The Wolf Of All Streets - Having 99% Of Your Net Worth in Bitcoin: Zoran Kole, Founder Of Crypto Insiders

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Zoran Kole, Founder of popular Telegram group ‘Crypto Insiders’ and trading course ‘Tools of the Trade’ is a professional derivatives crypto trader. During boring college classes, he picked up crypto trading and became a Bitmex all-star. With 99% of his net worth in Bitcoin and a goal to accumulate 100,000 coins, he lives the mantra 'go big or go home.' Scott Melker and Zoran Kole further discuss Bitcoin as a Swiss Bank in your head, entering the market at the Mt. Gox top, aggressively revenge trading, meditation and journaling to improve trading, the Bitmex liquidity engine, Pepe memes and crypto twitter, how to hold 99% of your net worth in Bitcoin, teaching people how to trade, generational wealth transfer, and so much more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everybody? This is your host, Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Every week, I'm talking to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, politics, and basically anyone else with an interesting story to tell. So sit down, strap in, and get ready, because we're going deep. I'd like to thank my sponsors, Round the X and Voyager, for making today's episode possible. We'll hear much more about them later on in the episode. This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group, the only events and podcast production company I trust. For access to the premier digital asset conferences and in-depth podcast content, visit them at blockworksgroup.io. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Today's guest is a recent college graduate turned crypto trading millionaire, now a managing partner at Zorax Capital. Zoran discovered his knack for trading cryptocurrencies during boring college classes. I think we've all been there. His pursuit turned incredibly profitable, resulting in a quickly amassed Twitter and Telegram following. Now his goal is to teach any retail trader how they can make money. So Zoran Coleman,

welcome to the show. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate you inviting me here. So when did you get into crypto? Because you're one of those people we're all jealous of who's young and got into it at the right time. Not in your 40s like me. No, no. So I found crypto early on. I got in actually at the top of the previous cycle. So the Mt. Gox top 2013, beginning of 2014. I found out about the Silk Road for more nefarious purposes, obviously. And from there, I kind of saw the volatility in Bitcoin. It was interesting seeing something go from $100 to $200 and then up to $800 to $1,000. So it was around $800 where I said, okay, let's go all in. It's going up to the moon. You know what it is. And it wasn't shortly after I saw it crash all down on me. Down to like 200 something coins. So I got in late 2013, early 2014 and became a bag holder of Bitcoin.

There's worse things to be, though, in retrospect. But had you traded anything else or was it sort of like this was the first investment you saw and you saw the potential and you were like, people are making, you know, like the meme, like everyone's getting hilariously rich and you're not, and you just decided to like go for it. Absolutely. So yeah, I had never thought about trading at all. So I first became a Bitcoin investor by default, right. I wasn't really poised to do that, but then holding through it, I got mad at the market, dude.

I was upset that I had literally lost my life savings at the time, like $20,000, $30,000 at the time. And then to kind of get back at the market, I said, well, what can I do? I can sit on my ass or I can learn how to trade. So that was kind of the motivation behind that. I'm going to get back at the market. I'm going to exact my revenge on it. I'm going to master this video game we call the market. Yeah. So did you revenge trade Bitcoin basically, or were you trading alts to compound,

or was it like you had your bag and you took a little extra money and tried to make it work? 2015. So let's say 2014, I just bag pulled the whole year and I get mad. In 2015, I'm like, okay, we're going to learn how to trade. So I wasn't really sure how to trade at all. So I first got into FX very little, dabbled in it here and there, some pairs, but it wasn't as interesting. And I said, okay, if I can kind of learn how to master trading FX, which I couldn't at all. And we moved into Bitcoin. So I was really just buying and selling on Coinbase, catching the spreads, hitting the fees hard. And it was probably about six months later, I discovered BitMEx the leverage product of the century right for crypto traders so I started on bitmex just trading the

strictly the XBT perpetual swap prepare and that's kind of where I laid my foundation I kind of got where I am today it all started on bitmex and it still is to this day I mean where did you get the initial money to invest you were a college kid so was it like like, you know, summer job money, like selling crack on the corner? You know, what were you doing? It wasn't the parties like that. So I was privileged, you know, saving my money from birthdays, Christmases, just things like that. So I had, you know, 20, 30,000 for my name. And I really just went all in with it and thought I was going to get rich. Of course,

I didn't get rich in the moment I got. You did, but just not yet. But that's a good lesson, right? I mean, patient, that's how markets work. It's a transfer of wealth from the impatient to the patient. A hundred percent. And that took a while to figure out. I was angry. I can't even stress that enough. I revenge traded so many. I've lost so many Bitcoin revenge trading. I don't want to talk about it from then to now. Yeah. Did you, because you had kind of gone all in, did you feel like you missed out on any opportunities? Like as a college kid was like, I can't go to the bar, my money's in Bitcoin, or was it like, you know, at least you were able to live, live your normal life? Yeah. So that money, you know, fortunately,

my parents helped me through college. I wasn't financially stressed that I needed to make tuition payments, fortunately. So I have my parents to thank for that.. I wasn't financially stressed that I needed to make tuition payments, fortunately. So I had my parents to thank for that. So I wasn't stressed outside. Oh, I can't go to the bar. I can't go to a party, this and that. I lived a relatively normal college experience. I did all the fun stuff.

I looked back on it today and said I had a great time. But on the side, I always had this little bag of Bitcoin. I didn't know what to do with. I just had it. And I knew internally I was upset over the price. So yeah, nothing really out of the ordinary with my college experience that led me to believe, okay, well, I can't have a normal experience basically. That's good. And you went to an Ivy League school, didn't you go to Cornell? Is that right? I went to Cornell for hospitality with a minor in real estate and finance. Hopefully now I'll never have to use that degree.

I was going to say you never used any of it. I have a Penn degree in anthropology, if it makes you feel any better. You have it as a backup. Hopefully you never have to use that degree. I was going to say you never used any of it. I have a Penn degree in anthropology, if it makes you feel any better. Well, you have it as a backup. Hopefully, you never have to use it. But I'm pretty sure that an anthropology degree is a backup for literally nothing. I mean, unless I want to go back and become Indiana Jones or like an anthropology professor. You know what, that might surface as a profession. Who knows in the future? You never know. I guess I have my shot. So obviously, you started as an investor, you became a trader. Now, what's your balance between the two? So I consider myself a Bitcoin maximalist by default, right? But I am primarily a derivatives trader. If someone asks me my profession, I tell them I trade magic internet money

on derivatives exchanges. So I'm more a trader than an investor, but everything I do is with the goal of just accumulating more Bitcoin. So that's why I consider more a trader than an investor, but everything I do is with the goal of just accumulating more Bitcoin. So that's why I consider myself a maximalist. What percentage of your portfolio are you willing to trade with? And what percentage is tucked away in cold storage? Yeah. So percentage of net worth. So first of all, just as disclosure, 99% of my net worth is in Bitcoin. I know that's like a gasping thing for people to hear, but I'm such a believer in it that I'm cool with it going back to my accumulation price of $800 and saying, okay, I'm 25 years old. I can't play for risk. Either this goes to the moon,

it's a six, seven figure asset class, or it goes to zero and I go find a job trading some legacy finance job. But in terms of portfolio allocation, I don't trade with more than 10 to 15% of my cold storage. Yeah. I mean, that's my basic, my approach certainly is not that high of a percentage of my net worth in crypto, but whatever portfolio I'm looking at, whether stock or whatever, I don't trade with generally more than 15. You know, these days I'll push it to 20, 25 when it's alt season or, you know, there's opportunities or things like that. But it's nice to hear that you have like that responsible approach because

most people at your age, you know, you started early. So maybe you've learned those hard lessons, but most people probably haven't gotten there. So talk about your trading strategy. Obviously we'll get into the educational stuff that you're working on and your product. But, you know, we have a mutual friend in crypto ISO, Tripp, who I had on the show before. And I know that you guys have a similar approach to markets, which a lot of people find very, very interesting the way that you sort of approach finding your trades and things like that. Can you

talk a bit more about your strategy? Yeah. So primarily, I'm a swing trader with a focus on trend following strategies and mean reversion strategies. So early on in my training career, so to speak, I discovered an indicator called the Ichimoku Kinko Kyo, which is a trend following indicator that when I learned about it, just made a lot of sense to me. You see all these colorful lines and clouds and charts and moving averages, but the indicator is known as equilibrium at a glance. So in theory, you can open up a chart, throw on this one single indicator and have a full view of the market. It's seeing if the market's overextended, if it's underextended, is it at the mean? And from there, you can base all your decisions. So as a swing

trader, I want to make easy decisions where I don't have to spend my time staring at a chart, you know, 18 hours a day. Even though I do, I like to actually live my life. So swing trading affords me the opportunity to play on a higher time frame, say the 4 hour, the 12 hour, and the daily, and focus on taking more high time frame trades that will take 2 to 3 days, sometimes a week, sometimes a month. But it's primarily about finding high timeframe levels, support and resistance, right? That's the epitomology of any sort of trading strategy,

buying support, selling resistance, and really just taking a view of a high timeframe where I don't need to watch the intraday moves. I need to set alerts when price gets to certain high timeframe levels, see what it does there. Is there an opportunity? Then I capitalize. So it's really more of a sit and wait, be patient, right? We talked about that, and then capitalize when the opportunity arises. So that's my primary strategy. Now, over the last two and a half years, I've developed something called liquidity theory with the help of Trip that really kind of expands on what crypto is really driven on. So I've noticed in during times where price is trending, Ichimoku is hands down my bread and butter. It's really good at capturing the meat of the trend,

say about 70% of it. But there is a lot of percentage of the time where price is just ranging, right? We talked about, you know, you come back over the weekend, what Bitcoin price do? Absolutely nothing. So it's when it's ranging that I tried to figure out, okay, I can't use my trend following strategy in a range bound environment, but I need to figure out how I can also make money in that market condition. So I developed something I called liquidity theory that aims to explain in a range why price moves the way it does and how and why. And that what I believe is strictly driven due to the liquidations of retail participants.

There are obviously some larger players who get liquidated or so-called hunted. But the whole point is that the market, like we talked about, is a device to transfer money from the patient to the, from the inpatient to the patient. And they do so by running stops. You see SFPs, you see liquidations, all of this in a way to engineer liquidity for a bigger player to eat your lunch, so to speak. Yeah. So, I mean, you're trading off information primarily in the derivatives market then and somewhat ignoring the spot market altogether. Yep. Absolutely. Which is interesting because, I mean, there are people who I guess would still argue that the spot market as a whole drives price, but that doesn't drive trading, right? It's not driving liquidity. You have, you know, spot should drive the futures price, but that doesn't drive trading. Correct. It's not driving liquidity. You have, you know, spot should drive

the futures price, but sometimes you have it where derivatives are leading the spot price. And that's why you have this inherent imbalance where traders can actually capitalize on an arbitrage opportunity. Have any of the issues with BitMEX turned you off on the platform? Because I know that that's been where you've traded. You said that's where you started. And I believe that's still where you trade, correct? It is still where I trade. So, you know, you have to really understand like crypto is the Wild West currently. It's a nascent asset class. There are going to be exchange participants who

had a predominant share of the market. All the, you know, bugs and issues people usually have with BitMEX are because they haven't learned the rules of the game, in my opinion, right? Can't identify the cheaters yet. So when you get stopped out on, let's say, like the bottom of a WIC, it's usually because your stop is triggered by the last price that was traded. And that's a default setting on BitMEX for stop losses. Now, if you just change the trigger price to be the mark price or the index price, all of a sudden you see that the index doesn't go as low as the last price did, if you just change the trigger price to be the mark price or the index price, all of a sudden you see that the index doesn't go as low as the last price did and you don't get stopped out. So there are little nuances that if you just, you know, take time to learn,

you realize how to avoid them and then also use them to your advantage. So I've been trading on BitMEX the last five years. I continue to trade there. It offers me the most liquidity for what I personally trade. I mean, do you think that they're counter trading their customers? I can't with, you know, maybe yes and no. I understand the risks involved with that. And I take that into account when I'm sizing and actually dishing out my risk per trade. Right. But I mean, anyone who's traded there has experienced what you just described, which is that extra $75 wick that seems to always be you. And I mean, you're actually, I mean, you're trading with size. So it's kind of, it's hilarious when you see like your average

person on Twitter is probably trading a hundred, a thousand, maybe 10,000 contracts, pretending that like there's this manipulation to liquidate them specifically when they're such a small player, but you're actually trading hundreds of thousands, if not millions of contracts. So you are at risk of like theoretically in exchange, seeing your orders and sweeping them purposely. Absolutely. And that's why you have this understanding that if you are one of the bigger players,

you do tend to get hunted because there's a lot of sentiment analysis tools out there now. But it's an inherent risk you take. You're trading against other traders. Everyone's goal is to make money for themselves. Your stop loss might be someone else's entry or their liquidity.

It's just being aware of it that allows you to kind of protect against it. I always joke that, I've said that a hundred times, like your stop loss is a whale's entry. I mean, you just said it, but it really, you know, there's a reason that you avoid those specific areas. So when Bitcoin is trading extremely tight, which happens to be the case now, but probably won't be when we release this, do you step away and do other things? Or do you still basically just play those 100x leverage stops and find that liquidity and just take smaller positions in trade? Or do you really stick primarily to the

swing trading? So my bread and butter is swing trading the higher timeframes. When price is this tight in a range, you size down. As a trader, you have to know when to size up and down. That's the hallmark of any profitable trader, I think. So yeah, as price gets in this tighter and tighter range, we're closer to the resolution. I'm assuming it's going to resolve within the time we release this. You size down knowing that if you're offsides, the downside risk outweighs the profitability. There's just no reason to punt large sizes in this tight 1% to 2% range, when if you get caught offside, you're going to slip $500 and that's going to take quite a hit

on your portfolio. So yeah, for the most part, I step away. If I have a few trades, I see I take them. But other than that, it's really just being patient, right? You position yourselves before this tight range. So when it happens, you're on the right side or you're not getting burnt. So I hear you talking about sizing up and sizing down. So clearly that means you have an understanding of risk management and you think it's important, which, you know, I'm one to always preach that kind of all the things we just talked about, your trading strategy, your entries, your itchy mojo clouds, none of that matters nearly as much as the way you manage your portfolio and, you know, and the way that you manage risk. So can, and it's funny

because it's sort of a meme, like don't lose 1% on your trades. That's like the one like basic risk or more than, you know, risk management strategy everyone has, but it's important to understand that position sizing, what you were just talking about is really a huge part of risk management. So you can talk about that specifically, and then just your general risk management strategy. So overall, I actually consider myself a better risk manager than I am a trader. And I take pride in that just because, you know, trading will help you make money, but risk management will help you keep it right. So profitability comes with the territory in the space. It doesn't matter what markets you're trading. Eventually you go on a hot streak, eventually go on a losing streak.

You know, there's a non-zero percent chance that you go on a 10 loss losing streak. It just exists. It's theoretically, statistically there. Don't like 30. And knowing that, you should keep that in mind where if you're on a hot streak, there is a real percent that you're going to start losing drastically, continuously. So by knowing how to size appropriately, so my approach has always been, I use a modified version of the Kelly Criterion for actually sizing my trades. And that's based off our larger data set of trades that I've gotten. And based on their R multiples and my win rate, I come up with the optimal sizing. So maybe it's between 3% to 8%. And then maybe sometimes it shows 20%. But I'll use a

modified version of the Kelly Criterion, maybe the 80-20 rule to say, okay, that 20% risk should actually be 5% only. So yeah, so my approach to risk in general, it keeps it between some low single or high single digit or low or high single digit, low two digit percent risks. And then when it comes to sizing, I mean, sizing is literally what determines profit and loss. And that kind of plays also into leverage, right? I think leverage is a huge misconception in this space, where leverage is a tool used to mitigate third party risk by keeping less funds on your exchange. Or on the second or twofold that you use leverage to actually capitalize on multiple trading opportunities across different asset classes without tying up your balance in one single trade. So when it comes to sizing,

you just have to know based on the market conditions you have, because not all markets are the same. Sometimes it's volatile and trending. Sometimes it's not volatile and trending. Sometimes it's ranging volatile or non-volatile range. Knowing the difference tells you what conditions you should actually be sizing up in and sizing down in. Right now, we're in a range with low volatility. I don't want to be sizing up there because the minute volatility up clicks, I get burnt. So it's knowing the market you're in, I think, that really dictates the whole risk management aspect of it. So you talked about the inevitability of win streaks, lose streaks, and how that plays into it. What was your worst losing streak that you can recall? I remember last year, it was actually after 2019 topped out at 14K. I went on an 18 loss losing streak. Yeah, so it was clear as day, I was longing a downtrend for the longest time. I couldn't get out of my bias. I couldn't get out of my own way. But I'm happy to

report, I lost less than 18% of my account because of my risk management. So every time I lost, I actually sized down from, let's say 2%, 1%, even a third of a percent. I kept losing less and less. And I'm okay with that because I made that all back plus some. Right. But what do people do when they're playing blackjack in a casino and they go on a losing streak? I lost 25. I'm putting up 50 because I need to get it. Oh, I lost that 50. I'm down 75. I need to put that in there. It's completely counter. I mean, it's intuitive. It's not counterintuitive because I think that's what people's intuition tells them, but it's counterproductive. And I think people don't realize that on a losing

streak, you progressively size down, not up because otherwise you're just pushing, you know, bad trades to increase your losses. Exactly. And it's that mindset of, I need to make X back. That kills you right then and there. That's when you should walk away from the computer, take a week off, whatever the case is, because trading is an extension of you. If you're not on the right mindset, you're not going to make money. Whether you believe it or not, you're just not going to. I think that's one of the biggest problems in this market is that mentality that you just described, because there's so many people who lost so much money in 2017 and 2018, who still in 2020, approach the market with their,

you know, the goalpost being getting back to what they lost, as opposed to just scratching it saying this is my new portfolio, and I'm going to approach it as if this was right. I mean, do you think that that's true? I mean, do you think- A hundred percent. I know people who've, you know, they made millions and they trade like they still have millions and they get liquidated every time, even on a hundred dollar account. It's because they can't get rid of that mindset. And that's, yeah, it's the most upsetting part for people is that they think they had something, the bubble's gone, the peak is gone for right now. They're not there yet. And they're training with that mindset. But realistically, what got them to that height

was not good risk management. I promise you that. Anyone who turned, you know, 10 grand into a couple million during the 2017 run didn't do it because they're great traders. They did it because they were lucky riding a bull there. It's fine. But you need to understand that in order to move forward. Yeah. Well, everyone's a genius in a bull market and that mentality, like you either accept that that's what the case was, or you think you're still a genius and continue to lose all your money. Yeah. So, well, what's the old adage? You know, there's two kinds of traders, those who are humble and those who get humbled by the market. You end up in the same place no matter

what if you're successful. You will be humble. It's just a matter of how much you lose before you get there. So obviously, you know you're shipped. You've moved into, obviously, education. And you're launching a platform soon, I know, which probably will be by the time we launch this called Tools of the Trade. I guess, can you tell us about what the platform is? And then, I guess, more importantly,

why you're choosing to do that? It's twofold, right? I want to start off with kind of describing how the idea came to fruition. So I've always enjoyed educating people in this space. I started a telegram. Well, first, it was a Slack community on 2017 called Crypto Insiders. And it happened because I didn't have people to talk with in college about cryptocurrency, but I always loved it. Like I just want to talk about it all day, but there's no one to talk with. So I found Quora, which is a platform, if you're not familiar, where you answer questions, people answer your questions. And that was a platform for me to actually share my knowledge and show that, hey, I know what I'm talking about. I want to learn more from other people. And people start taking notice on Quora. And at one point, I became the number one

specialist answer for cryptocurrency on Quora. And people are saying, hey, do you have another platform we can talk more frequently? So I started a Slack group at the time of 2017 called Crypto Insiders, just came up with the name. And there were about 300 people at first, and then it blossomed into 1,000 and 1,500. And there were 1,500 people first, and then it blossomed into 1000 and 1500. And there were 1500 people all from Quora. So they're all really bright minds in general, because I think you really usually are an intelligent person if you do come to Quora. Yeah. It's just the type of people it attracts. And I started this group and we just,

on day to day, just talk to people. They would ask me about the actual cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, but then more specifically about trading, where do we think price is going to go, et cetera. And I was sharing my thoughts and people liked it. So from there comes the 2017 top, we top out, cryptocurrency is dead, people aren't talking in the Slack group. And it's probably a year later, I started back up on Telegram because that was where everyone seemed to be going. Yeah, just going to Telegram. Exactly. So we started back up on Telegram. There were 100 people at the time. And slowly but surely, just me sharing charts and my understanding of the market, word of mouth grew and it blossomed into now 5,000 people about a year and a half later. That's great.

It really is. And what I love the most about it is that there's no bullshit. It's very low shitposting. It's really driven towards analysis and teaching one another. So I've always felt that if you can teach someone to do what you're doing or explain things as if they're a first grader, you're showing mastery over a concept. And that's what I love to keep doing is testing myself and make sure, do I really know my shit? Because if I can explain it to you and you can do it yourself, that shows that I have mastery over it. So that's kind of also where I met Trip and I'm kind of segwaying the question. He was also someone sharing his insight in the crypto insiders community. And we kind of came together and we would talk on a regular basis, discuss the market. And I always like talking

to people who I feel that know their stuff. So we kind of hit it off. And from there, we kind of decided what can we do to provide the community more value? Because I can only answer so many questions a day, crypto insiders, and I never mind it. It's always great. But there has to be a more formal way to actually get this education to people. So that's when the idea came up for tools of the trade, which is, you know, in a space dominated by paid groups, which again, I have nothing against everyone teach their own, but in a space dominated by paid groups and spoon feeding where, you know, here's my target, here's my stop loss, here's my entry. What if we can actually teach a man to fish for himself? What if you can give him tools to actually find financial freedom for themselves? So I'm fortunate enough to say I've attained financial freedom on

my own through trading. And I really feel that if you have the drive and motivation to do so, you can actually achieve that for yourself and what it means to you. It might not mean tens of millions, it might not only mean a couple hundred thousand, but learning to trade for yourself is a skill, right? And if you have the dedication and patience and really want to do this, I think the tools of the trade is a perfect platform for doing so. So the tools of the trade is really a four-part curriculum, and we call it a curriculum because it's really four different courses that are aimed to take a trader or even someone completely new to the markets who may have never even seen a chart, a trading view chart or a candlestick and bring them up to speed, cut that learning curve in half, bring in the risk management and say, okay, now we've brought you up to speed

with all the skills to actually do analysis and then teach you the actual operational tactics of actually trading. How do you go about trading? How do you journal trades? How do you make a trading system? So it's really this full encompassed curriculum to bring people up to speed, whether you're a new trader or a veteran trader and really fine tune your system. Do you still journal? Every single day, every single trade or every single trade, no matter what day it is. I've been doing the last three and a half years consistently. And I can't like stress enough how much that's improved my profitability. Can you tell like, why is it because you are able to like give yourself an honest appraisal of the mistakes that you made? Is it because it basically forces you to look yourself in the

mirror and you know, it's more the latter because you know, if you're, if you don't know yourself coming into trading, it's going to be a really humbling experience to find out all your character defects and flaws through trading. So by journaling, it's really like a self-reflection, right? So you're being honest with yourself, not only, okay, I took a great trade. How am I doing mentally? I journal my hours of sleep. Did I eat? Did I meditate the night before and the morning before? Did I exercise? All these exogenous factors that kind of play in. Am I in a good headspace to trade today or not? And I notice what ties my winners and my losers together. So for example, from my past journal reviews, I know when I sleep four hours a night and then I hit the charts the

first thing in the morning and get into a trade, I'm more likely to not stop out before it hits my target. And why is that? Well, maybe I'm a little cloudy because I only slept four hours the night before. And then for a winning trade, for example, I've noticed that I always meditate the morning prior and I always have my workout in the morning right before the trade actually enters. So maybe that's just a random fact or a random coincidence or maybe not, but at least I'm tracking it. And that's the point. What gets tracked gets improved. That's kind of the philosophy I've always held for that. You're obviously built for trading though, because I think that 99% of people who trade don't even consider the outside factors of their life and how it does affect their trading. I do.

Like I, those were hard lessons learned. Same thing as you, because like I have ADHD. So I can tell you like if I've drank coffee or not at the way that I approach the chart, or certainly like exercise for me is the single most important factor for me probably in having focus. So if I have an exercise in a few days, my trading and my analysis are garbage. But it speaks to the fact that even people, you know, you're selling a trading course and you can teach them everything in the world. But I think, I believe, you know, that still a majority of people do not have the temperament to do it or the discipline, no matter how many things you teach them, right? Because they're just, either they're inherently gamblers or they're just too emotional for it. I mean, do you think that everyone can learn to be a trader?

So it's a loaded question because like throughout the curriculum, once you get into the third course, we actually teach you about getting into the trader's mindset, emotional control, using techniques like meditation. I even walk you through actually some meditation techniques because I do think it's a skill that can be learned if you want to. It's nature versus nurture. I think nature, most people have an inherent ability to succeed at skills that they apply themselves to. And then you really just need to nurture that with the right tactics. If you teach a gambler before he's a gambler of risk management, it's much less likely he's going to be a gambler, right? He's going to apply the principles from the get-go. And that's building them up from

the beginning. That's interesting. It's funny because obviously, like, here we are in my podcast. I'm a trader first. It's how I make the most of my money. It is for years. But I get the constant, constant criticism. The minute I do anything else that has any sort of monetization or value to it, that I must be LARPing. I must not be a real trader because I'm trying to make money in other ways. And if I was really a profitable trader, why do I need to have a podcast or why do I need to have a newsletter? Have you seen any of that sort of pushback from the community in even before you've launched, but talking about doing this? Yeah. So I've always, I mean, that's kind of been the stigma behind crypto Twitter. And I really think it's really

specific to crypto Twitter because of all of that. And don't get me wrong. I've thought about that for the longest time. I was against monetization of my brand, community following, et cetera, because of that. But, you know, in the late, I guess, couple of years, I've come to grown that like I'm a trader. I make my profits from trading, but there's nothing wrong with amassing more wealth. That's just something I've kind of gotten greedy over for myself. My goal has always been to accumulate 100,000 Bitcoin. That's my goal in life and as network, not to be a billionaire, but to accumulate 100,000 Bitcoin. That's my goal in life and as net worth, not to be a billionaire, but to accumulate 100,000 Bitcoin. And if there's another avenue I can take

where I'm not selling vaporware, I'm actually empowering people and it's a good product for someone to actually use and grow and gain from, I'm not going to feel bad at the end of the day that I helped someone else achieve financial freedom and I'm monetizing my own brand following knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. So it does get a bad stigma. I think as the space becomes less nascent and people grow to accept this as an emerging asset class, we're going to see less of that. People monetize because they're able to. And there's a client or customer who's willing to pay for the knowledge, experience, whatever you have. And there's nothing wrong with that at the end of the day. Roundthex.com is one of my favorite companies in the entire crypto space.

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That's investvoyager.com, promo code SCOTT25 for $25 in free Bitcoin and start trading today. Yeah. And also, I mean, a real trader knows, as we've talked about over and over, that you're going to have bad runs, you know, so maybe you've attained financial freedom and that's not a problem for you because you have it to fall back on. But a lot of people who are trading and are, you know, grinding it out like a poker player and making their daily wage or something, if they go on a month long losing streak, they're really going to be in trouble. I mean, it seems like common sense that anyone who can should have multiple revenue streams, especially if some of them are passive. Very true. And that's kind of the thing, because as traders, you sit at the table every morning at the chart and you make your daily bread, right? But if you have a bakery making the bread for you, you can just pick up a loaf every now and then. I don't see an issue with that. And again, as we move on,

crypto Twitter will evolve and get more mature, so to speak, and the stigma will diminish, in my opinion. How much do you think that crypto Twitter and that sort of immaturity affects the outside perception of our space? Do you think that it does? I mean, I'm not saying that like Jamie Dimon or whatever, like from JP Morgan checks on Twitter and says, wow, these guys are clowns, Bitcoin's crap, you know, but do you think that it has a negative impact

or a positive impact on the space? You think of like the history of cryptocurrency in the industry, right? We came from people talking about the Silk Road, using it to buy drugs and guns and even human trafficking, whatever the case is. We've transitioned to, okay, well, people use this, you Road, using it to buy drugs and guns and even human trafficking, whatever the case is, we've transitioned to, okay, well, people use this, you know, to evade taxes and hide and launder money.

Well, okay, it doesn't really work that well, actually, it's not that much of an anonymous blockchain. So now we have this culture on crypto Twitter that either you're LARPing or you're a millionaire, either you're a maximalist or you're not a no-pointer, whatever. It puts people in different factions and silos it off. So as an outsider coming into the space, I'm sure they're taken aback by the different warring tribes, so to speak. But I think as the space grows, Twitter will become more conformed. And I'm hoping that we have less of a stigma, less of an immaturity attached to that. Because yeah, it is kind of tough for a newcomer to look at crypto Twitter

and be like, there's a lot of anonymous characters. There's a lot of non-anonymous characters. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone's shitting on each other. It's wild. It's like high school. That's like the best way. Like, what are these memes?

Yeah, exactly. It's high school and everyone has their different cliques. So I think as we transition to a more accepted asset class, that those personalities, stigmas, clicks will kind of mesh into more of a college body, so to speak. Yeah, makes sense. Also, I mean, you know, inherently the audience will just age, right? I mean, there's, you know, it's like you're, I'm 43, but like you're in your 20s, when you and all the people who are your age and started at the same point are 35 they might be a little less likely it's like i'll give them a little bit a little less likely to

to you know post pepe memes um that's so yeah so tell me about zora yeah sorry please go please in uh who are my age uh millennials are gonna them, have made a shit ton of money. And they've done it very easily without much work, so to speak. So they feel entitled to enact their immaturities in crypto Twitter. I think that's really the driving factor behind the CT culture the way it is, is you have a lot of young kids my age or older, younger, who are blatantly, stupidly rich at this point, where they look at people who are just coming into the space, a hard worker doing whatever. And they're like, well, you're not as rich as me. Fuck you. Right. And I think that immaturity will hopefully diminish as they grow up. Right. Or even the flip side. And then you mix that with the people who are dead ass broken,

bitter, who are the same age. Right. So it's a, that makes for an interesting, yeah. So totally the flip topics. What, Tell me about Zorax Capital. Yeah, so Zorax Capital is an interesting one. I started in 2015. And originally, it was really just an offshore energy for tax optimization to trade my cryptocurrency holdings. But then in 2017, it kind of took on a new light where there was the ICO craze, right? I remember trying to get into all these ICOs, these private sales and seed sales. Which is tough as an American.

Of course. So that too. And that's why it's an offshore entity because you couldn't get in as American. You couldn't get in as American business either. So Zorax Capital took on this pseudo VC approach where we're this offshore entity. We're really interested in investing in some of these new ICO projects and I'd get favorable seed round terms or private sale terms from getting into these ICOs. So it became a two factor where I could use it to trade my regular portfolio, but I could also use it to get into some of these incredible ICOs that would either go 40x, or they'd go negative 80%. It was twofold. Yeah. That's the law of averages. The I mean, that was everyone's approach.

I feel like in 2017 was like, I'm going to buy 10, nine are literally going to zero, but one's going to do 100 X and I'm good. Right. It worked out for some people, I guess. If you did 2016 to 2017, it was fine. But if you did 2017 to 2018, you caught the back end of it where you just got burned. Yeah. Just my shitty ICOs where I literally just threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars at vaporware. And to this day, they're down negative 99.9. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I've, yeah, I found like bags of wallets that I was like, wow, I forgot that I own that now 37 cents worth of this coin. $10 investment. Yeah. So do you, I mean, I'm going to assume since 99% of your money is in Bitcoin that you

don't trade other markets? No. Well, I've always thought about, you know, transitioning to legacy or FX or whatever the case is. It just never had the volatility back when I was trading crypto that I tell myself, oh, I wanted to... It does now. It does now for sure. But, you know, there's also that approach where fundamentals are actually a big piece of legacy in FX where fundamentals mean jack shit in crypto. It's entirely, I say that all the time. People get so mad. It's technically driven or slow driven. There's no fundamentals. There's pump of mentals, but no fundamentals. And that makes it easier for me to trade personally. So I like to stick where my bread and butter is.

I'm a product of crypto. I like to consider myself that I'm just going to stay in crypto because of that. So I agree. It's a technically driven market, which I don't think, I mean, people argue with it, but it's hard to argue with it when you see Bitcoin sneeze and move 5% and every other coin reacts exactly the same way. So you can't really argue that because Link did a deal with Samsung this week, but still gets destroyed by Bitcoin.

There are fundamentals. These companies, there are fundamentally good things about them, and they could, you know, but as a trader, it's very difficult. So that said, do you think that we're approaching a time, there will be a time when there is a bit of a decoupling where certain altcoins or projects could, you know, prevail and become real, you know, real players? Yeah. So I've always held the belief, at least the last five years, that altcoins, also known as shitcoins, like their sole purpose is used to accumulate more Bitcoin during periods of sideways, right? So you follow the capital inflows, people use dollars to buy Bitcoin, and then they use the Bitcoin to buy altcoins. And therefore the alt BTC pairs pump to a certain point. And then I

have this other theory where they'll exit the altcoins, right? They'll sell them for Bitcoin, Bitcoin pumps, and then they'll sell their Bitcoin for dollars. And then it all crashes and recycles. So it's always been a means to an end for people to accumulate more Bitcoin. Now, in the future, are some of these projects, and by some, I mean, maybe less than 1% of them, actually going to become fundamental companies that have real revenue sources and have realistic valuations? Maybe. But until I see any of these companies start picking up balance sheets that actually show revenues from other companies or whatever their main source of revenue is. I think it's an entirely speculator-driven market. And until

we get that real-world adoption, and you see companies making money for a balance sheet, you're not going to have anything else other than the fact that it's used for accumulation of Bitcoin. But it might happen. Definitely. In the late 90s, early 2000s, you know, when I was your age and you were four, you know, we had the, obviously, the internet boom and busts, you know, bubble pop or whatever. And we saw a few companies emerge as absolute beasts, you know, and become the most valuable companies in the world. And there was sort of this culling of the other 90-something percent uh and i wonder if that may be sort of what the future looks like i think it would be if you look at what you know yeah you talk about link and there's some other ones maybe

some exchange coins etc uh there's going to be less than 100 of those companies that actually make it out of the 10 000 now we have um but even of those 100 companies maybe 10 of them will actually stand the test of time and you'll see them in decades from now so if this you watch this podcast 10 years from now uh will those companies still be there you might have never heard of them right so right we'll see right and and the thing is some of the companies could uh succeed and the coins could go to zero still so exactly because they're not attached Not like you're not buying stock. People don't, you know, it's not stock. I mean, that was like the biggest sign of the 2017, 2018 bubble pop.

I remember my friend Jason, we were like talking. He was like, well, my nanny just came, you know, to work for my kids and said that she just bought a bunch of shares of Ripples because like CNBC told her how to buy it or something. And I was like, oh my God, it's over. Shares of ripples. It was plural, you know, ripples. So we talked about when you got into it, but, and that like you saw it as a money-making opportunity, but the maximalist sort of approach, did you have a really like strong belief like that, you know, the fiat money system was going to collapse or any of these,

that this was digital gold or the store of value? What was the narrative that got you into Bitcoin? And what is your narrative about it now? So the narrative that got me into it was definitely the idea of digital gold, a store of value. I haven't bought into the world reserve currency just yet, just because it's not as quick and efficient as a dollar would be or even some of these other shitcoins like Ethereum, just to say, you can do a quick transaction on Ethereum where it takes 10 minute block times on Bitcoin. But the value, I mean, the narrative to start was a store of value, because I kind of looked at Bitcoin as this Swiss bank account that you can put in literally just inside your head.

So the idea that you can cross borders with nothing but a piece of paper with your private keys, or even if you just memorize them, you can cross borders with billions of dollars and access it anywhere in the world. That idea is what piqued my interest because you don't need a long-term money. You don't need to hold money, physical money. You can literally move from country to country, state to state with billions or billions of dollars inside your head. And that was powerful to me. So that was in my mind, like being your own bank, you have a store of value. If there is inevitable future inflation, it's obviously now, especially as we see the money printer go burr means the Fed just keeps creating money out of thin air.

That value proposition to me that Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation or the collapse of the fiat currency makes more sense now over time, especially this year. And to this day now, it's more of digital gold in my mind. It's a store of value. It's a new asset class that you can invest in and hopefully appreciate more than gold or any other of these risk uncorrelated risk assets. What do you think about the legacy market right now? Talking about that, I mean, obviously you don't trade stocks, but you're, I mean, these days you can't trade Bitcoin without at least being aware of what's happening in the stock market.

But like, what do you think the future looks like with the quantitative easing and infinite money printing and all of these things? So, you know, I never used to look at an S&P chart for probably the last six months to a year ago. The correlation is undeniable at some points in time. You see, you know, Bitcoin and S&P work move in lockstep. In terms of where legacy is at, I've been looking at those charts a lot more lately than I have before. I think that at this point, we're in this phase of complacency, right? So I think we're talking about you know the wall street cheat sheet uh little chart we're in complacency where we might we've in my opinion

we've kind of hit the peak and now this is the second lower high where we're just everyone's complacent everyone's like it's all good fed got our back they'll continue printing money uh and you know i bet you that the indices will continue going, but it's not a matter of if they'll stop going up and if the music will drop, it's a matter of when the music will stop. And usually when the music stops is when people are the most complacent, all your bears turn bull, all your shorts close, all the liquidity above is sourced. So I can't say for certain when it will happen from the timing aspect, but I know, the decade plus long bull run that the market legacy markets have been with have hit a nail and they need to kind of refresh. So we'll see what happens

over the next couple of months, years, whatever. But I think we're at that complacency phase. I agree with that. So, you know, we talk about correlation and yes, they obviously have moved at times together. I mean, I think we have 10 years of evidence that Bitcoin has outperformed the market tremendously. What do you think happens to Bitcoin if we do see that true confirmation that the stock market bull run is over? Which I mean, we saw that confirmation to some degree, but yeah. Exactly. So I think at this point, everyone's waiting for the decoupling, right? I put a tweet out, I forget, like during the March crash, that the decoupling will not be televised.

So I think for a large part of if we do top out and the markets do make a lower low from this recovery in March, we're going to see a period where Bitcoin does sell off. I personally held that we're going to make a higher low, however, on the charts. Now, whether or not Bitcoin actually decouples after we make a lower low remains to be seen. I'd like to think it does, though. I think that there's enough smart money in this space that has a vested interest in pushing the narrative that Bitcoin is a store of value, especially when the whole legacy market is crashing. So I'd like to think that if we have another one of those, quote unquote, black swan events, that the price of Bitcoin will at least be resilient to the downside of the legacy markets. And I think that resiliency will be the first indication of it to come.

I hope it happens. I would hate to see us, you know, in the... So are you hearing that through here, by the way? I'm just pausing because I'm getting a FaceTime call through my computer. I'm gonna have to tell them to edit this out. He'll hopefully hear it. But yeah, it was I don't know if it affected the recording. Hopefully not. So maybe you didn't hear it. So starting again. So 99% of your net worth is in Bitcoin. Does that mean that you spend Bitcoin regularly? I mean, is that how you transact? I mean, you're... So I've always been under the impression to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible, my goal is 100,000 Bitcoin. So when I make any of my profits, since we're mostly on BitMEX, obviously, I only sell what I need month to month to pay my rent, credit cards, etc., standard of living. I would rather sell in the month that I need money rather than selling a

couple of years ahead or whatever the case may be just to have, just because I'm such a maximalist. There's obviously some capital gains implications there if I do sell more than I actually need in the moment. So I try to really just, yeah, anything I need from a month to month basis is paid OTC with Bitcoin. I sell it for cash, pay my bills, and then move on to the next month. So you do it OTC, You don't do it on exchange. Correct. Can you talk about what that process is like for people who don't understand? Yeah. So OTC is over-the-counter transactions where you basically,

when you have an amount that you don't want to get slippage on or you want to get favorable spreads on, it does pay to have some sort of relationship with OTC desk, trading desk, essentially. So there are a handful out there. I won't name the ones I use. But basically, you do a transaction, you lock in a price, and then you transact. It's like doing a market order with an exchange, except you actually, the time settlement is usually like a day later because of the way banking works, right? So I do my OTC transaction with a favorable desk.

I use this desk specifically because I won't name the names again, but there was a period of time where they did a wrong transaction where they accidentally sent me 200 Bitcoin by accident for a much smaller amount. And I was obviously gracious enough to send that back to them for the correct amount. But the point being is because of that little slip up, I now have a trusting relationship.

Exactly, exactly. So in my mind, it works better to go through an OTC desk, but for the average retail trader, right? I see nothing wrong with a regular Fiat off ramp. Every time I've been down the OTC path, not selling and buying, but I'm trying to help people, you know, source large deals and things like that. It's just incredibly horribly scammy rabbit hole. Nobody's serious.

And you get right to the end and that's a game of chicken. You show me yours, I'll show you mine. And nobody wants to prove they have the Bitcoin. Nobody wants to send the funds into escrow. Proof of coin, it's a round robin, right? It is a very scammy space if you really move into the OTC side of trying to negotiate deals with people. And that's why you really shouldn't use reputable trading bests or well

established market makers in space. Do you think that we're going to get to a time when you don't need to cash out and you can just pay a rent in Bitcoin or you can just, you know, pay those bills? So I definitely think you'll be able to now, would I want to? Probably not though. I don't know that I want to? Probably not, though. I don't know that I'd want to use Bitcoin for day-to-day transactions. I really don't.

I think I'd rather use it as a portable Swiss bank account that you access infrequently and then make one of those, you know, I'm not going to say Ripple or Ethereum, become those methods of transfer of choice for people to do fast transactions. So maybe it would be a digital dollar, for example, but Bitcoin itself, I don't think will ever be used in peer-to-peer transactions on a daily basis, for example. Funny, because there's a lot of maximalists who would hate to hear you say that because they still perpetuate the narrative that it's a good, you know, form of money for transacting. And the fact is, it's crap. Yeah. I'm assuming you've been there. But I mean, I've had it take two days to get Bitcoin from someone before, you know, in 2017, when it was going nuts, I mean, you couldn't move it, you know, it was jammed up.

And I mean, there are just much faster cryptocurrencies, which and beyond that, that now leads to sort of the I mean, DeFi, but the rise of stable coins in general. And I mean, I believe that stable coins have effectively killed the use case of Bitcoin for actually transacting because who wants to send something that might be worth 30% less by the time it arrives? No one, no one. And that's the overarching fact is that stable coins should do what they're intended to do. And I don't think any of the other currencies attempting to be money transmitters like Ripple, for example, have any place in becoming that because the likelihood that Ripple gets adopted before the U.S. creates a U.S. digital dollar

is so minuscule that the idea of investing in Ripple because of the price appreciation that is going to be used as a stablecoin is kind of wacky in my mind. Yeah, I mean, the Ripple narrative is dead done. And even if you like the narrative, you cannot ignore the fact that every single time the price rises, they move money, you know, they move XRP to an exchange and dump on you. It's just, I on you it's just i mean it's it's it's fast so if you if you're going to be bullish on it you have to believe they're going to run out eventually they're not want to ever sell so you know you you're you're a bit of a

bitcoin whale and you're not anonymous no i've actually talked about that with a security advisor. I started out, I was just going to ask how you approach security. So go ahead. So I talked to the security advisor before I kind of went on Twitter and even on Quora with my actual face and name, et cetera. I have everything in my life secure. I'm not going to talk details, but everything that I own, everything that, you know, my security is not my priority. And I have that unlocked. So when I came out on Twitter, you know, my security is not my priority. And I have that on lock. So when I came out on Twitter, there are a few other notable figures who are also not anonymous like yourself and some other podcast hosts.

We have it on lock. I'm not worried about things like that. Now, do I go around telling people where I live, what I do, etc? No. But I do, to a great extent, secure myself. And as long as I feel that I've implemented those security measures, I feel fine being on Twitter. Here's my face. Here's who I am. Here are the charts I share. And here's me, you know, talking to you day and day and crypto insiders. Have you been targeted? Like have you been sim swapped?

So I've never been sim swapped, thankfully. I don't think anyone could at this point because of the measures I've taken, but I've never been directly targeted. Not that that's an invite to target me, but I have my shit on lock for a better way to say it. Right. I mean, I guess if it's so clear that you're secure that, you know,

cause I mean, I was SIM swapped and, uh, I wasn't at any point really particularly worried that they were going to actually get my Bitcoin. Yeah. But it really messed my, it really messed my life up for a long time because of all the other

things that they find and expose. You know, I had a conversation with, you know, Jason Williams from Morgan Creek. And I mean, he was talking about, you know, being SIM swapped eight times and, you know, credible threats and guns and hijackings. And, you know, that's, it's an unfortunate part of this. It's a real risk in this case, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you, but you don't worry. Honestly, no.

I just don't. I'm not even going to say anything more on the topic, but no, I don't worry. I mean, that's good to know because a very, I think very few people at the top of this game sleep very well at night. So it's nice to hear that there's some. I do, you know what I mean? Because also, like, you know, I don't have 99% of my money in this.

You know, it's more like, but like you, you know, I basically have personal concierge security on my phone and all those things to make sure that I'm, you know, protected. And it's unfortunate that you have to take those kind of steps and lock your life down like Fort Knox. Because Warren Buffett lives in his old house and he's been in for 50 years and nobody's trying to hack him for his billions. It's a day and age and I think people are going to, not transition from doing things like that,

but the higher your status or appearance in public eye, the more you have to be secure. I think that goes for, you know, even paparazzi and actors that go together, executives in different firms. It's just, it's part of the game. You understand it, you take the measures you can, and then whatever happens, happens. Yeah, there's a lot of things that like a lot of that people don't consider, I think, and it's not really an issue at your age, but as you get older, like there's not just the security, but there's like, you know, how do you pass your crypto on?

What if the person you're passing it on dies in the same car accident as you do, what happens to it then? And I think that there's a lot of room for improvement in the processes for that. And probably actually going to be some great companies that. That is a good use case. A good crypto company use cases, creating these dead man's switch, so to speak, that actually do what they're supposed to and a checklist and without a middleman. Yeah. You don't want to fight over your private keys when you're, when you're gone, unfortunately. So, you know, we talked about how you approach trading and, and meditating and, and, you know, we talked about how you approach trading and meditating and, you know, all the things that you do to sort of get yourself in the right mindset.

All that said, do you ever just get raging pissed off and, you know, throw your phone across the room on a trader if you really eliminated the emotion? So in the beginning, at least the first year, year and a half, two years, I rage so often. I can't tell you again how many Bitcoin I've lost rage trading because of it. Just because I've been in profit, a nice amount of profit, I get greedy and it runs all the way back to my entry and then stops me out or it was going to stop me out and I move my stop even lower. It runs me over and I've raged, absolutely. But over the last several years, I've really learned to detach emotions. I think that's one of the biggest keys in my personal trading success is I've always treated trading like a video game. It's a game that I learned the rules, I apply the meta, and then I win, right? And by emotionally detaching yourself

from how the market goes up and down, whether it's profits or losses, by removing that emotional attachment and becoming more stoic, you have less of an issue dealing with and processing information as it comes in. So also when it's sizing, right? Like a person might say, okay, well, it's only $100 risk. I have a $10,000 portfolio. It's 1%. But then what do you do when you're risking $10,000 on a million-dollar portfolio, right? The process has to be the same. And the more you can emotionally detach and look at it from more of a system-stematic way, the easier it is to actually handle wins and losses. You don't get too excited about the wins. You don't get too down on yourself

on the losses. It's a game that gives and takes at all times. And just knowing that has kind of helped me work with meditation, work with my experiences to kind of gain this emotional mastery over myself. Outside of trading, are you a competitive person? I'd like to say so. I used to play professional games, shoot them ups, like Call of Duty back in the day when I was actually in middle school. So I've always been competitive from a gaming standpoint. I just like to win at things in general. So yeah, I'd say I'm a competitive person. Because it's funny, it's the same for me. Like I really could not care less what happens in a trade, but I'll legitimately get pissed off if someone beats me at fantasy football, which is like something, which is something I have zero control of. It's not

like I'm out on the field. I shouldn't, you know, but I hate losing. I grew up as an athlete. I just, you know, I always want to win. But, and so I think that was one of the hardest things to detach, but trading is just not like that. But like you said, also it used to, there used to be a thrill attached with trading when you made money and by eliminating the downside, you know, by eliminating being upset, you also unfortunately get rid of any of the excitement. But that's when you make the most money. So when you learn to attack yourself, you don't ride these highs and you don't, you know, on these lows. It's what actually helps you look at things objectively because you can't force the market to do what you want, right? You need to be objective in everything. It's what's there. It's what's

actually happening right now. If you're like, no, if I do this, I'll get lucky. It just doesn't work that way. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can actually start playing edges to your advantage. Statistically that, hey, I'm going to win more than I lose. I'm going to make more on my returns than I am on my losses. And all of a sudden, my expected R multiple, my win rate leads to a profitable trade. Yeah. So what happens when you get to 100K Bitcoin? That's a good question. I'm on my way there. But when I get there, I haven't really thought of what I'm going to do. Probably retire, right? I've always enjoyed trading because it is a video

game, but I don't have any far out plans into the future besides start a family, have a house, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm not even there yet, dude. I'm so young that I'm cool with this going to a million dollars a coin, but I'm also cool with it going to zero. Cause I'm a part of it goes to a million dollars a coin. You are going to be, you know, you're going to not just be buying islands or be buying countries. Well, it's always been the bullets. Cause it's, I've always loved a great story. And I think my life,

the way it's played out to be in the position I'm in being financially free at this age when my friends are grinding away, uh, it's empowering. And I really just, I want to be a part of this movement. I love crypto. I love everything about it from a maximalist to the actual technology, to the amount of money you can fucking make. Uh, it's, it's just so much fun and it fits my personality and who I want to be. Gotta say, man, you're lucky to, you know, have been born into this time and have the right timing for it. You know, when I was in college, we, I didn't, you know, I showed up my freshman year at Penn and asked me what my email address was and what I wanted to be. And I didn't know what an email address was,

you know, so I definitely have a lot of envy that I wasn't in a time where I could have been throwing my beer money into Bitcoin instead of, you know, I don't even know, we weren't investing in anything crappy stocks, you know, at the time. So, you know, it's really, really cool for people your age, the ones who have managed to sort of, you know, break the code to have that opportunity, because this is sort of that once in a lifetime opportunity that most generations didn't have. You didn't find like many, you know, rich 25 year olds when I was. I really think that cryptocurrency as a movement will be the largest transfer of generational wealth that, you know, American or world history has ever seen.

But the question is, will it be the millennials that end up with that money or will it just be the boomers in my generation that find a way to end up with it anyways by owning, you know, whether it's the exchanges or the funds or whatever it is. I actually kind of worries me for millennials is that they'll end up still being even though they were the ones who adopted it, that they won't be the ones who capitalize on the wealth. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't. I'd like to think we capitalize on it because, you know, you ask the average except except for the Robin Hood traders, what they would rather own, Bitcoin or gold, and the majority of millennials will tell you Bitcoin, right? So gold as a store of value is kind of diminishing in the millennials' minds. So I hope that translates into people actually going out. Should I, you know, I have some investable income on the side. Should I buy gold? Should I buy stock? Should I buy Bitcoin? I'm hoping the vast majority actually go to Bitcoin, but we'll see. Yeah, people, the thing is that people don't trade their gold away like degenerates with 100x leverage. That's very true. So I guess it has to, it's, you know, whether it's Bitcoin or something else, you still, I think, have to be an investor

first and understand that the way you acquire that wealth is to put money away in whatever it is between being a superior option and just not touch it. Right. So that's the toughest part for millennials. They want it now, now, now, especially seeing people on Wall Street bets and Robin Hood making money and losing a shit ton. It's the inability to delay gratification that really hinders millennials approach to whatever the world's going to come to in the next 20, 30 years. Yeah. It's a crazy time. I mean, it really is just a crazy time to be alive right now. So, you know, what can we look for from you in the future? Obviously you're releasing the trading course. Do you have like plans, you know, to expand on that once it's released and, you know, what else you got coming? Yeah, so I mean, obviously, stay tuned for the release of tools of the trade. It's been a real

passion project the last nine months, I really think that trip and I have developed the most fullest, fullest encompassing curriculum that has ever been brought in the cryptocurrency space, maybe even outside of that remains to be seen. And it's a way that I really feel we're empowering people. And that's a good feeling I can go to sleep with every night. So in terms of what to expect, I mean, this curriculum is, in my opinion, one of the best. I had a friend of mine go through it over the last three months, never looked at a chart, and he's already taking profitable to break even trades after 12 weeks, which is amazing. It's incredible to cut that learning curve in half. Other than that, my real goal has been to really develop the Crypto Insiders community.

I really think there's a place to make that community a whole decentralized autonomous organization, where that's some sort of community token and start outsourcing voting rights. And this may get a real example of what cryptocurrency can do to a decentralized community. So that's going to be my next step in the process after the release of the curriculum. That's a pretty huge step. Yeah. I think it'd be a cool thing to tackle. I have to say, it's really interesting to hear about your friend. I had a conversation recently, I don't know if you're familiar with Joe McCann. There's obviously a well-known trader in the space. And we were talking about the you know, the thing you and I

were talking about earlier, which is like, can everybody just become a trader? And he was under the impression that you won't be successful until you've blown up at least two accounts. Right. So like he is under the impression and listen, he and I are both older guys who come from a sort of different generation of trading where like, you're going to go broke a couple times, but we didn't have this level of education or this, these outlets or these communities or anything. You were just out there on your own, just throwing money into the market. And you learned by losing. Do you think that people now that there's enough out there and that you can really teach people to be successful and never have to go through

the painful part of it? I'd like to think so. Just cause. So actually just yesterday, my buddy said the one who took the course that he took that he took the last year that he's on a 10 loss losing streak. And I said, Well, how much are you down? So I'm down 8%. That's amazing. That's awesome. That's just good trading. Learn risk management in the first course. And I taught you like, don't risk more than a few percent, especially when you're still getting your edge in your system. To be down 10 trades back to back to back and only be down 8% learning to size down, that's cutting the learning curve in half. He didn't blow his portfolio. That's 15 years for some people of learning.

Exactly. So I think it is possible to really stray on the nurture side, to nurture people to become good traders if you teach them the principles from the get-go. And I think that's the toughest part for someone who might take the curriculum already haven't mindset of I already liquidated myself ten times on bit max how do I know who's gonna help me win yeah it's no guarantee but if you learn the principles you have that much more of a fighting chance to actually make it as a trader awesome so where can everyone follow you after this and keep up with you and make sure that they get their hands on tools of the trade so as always our at captain Cole one on Twitter, that's kind of just my bread and butter

where I post the most. And then obviously in the Crypto Insiders community on Telegram, those are the two places I've always been and always will be. I enjoy communicating with people all the time. So either shoot me a DM on Twitter, always happy to respond, or on the Crypto Insiders Telegram. Again, I'm an open book for the most part. I really enjoy empowering people and teaching them to do what I did, because if I can do it, I really feel almost anyone can. Awesome, man. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for taking the time. I'm going to convince you to send me the course so I can run through it and check it out myself. If you don't, I'll make trip to it. So don't worry about it. I'm getting it

one way or another. But really, very, very enlightening because, you know, you are a different generation and a different breed of trader and you've accomplished so much more than most people my age at a young age. So it's really interesting to get that sort of different perspective because it is a really, you know, it is really like the tools that you've grown up with, the strategies that you've come up with are very different than anyone else, you know, who didn't have those, I guess, you know, tools before. So really interesting. Thank you once again. And I can't wait to get this out there and see what people think.

Thanks, Scott. I appreciate you having me on. It's been a blast. Have a good one. Hey everyone. Thanks for listening. New episodes go live every Tuesday at 7am Eastern Standard Time. Links to our Apple and Spotify channels are in the show notes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Scott Melker to continue the conversation. See you next week.