The Canadian Investor - Aritzia’s Turnaround and BlackRock’s New Canadian Bitcoin ETF

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

In this episode, Simon goes over the alarming findings from the latest MNP Consumer Debt Index. How Canadians are grappling with financial strain, rising insolvency fears, and shrinking disposable incomes, despite declining interest rates. Simon also analyzes Terravest’s impressive Q4 and full-year results, highlighting their growth, acquisitions, and dividend increase. Aritzia’s standout Q3 performance takes the spotlight, with soaring U.S. revenues and a focus on e-commerce paying off in a big way. Additionally, Simon finishes the podcast by covering BlackRock’s launch of a Bitcoin ETF in Canada and what it means for the competitive landscape of crypto investing. For listeners curious about Bitcoin, Simon shares a simplified guide on how to buy and store it securely, including insights into cold storage, multisig wallets, and the pros and cons of various options. Tickers of Stocks/ETFs discussed: TVK.TO, ATZ.TO, IBIT.TO Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Finchat.io for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back into the show. This is the Canadian investor podcast made possible by our friends and show sponsor EQ Bank, which helps Canadians make bank with some of the best rates on the market. I personally, and I know Simone as well, is using the GICs on a regular basis to set money aside for personal income taxes in April or February. Their GICs are perfect because the interest rate is guaranteed, and I know I won't be able to touch that money until I need it for tax time. Whether you're looking to set some money aside

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This is the Canadian investor where you take control of your own portfolio and gain the confidence you need to succeed in the markets. Hosted by Brayden Dennis and Simon Bélanger. Welcome back to the Canadian Investor Podcast. My name is Simon Bélanger and I will be your only host today. Unfortunately, Dan Kent, who's normally here with me for the news and earnings episode, the Thursday releases,

could not record today because he has a really bad sore throat and has also a commitment that he has to do a bit later this week in terms of a debate that's been planned for a long time. So he has to really try and rest his voice. Hopefully he gets better. If he listens to this of course best of luck to you Dan. So the way I'll do it today it's the first time I do a solo episode for News and Earnings. I've done some in the past where I went over some of my financial struggles

about 10 years ago or so. I encourage people to listen to that episode if they're interested in listening to that. And feel free to send me some feedback. Obviously, this was a last minute thing, so we were not able to find a replacement to step in. Braden was not able to do so either. We'll start off with the MNP Consumer Debt Index.

I will add the link in the show notes for anyone interested in looking at this survey. I will give a general overview of what the service looked like. And they do this survey very, pretty frequently. I believe they do it every quarter. The data was compiled by IPSOS on behalf of MNP Limited between December 6th and December 17th of last year.

The survey was done with a sample of just slightly over 2000 Canadian age 18 years and over. Now the overarching theme is that despite declining interest rates, Canadians are facing increasing financial strain with rising concerns about insolvency, job security, and their ability to manage debt and unexpected expenses. So a lot of Canadians have a pretty pessimistic financial outlook and when I say Canadian obviously it's a survey so it's the people that were surveyed. I believe the margin of error I

didn't say it is about 2.5% so take that with a grain of salt but 2000 is a pretty substantial survey. Now fewer Canadians expect their debt situation to improve in a year and that's 27 percent. It used to be four points higher so 31 percent the last time they did this survey. More Canadian anticipate worsening financial conditions. Job loss fears reach a record high at 41 percent that was up 9 percent compared to the last time this survey was done. Half of Canadians that was up 8% are $200 or less away from not being able to pay their bills and debt every month. And one third of respondents said they are already insolvent, meaning that they're not able to keep up with their bill and debt payments with

a notable increase amongst men. The debt repayment and financial cushion is definitely shrinking according to this survey. So Canadians say they're $147 less in disposable income every month. Now that amount is now averaging $790 and of course this is an average. It's always important to remember with averages because people may be hearing this and say oh wow if you're saving $790 a month you're actually doing pretty well. Again this can be very skewed by higher income because averages can be skewed one way or another. Half of Canadians are worried about their ability to repay debts.

Many feel less prepared to handle rising rates or unexpected expenses. Two-thirds of respondents said that they desperately need interest rates to go down. Never a good thing to hear that when you desperately want rates to go down. And I think it's a reminder that whenever you take on debt, make sure that you map out some scenarios that may be not great going forward. So make sure you maybe map out the fact that you could have, if you're in a couple,

maybe one of you loses some income for a period of time or loses their job so it's important to trying to understand whether you would still be able to do your payments even in these kind of bad outcomes do happen for you in the future of course we don't want these things to happen but I'm a firm believer that you always want to plan for the worst and then you know you're good whatever happens and fewer Canadians think that they can handle an increase of $130 in extra interest expenses per month

than the previous survey. This is just a general overview like I mentioned, but it's important to take these things into context and one of the things that I'll show here for a joint TCI listeners is GoEasy. So GoEasy is a subprime lender. If you're not familiar with subprime lending, it's just offering loans to clients that would not necessarily be approved by a big bank, for example.

In the US during the great financial crisis, we did see a lot of that happening, subprime lending with the mortgage sector. And what I'm showing here for GoEasy is that's their line of work. So the problem with that type of business model is you have much higher write-offs. A lot more people will end up defaulting on their loans, but they do make that up with higher interest

on their offerings. And GoEasy has seen the gross loan origination which is just the amount of loans that are issued and I'm showing this since 2019 so 2019-2020 it was around a billion a year 2021 1.5 22 2.4 23 2.7 and the trailing 12 months 3 billion now Now that growth rate is a 24% compound annual growth rate and that just shows that there are more and more Canadians going for these types of loans and these are not the type of loans that you really go and get unless you really need them and I'm on

Easy Financial's webpage here EasyFin them. And I'm on GoEasy Financial's web page here, EasyFinancial.com. I'm on the personal loan section and looking at what they offer. So loan details, they'll offer anything from $500,000 to $20,000. Rates starting from 29.99%. So you're not going and getting one of these loans if you can get a loan from a big bank to say 8-9% if it's a personal loan typically there'll be higher interest whatever it would be I can guarantee you that if you're approved It'll be less than 29.99% and what's very Sad or interesting whatever you want whatever adjective you want to use is most commonly used for bill

payments, not great, debt consolidation, not great, home and auto repairs. So two of the out of these three things or bill payments and home and auto repairs is just making ends meet. Debt consolidation is if you have a lot of debt and you're trying to put it all in one place. Typically, you want to do that to also reduce the interest rate overall. Not quite sure that you're achieving this. So it's a bit weird that they have that there. But I wanted to bring some context because when I posted this survey on Twitter, there was someone who mentioned in the comments that it was not looking great just like 10 years ago.

So you can't really you know look too much into it. And although I agree that surveys are just surveys, it's people giving their opinions here. Sometimes people may have you know skewed vision of what their finances are. They may think it's actually worse than it actually is. Granted I can give that, but when you combine that with some data, for example from GoEasy, I think it's easy to say that there's more and more Canadians in a bad financial situation. Now we'll move on here to Terravest. Terravest is Take Care TVQ on the TSX. They released their earnings in mid-December. It's something I wanted to go over and just to see how they did. It's a company that I find quite

interesting. For those not familiar with it, TeraVest is a diversified industrial company that sells goods and services to a variety of end markets. They do home-eating products, propane and hydrous ammonia, also NH3 and natural gas liquid, NGLs, transport vehicles, storage vessels, energy processing equipment, and fiber class storage tank. In other words, they provide a lot of equipment and services to the oil and gas industry. So it's a play to be able to bet on the picks and shovels if you'd like. If you're looking to benefit some potentially some increased investments into space whether it's in the US with Trump about to take office in just a few days or

it would be in Canada if you think the conservatives will come into power and loosen up regulation and encourage more oil and gas drilling. So it would be an interesting play for that. It's one play that Brayden invested in about a year ago if I remember correctly and props to him. It's been a great investment. They've done phenomenally well. I believe if I'm just going on memory they've more than double since they're not trading very cheaply so keep that in mind and of course do your due

diligence. So revenues were up 34% to 912 million and I'm doing the full year just because we haven't looked at them very often. That's impressive because they did have... it's impressive despite the acquisitions that they made last year. Most of them came into effect in Q4s but they're still impacting full year results and excluding these acquisitions revenues were still up 4% for the year. So it's going to be more of an acquisition play as well but you'd be betting on both things right some increased investment in the oil and gas sector but also potential for acquisitions here. I don't know how much they paid for each acquisition but you can make the case that they probably got

decent value because the space has been pretty much hated over the last few years versus a lot of money flowing into the MAG-7, the mega-tech, the big tech stocks in the US. Net income increased 51% to $64 million. Earnings per share increased 43% to $3.30. Free cash flow for the year more than doubled to $101 million. Again, keep in mind they did do a lot of acquisition so it's not apples to apples. They also announced that they were increasing their dividends by 17%. They have more than enough room to do that. The dividend payout is 10% of their free cash flow so there is ample room here. And a company like Terravest is very interesting play if you think like I said the industry will be booming. If there is more investment in this space they will

definitely benefit from that. And looking at a chart here that I pulled from finchat.io, looking at TeraVest free cash flow per share for the Joint TCI viewers, it's very impressive. So looking back all the way to 2015, they had about a dollar of free cash flow per share. It's been up and down so it's not a straight line. It will be a cyclical business again based on the type of investment That's happening in the oil and gas industry But over the last year they're looking at five dollars and twenty cents of free cash flow per share Very impressive because when you look at it on a per share basis, it also accounts for dilution

So it factors that in and the fact that it's increased essentially from being like flat. So zero very close to zero couple years ago to now $5.20 per share. Very impressive. I will say it again. It is not trading cheaply. So make sure you keep that in mind and make sure you do your own due diligence. If that is a company that you're interested in investing in. As do it yourself investors, we want to keep our fees low.

That's why Simone and I have been using Questrade as our online broker for so many years now. Questrade is Canada's number one rated online broker by MoneySense. And with them, you can buy all North American ETFs not just a few select ones all commission free so that you can choose the ETFs that you want and they charge no annual RSP or TFSA account fees they have an award winning customer service team with real people that are ready to help if you have questions along the way as a customer myself I've been impressed with Questrade's customer service whenever I I call or email, every support rep is very

knowledgeable and they get exactly what I need done quickly. Switch for free today and keep more of your money. Visit questrade.com for details. That is questrade.com. So not so long ago, self-directed investors caught wind of the power of low cost index investing. Once just a secret for the personal finance gurus is now common knowledge for Canadians and we are better for it.

When BMO ETFs reached out to work with the podcast, I honestly was not prepared for what I was about to see because the lineup of ETFs has everything I was looking for. Low fees, an incredibly robust suite, and truly something for every investor. And here we are with this iconic Canadian brand in the asset management world. Well folks online are regularly discussing and buying ETF tickers from asset managers in the U S let's just look at ZEQT, for example, the BMO all equity ETF, one single ETF, you get globally diversified equities. So easy way for Canadians to get global stock exposure with one ticker keeps it

simple yet incredibly low cost and effective. Very impressed with what BMO has built in their ETF business. And if you are an index investor and haven't checked out their listings, I highly recommend it. I bet you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was that BMO, the Canadian bank,

is delivering these amazing ETF products. Please check out the link in the description of today's episode for full disclaimers and more information. Calling all DIY do-it-yourself investors, Blossom is an essential app for you. It has been blowing up with now more than 50,000 Canadians plus and growing who are using the app. Every time I go on there, I am shocked. The engagement is amazing. This is a really vibrant community that they're building. And people share their portfolios, their trades,

their investment ideas in real time. And it's all built on the concept of transparency because brokerage accounts are linked. And then once you link your brokerage account, you can get in-depth portfolio insights, track your dividends, and there's other stuff like learning, Duolingo-style education lessons that are completely free. You can search up Blossom Social in the App Store

and join the community today. I'm on there, I encourage you go on there and follow me, search me up, some of the YouTubers and influencers and podcasters that you might know, I bet you they're already on there. People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas and using the analytics tools. So go ahead, blossom social in the app store and I'll see you there. Now moving on here to Aritzia, they released their Q3 2025. It was a really good quarter.

It's hard to say it wasn't. I mean, if you're just following this stock casually or if you have it on a watch list, you probably noticed that the stock was up pretty big last week when they reported earnings. It was up about 20%. Net revenues increased 11.5% to $729 million. Comparable sales growth were 6.6%. United States Revenue, the US revenue is really the highlight here in my opinion. It increased 23.6% to $404 million. It now represents 55% of revenues. It increased their gross margins increased 430 basis point to 45.8% operating margins

increased 350 basis point to 14.8% Adjusted EBITDA increased 48.7% to 136.4 million Net income increased 72% to 74 million So it's very impressive what they've done. In terms of regional performance, like I said, the US has been really phenomenal. It's been increasing very nicely. Canada, on the other hand, is still increasing.

They had net revenue growth of 5% in the third quarter of 2025, and they have a bit of a funky financial here. So that's why it's Q3 2025. 40% of their stores achieve all time high sales record. Again, very impressive here. On the call, they mentioned that their inventory positions were improving, which resulted in lower markdowns compared to last year.

And that's important because they had been seeing some margin compression because of that that because they had to discount. It was a result of the pandemic when there was a whole lot of people actually you know buying their clothes, a lot of people spending on clothes, returning to work, a lot of tailwinds happening here for Aritzia and they did what a lot of companies will do and get themselves into trouble and it's not specific to Aritzia is you see this increased demand, you start getting more and more inventory because you project into the future that that demand will

likely continue. If it doesn't materialize then you're a bit in a bind because you have too much inventory and you actually have to start discounting. Gets even trickier when you're looking at fashion when things can quickly go out of fashion. Then you have to discount to get them off the shelves and for those on joint TCIs you'll see that I'm showing a graphic here. So there's two lines. The one that's going kind of a straight line up into the right if you're just listening so I'm looking here at the since December 2019 where Aritzia had 94 stores and then you're looking at the most recent quarter where they had 127

stores so quite the increase they've increased a number of boutiques that they call them at about a 6% clip per year. And then you also see their comparable sales growth. That's really important because comparable sale looks at essentially existing stores. So they would try to compare things that are just on a kind of apple to apple, if you'd like. And the comparable sales stores were amazing. So you saw during the pandemic, you had quarters looking like it was in the high 20s, 29%, 28%, 22%, 32%, just through the roof. And then you have a sharp drop happening

in early, mid 2023, even when negative for a period of time was flat. And then it's coming back up to 6.5% has been trending up now for about Better part of a year. So it shows that a Ritzia I think is turning a corner I'm not invested in them myself. I know Dan has done quite the killing with his investment here I think he purchased it when it was close to the bottom. So he's done some phenomenal returns. If you're looking at a Aritzia just over the last year in terms of total returns and I don't believe they pay a dividend so doesn't matter the total returns part but nonetheless over the last year

you're looking at 88% returns which is just it's phenomenal especially for a clothing company a fashion company. But again when you talk about anything fashion that's always going to be a risk is you don't know exactly how it's going to be doing medium to long term. So that's why I've stayed towards a company like Lululemon because I think that Lululemon over the years has proven how they have sustaining staying power. They're not just a fad, they're probably not going away anytime soon. Again, probably not so you have to think in probabilities but that would be the biggest risk in my opinion with Aritzia is the fact that is it going to keep trending? We'll have to see.

And on the call, they mentioned that their inventory position had improved, which resulted in those lower markdowns last year. So they're really getting that into a better space. The US was really the highlight, like I mentioned, was fueled by e-commerce sales and strong same store sales. They specifically mentioned on the call

that it is part of the investment they have done in e-commerce and boosting their online offering. They also have started or they also did one of their biggest if not the biggest marketing campaign in the US and they said that went very well during the call. They plan to open a total of four new boutiques in the fourth quarter including two that are already open. And one thing that I didn't mention when I was looking at the boutique count or store count whatever you want to call it is that yes it increases at about 6% per year but it's nice to see that you know they're doing you know a few boutiques every quarter

they're doing, you know, a few boutiques every quarter, probably an increase of just single digit in any given year, it looks like they're really taking their time, making sure that whatever boutiques they are opening, that it's done with a plan in mind. At least that's my interpretation. If not, if they were growing at all costs, you'd probably see much more of an increase in the number of boutiques.

And it does not appear that that's what they're doing. It looks like they're doing a more systematic approach. Now we'll move on to some Bitcoin news here in Canada. And these last two segments are about Bitcoin. So for those that are, I know some listeners are pretty vocal that they would like us to talk less often about Bitcoin and a lot of people will reach out to me and mention that but for each I would say and these are just rough numbers but for each one person that would like us

to talk less about Bitcoin there's probably 10 that say the opposite that would like to know more about Bitcoin and more segments about it. So we do try to balance it out. I've mentioned it time and time again. I'm a big believer in Bitcoin. I have a pretty big portion of my portfolio in Bitcoin and Bitcoin ETFs. Take that into account. Regardless if you're still skeptical about the asset or you're really interested in it,

I think it's still important to understand what's happening in that space. I think it's become large enough that you can't really ignore it even if you don't intend on investing in it. And it's important to understand too, because there might be some businesses that you're invested in that may have some exposure to Bitcoin, whether it's financial institutions that may be looking at offering some services related to Bitcoin or there could be some again financial companies that are offering custodial services for Bitcoin so I think it's really important to at least be aware of the space. I know the crypto space when you look outside of Bitcoin there's a whole lot of junk out

there would say it's probably 99% junk if you exclude Bitcoin. That's why I tend to stay in this asset because it has unique properties that a lot of the other stuff doesn't have. Plus it has the network effect that no other cryptocurrency can really claim to have and I think it will be very hard to dethrone Bitcoin on that aspect. And the way I view Bitcoin is pretty simple. I think it will be very hard to dethrone Bitcoin on that aspect. And the way I view Bitcoin is pretty simple. I think it's insurance on the financial markets or financial system even despite the fact that it's being integrated more and more. It still allows you to control what you own in terms of Bitcoin especially obviously when you own the actual Bitcoin asset. It would not be the same if it's a Bitcoin ETF. That's a different conversation there

but it allows you to be your own bank especially if you have it in self-custody. I mean you're essentially not reliant on anyone so no one can really dictate what you do with the Bitcoin you own if it's self-custody. Sure, you may have trouble in some jurisdictions to withdraw or convert it to the Canadian dollar or whatever fiat currency you're currently living in. But the reality is you can still transfer it from Bitcoin to Bitcoin for self storage, there's not going to be any restrictions. Government have no control over that. So there are a lot of reasons why I own bitcoin. This is just a quick overview of why I think it's important. And the last thing is probably, I think it's really important to have a neutral currency. And we've seen

and I've mentioned this more than once and doesn't matter what your views are on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It really doesn't matter. The important thing is the fact that the US and Western country actually put sanctions into debank Russia, if for a lack of better words, to make sure that Russia was no longer on the financial rails, the swift system amongst other things. I think it really served as a warning notice to other countries that may be in the good crisis of the US right now, but may not be in the future, that they should be really looking at alternatives, maybe not fully going out of the US dollar system, but still looking at hedging with things like potentially

Bitcoin. So there's a lot of things that are interesting with this asset. We'll see what the years actually brings for Bitcoin but some big news came out this week. So BlackRock launched a Bitcoin ETF in Canada. The ETF will be traded on the CBOE exchange under symbol IBIT. So IBIT in CAD and IBIT.UNUSD. Make sure that you are checking where it's listed because IBIT is also the symbol on the US exchanges for their spot Bitcoin ETF and when I'm saying Bitcoin ETF here I

will say spot Bitcoin it's not a futures ETF or anything like that so I'm specifically talking about spot Bitcoin but it is the same ticker as the SpotBitcoin ETF in the US. It will have fees of 0.32%, but the MER, which is the management expense ratio, that includes the fun fees, the management fees plus the fun expenses, is still not known. Usually when ETFs launch, they won't have the MER because they don't know exactly what the expenses will be for the upcoming year and then they can use that as a baseline for future years. But even on excluding the MER,

it's one of the lowest fees. On a MER basis currently, Fidelity has the lowest management fee for Canadian Bitcoin ETFs at 0.39% and a MER of 0.43%. So it's probably reasonable to expect that the MER for the new iBit ETF will be under 0.4% which would make it the cheapest in Canada. And if you ask me, it's about time that we have some better Canadian denominated options for Bitcoin ETF because Canada has had Bitcoin, spot Bitcoin ETFs for quite some time. So I think it's 2021 if I remember correctly,

when they were launched, but the fees were extremely high compared to U.S. listed one. They had some offering in U.S. dollars as well, still think they do, but it was clear that they were taking advantage of the fact that there was not any options in the U.S. for spot Bitcoin ETF. It was, I'm trying to remember,

I'm pretty sure that all of them had fees over 1%. So it's a far cry from that now. It's significantly dropped. And it's not surprising because we are seeing or we saw a lot of outflows from Canadian Bitcoin ETFs last year. And one and it's easy, I think, to come to the conclusion that a lot of those outflows probably went to the US Bitcoin ETF because most of them have fees of around 0.25% and you start comparing that to 1% plus. Even despite the fact that you have to convert Canadian dollars to USD can make a whole lot of sense for people to actually just buy the US one. And for example, I was able to pull some data here as of November 30th, 2024.

The purpose Bitcoin ETF, so this is a Canadian one, had seen $127 million in outflows in 2024. And according to Reuters, US Bitcoin spot ETF attracted more than $65 billion in inflows last year. So it doesn't take a genius or mathematician to be able to say okay I think the US Bitcoin ETFs were taking a lot of the business away from Canadian listed ETF and it's nice that there's been this competitive pressure if you ask me to provide some more cost affected option for Canadians. The advantage of having a Bitcoin ETF and there are some advantages and disadvantages. The big one is that you can hold that in registered

accounts. So think TFSA, RSP, FHSA, RESP, you could even have that in there. So you can have that in registered account, tax advantage account. So it's a big advantage here if you don't want to have to pay capital gains taxes when you have to sell your Bitcoin if you're in the profit. Some of the downsides of course I mean you don't own the actual Bitcoin. Yes you do indirectly but I guess yeah you do indirectly but again if there's anything that happens with your account, I mean, you're at the mercy of the Bitcoin ETF provider, your brokerage account, and so on. So it is a different experience than owning actual Bitcoin, which leads me to my next segment here. Again, like I said, the last two segments were on

Bitcoin. And I will finish with this segment here because doing an episode solo I am starting to realize that first of all you can't really grasp your breath all that much so you're constantly talking it's harder on your voice so I'll try to keep this one relatively short but again I will give a decent amount of detail just for people who are looking to get started with owning actual Bitcoin. As do it yourself investors, we want to keep our fees low. That's why Simone and I have been using Questrade as our online broker for so many years now. Questrade is Canada's number one rated online broker by money sense. And with them, you can buy all North American ETFs, not just a few

select ones, all commission free, so that you can choose the ETFs that you want. And they charge no annual RRSP or TFSA account fees. They have an award winning customer service team with real people that are ready to help if you have questions along the way. As a customer myself, I've been impressed with Questrade's customer service. Whenever I call or email, every support rep is very knowledgeable and they get exactly what I need done quickly. Switch for free today and keep more of your money. Visit questrade.com for details. That is questrade.com. So not so long ago, self-directed investors caught wind of the power of low cost index investing.

Once just a secret for the personal finance gurus is now common knowledge for Canadians and we are better for it. When BMO ETFs reached out to work with the podcast, I honestly was not prepared for what I was about to see because the lineup of ETFs has everything I was looking for low fees an Incredibly robust suite and truly something for every investor and here we are with this iconic Canadian brand in the asset management world Well folks online are regularly discussing and buying ETF tickers from asset managers in the US. Let's just look at ZEQT, for example, the BMO all equity ETF.

One single ETF you get globally diversified equities. So easy way for Canadians to get global stock exposure with one ticker. Keeps it simple yet incredibly low cost and effective. Very impressed with what BMO has built in their ETF business. And if you are an index investor and haven't checked out their listings, I highly recommend it. I bet you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was that BMO, the Canadian bank is delivering these amazing ETF products. Please check out the link in the description of today's episode for full disclaimers and more information.

Calling all DIY do-it-yourself investors, Blossom is an essential app for you. It has been blowing up with now more than 50,000 Canadians plus and growing who are using the app. Every time I go on there, I am shocked. The engagement is amazing. This is a really vibrant community that they're building. And people share their portfolios, their trades, their investment ideas in real time. And it's all built on the concept of transparency

because brokerage accounts are linked. And then once you link your brokerage account, you can get in-depth portfolio insights, track your dividends, and there's other stuff like learning, Duolingo-style education lessons that are completely free. You can search up Blossom Social in the App Store and join the community today.

I'm on there. I encourage you go on there and follow me. Search me up. Some of the YouTubers and influencers and podcasters that you might know, I bet you they're already on there. People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas and using the analytics tools. So go ahead.

Blossom social in the app store and I'll see you there. So I've actually been getting a lot of questions on this. I think I had done a segment two, three years ago during the last bull market. Now this is a simplified version so make sure you do your research well. I'll give some people some ideas here of course if it's too much for you, if you think it's too scary. I know from a technical basis for some people it gets a bit scary to buy actual bitcoin then the ETF version is always there. But if you're willing to take the time and learn, there's tons of good information out there on YouTube.

Do your research, but once you do it a few times, take it from me, I started investing in Bitcoin several years ago before the pandemic in 2018. I remember the feeling at first I was a little bit scared, but as you do it more and more it becomes easier to do. So the first thing that you'll have to do you'll have to create an account with an exchange and I will be giving some exchanges that are reputable that I'm familiar with some that I have used some

that I haven't but I know they are reputable. I make sure when you pick an exchange that their fees are reasonable on both purchases and withdrawals. Some exchanges will charge you straight up fees on trades, while others won't charge you fees on trades but will take a spread. So if you're new to investing, taking a spread is just taking an arbitrage if you'd like between the actual price and the price that they're selling it for you. So taking a spread is say Bitcoin is trading at $90,000 USD and you want to sell some.

Doesn't matter what price you bought it from. So you want to sell some it's trading at $90,000. Now you go to your exchange and they're like okay you can sell the $90,000, but we will give you a price of $89,000 for the Bitcoin you're looking to sell. And the $1,000 difference is the spread. So that's the fees they're charging, in other words, so they're pocketing the difference between the two. That means that they would take a spread of a bit more of 1%.

And you'll also see some that charge for withdrawal. So just be aware of the fees when choosing an exchange because in my view that should have be a big consideration. Of course, you also want the exchange to be legitimate. And not to worry, I will give some ideas of exchanges that people can use whether it's in Canada or the US or internationally. The second is you'll have to send money to your account on the exchange. I found that for my usage, I like an exchange that gives me the option of an interaccy transfer for making deposits or withdrawal. It may be a good thing to make sure that there are other options,

other options that would allow larger sums to be withdrawn just because if your investment does well and who knows the amount you invested and you end up having to withdraw you know 50, 100,000 whatever it is I think it'll be important that you have some options that allow you to withdraw larger sums versus e-transfer where it may take several e-transfers until you're able to get all of that because oftentimes there's going to be some daily, weekly, or monthly limits. So keep that in mind. Now in terms of storage, there are three main options for storing. So I'll leave it, I'll go over each option, pros and cons, and then some examples for people looking to have more information on these options. So the first one will be you buy it on an exchange, you leave it on the exchange. It's easy access. It's less likely to be prone to user errors. So

if you're not familiar with Bitcoin, very familiar with it, you're kind of new, it'll be easier from that perspective. It's almost just like buying stocks on your brokerage account. You have a certain amount of money, you buy Bitcoin Bitcoin and then it stays in your account. Now you have to trust the exchange. These are the cons. Easier for bad actors to access your Bitcoin through the exchange so they can gain access to your account somehow.

Again, if you have Bitcoin on an exchange, I would recommend having multi-factor authentication to limit those risks. But again, trusting the exchange is important. We saw that in 2022 where there were exchanges like FTX, even some lending platforms that were also exchanges. BlockFi was one of them in the US Celsius, where they ended up doing shenanigans with the funds.

The funds weren't being properly kept one for one and that resulted in some losses for a lot of those customers. Some of the money has been recouped but not all of it when you look at it on the Bitcoin or crypto basis. Another con here is you don't have control of your keys. You could be at risk of financial repression and financial repression your keys. You could be at risk of financial repression and financial repression for people not aware of it could be as simple as the government saying you know what we're cutting your banking services and because the exchange is regulated the exchange has to follow that. And you can just look back at the trucker protest that happened here in Ottawa in 2022. Again whatever your view of that was at the time,

it doesn't matter. Like I've said, I've been pretty consistent on that, is they still use the Emergency Act to cut access to banking for a lot of people that were in the protest. And whether you agreed or not with the process is not the point. What I've always said is even if you did not agree

with the protest back then, it just shows that Whichever government comes in the future whether it's five years ten fifteen years down the line There might be some protests going on that you totally agree with and the government says you know what we don't we want to Make sure this doesn't happen again, and they start freezing assets So this is an example of financial repression. Another example would be just limiting the movement of capital, whether it's inside Canada or outside Canada, typically it'll be outside the country. So you are at the mercy of that when it comes to having things on an exchange. Another con here, I

haven't seen any inheritance plan option yet on exchanges. There may be some I'm just not aware of them. I did some research I couldn't really find any I think there's a lot of legality behind that so that's probably why exchanges are not going for that. And now in in terms of examples of certain exchange you could use some that I've used so ShakePay is a Canadian exchange Newton.co also Canadian I've used both of them both are great exchanges. Bit on the higher side for the fees so take that into consideration. Endax.io so I did a bit more research have not used this one I will probably use it at some point

in the near future because it looks like they have some of the lowest fees. 0.2% is what I saw and they charge $5 for withdrawal but for the uses I would do this is likely the best option for me whereas a Newton or ShakePay they'll take the spread like I was talking about earlier. Bull Bitcoin seems to be very popular especially with people that are very much into the Bitcoin space like a better word Bitcoin Maxis I've heard a lot of good things from people I know about bull Bitcoin I've not tried it myself so take this with a grain of salt do your research when it comes to that and when it comes to more international exchanges for the lack of

better word or larger exchanges that are not just Canada. You also have Coinbase, Kraken. I've used Coinbase before. It's as good as it gets in terms of a large exchange. It's publicly traded. I have not used Kraken but I know some people who have and they've had a really good experience on there as well. So keep that in mind. Now the second storage option here is cold storage or it starts let's just say cold storage and it's a type of self-custody. So cold storage means that you're storing your Bitcoin offline. It'll typically be done using a hardware device dedicated to that. Now the pros is that it's very secure, it's

hard for bad actors to access your bitcoin, and you have control over your own keys. So these are some pretty big pros. And I forgot to share, I have a nice table that I created for my nodes, but I'm also sharing for a joint TCI. So forgot to share it as I started, but here it is for our joint TCI viewers. Now the cons is it's a learning curve. I won't lie, there's a pretty steep learning curve.

It is a bit stressful when you first use it. If you do get cold storage, the first time you transfer some Bitcoin to it or crypto, some will work with other types of crypto as well. My best tip is just to do a small, very small transaction first. Sure it's going to be it's going to cost you the normal fees but it's better to lose $10 than you know shipping a thousand dollars worth of bitcoin or whatever it is and doing it in error. So at least

if you try this way you follow instructions there's tons of videos out there that will walk you through it on how to do it as well. So it's not it hard as it may seem at first, but it is a learning curve and it can be a deterrent for a lot of people. There is a risk of loss if the seed phrase or device is lost. Keep that in mind because if your house burns down and you've lost your seed phrase or device and that's it you've lost the Bitcoin. There's no going back. So it is a trade-off whether that's something you want to deal with or not that's a personal decision. Again there's no backup if you lose your seed phrase so you have to take care of that. There is a higher upfront cause because you have to buy most people will end up getting

these devices and I haven't looked at the cost recently but when I got mine back in the day it was about $150 to $200 for each device. So it is an additional cost especially if you don't have large amounts of Bitcoin. Typically if you don't have large amounts of Bitcoin, if you only have like $500 worth, you probably are just fine with leaving it on an exchange. I mean, at that point, it's not really worth paying $200 when you only have $500 worth. So you have to make sure that whichever you're using, it kind of makes sense as well from a financial perspective.

And there's no inheritance plans with cold storage. Or if there is one, you know, you have to teach your spouse or whoever you want your beneficiary to be to you have to show them how to be able to use your device if anything happens to you. In terms of example, ledger, Trezor, cold card, I've not used all of them. I've used some of these over here. I've used ledger before. I've used Trezor as well. I've used Ledger before. I've used Trezor as well. I've not used Cold Car, so keep that in mind. But I've heard all good things. If you do end up getting a cold storage device, hardware wallet as they say, make sure that you buy the

device directly from the manufacturer. I've heard stories of people buying them on Amazon, for example, and the device are tampered and then they end up losing their bitcoin because the devices were not secure to begin with. Now the last option here to store your bitcoin and I would say in order leaving it on an exchange cold storage and then the last option is multi-sig you really leaving on an exchange I think for me the way I view it is you know smaller amounts Money that you'll probably be withdrawing soon Then it makes sense to leave that on exchange cold storage and that's just my perspective Obviously I went over the pros and cons for both cold storage again

If you have a bit more Bitcoin you wanted to keep it secure You want to be in control of your your own keys, then cold storage is a good option. Multi-SIG is the last option here. This is a type of wallet that requires multiple keys to access the funds. For example, you could have three hardware wallets and set it up so that you need to authorize two out of three wallets to sign a transaction. So essentially you need two out of three keys as an authorization. And typically the provider will keep a key in a case that you lose it.

So I was talking about the three keys earlier. So it could be that you have two hardware wallet and then the provider will keep one. So you needed a two out of three, but if you happen to lose one of your two, can go to the provider they'll authenticate you and then they'll give you your last key to make sure that you need the two out of three. So it gives you some protection against losses of losing one of your keys potentially. So it's that extra layer of security. I've seen multi SIG 3 of 5.

I've also seen 5 of 7 as well. Typically the higher you go the more expensive the services will be at least from what I've seen with some of the big providers and I will be giving some options here. In terms of the pros they are very secure, hard for bad actors to access your Bitcoin, you have control over your keys, eliminates a single point of failure and it gives you a lot of them will give you the ability to set up inheritance plans with these services. So it is something that can be pretty interesting, especially if you may have owned a lot of Bitcoin and crypto and your spouse is maybe

not super savvy on the subject, then what I've seen, it's relatively easy to set up to make sure that if anything were to happen to you, your Bitcoin doesn't kind of fall into the abyss never to be used ever in access again. It gives your spouse or your family a way to access it in the unfortunate event of your passing. In terms of cons, their learning curve on how to use it again goes the same with cold storage here. There's a lot of good resources online. Most of these sites will have some tutorial. You literally like follow the video to the tee. Some trust is required in third party although the way they're set up is that you ultimately remain in control of your bitcoin or your crypto.

The most expensive option by far, depending on what level of multisig that you choose, you're typically looking at 250 bucks a year USD up to several thousand dollars. So clearly, and that's on top of having to purchase some hardware wallets. So let me take the two out of three, for example. So you have two hardware wallets, just say they're $150 per hardware wallet, $300 there. And then you take the cheapest cheapest option $250 US let's convert that to CAD say it's another 300. So you're looking at $600

So clearly if you have a thousand dollars in Bitcoin and you just paid $600 and these are typically yearly Subscriptions to so that $300 is recurring. Of course, your hardware wallet is good to go. You don't have to pay for that again. But it would not make sense to only have $1,000 and have multi-sig. I'll be just straight up. It would not make sense from a cost perspective.

But then when you're looking at having $50,000, a hundred, 200, half a000, $100, $200, $500, $1 million, $1 million, and then you're looking into the big, big sums of money, then having something like Multi-Sig can start making a whole lot of sense, even if there's a fee behind it, just having that extra security for a lot of these larger Bitcoin holders,

it will make a whole lot of sense. Now, in terms of options, the three that I'm the most familiar with is casa.io, nunchuck.io, and unchained capital. The big differences here is casa.io and nunchuck.io are both non-KYC options. KYC is know your customer. So think about it when you open a bank account or you open a brokerage account. They'll require you to send your personal information, driver's license, piece of ID, all that stuff. So that's know your customer. So these are regulations but non-KYC they do not

ask you for that personal information. So non-KYC, they do not ask you for that personal information. So non-KYC is clearly the most private from a privacy standpoint. And there's some pros and cons for that. If you're really looking to keep things as private as possible and people will say, well, what do I have to hide? I'm not a criminal. Look, you don't have to be criminal to want to be able to keep things more private. Like I'm a very private person. Like I am just a private person when I think, and I know this is extreme, but

when I think about celebrities and how much attention is on that and how little privacy they can have on an everyday basis, and I know it's a complete different thing, but to me I would hate my life if that was the case. I would not want that scrutiny. I enjoy having that privacy. I enjoy having some anonymity when it comes to my personal life and privacy for me is a pretty high consideration when it comes to my bitcoin. But again some people they may not value that part as well as much and that's fine.

And there are some advantages if you're looking for some of the KYC information. Unchain Capital is I think the best one I've seen out there for KYC and they offer some even more comprehensive inheritance options compared to CASA. For example, that does have some option but it's a bit more you still have to teach whoever you're the person inheriting would be you'll have to teach them a little bit kind of the basic whereas my understanding is Unchain Capital does goes way beyond that but again because they have your customer information they probably take on the beneficiary information as well

I'm not sure I haven't tried Unchain but I would assume that's how it works. And they also offer other products. For example, they offer Bitcoin loans so you can get some loans in exchange as using Bitcoin as collateral. So there are some things that are offered by these KYC options that would not be there for the non-KYC. So at the end of the day, and I've talked about this on the podcast time and time again on various subjects, not just Bitcoin for all different types of things. A lot of things in life, not only investing, is all about trade-offs. I was talking with my wife, completely different subject, but we are moving in about a week from me recording this podcast on the 14th. So

we're moving on about yeah just a bit more than a week and when we were looking for a new place we had certain areas that we liked. There was definitely an area decently big that we really liked, but one of the tradeoffs because it was more central is that for the same price we were getting just a smaller place versus going 20-25 minutes away from that area, a bit more outside, well still within the city but a bit more in the suburbs if you'd like, we would get a way larger house for the same price but again you're trading off here proximity so longer commute if you're

going to work but you're getting more space. So at the end of the day you have to think about the trade-offs and what makes the most sense for you and this is no different for investing or purchasing bitcoin and figuring out the storage option that works for you. So I hope this really helped people. I know there's a lot of people that were asking me to do a segment like this for quite some time. I hope this was useful. Our joint TCI listeners, you'll have the chart that I used. I did that all myself.

So the pros and cons, some of the examples for each of them. And it was great doing this solo episode. I wasn't sure how it was going. I'll be honest, I was a little bit nervous starting off just because I'm used to bouncing ideas off of Dan, off of Brayden, off of some guests when we have guests every now and then. And just doing something on my own. It's not something I was exactly sure how it went. I think it went pretty well but happy to hear some feedback for those who listen whether you like this or not. Typically if this happens again I think it will be more if it's a last-minute kind of thing

like just happened with Dan losing in his voice and not being able to get someone to step in for him. But I would really appreciate people letting me know if they enjoyed this or not. Constructive feedback is welcome. It is not an issue. If you would like to follow me on Twitter, I'm at Fiat underscore iceberg. I took a little bit of a break during the holidays from tweeting or Xing or whatever you want it, but I started tweeting a little bit of a break during the holidays from tweeting or X-ing or whatever you wanted, but I started tweeting a little bit.

I try to be as responsive as I can when people ask me questions and one of the questions wanting to do in terms of how to buy and in store it came from Twitter. But that's it. I think I'll leave it at this. Thanks a lot for listening for those who listen all the way to the end and I'll see you on next Monday with a regular episode with Brayden. Thanks a lot for listening. The Canadian Investor Podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The hosts and guests featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast.

Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.