The Wolf Of All Streets - NFL Player Converts Salary To Bitcoin | Sean Culkin, Kansas City Chiefs

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Finance and football don’t normally go together, but Sean Culkin's passion for finance matches his love for football. While grinding through college, Sean spent his spare time behind a Bloomberg terminal learning about the failing financial system. Upon discovering Bitcoin, Sean Culkin joined the select ranks of athletes who have opted to receive their salary in bitcoin, strengthening the emerging trend that professionals around the world are beginning to follow. Follow Sean Culkin: https://twitter.com/culkin22 This episode explores: ・Converting almost $1m to Bitcoin ・Back-loaded interest ・7 out of 10 athletes going broke ・Playing college football and studying finance ・Buying cash flow assets ・Playing for the Kansas City Chiefs ・Teaching athletes about investing ・TikTok meme stocks ・Elon Musk and Bitcoin ・Government money printing ・The Doge gateway drug ・Opting out of the fiat system --- Nexo Try Nexo’s full-suite, instant crypto banking service, featuring: savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, stablecoins & fiat; flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR; an exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and best-price guarantee. All this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/nexo or download the app on Google Play or the App Store. --- Cosmos Visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos to learn about the Cosmos Hub and how the $ATOM can connect every blockchain. Cosmos is the port city connecting chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum to ensure your liquidity on any chain can be used anywhere. Find new staking opportunities, applications, or build your own parachain at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This episode is brought to you by Nexo and Cosmos. Stay tuned to hear more information about both of these amazing companies later in the episode. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Now, some of us in the Bitcoin community stare at charts while others spend their time building apps and developing new protocols, while a new breed of Bitcoiners are paid to score touchdowns and knock people out. Today's guest is setting a trend for Bitcoin adoption in the world of sports. Kansas City Chief tight end Sean Culkin is elected to convert 100%

of his 2021 salary into Bitcoin. But Sean hasn't just left it at that. He's become an integral member of the Bitcoin community and an evangelist spreading the good word for all of us. I can't wait to find out why he's taking a salary in Bitcoin, why he's a believer, and dig into the wider consequences of the decision. Sean Kalkman, man, thank you so much for coming on the show. Scott, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to talk. It's going to be a good time. So before we get into the questions, once again, you are listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, which airs twice a week. And I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. And sometimes people who cross over from multiple, multiple ones of those. This podcast is powered by Blockworks, the fastest

growing media company in the digital asset space. You can check them out at blockworks.co. And if you listen to the podcast, follow me on Twitter, you should check out my website at thewolfofallstreets.io. So Sean, let's get into what's important here. You played college ball at Missouri, which is in the Southeastern conference, but Missouri is neither in the South or the East. What is up with that? I know it was actually, uh, the, my first year too, was when we went from the big 12 to the sec. So that I think was a big part of why they recruited me and found me because they started to kind of, shift their focus to more southern states and my name kind of came up and uh yeah like you said it was there was a transition period right going from the big 12 to the sec but we actually handled that pretty well and had some early success early on

and i'm a gator fan oh i used to be a gator fan i was just gonna say you're from you're from like clearwater i was a diehard man yeah i'm from clearwater and you know i speech like 10 minutes from there so i was a diehard like tim tebow fan when chris leak was a quarterback and he was a freshman and obviously going to the national championship then and just you know between basketball and football i was a big uh gator man yeah it's my friends and i flew out to glendale for that chris leak national championship when he was a freshman and we actually couldn't get tickets and we snuck in using fake vendor passes but that's My friends and I flew out to Glendale for that Chris Leak National Championship when Timo was a freshman. And we actually couldn't get tickets. And we snuck in using fake vendor passes.

But that's probably a story for another day. Incredible. I have to learn later. I mean, where you're from, you love the Gators and you love Frenchies, right? Frenchies, yes. Have you been? Oh, my God. My wife's from Tampa.

We used to go out to Clearwater. No way. Yeah. So Frenchies is the original. And Indian Rocks Beach is like six or five. It's five minutes from my house. It's amazing. I go down there all the time.

Yeah. Love that place. Well, okay. And people can listen to us talk about Florida and football all day, I'm sure. But I know what they really want to talk about. And that's, let's just dive right in. Why did you decide to take your entire salary in Bitcoin this year? Yeah.

So, you know, when people ask me that, this year? Yeah. So, um, it, you know, when people ask me that, I think there there's two parts to it, right? It's like, how did I undercover Bitcoin and just blockchain and crypto as a whole? And then, um, you know, why did that lead to me converting my whole salary to Bitcoin? So I think, um, it's important just to talk a little about my past and my history. And like you said, I went to Mizzou and my sophomore year, I switched my major to finance and just was fully immersed into it. I just, it was the first time in my life where I had an equal passion for finance and economics like I did for football.

And I was just really encouraging because I knew football would end at some point, regardless of what happened. So I ended up getting a highly competitive internship as the equity research analyst for an insurance firm. So, you know, between workouts, meetings, practice class, you know, I'd be working 30 plus hours a week, you know, sitting on Bloomberg terminal, just geeking out on Excel spreadsheets. And it was a new passion of mine that I fell in love with and you know in my head i was grooming myself for uh wall street's demands like if the nfl didn't work out i wanted to pursue wall street go to new york because between you know social life but then what i was doing with my job i was

studying for the cfa working during the summers and also during the season and then just my football obligation being a d1 athlete and i was going going 80, 90, 100 hours a week. So I was ready to take that on. And I remember sitting down and just reading an article about blockchain and Bitcoin and it being created by this anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

And I quickly saw the beauty and non-discretionary components of the network. I thought it was very George Washington of Satoshi to be selfless and remain anonymous. And I recognized the store of value it offered. The fact that supply can be verified, I think is incredible. And it's very transparent about its issuance. And the only asset I knew to be similar was gold. And I think that's also important because my dad was a gold bug, you know? So early on I was, yeah, I, yeah. So early on I was exposed to the philosophy of what made him find gold attractive and just kind of like being exposed

to the fallacies of central banking and the debt that the world is in. Right. So like I was from an early age, just during my time, and this is before I even went to college, I had a different way of thinking that I think many don't have at that young of age. And there's some parallel between gold and Bitcoin, as we all know. I want to get back to the salary thing in a minute, but I want to ask you because I think that this would be on everyone's mind. Every time we hear about a boomer who loves gold, we think of like the Peter Schiff's of the world and the people who are like emotionally just have this attachment to gold and hate Bitcoin. What does your dad think of Bitcoin? So he's trying to understand it.

He's older. He's over 70. He's over 70. He's open-minded. He's since then have, you know, tried to, he's working with an advisor and thinking more long-term. So he's trying to, he started to, you know, divest and get some exposure to equities and some cash flowing, you know, stocks and dividend paying stocks. So he's definitely trying to understand it, but it's hard, right? With many people of that age. He doesn't understand sometimes at first the value and then just the volatility of it. And I understand that, right?

So I tried to explain it. And he's good. I think everyone kind of viewed Bitcoin with skepticism at some point, right? But he's definitely proud of me for doing this. But he's not dismissive. He's not dismissive. No way dismissive. He's just trying to understand, but at the same time, being transparent about having some confusion. Right. So we obviously got a pretty good, I think, idea of your basic background there that finance and economics were something you

learned a passion for much earlier than probably most people. And I think a lot of people, you talked about sort of the central bank fallacies and those ideas. Most people don't get there ever, right? It's not even a matter of what age they get to, they just never think about their money, I think. But so all of that obviously culminated in this decision to take your entire salary in Bitcoin. So, you know, why did you go all in? You know, because obviously you could have scaled it. We see a lot of guys are like, yeah, I'll take 20% or I'll take 10%, but 100 is next level. 100%. You know, through the conviction that I had, and as I went down the rabbit hole, I asked myself one question. I'm like, what would bring me more regret

as I'm starting to contemplate deciding whether or not I should do this? Would it be investing all of my money in Bitcoin and me losing a significant amount of money and me being wrong or not doing this and seeing it go as I suspect? And that was very clear to me. It really just has to do with my level of conviction.

And I mean, I just started questioning just the environment. So I would, I would ask people, man, if you had a million dollars, like where would you put your money right now? And I would get different answers from it kind of depends on who I was asking, you know, financial advisors, advisors would, you know, say, well, it depends, you know, what's your expenses, what's your current worth, what's your, you know, we want to be diversified. I'm like, okay, I'm trying to ask what asset class do you trust right now? Yeah. And everything's offering negative real yields right now. Like I see the highest level of short interest on fixed income and cash and the lowest amount of cash and mutual funds. And I see what's happening right now

with like the boomer population, uh, nearing retirement and how the fed the steps in the stimulus to prevent any type of recession. Like we can't let just truth be felt, right? They just try to delay it every single time with more stimulus. And I feel where I, a big reflection point. And honestly, man, it's just, it's a store of value. I see the components of that and I see just how it's transfers value across time and space. And it's something that's not going to be the base over time. And I knew that with Fiat and I didn't trust the valuations of equities right now. I already had fixed income. I didn't want to add to that. I just bought a home and it just actually made the most rational sense because in my eyes, the way I see crypto developing and this new world of finance, I started to change my approach to my portfolio to where my exposure right now to fixed income, fixed income, cash

and equities and real estate is the hedge on if this is wrong, like now Bitcoin is not is no longer the hedge for me. Right. So I guess the question then is, there's a lot of day to day implications, obviously, of being all in Bitcoin, you know, just because that's the, you know, the tax implications, and how do you actually pay your bills and stuff. Do you think that this would have been a very different decision if it was your rookie contract? You're obviously doing it a few years in.

So like you said, you have a fixed income portfolio, you bought a house, you obviously have money to live on. Could you have done that straight out with your rookie contract or do you think you had to establish a portfolio and a base before you could do it?

To this level, definitely needed a base, right? Because I understand that expenses, you know, have increased since then. And if I were to do 100% in Bitcoin and just, like, I would have to have a better plan in place. I would have to have cash flowing assets and just a cash reserve, right? I know that at some point,

even if this goes exactly how I planned, I will be in a cash crunch at some point in the coming years. So then I'm gonna have to have a plan whether it be, I don't wanna ever trim my position. I would hate to have to do that. I could if I had to, right? Just a little bit just to continue to live,

but I would rather collateralize it. And I also know that new systems and protocols are being developed, I think, in the coming years where you can maybe get loans or credit cards where as long as you keep the LTV ratio the same and Bitcoin continues to accrete like we've seen, you really just can continue to have expenses and fiat and build your savings in Bitcoin.

So I think I would have loved to have expenses and fiat and build your savings in Bitcoin. So I think I would have loved to have had exposure to Bitcoin earlier on. Like I did the number, I think, because I've always been league minimum too. I think that's another thing I've been very transparent about that is relatable to, you know, people following my story. Like I'm not some guy that's made millions of dollars in NFL. I have always been league minimum and I've been very frugal and saving and wise in my money. Yeah, I totally get it. And the league minimum part is really, it's impactful because I think people even see the league minimum and they're

like, well, there's a million bucks, 900, 900, 920. Yeah. Right. But like football players, athletes in general, but especially football players have a really finite career, right? You like you have to make a life and a lot of guys, I mean, you can go to Wall Street, like, yeah, you can even tell by your education, the way you talk. But there's a lot of guys who play sports, who the only thing they've ever done is play sports. And they really need to like get it while it's hot, right? Get every single penny out of it. And one, you know, Achilles and it's over. It's funny you mentioned I, you know, I tore my Achilles too.

So that's another part of my story. So I had that happen last year, but yeah, you're just going to completely right to the financial illiteracy too, is just, you know, common in this industry. So I've been very, just trying to help others, right. And just share my knowledge and, you know, make it known to athletes like man when you're done playing expenses keep rising but if you don't have income like that you're on a path to serve them right it's it's inevitable so you have to have a plan but then also we're blessed to be paid so much money in the front end of our lives like save it invest it the the regardless of your investment investment vehicle you have the ability to capitalize on just

compound interest and the beauties of that. And I always knew, as I, like I said, in college was to finance and saw the trajectory, uh, with my life. I knew that my long-term career will be the overlap of football and finance and helping athletes. But now I'm beginning to see, I think it's, it's football finance and crypto and Bitcoin because just this deflationary nature, right? Like a lot of guys actually don't have exposure to stocks. A lot of them, after they spend all their money, they don't have much really to invest sometimes. So I'd rather have Bitcoin, man, and just know that it's going to keep your value. And there's this,

it's sad, honestly, too. Like the fact that, you know, I think it's 70% of athletes go broke within three years out of the league. Same thing with lottery winners and those people, you know, and lottery winners can be someone who won 50 or $60 million. It's not a surprise that someone who saves a couple million bucks and then can't get a job. If they haven't, it would have been fiscally responsible would go broke, I guess. But you guys do have that fortune that if you handle it well, most people's income is backloaded, right?

You start earning in your forties and your fifties, but like, you guys get it right up front, you know? But the problem is that, I mean, when I was, if you had given me a million dollars and I was 20, I would have had like negative a million dollars three months later. So I get it. But yeah. So, I mean, but you said 70%, that's incredible. Right. And even, even at the league minimum, that shouldn't be the case. Right. Right. Because most people don't make a million dollars in their entire lives and survive exactly yeah exactly exactly so um again it's just and it's trusting people making sure you vet the the process of interviewing advisors if you

select to go that route right because there's a lot of guys that they've been on the nfl nflpa approval list right and they because you have to apply to be um uh certified by the nflpa And still you see stories about those guys like going to jail for fraud and just embezzlement and just place not their money, right? So they start to take high risk positions and it's the sexy venture capital deals, right? That a lot of athletes want to. And some of them have just incredible opportunities

that many just don't have the um the opportunity to have right and they hit it's very um but most beneficial but some of them don't hit man yeah right so it's like oh yeah for sure or or you know friends back home um you know i got this restaurant or this new bar and it's great ideas and you probably intend to do well but it's hard man and and as an athlete too our schedules don't allow for us to be on top of it like during the season like it's it's 6 a.m to 10 p.m man like you know during training camp and then during the season you know you might have some days that don't go as late but it's a grind and all of your cap all your resources and energies all divvy to football and do you so do you think it is a result of just poor financial advising that a lot of these guys go broke or do you think that

a lot of them don't even get a financial advisor and just think hey man i've got money and they just start spending it well i mean we're here in the nfl for you know a big part is because we've been on ourself right we have the mentality that we will always overcome and keep playing as long as we want to play. And that's true for a lot of guys, but it's, it's a highly competitive and people every year are coming in to replace you. There's a, there's 53 guys on a team, you know, there's 32 teams. It's really not that many players, you know, in the league making good money. So, and also you can't control injuries. Like you said, like there was a scary moment when I thought my time was coming to an end, uh, two years ago, cause I was on the path. So I was really coming to my own playing really good ball, looking to have my first big contract. And then I was starting

week four, blew my Achilles out. And that was a grind for me, man. That was a year of just my contract expiring, not being ready, having my agent tell teams I'm not ready to play yet. And I didn't sign until week three of the season, played with the Ravens. And the funny thing with that too, is as I've shared my story with others is like, I still, I didn't get, I didn't buy my first amount of Bitcoin until December, 2020. So like, since then, like you don't have skin in the game, if you don't risk capital that you use your time and resources and skill set to

and risk that in something, you're not going to be tied to it, right? So as much as I learned about Bitcoin early on when I was an analyst, I then went to training camp back into the grind, man. 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Years go by, I haven't thought about it but same thing I was in March 2020 my man this is fascinating this is crazy this would probably be a good play based off what's happening on a macro standpoint but I'm just busting my ass for rehab go sign up the Ravens have to learn a new playbook mid-season and it wasn't really until I had a high ankle injury I was sidelinedined for three or four weeks. So I had a little bit more time and I was sitting in the hot

tub in the training room. And I was like, screw it, man. Like, let's go. I got it. Let me just get some skin in the game by four or $5,000. And I've just been immersed in the rough and gone down the rabbit hole since. Guys, it's time to wake up and go earn some money. One of the most exciting use cases of crypto is both to earn yield and take low interest credit loans, especially since your actual bank is giving you Nathan Nada, nothing in interest. Necto is leading the charge in this arena with 360 degree crypto banking services. If you're just looking to park your crypto, do nothing, earn some interest, you can make up to 12% a year by doing services. If you're just looking to park your crypto, do nothing, earn some interest, you can make up to 12% a year by doing nothing. If you're in the market for a

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You need to absolutely check them out at the wolfofallstreets.link slash Cosmos, C-O-S-M-O-S, and see everything they have going on. Well, it's interesting because I think you kind of described something where the nature of your career or the nature of athletes in general is like you're a hell of a lot more worried about making the money and making sure that you're going to be able to make the money that you are about storing the value of it at that moment. Like if you're fully in the grind all the time, you're like, where's my next paycheck coming from? Am I going to be able to play? Am I going to get better? Of course, your mentality is about, you know, your paycheck. I think that's how most people operate and why they don't worry about Bitcoin or stores of value, you know, to extrapolate that down to your average daily

worker, like, and that's where this wealth divide comes from, right? Like if you already have money, you can think about stores of value. You don't have money to protect. You don't have value to protect. And I think that's kind of a funny thing with the Bitcoin narrative of storing value or the gold narrative for that matter. If you're living paycheck to paycheck and you need every penny of cash to pay your bills, a store of value isn't that meaningful, right? Right. Right. But I mean, on that though, like I have this idea, like view it like a 401k in a way. Like I think it's all relative to your means. And, you know, regardless if you're a small business owner, if you were a corporate America, if you are minimum wage, the components of Bitcoin,

obviously why I'm doing this and I'm a believer in it, I think over time, it's going to continue to accrete. Like I would, I would rather have somebody, if they can only take one or 2% of your portfolio, take it aside, put in Bitcoin and know it's going to compound over time. And so that's one big part of this decision of mine is just to inspire people to one, just do their own due diligence and learn from themselves. And many people that discredit Bitcoin, I asked them like, how much time have you spent learning about it? And it's like 30 minutes. And I'm like, so in 30 minutes, you decided that you're just never going to explore Bitcoin or crypto as a whole. Like that's so dogmatic to me. And so I'm just trying to just

inspire man, this people, Hey, do your own research. It's working. And yeah. And anyone, yeah. And again, yeah. And people are like, well, I missed the Bitcoin train, man. I missed it. And it's like, really? Cause I'm agreeing to buy through 2021, my salary, like I'm dollar cost averaging Bitcoin at the future price that is unknown. Like it's too expensive. Yeah. Right. I agree that. Yeah. But that's like the funniest thing about human nature is like nobody that I told to buy it at 6,000 wanted it, but they all wanted it at 60,000. At 60, exactly. Right. And, or the opposite is like, I thought about it at six, but it went to 10 and now it's

too expensive. Well, it went to 20. Now it's too expensive. It went to 50. It's now it's too expensive. And there's never a price, right. You know, where it becomes, it's just a very strange part of human psychology. And I think that's starting to change too with uh like podcasts and social media and just the retail investor wall street bets right reddit users like before you know i i think like we were so conditioned to view volatility and dips as just just terrible thing like fear and we'd everyone just conditioned to sell and now you're starting to see like the tweet that's like dude buy the dip you idiot like have you learned by now like yeah well for you right i mean you just said you're gonna be dollar cost averaging blindly you don't control when your paycheck comes it comes at a fixed date you're gonna buy bitcoin on that date if you believe

in it long term there's an argument for you to say hey man let this thing just drop big time for the next year while i'm buying in dollar cost averaging, right? I wouldn't be mad about it. But that's the beauty of the buy the dip mentality is that most people get fearful, as you said, when there's volatility on dips, but if you're actually trying to get into the market, it turns your mindset completely on its head where you actually want the price to drop. Right. Right. It's, it's, yeah, it's incredible. It's like you said, it's just a weird human psychology. So I'm curious, there's, it's like kind of fortuitous timing for you when this,

when this happened, because you obviously were already into Bitcoin, you got skin in the game, you had your injury, as you said, and some like, questions about your future, and then COVID hit and the entire world melted down, right? And I think for the first time, your average person started to think about their money a little bit more. Why are stocks going up if I can't, like if I don't have a job? Right? So do you think that that played in at all the timing of that to your decision? Or do you think that other athletes that you're talking to or people that you're seeing

are understanding it better than maybe they would have a year and a half ago? Yeah, so the approach to Bitcoin has definitely changed over time with the athletes. Like you mentioned, like just the vibe like before, because even months ago, I started to kind of tweet about it. would get no traction but i was just passionate about it and wanted to put something out there and some of my friends would be like you know that's interesting like oh i can see the store of value component of it um and whether or not they understand the fundamentals

of it or understand what's going on right now in the in the economy they can see the asset inflation occurring right so it's like when they're trying to buy a home like so i just bought home right that process was crazy you know my girlfriend is every we were getting outbidded 100 150k all cash every single time you have to waive all your contingencies and it was just a bloodbath in la too mind you which is super competitive. And like you said, with just the weirdness, I mean, like with owning the home for three weeks, I think we had an offer 150K over what we paid for it within three weeks. And I'm like, man, this is somebody that's probably older, smart, understand what's going on.

Either doesn't have the balls for Bitcoin or doesn't understand Bitcoin, but what's hard assets. So that's when like, it just confirmed more of my conviction and the kind of the mentality that I was having. And like you said, like, I think March, 2020 was huge. It changed the world forever going forward. I think all models before will probably be antiquated over time. And like you said, I, our equity is increasing 25% or is the monetary expansion rate increasing to 25%. Like what's happening right now? And, you know, Rob Paul talked about how, when you change the denominator to the Fed balance sheet on how every asset class goes flat and it's like, okay, maybe we're not

seeing the inflation and CPI and like what we're buying day to day. And if we're going to have transitory inflation or long-term structural inflation, but man, we're getting money at the base right now. Yeah. The dollar denominator is the biggest misdirection probably in history. Yeah. Right. Because like, if you just take in the simple fact that the value of the dollar is going down and as you said, I mean, what they've printed 40% of all the dollars in history in the last year. Yeah. Of course, everything looks like it's going up

right so so and and so with me and anyone but like obviously i'm an athlete so that's kind of what i'm really trying to um come out and speak towards but you know like michael saylor like the bitcoin strategy right so it's like it's the first time i think um you know people within the risk risk management team are having to incorporate how they're going to handle their treasury. Like, what are you going to do with their short-term assets? Because now if it's sitting there,

you're destroying wealth over time. So I started just kind of going down that philosophy and seeing, man, I could definitely see because of this liquidity, corporations beginning to adopt the Bitcoin standard and just continue to have a massive influx of cash and capital go over to bitcoin from corporations to small business owners to individuals and athletes are no different like that's why i tweeted i'm like man we need to

start viewing ourselves as corporations yeah you run the business we're on the field and then in off season we're investing into our body we we have fixed costs, we have to continue our maintenance with physical therapy, injury prevention, getting stronger, getting faster, working on our skill set, having soft tissue. And then also we have the brand, right? And we have to build our image and our social media presence. And some of us are fortunate maybe to have cash flowing projects coming in and it's a, it's a corporation. And what are you doing with your cash reserve when it's just getting depleted over time? And many aren't investing at least into the S and P 500, or they're buying just crazy risk stocks or, or, or now it's, it's funny Doge and stuff like, which is cool. It's fun. It's entertainment,

but the bulk of the money, what are you doing to preserve your value over time? And I think Bitcoin is that solution. I mean, Doge is amazing. It's probably my favorite asset of all time because I've been doing this since 2016. It had the predictable cycles. We love it because it's a meme. It's because it's a joke, but you just touched on it. There's people who are investing in Doge, right? If you understand that it's a joke and you're gambling and it's fun, have at it, you know what I mean? Go to Vegas, take your 300 bucks and say, I'm gonna get some free drinks and whatever. But when you start hearing people talk about,

this is the future of money, this is an investment, like it's not an investment, right? So, and that's the mentality that I think is very difficult to break in people. Yeah, yeah. Like I think it's good because it's kind of the gateway to understanding crypto and getting exposure to it. But like when you talk to somebody that's so bullish on Doge and then you start bringing up Bitcoin, they know zero about Bitcoin. And I think some people are going to get hurt and they get stuck holding the bag.

And I hope it doesn't scar them to where they can't explore crypto and Bitcoin and what's happening with Bitcoin and DeFi and this new world that's starting to just grow at a rapid pace. And I'm curious to you to know your thoughts on just the whole altcoin digital assets versus Bitcoin debate. Because obviously when it came to this large magnitude decision for me with my salary, I found Bitcoin through its properties of scarcity and security as the asset that I wanted to put my wealth in. But I'm understanding too, I'm not a Bitcoin maximalist to the extent where I'm not open-minded to at least explore other opportunities. And I think it's fun to, hey, sentiment play the volume right you can scout money make money if you're

going to trade it but and then obviously with ethereum and more of those um digital assets where like the utility and how it's used for just um actually the medium of exchange component with defy and it's just a new i'm starting starting to learn more, but obviously. Yeah. I mean, I could tell you for me, like one of the hugest differences between the run now in 2017 was when you wanted to take profit back then you had to sell into dollars. And it was like this really painful sort of thing because you knew the dollars devaluing and the whole point was to get up, but you also need to pay your bills. Now we have DeFi like you touched on. And even if you're not, if you're not going to go far down that rabbit hole, we have the Voyagers and the Nexos and the sort of, as people like to call them, CeFi, you know, like platforms, but you can earn

yield, right? So you can park all that Bitcoin and get six and a half percent indefinitely. And if you do need to take some out, you can go into USDC and get nine or ten percent and that's backed right and so to me that's a huge difference right now and i think that that is the uh doge maybe is the gateway drug to like trading but i think the the gateway drug to understanding in my opinion for like the masses the thing that i've hooked my friends who said never about is go buy some usdc and earn nine percent yeah right right. And the counterparty risk is very minimal. There's counterparty risk for lending, but you know, like I I've been no, no, no mystery that I'm a huge fan of Voyager. I've had the CEO, Steve Ehrlich on show twice. They're a publicly traded company on the Canadian stock exchange. He was the CEO of E-Trade. You

know what I mean? So like you can, you can vet, you know, I talked to them about how they're doing it. There's, you know, there's always risk. But to me, the risk is that the interest will be reduced. I don't think there's much risk. You know, I think that maybe we won't be getting nine or 10% down the road. And I think a lot of people are getting exposed to it now for the first time. But this has been going on for years, right? If I'm not correct, like I've asked on this podcast, which is like, I've got a million bucks. What do I do with it? Right.

And I haven't been able to get a good answer from anybody on that. You know, like anybody who doesn't understand Bitcoin. Like there's plenty of people who are like, I'd put it into Bitcoin, but I talk to Bitcoiners. Right. But your average person, I think they're uncomfortable with stocks. I think they're starting to understand

that you certainly can't hold it in cash. What are you supposed to do with it? Right, right. And it's becoming increasingly harder to buy a home, right? And any real estate opportunity and commercial property. Do you even trust commercial properties either right like if you if you see this digitized system going forward and people are traveling less like commercial real estate is probably um there's some question marks there right and then um you know with these valuations with stocks it's like our is is growth stocks that's going to continue this this roar roar with tech? Not unless they are officially inflated. Right, right.

Because then what happens when rates continue, if they rise? So are they going to rise? And we saw that happens to the DCF models and how growth got hammered. But then if they're going to do yield curve control and continue to inject capital in the system to reduce rates, again, that's up the money supply right and it's just debasing cash so it's like the value that you see like i don't know like it's hard to imagine that in a global pandemic how so many people got and quote wealthy and you know if you realize the gain yes but like you're right you're right. But it's, it's just, I, and I think it could be a good model for what could happen with Bitcoin. There's so little supply in real estate, right? You're out in LA, and you can flip your house for $150,000 more in a day. And my friends have told me the same

story as you go to look at a house that hasn't even hit the markets, like listing tomorrow and already has eight offers well over what they were going to ask. It's crazy. That's what the Bitcoin market's going to look like with the halvening and supply leaving exchanges. That's what I think is the path for Bitcoin, except for it's not sustainable with real estate and it is with Bitcoin. Right, exactly, exactly.

And we're going to be in supply crunch at some point. That's when it's just going to pop right and yeah so you're gonna have some exposure to it what was so you didn't buy bitcoin immediately so maybe you didn't have this light bulb moment with bitcoin when you're an analyst but what was your light light bulb moment that said the actual system is broken and doesn't work right because i think you have to come to that realization first. Yeah. Well, in March I was talking to my girlfriend and I'm like, okay, sweet. We can finally buy a house at an affordable price. Obviously it was a terrible time in life. Right. So I didn't do it like nice. Like it was weird. I was scared. Like we were all a little fearful and

it was a weird time, but I also knew that, you know, history repeats itself. You look at prior years during any type of correction like that's when you buy and and it's going to pay off so we started to just look at home prices and i think it was like a week when people were a little scared and then it just started soaring and all the yeah and so then that just made, that was confusing to me. And then I continued to see what the Fed was doing in regard to like PPP and just basically the money, like the battle between the public and the private market. Like now, like the private market is competing with the public market for spending.

And then I'm seeing the structural shift where people aren't necessarily wanting to go back to work. Like why they're not incentivized to go back to work when they're making pretty good income through these government aid programs. And just the combination of that, and then seeing the metrics that were reflecting that the economy was rebounding, you know, this is like in the last six months and previous months and things were starting to pick up. But then the spending, it just kept exceeding. And what is it like 120 billion a month?

Like it just kept coming and coming and coming. And then the raise, I was like, I talked to my guy. I'm like, yo, you see those rates right now? They're starting to go up. They're 10 years going up. And then boom, like you're starting to see it now. It's starting to go down a little bit. It's kind of like in this weird point and i'm like dude what is going

on like if they're not going to ever let it because are you going to allow a recession to happen like the great just that's the problem i think you know with everyone retiring yeah i've had this conversation on this show so many times, but, you know, the central banks are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'm definitely not justifying what they're doing, but they certainly can't let everyone lose their jobs and go into a depression either. Right. Certainly politicians don't want to be the ones who allowed a depression. So it's like it's just so fundamentally broken. Right.

Right. Like you're not going to get re-elected by doing the right thing yeah unfortunately right and and and doing the right thing also will have a very hard negative impact on a lot of individuals in the world and you know i was reading like pain is um you know needed like it's truth right at At some point, to just continue to just put off and delay pain, it creates issues within just the world and our system. And it's like, I don't know what I would do if I was in their situation, but I'm starting to understand.

Have we been in a moment like this before? I'm starting to understand, have we been in a moment like this before? I'm starting to ask people, cause I'm young, right? I'm only 27. So I'm continuing to learn more, but I just think we're at a weird time, man. And that's where I'm like, Bitcoin, Bitcoin's growing. Like when we looked at the models, when you change the denominator, like everything's flat, but Bitcoin and other crypto assets, like everything's thriving and you've seen what's going down in Miami and how it's going to be the new Silicon Valley. And just, I started to ask myself too, like are people graduating high school,

going off to college to want to go join a traditional finance system and be investment bankers and be institutional managers and money managers? And I don't know, I need to like speak to them, but I get the sense. And maybe I'm a fault of just select, you know, group think and what I'm the content I'm consuming.

But I get the understanding that no, it's not happening maybe at the level that it has. And it's not as appealing. And the brilliant minds are not necessarily being drawn to Wall Street. And maybe they're going before the tech companies and engineers. And then now i think so i think crypto is pulling that so for me it's clear that your trajectory gosh we can't talk trajectory that we're going on with crypto and that's what i said before like my previous allocations are the hedge right and i saw what i had coming up with next season i'm like dude i'm

getting paid in bitcoin 100 and i'm not even viewing it as a risky decision. Like I don't really, if I did Ethereum or some other asset, like maybe that might be a little bit more because I don't understand it. And that would be kind of scary for me. But when it came to Bitcoin, I know that it's going to exceed being paid in fiat. I know that. I mean, I had a very similar trajectory. I always kind of until even last year, like around March, I was always like, yeah, 10, 15% in crypto, you know, but like your other assets. And now I have the same mentality. It's like, I'm not rebalancing to that stuff. Right. I've got enough. I've got enough stock and enough of these other assets, you know, don't need any more. I'm curious, the actual enough of these other assets that, you know, don't need anymore.

I'm curious, the actual mechanics of getting paid in Bitcoin, you know, like, do you lose a percentage? Do you know, is it like who brokers it? How does that actually work? Yeah. So, so one thing that the chiefs were super open to this idea and didn't have any resistance to it. They just wanted to make it be known.

Like when I market this, like make it clear that you're getting paid in fiat and then you any resistance to it. They just wanted to make it be known. Like when I market this, like make it clear that you're getting paid in fiat and then you're converting to Bitcoin. Right, they're not buying Bitcoin to pay. Right, they're not buying Bitcoin. And maybe that day will come. Like people ask me that down the future, like when people,

if teams start putting it on their balance sheet. I mean, obviously we just saw yesterday the deal of the Giants and Grayscale, right? That was, I think that's a big move, right? And maybe we'll have a day and age and that'll be interesting on how that, the implications are with taxes when you just receive physical Bitcoin.

But for me, yeah, it's, it's, I'm getting paid USD. I'm working with Jack Mallers through the strike team that he has going on there. Yep. And he's just on chain doing the conversion and just basically dollar class averaging. Like it's already beginning to, it's already beginning. So, uh, we get a stipend check right now, uh, cause we started a month ago, off season workouts and, uh, meetings and everything. So, uh, I wanted to start now. I'm like, I don't even want my

stipend if he got, I want that in Bitcoin. So it's already began. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, gotta get in, get in as quickly as possible right i know so i'm in a weird position right i'm in a weird um like do i just keep buying bitcoin like beyond just the the stipend check and really go all in to lower my cost average knowing that it could be higher during the season but or do i just be like hey i'm about to really get high exposure to bitcoin yeah in a couple months and because of my situation like needing that cash reserve and for expenses and then um you know football is also not guaranteed i understand that i understood that uh very clearly when i had my Achilles injury and how quickly it can change.

And you're only as good as your next play. And I still need to go and do my thing come August. And just like in the downside model, like how did that look? And I needed, you know, some, you know, cash to cover my burn rate currently. I think there's a clear idea here, which is that we get you on every every podcast and then you get endorsements from crypto companies and you get paid yeah right yeah no exactly so and that's starting to begin you start to see some companies reach out i just want to make sure i'm aligned with something you know that has good fundamentals and good leadership but yeah i i that there's some risk mitigation by doing this still by maybe being um you know

get some endorsements and get paid in fiat to cover expenses and just continue to buy bitcoin like you said and just go all in really do you think that we get to a place speaking of going all in do you think that we get to a place i mean i don't think it's going to happen this year next but where you take your salary in bitcoin and for not even for you since you already already have other assets, but where somebody can exist solely in this crypto ecosystem? Like, do you think we get to a world where it's either, either it's so bad on the outside that you have to do it or where our infrastructure and we have these systems in place enough where like, you can basically just say, F it, like I'm opting out of this altogether

and I can buy my house in crypto or I can, you know, like make my car payment in crypto and. Yeah, no, it's, it's like time will tell, right? Like, I think we're at this, that version point where it's going to be almost two worlds. Right. And it's like, what system do you want to opt in? And, and I see people just continuing to switch over to crypto because I read an article a couple of days ago, like retail investors are just, and I'm sorry, millennials, millennials, young people are just tired and they're beginning to understand. Like we said earlier in this podcast, like the issues and the corruption and the manipulation. And, and I don't want to, I have so much debt for my student loans. I don't want to get 6% or 7% when I can get a hundred percent in a week in Doge. Right. And it makes sense. And millennials have been so screwed. I mean,

you guys have been absolutely hosed by timing of every like main someone laid it out for me before but like the the placement in time of the great recession and this crash and all those things i mean it's like millennials never had a chance because they've been printing away your value since you entered the marketplace at all right since there's been any earning good luck doing the traditional american dream right of just buying a home and living comfortably and continue to build worth and retire with ease, right? And it's like the stress. When I was a kid, you put your money in a savings account and you got like 10% and it was fine. Right. Right. So that made sense. You know, when like, it's a different world when it comes to like just equity valuations too. like you said it was 10 like that 60 40

portfolio was intact because it made sense 60 40 does not make any sense to me anymore that's why i'm i'm i was fortunate i had some good actually some muni um and fixed income that i got in march that are paying pretty good yield tax free but you can't find that anywhere now no and anyone that's talking 60 40 right now i think is just leaving yield on the table. And yeah, I'm just, I mean, I'm not a big, uh, Tik TOK guy, but I watched Tik TOK sometimes and man, those people aren't doing the 60, 40. They're not doing, they don't want to buy anything. That's not a meme stock. They don't want to buy. And they're never going to Home Depot. They don't want to buy Lowe's. They don't want to buy consumer stable companies.

They want Tesla. They want Amazon, Apple. The growth stocks, right? The meme stocks. And then now they want crypto. Like people that hit me up about. GameStop. Yeah.

So, and I think you're starting to see the banks and the people that have had success within their frame of reference, if they don't at to let their clients have exposure to it, they're going to lose clients because people that are smart, that have had success because of their intelligence are seeing what's going on and they want part of this. And that's only going to grow, in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, I think we saw it. It was literally today. I think the news this morning or yesterday, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, who just hates Bitcoin. I mean, just hates it. Years ago said that if any of his employees ever touched it or traded it,

he would fire them on the spot. He came out today. He said, listen, my clients want it. I have to do it, but I still hate it. But it's a perfect example, it's either you know keep up or you're done you're left behind and this is the thing and and documenting bitcoin the twitter account like i love when they post the articles and headlines from just march and yeah a couple months after till now like that is so revealing to me like a complete 180 and i think there's so much truth there and the idea that elon musk is accepting bitcoin and not going to convert the fiat i know he liquidated some for profit which i'm cool with like i understand like i'm like dude why you're the ceo your job is to increase your total value you maybe didn't have as much profit as you thought through the business and

you want to liquidate because you made a great deal pad that yeah and and he's still talking bullish on bitcoin but the fact that one of the smartest individuals in the world is willing to accept fiat for the cars he manufactures just makes me think okay so he obviously thinks it's going to appreciate. Like, regardless of how much you understand, and I'm not saying you should never think for yourself, but there's a lot that is relayed from that decision. Like, yeah, like, let me make the decision for you. If you're going to follow somebody, if people see a meme stock and see an article and they spend five minutes and they put 5k into the stock if you're gonna do that then and not be open-minded to bitcoin and hearing elon musk say what he has with bitcoin like that makes zero sense to me completely irrational and

do you think let's say you keep playing for five years, 10 years, 15 years, however long, I mean, do you see a reason ever to not take your salary in Bitcoin moving forward? I think, you know, for me, this was a macro play, kind of how we've talked about and like a decade decision where this is how I see it going for the next decade with the current regime and obviously with you know making a macro decision you always um you you adopt and you change based off what's happening and so i don't want to give an answer right now and then see that the thesis has completely changed in two years and assuming assuming different. Assuming your thesis remains correct. Yeah, absolutely. Why would I need, why would I want to be Fiat? Like if anything, I think if things go as planned, I do my thing this year, I get a good contract, a three-year deal, maybe get

a signing bonus. Maybe some of that signing bonus I get in Fiat. Yeah. To like, just continue to do what I'm doing. You have to live without having to collateralize or you know stake myself and but yeah I don't ever see a world in which I want the majority of my income in a depreciating currency that's been proven over time and like for me too like the mentality that I've developed really in 2021 has been just being optimal and optimizing the decisions that I make every day in my thoughts and just being intentional with like what I'm actually doing. Like when I say something, do I really mean what I'm saying? When I think like when you like people think and they say something, but like really going deeper, like what does that imply and when i'm starting to just understand that and to see my purpose and it didn't make any sense for me to go on the field risk my health

and just grind to be paid in a depreciating currency that's always been depreciating by its nature, at least since 1971, but more so in the last year. So things changed. And that's why I'm doing this decision. It's really true. Yeah. I mean, you're putting your health on the line to earn an asset that's losing value every day. I've never really heard, like I've never considered it that way for you guys as athletes, especially, but so true. I've never really heard, like I've never considered it that way for you guys as athletes, especially, but so true. I mean, the time and energy debate, right? The conversation with Bitcoin and like understanding money,

like that's what Robert Breedlove and how Michael Saylor talks and explains the thermodynamics and just how just humans operate over time has been fascinating to me and then i just extrapolated that to what football and the football and its demands like it's time it's energy it's it's also risk like i understand the risk of playing the game it's not like we're just going out there and making great money like there's there's a process to what people see on the field.

And league minimum or not, that's still incredible money. I'm so fortunate and blessed, but it wasn't optimal. It's not optimal, right? Like stats and history show that it's not. Do I trust, like we said, taking that income and then putting majority in stocks, just dollar cost averaging stocks, because I'm not actively managing during the season. No. What's the asset that's appreciating? Crypto. Which currency falls in line with my morals and just like the

freedom that it provides and sovereignty and the, the, like I said, like I said before, the scarcity and security that it provides Bitcoin. And that's what I'm doing. How much did listening, how much did listening to guys like sailor and breed love and, you know, I've had both those guys on the podcast. I found that I just kind of shut up and let them talk because they're a hell of a lot smarter than me, you know, and so people like that have definitely impacted my thinking on money and, you know, what I will do with my own investment. So how much did the crypto community and these sort of like legendary figures now who have been speaking for all of us, I think, to the mainstream, how much did they impact this decision?

It was, it was huge. It was huge. Enough to make me think, right. And do my research. So a buddy of mine, when I had the high ankle, I was sitting in the training room, sent me Michael Saylor's interview with Preston on a, uh, gosh, what was the podcast? I know we've, you probably heard it. Yeah. And, and I was like, man, that's

fascinating. But instantly I researched who is Michael Saylor because I'm trusting him, but like anyone can say stuff and sound smart, but the credibility lined up, like he's super successful and you can see the brilliance he has. So it just, and it just at least made me do my own research, which again, I'm not claiming to know everything, but by me going on podcasts and talking and being vocal on Twitter and being in headlines for this decision I made, I'm hoping to inspire others.

Okay, research for your own because if you spend 30 minutes or less, you're probably going to come out with the outcome that Bitcoin is this terrible, terrible system that if anything, the more I explore them, right, drug dealers, money laundering, oh, it's so bad for the environment. That's a new argument, right, for the forthcoming years. But the more I research, the more egalitarian it is to me. And I think it's a solution to the wealth gap. I think it's something

that should be highly considered by anybody. And that's what I hope to have done from this. I know you can't like speak for other athletes, obviously, but I mean, listen, there've been guys who have talked about Bitcoin, like Russell, you know what I mean? It's not, it's not new necessarily in sports. I mean, Spencer did when he like tokenized himself, you know? But you're the first I've seen who went all in like this are you getting calls like do you think that this is going to become a thing yeah i think so i the the calls and the um the dialogue that has happened is is changed i think

and i've talked about this like the fine line of brilliance and crazy. And it takes any idea that is crazy that the majority of the population would never adopt. It takes pioneers and people to assume that risk and put it out and let the market decide, regardless of the outcome, people will learn from that decision. And I think also how people responded to this is a reflection of the future. Three years ago, if I would have done this, I probably would have just been ridiculed on every single news platform. Sure, it would have been too early. Right. And that was not the case here. Obviously, you had your haters, people that are sitting at home on Twitter just hating. But it wasn't that bad. It was overly very optimistic. And like I said, I can't give out names but i also know with my

conversations with jack the amount of people that have hit him up since then i'm hoping i'm hoping that we're gonna be you know make this yeah you know it's interesting i always kind of talked about uh a lot of people do like michael saylor is this one thing right like he's this inspirational figure he raised debt to buy Bitcoin. Like half the market cap of his company is basically Bitcoin now. He's all in Bitcoin on a level. And then you have Jack from Square and Twitter

is like slowly getting in. And then you have Tesla who sold a little, but kept most. I think those are the models we're going to see, but you're like Michael Saylor. You know, but I think that I'm models we're going to see, but you're like Michael Saylor. Yeah. You know, but I think that I'm assuming I can't just judging us. Most people who come in as athletes are going to do the 25 or 50% or 10%.

Wouldn't you say? Yeah. Yeah. I was pretty vocal about not, you know, saying a hundred percent is suitable for every person. Right. Um, that was something that I assumed and, uh, the risk and, and was okay with it. And also I'm, I'm cool with volatility and I, yeah, I think it's going to be probably lower, lower scale. Um, you know, they're also making more money. A lot of those guys are a lot of people in the league,

you know, make higher, have higher paying, uh, higher paying uh contracts so um if they don't have i mean what's more conviction not having the money and going league minimum like me and going 100 or somebody not understanding enough to put maybe 10 million but they want to put five yeah it's a good that's a good debate but regardless either way you know regardless i think you know people are going to be to, to do it on some scale and it's gonna be cool. So is football going to be fully back next year? Like do they fill in the stadiums you think? And I think, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think it's, um, it's looking like that, like with, um,

you know, the dissemination of the vaccine and people like, I don't, I don't know if the teams are going to mandate it. I know they're not mandating players, but like if they're going to mandate fans, you know, I know the Superbowl, you had to be vaccinated. Um, but we'll see, man. Um, also I hate to have to do this, but in two and a half minutes, I have a meeting with the chiefs and we have a team meeting. I know we're like on the pod and tell Patrick and Travis. I said, hi, I will. I will for sure. Listen, where can everybody keep up with you and follow your progress? Yeah. So Twitter, Kalkin 22, Instagram, Kalk 80.

And yeah, those are the two platforms I'm most. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for doing this. I always like to ride people right to their hard stop. So I'll let you go and do more important things and talk to me. But this is really inspiring. And I hope that you're not the last, you know, that a lot of people do what you're doing, because I think it's extremely important and really a great example. Hey, Scott, thanks for having me on. It's been a great time. And yeah, we'll talk soon. Speak soon.