Fair enough. I mean, yeah, those are the biggest threats

that the government's going to tax assets. I guess I want to differentiate between your primary place of residence and if you have some rental properties. Can I ask you something? How many people, in your opinion, in Canada, by percentage, let's say, of 40 to 65-year-olds, 40 to 75-year-olds, have two properties? The latest that I checked was, and this was talking to a mortgage broker, so don't hold me to this, was that 11% of mortgages in the country are for

real estate that you're not living in. And out of that 11%, I got to think it's some investors have multiple properties. So it's probably a small group of Canadians who actually have multiple properties or rental or choosing real estate as a hard asset to protect some of their purchasing power. It used to be like 4% when we started in this business. Now it's 11%. And that was 2008. So that's just a wild stat. And I don't know where that was referenced. So I can't give a source on that, but I was just talking to a mortgage broker who gave me that stat. But yeah, government taxing real estate is a threat and interest rates is your ultimate threat because you just don't know what's going to happen. And we can see a couple of interesting

trends in real estate right now. We still have Canadians who are coming to us. So for example, we just had two surgeons reach out to somebody in our team saying, hey, look, I've invested all, I've done all the right things. I've S&P 500 index funds. I've done all the quote unquote right things. It doesn't seem to be working out. Help me get into the real estate market. So we have to understand there's some Canadians to introduce Bitcoin to them is just such a leap. They're just starting to understand that maybe a hard asset like real estate could work for them. So that's still happening. But then you have some advanced real estate investors who have multiple properties. So we actively have a couple real estate investors who have multiple properties who are choosing

to sell some for Bitcoin. So they've gone down the rabbit hole now. And yeah, that's new. We haven't seen that. That's just a this year thing. So I just spoke to someone who I wouldn't call 100% Bitcoiner, but now they get the value proposition of Bitcoin, the store of value of Bitcoin. And they came to me, if I had to guess, I believe right now they have between six and eight

property. They've worked really hard. This hasn't been something that's come easy to them. They've worked their ass off to be able to pull this off. And now they're saying, you know what, I'm selling one of my properties. And they're actively in touch with Bull Bitcoin. And they're going to be buying some Bitcoin. So I don't want to get everyone hopes up that like, oh my God, here we're seeing the demonetization of real estate. I don't really think we're there yet, but it's the very first sign of where I can see some investors and I would call them advanced investors who are saying, oh, I want to rebalance here. I might have like a hundred percent of my hard assets in real estate. What's this Bitcoin thing? I want to introduce some of that into my portfolio. Or even like a mini, mini micro

strategy play. I'll call it like a property that you already own. You can refinance, put that capital into Bitcoin and the asset itself, as long as you can carry the property. Just carry that instead. Yeah. That's an option that some real estate investors have for sure. And the long-term threat is what you said, like government coming out. And it's not just real estate, but like all assets. It's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of honeypots out there. It's Bitcoin too.

We talked yesterday on the live stream about how in the budget, this kind of underreported tidbit about, I think starting next year or the year after, if this goes through, of course, there's a lot of ifs, ands, and buts these days with the election coming up next year. But part of the tax reporting requirement for all Canadians would be you have to report your Bitcoin buys. So they're not printing those lists to admire them on the wall and frame them with nice plaques. They're going to start looking at how much you've made and whether they should tax on

realized gains or whatever, right? So I mean, Bitcoin is vulnerable to this too, although a little bit more defensively. So then a real estate and business building and whatnot. I mean, what are you guys, when I think about your generation, one of the reasons I started buying Bitcoin is because I, you know, didn't want to play in the S and P I had a house and I saw that the S and P was going up two, three, 4% a year. So at first it was weed stock speculation. And then basically like Bitcoin right after that, right? I mean, people your age can't afford a house.

I guess in the Rockstar network too, I get a lot of questions. It's like, why don't you already have an investment property? Right? Yeah. And so right now, I don't want to sell any of my stack or all of it. And it just doesn't make sense for me to sell my Bitcoin stack to buy a rental property. At some point, I still do like the leverage play on real estate. And in the future, I still would, even in Ontario, would like to buy a rental property. But right now, I don't think it makes sense. And I think too too just because i've grown up i guess with uh like with him and whatever uh

rockstar and everything the uh i love it i've gotten in shit so many times for not knowing how to address my dad when he's in the room yeah with him yeah so um i don't know i was never really thinking about investing in stocks to begin with yeah and i think a lot of my friends too real estate i would say a lot of my friends too, real estate, I would say a lot of my friends too, the first kind of big investment they're thinking about is a rental property, probably over investing in stocks. And I guess it's easier to invest in stocks. They'll keep money in stocks. But I think the goal is to buy an investment property, I'd say for a lot of my friends. Is it because you guys have seen- Probably. Yeah? Yeah.

Because I mean, the thing that always kind of got my jimmies riled up when I was in university was that I was just thinking about how easy we were to deal with as students. And we were paying, back then it was like $350, $400 a door or something like that. Totally. I tell him all the time, my first rent property, I'd like to be a Western student rental. It's hard to say. Do you know what the rents are on rooms at western right now at mac 1200 a door yeah yeah something like that pretty much yeah that's that is on the higher

side 900 i'd say the average is maybe like 950 okay but yeah no there's 1200 and it's still a room this size yeah yeah yeah no this is big is it for a bedroom yeah you should see yeah yeah i mean i'm not small i've not seen some i lived in some but then i guess a good transition though to um back into bitcoin is the uh when you show the four four year rolling compound average oh my god bitcoin it's crazy this is from your deck on the weekend uh yeah yeah i probably haven't i haven't watched yet anthony sent me the uh the link yeah and i think when you're talking about orange filling that's a good way to that's the way i think i think people my age because then they can actually hear it because some of my

friends work on bay street and they work in some big funds they work for pension funds they work in capital markets like the fidelity and blackrock too though etfs do help with like the wall street people as well slightly it has to yeah sure because that but that just to bring to continue what you said there that compound annual growth rate for my generation, that gets their attention. I think it has to for mine as well. For me. Back in January, it's higher now, but in January, I ran it around my birthday. And I couldn't believe the number.

It was 46% compounded annually from January 2020 to January 2024. That includes both run-ups and run-downs and the run down and i honestly couldn't believe it that's a covid low too right the covid low came in march 2020 so you add that as well include that that would be in there so that's 46 percent compounded annually that is tough to are and then if you look and compare that against the p.e ratios of some companies that you would invest in, it just makes your mind like, and again, for my generation, it looks at maybe financial markets with PE ratios and that kind of thing. It is hard to justify when you have this much data on Bitcoin.

Now, when you look at the PE ratios that you're investing in some of these stocks, it's like Bitcoin becomes a very hard thing to argue against. Yeah. There's no doubt. And the other thing too, I would say is that if I look at the stock market, let's say you pick one of these like Meg seven stocks, how many of the Meg seven are under pressure from government because of their size and dominance. Tesla's under pressure because Elon owns Twitter.

You see Microsoft can't close with Activision and Blizzard on a merger. Oh, really? I didn't even know that. Google and Apple are under antitrust lawsuits for the app stores and for the color of your text message bubble open ai must have the attention for sure they do and so this is the other thing i think people don't realize when they're investing in stocks there's execution risk right you have to hope that the ceo doesn't cheat on his wife at a fucking yacht party or something because if he gets caught on camera the stock takes 15 uh you have to hope that tim Cook doesn't get hit by a bus, right? And you have to hope that

some Senator Warren, like Spurg, doesn't freak out one day and say like, no, we can't have this company. It's too big. The market cap is too big. There's too much dominance. And they just come for you. All it takes is a Twitter post, knock your stock down 5%. People are going to realize at some point that the risk isn't in Bitcoin. It's in all this other stuff. And I think to your point earlier about the real estate, for a guy who owns eight properties to sell one, many people who are skeptical would say, oh, it's only one property out of eight. I would say this guy went from 100% to not 100%. And he didn't go to the fucking fucking DFV. He didn't go to the bonds. And remember, he worked hard to qualify the banks to be able to pull that off,

to have equity in the other properties, to try to pull that out, to buy another property, to deal with tech. Like he has dealt with a lot. So to make the decision to let one go, it's a lot. And that's in 2024. I've never seen that before. I can say that I've never seen that before multiple times. Maybe in 2023, I heard of someone, but now I'm seeing it multiple times with multiple people. And I don't want it to seem like an avalanche. I haven't seen like this avalanche. No, but it's starting. It's starting. Yeah. And it doesn't mean, like you said earlier, that the entire asset class is demonetizing. I own my home. I don't think that this was a bad investment. I don't think my first house was a bad investment. And ask yourself if you're the one being kind of othered by the government now, you know, you're the one in the crosshairs.

There seems to be a lack of willingness to address key issues and budgets and spending and things like that. And instead, they're looking at business owners, the 1% or whatever. And, you know, I don't think he's in the 1%. I don't think you guys are in the 1%. Why should you have to, you know, you started a business, you own a couple of properties. Like, well, it's not a 1% thing. I'm just doing what was, you know, important to me, the right decision, get out of the dollar or the loony, I should say, and try and protect my family's wealth.

Stuff was passed to me that I want to pass down. And you're also vilified in the media. Yeah. Like those damn real estate investors. Totally. Weren't you telling me that one of the things you guys give to your clients is like prepare for your neighbors to hate you yeah i think back in 2017 yeah before we even really knew about bitcoin we were saying hey prepare to be vilified like everyone in this room you're you're doing the right thing for you and

your family but you will be vilified in the media yeah and uh yeah we were calling that out years ago now to see it really start to come out is interesting. Brutal. Yeah. There was something you were saying about that that made me think about just my generation. So I'm 51. Yeah. And I think my generation and definitely the boomer generation ahead of me, they have done so well with this system that when you're talking to people of my age or older, they really don't want to see Bitcoin or have any need for it because if they have a house and they have a cottage and they're going on vacation and they maybe started a company downtown Toronto, or they're a partner at some law firm in Toronto, they kind of pat you on the head a little bit

and say, hey, Tom, that's really cute. That's cute. Really nice thing. It was a Bitcoin thing. Really nice. But you know, I'm about to go to France this summer. Can you tell me, you know, my two week vacation and maybe it's a stretch for it. It's not like they are, it's an easy thing. They're going to spend money to do it. And it's a big decision to spend that money to do it. But they're more interested in like, Hey, can you give a name of a hotel in Paris that you can recommend because they've done well, the systems kind of worked for them. So to speak to someone, and that's what interests me about people like Greg Foss and Jeff Booth, some of these guys who get it because they didn't really have to get it. There was no real incentive for them to get it. And I almost feel like it's cool that you get it and Aiden's

generation, but you guys were almost forced to get it. It was like, shit, what's going on with the system? I need to look into it. But some of these guys, they've done pretty well. And that's honestly what impresses me about some of these guys the most. Like, holy shit, these guys didn't have, there was no real incentive for them to get it. There's no incentive for Greg going around talking the way he did and trying to educate Orange Pill for Jeff to do the same kind of thing. And I feel really impressed by that kind of thing because people in my generation, they are there.

They just think it's a cute little thing. They don't, they don't see it as anything bigger. And I think that's kind of part of, unfortunately the problem. And I guess to everyone in those generations, like the Fiat world was just completely normal. And that's what they've known since they were a kid.

When we started the business, exactly. When we started the business, we were just talking about this, the office the other day were when we started the bit exactly when we started the business we were just talking about this the office the other day when we started the business real estate was the only answer yeah like real estate was the escape hatch it was like holy crap we can do this real estate thing we see that the results of that and the cost of real estate right like everyone realized around the same time this is the only thing you can do to protect yourself well you had those low rates for like 10 years we just like we wrote a trend let's face it we were a little lucky and getting into real

estate and staying in that summit it's not all smarts you just have low interest rates and you're kind of riding that way yeah yeah um but uh but now we were just talking about this again can you imagine a world without bitcoin right now can you imagine a world without bitcoin right now and that's why the technology is so fascinating to me. And I think that's really kind of what sold me personally on it was that when I started to understand the technology behind this thing, I thought it was just this cute little token online. I didn't get it until 2020. And then I had flashbacks to my Oracle days of like, holy smokes, this is a bigger technology. And I know this is probably an overplayed thing right now but this is like tcp ip this is a new protocol this isn't just some coin this is a protocol and

when i started working at oracle i started in tech support and in tech support there was those of us that supported windows and unix i don't know if you know about unix or unix okay and then there was there was network support so the guy who sat next to me, he supported Novell Networks. And I would ask him, I'm like, what's Novell Networks? And he's like, oh, not only do I support Novell Networks, I support NetBIOS and AppleTalk. And I'm like, what are these things? And he goes, these are other network protocols. And he goes, they're all dying off. And I'm like, well, why are they dying off? He's like, well, yeah is just a got the network effect and devoured everybody the open network the open network because novell networks was a closed network it was like a

corporate network novell network was the name of the company it was like a proprietary network and it was a closed system because it was corporately owned versus tcpip that was open so when i started learning about bitcoin then i had flashbacks to that conversation. I'm like, wait a second, this is an open monetary network against a closed system. Looks familiar, right? Looks familiar. And then I had another one with Linux, and I'm sure you've heard of Linux.

My co-host who's in the chat, when he's not talking about HLM. That's right. He's always talking to me. Okay, so when I was in tech support at Oracle, we supported AIX, Unix, Sun Microsystem microsystems unix a whole bunch of flavors of unix and sun microsystems was like everybody wanted the sun microsystems flavor of unix that was like if you were a techie running an oracle database that was like the hot shit like you

wanted sun microsystems the computers when we were kids in elementary school had unix on them i was thinking about this when you mentioned it a second ago yeah anyway go ahead i'm having like so linux came out and linux started devouring the market share of sun sun microsystems was a public company that oracle then bought a few short years later for i don't know i feel like it was pennies on the dollar i don't know the yeah so then linux took over that market share linux was open source and started eating the lunch of the closed Unix systems. So then I was flashing back to like this Bitcoin thing's open. Another example of a closed system devouring an open system. And Bitcoin just started to make more and more sense. And I remember a few friends used to work at BlackBerry and BlackBerry was a

closed system. All the communications used to go through Waterloo. And then the iPhone came out and the iPhone was using TCP IP and it just devoured BlackBerry that couldn't really handle and grow and scale using their closed system. So to me, again, it was just all these technologies that were just closed systems that the open system devoured. And that's how I look at Bitcoin. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is an open network. This is inevitable. This is an inevitable thing. And that's how i look at bitcoin i'm like oh my gosh this is an open network this is inevitable this is an inevitable thing and that's kind of really just led me down the path of bitcoin getting more and more confidence in bitcoin and then the the pureness of the technology stack in bitcoin is really interesting when i worked at oracle we tried to launch database technology stop me if this is like keep going uh we start we inside the database and this is where i start to understand

ethereum inside the oracle database they tried to launch portals so portals were things like on the internet now that everyone knows like you could log into a website yeah okay but what they tried to do is instead of on the tech stack run it run it as separate technologies which was much better and much faster oracle tried to embed the portal software inside the database. So this website that you would visit was executing inside an Oracle database, which I don't want to get too technical here, but that is chaos. Like that is shit. It ran slow. It was hard to, I used to support it. We used to try to sell this stuff, but then other people were competing against us and they would separate it out. It was just like, the database should just do what the database does. And the execution layer of software launching the websites should be the best at doing that. And they should be two

separate things. So then when I started to learn about Ethereum, I'm like, oh my gosh, they're trying to do everything inside this one layer. Just like when I was at Oracle and we tried to stick everything inside the database as the value proposition of the Oracle database was like, you just need this one database. It's everything. And I was the guy installing it, trying to make it work. And it wasn't quite as good as separating it out. And it taught me that tech stacks should be very simple and clean if they're going to scale. So I had all these flashbacks when I was going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole to my old tech

days. I'll stop now on the tech stuff. But it just gave me clarity. It just gave me clarity. I'm looking at you guys. I'm like, is this just crazy? But this is important, right? This is why Bitcoin is so much fun, because people come to it from different points of

view, right? You remember the database thing. You're like, this is not simple enough on the east side. Great simplicity and open network on the Bitcoin side. This thing is going to be the one that. Yeah. I thought you did a good job dumbing it down to, and that like open versus closed network presentation that you gave at the event.

Yeah. Which is kind of what you just mentioned. Communicate that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, you and Len were talking about lightning and like you were talking about an open network and maybe if lightning might not be the layer two that's can scale and be the the layer two forever but i think it was jack mauler saying like it almost doesn't matter i don't know if it was jack mauler talking about this but like

an open network it doesn't matter like the the best product will always win so lightning could be a step i think len was saying this as well lightning is just a step to the next best thing if it's not lightning and i don't know the analogy was like there was my space and then there was facebook and then yeah so on the open network just the best products win everyone is like this is it's a big deal to me that people have this point of view that bitcoin is just a network it's not necessarily a finished product it's not the it's not done being built yet it's not done developing oh but the the baseline thing the mining the issuance the difficulty adjustment all that stuff that's never going to change that's that's your value yeah that's your value

layer one that did take a while to understand everything else you know yeah and so do you get it now totally yeah but it took it took hours probably for sure hours is nothing man you know, I've been throwing this stuff at people in my life for five years, seven years, right? Credit to YouTube because I know how difficult it can be to Orangeville. And I know you guys both have, so, and I know it's difficult. It's not easy. You guys have managed to do it. When we were in England, we brought a good friend of ours, Jonathan, who moved to the UK and he's like, you're coming to the UK. I'm like, I'm going to this Bitcoin conference. Join me if you want. And I i just want to i just want you to know something like i'm really interested in this i'm not going to this conference like back in the

corporate days you would go to conferences as an excuse to just go to restaurants but i'm like i'm going to this conference i actually want to pay attention i'm very interested in this stuff so like if you're coming here just know that i'm not like not going i'm going to be in there listening and he came in at the beginning they launched the conference and they were screaming bitcoin and he looked at me he goes where am i what is what is this where have you taken me no but just stick with it just stick with it while i'm screaming screaming big okay last last question off the beaten path a little bit i'm bringing my wife to montreal oh awesome awesome. Awesome. Uh,

what advice do you have for me to, so that she doesn't go crazy watching some of the stuff she doesn't, she thinks she's not going to watch any of it. I'm demanding that she come to at least a few things, including the, like, I'm going to be on a panel. Like you have to come to that.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Everyone's got to come at it at their own time. What does your wife think about Bitcoin? What do you tell her? What do you talk to her about? I don't know. What does mom think about Bitcoin? I don't know. She probably gets to come at it at their own time. What does your wife think about Bitcoin? What do you tell her? What do you talk to her about? I don't know. What does mom think about Bitcoin?

I don't know. She probably gets annoyed at us sometimes at the dinner table. We talk about it a lot. We talk about it a lot. We were talking to her about the having. I'm like, the having. The having's tonight, Carol. The having is tonight.

I know. She went, get a good bottle of wine. And then I think, get a good bottle of wine. Mom said that. Mom said that. Because that was when I came from London. She goes, dad told me this five times today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. No, but I think mom said that because that was when i came from london she goes dad told me this five times today yeah yeah yeah so i think now after years i think so too i think she likes even my little sister sienna's stacking really yeah yeah yeah what do you mean how old is your little

sister grade 12 okay so she's not a kid no okay i'm gonna say like len's daughter's like 10 or something she's got a little stack like, sorry. I was going to say, like Len's daughter's like 10 or something. She's got a little stack. Like, you know, being built up. Yeah, yeah. Sienna's definitely more interested in price action for sure, but... She's very interested in the price action. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love it. Yeah. It's been going up today. It's been going up today. That's the ticket. Okay, let's get you guys out of here. Final comments, closing thoughts. I mean, love what you're doing.

I really, I think you don't like to hear it. I don't think you and Len like it. I like to hear it, but I think that we're not the only ones. You doing it too yeah no we're all doing when you want to start yeah everyone at rockstar has got a yeah yeah what are you what are you i'll hop on some episodes guys in florida talking to guys who i don't know about this guys he bought a house once let's get them on video forward to the canadian big quitters podcast live events right across the country that's what i'm looking forward to and that's what i want to leave you with so thank

you shout out to cbp yeah no phil yeah Shout out to the CBP. Yeah. We'll start an Ophel. Yeah. Say hi to Len. Say hi to Len. Take care, everybody. Thanks for coming. Busy, busy room, but go back to work now. Don't forget, everybody, lots of other stuff on CBP Media Network, including Two Whites in the Blue. Me, Joey, my brother-in-law, Mike, and our friend Will talk about all the problems millennials are having with finance, romance, and just getting by.

If you like CBP, if you like the NHL 94 podcast, I guarantee you'll like that one. Search for it, Two Whites in the Blue, anywhere you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you.