The Wolf Of All Streets - Ran Neuner: Losing Over $100 Million With Luna Helped Me Reevaluate My Life | Crypto Banter

Episode Date: July 31, 2022

What does it feel like to lose over $100,000,000 in two days? Ran Neuner, the founder of Crypto Banter, talks about how he built the first crypto show on TV, what makes Crypto Banter different, his record losses on Luna and UST, and how he 10x’d his business in a bear market. This is inspiring stuff - a must-listen for anyone who trades crypto markets. JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER 📩 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR ►►This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. This stuff is incredible, and I start every day with it. It’s just one scoop in a cup of water each morning, and you get 75 high-quality vitamins, whole-food sourced ingredients, probiotics, and adaptogens to help you start your day right. Right now, Athletic Greens will give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/MELKER. I can't recommend this enough! Episode Links: Ran Neuner Twitter: https://twitter.com/cryptomanran/ Crypto Banter: https://www.cryptobanter.com/ Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/ FOLLOW SCOTT MELKER • Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets • Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io • Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3FASB2c SHOW NOTES 00:00 Intro 00:15 A note from our sponsor Athletic Greens 00:25 Introducing Ran Neuner 01:27 The 1st TV show on Crypto Markets 10:16 Youtube Crypto Shills 12:00 Live, 24-7 Credible Crypto Streaming 13:37 What is Banter? 20:34 A note from our sponsor Athletic Greens 26:58 Losing 9 figures in 1 Day on Luna 32:02 How Crypto Banter 10x’d in a Bear Market 41:10 Thanks for watching

this podcast is brought to you by athletic greens please stay tuned for more information on this amazing company later in the episode this is one of the rare conversations that left me absolutely speechless and also left all of the people sitting in the episode. This is one of the rare conversations that left me absolutely speechless and also left all of the people sitting in the room speechless. Rand Nooner gave us a very, very honest appraisal of how he lost over nine figures in a matter of days on Luna, how he recovered from that and has been reinvigorated and re-inspired to build back even bigger. This is an inspirational conversation that you cannot miss. All righty, what are we talking about?

I don't know, what do you want to talk about? When is it coming out? I thought you were hosting me. Okay, cool. When is this actually coming out? Sometime in the next few months, so we don't talk about Bitcoin price. So we should keep it much more broad.

Yeah, I know what I want to talk to you about. All right, cool. This is what I want to talk to you about. All right, cool. This is what I want to talk to you about. Yeah. Building a media company in this very niche industry with incredible levels of nuance and... So do me a favor. Let's do it, but dig in.

Like, don't be scared. Like, dig into the fad, dig into the hate, dig into the... Like, let rip, bro. If you're going to do it, let's do it. Okay, well, first of all, you had the first television show probably in the world on mainstream media that was crypto-specific

on CNBC in South Africa, correct? You saw the light somewhere along the line that this is what you wanted to do. No, absolutely not. It didn't actually work like that at all. So history, long story short, I built an advertising and media business. It was the biggest advertising and media business on the whole African continent. I had 1,551 people work for me the day I sold it.

I remember because I had to get a staff manifest. We had 79 offices across the African continent, which I know to someone in the States sounds like, oh, you had 79 offices. But that's in the States where there's roads and streets and planes. In Africa, like some of the offices you can't even get to. So we had a very big linear business. And one day I decided that I don't want to work in a linear business anymore and I sold the business and then I discovered blockchain and crypto and I went down this rabbit hole of exponential thinking and blockchain and crypto and networks and in 2015-2016 which is when this was happening

there was no information at all about crypto so like now it's like you have a whole lot of youtubers and you have written channels. But in those days, there was nothing. Coindesk had something and there was Bitcoin magazine, which was something. But if you wanted live information, it just didn't exist. And so to be honest, I wasn't even thinking of doing a show. I just went to meet a friend of mine at CNBC. We spoke about something completely different different i tried to get him onto ypo which of which i'm a member and he said what are you doing i said look i'm exploring this thing called blockchain and i showed it to him he's like yeah i like bitcoin and i know about bitcoin he says you know you

should go and talk to people at cnbc he's a director of cnbc go and talk to people at cnbc and maybe they'll be interested in it. So at this point, I've never done TV. I'm not even thinking TV. So I go to CNBC. I explain Bitcoin and blockchain to the production manager, who's a lovely lady.

And she says to me, everybody has that moment when the penny drops. And I could just see that when she got it, I drew it for her. When she got it, her eyes lit up, and she said, we have to have a show about this. I was like, cool, guys. Have a show.

That's amazing. Enjoy. Enjoy, yeah. Just phone me if you need anything. And then she said, no, no, no. You're doing the show. And I was like, OK, but I don't do TV. She said, you know what? cool, let's try it.

She said, I said, cool, let's try to do a three-minute show on Power Lunch or on whatever. Let's just do a three-minute Bitcoin segment. She goes, no, no, no. This is a weekly show. It's 30 to 60 minutes, and it's live. And I was like, hold on a second. I've never done TV before. You want me to do live TV?

I said, okay, we can do it, but not live. And we negotiated, and we said, okay, we can do it, but not live. And we negotiated and we said, okay, let's try. So long story short, CNBC's got a lot of great production staff, but none of them know anything about crypto. Zero. Zero. So we have this dry run

the first week and the show is an absolute mess. It's an absolute mess. And then the next week, I said, you know what not i've got an idea and i said i phoned all anyone that i knew in blockchain and crypto i phoned brock pierce and i phoned spencer bogart and a whole lot of other people that i'd met at conferences people who were my friends and i said at five o'clock on or ten o'clock on this day i'm gonna phone you via zoom answer the phone and we're gonna speak about crypto you're gonna be live on cnbc and we started

the first cnbc crypto show now i'll give you some of the footage just so that you can show it i remember watching it yeah and it was the worst i was first of all i was so bad i was so bad i was like i was like trying to read this teleprompter and it was like you could see my face moving i was really bad but so we did that and we posted the show online and my wife actually called me the next morning and we posted online i was oblivious to youtube and we're just on a show on tv cnbc's tv is not online and we were in africa it's like it's not cnbc usa it's cnbc on the continent of africa my wife phoned me the next morning that was a and she said to me did you advertise a youtube show because my wife was in social media at the time i said i didn't even know it was on My wife phoned me the next morning, and she said to me, did you advertise the YouTube show?

Because my wife was in social media at the time. I said, I didn't even know it was on YouTube. I didn't even know they posted the shit on YouTube. She said, you should go look at the views. I was like, okay. And I don't remember the number of views, but it was like 25,000, which was like, that was big. And my wife said to me, she said, you know what?

You actually may be onto something here. And then newspapers started to phone me and PR companies started to phone me and started to pitch me interviews. And I was like, wow, hold on. And then we realized that we actually started the world's first and only televised crypto show. And we ran that show from 2017 until lockdown. And it was amazing. It was the world's only televised crypto show. Up until today, there isn't a televised crypto show in the world.

And I mean, it's something that I'm very, very, very proud of. But we can talk maybe about some of the problems that I had when I was at CNBC. Go ahead. So first of all, I want to say I love CNBC. They're a great bunch of people and they have a great business and it's an international business. But as a crypto person, I had three fundamental problems with CNBC.

The first thing about CNBC is crypto people love the fact that CNBC is talking about crypto. But they will never do what CNBC says. And in fact, if they're going to do anything, they're going to do the opposite. So they don't trust, there's no trust on CNBC's coverage of crypto. Second thing about CNBC is, it's probably the same as all media. You're encouraged to not have an opinion. You're encouraged to be a puppet who asks the right questions and reads off scripts. And look,

I'm not a trained journalist. And I definitely have an opinion. And anyone that knows me will tell you that when I have an opinion, I'm always the first to voice the opinion. Like, I'm... No holds barred. What you see is what you get. Yeah, of course. And the third thing is that I felt that CNBC

was very much like an old kind of media. And when I say old kind of media, it was always in a studio, people wearing suits and ties. It's kind of like an unspoken rule that you're either wearing a jacket and a collared shirt or you're wearing a tie. And then I'm like, crypto people don't want that. They want you to be who you are. And so it didn't work for me. And then the other things that, and I get it, CNBC is very scared of scams. And there are tons and when I was in CNBC, there were thousands of scams purporting that CNBC is starting a fund and stuff like that

and please invest and people asked a lot of money that I don't really at the time they didn't really like us having telegram groups the word community didn't really work very well and so when lockdown happened we took the show off air because the notion

of doing a show in a three-bedroom apartment in New York with three kids while you're locked down and a webcam just didn't feel right at the time. Now it's like, now you can do a show from anywhere. But now you can do that. Yeah, but at the time, it's just like, you know, I used to go to studios and get makeup done, and now it's like three kids running around and, you know,

facing the bed, or do I face the fireplace, or where exactly do I face? So and facing the bed. Or do I face the fireplace? Or where exactly do I face? So we stopped the show. And we were in the middle of a bear market. And I just thought, let me just try something. I wanted to start a 24-7, 365 live crypto streaming radio. It was supposed to be radio. And the reason why I did it was because I found a need. And the need was a very simple need. The need was 24-7, 365, things are happening

in the crypto market. But where do I go if I want to understand what's happening in less than 20 minutes? Now, in a traditional world, no problem. Switch on Bloomberg, switch on CNBC, put on CNN. Within 20 minutes, you got your fix. You know exactly what's going on in the markets, right? Crypto, all that doesn't exist. If I said to you, Scott, right now, this minute, where do you go? You want to know what's happening in the crypto markets right now. Where do you go? I mean, I go to Twitter. Okay, Twitter, but you got a million people. But you have to already have that network built on Twitter. You have to know exactly who to follow. If you're an average person, there's literally nowhere to go. 90%

of Twitter is a shitshow and bad. Correct. So Twitter's out. You could go to Telegram, but I don't know about you, but if you ever try to swim in Telegram groups... Oh my gosh. 99% scammed. I don't even open my Telegram because I'm scared it will explode.

I don't open my Telegram. So the question is, the man on the street who wants to switch on something 24-7, 365, he has three options, Twitter, Telegram, or he can go to YouTube. Problem with YouTube is that YouTube, 95% of channels are paid. So people either invest with strings attached.

So invest with strings attached. So invest with strings attached. I will let you invest in my project if you shill my token on your platform. Or they have paid token reviews. Now, the problem with that is that the minute that someone gets paid to shill, you never know whether what he's talking about is true or whether it's actually paid to shill. So you never know. You never know that. And so the problem is that you've got nowhere

where you can get live streaming 24-7 credible crypto content. It just doesn't exist. And crypto people want their hands to be held and to be guided through this maze. They don't want CNBC-type journalism where people just ask the right questions. They actually want to be... I thought, look, let me just go and be myself and just tell people what I do and tell

people how I do it. And the reason why I did it was because it forced me to focus on the news every single day. So I've got terrible ADD. So that means I can't focus for long periods of time, as you well know. And I need quick information. And I need someone to keep me focused. And what keeps me focused is I know that every day at 10 a.m. EST, I've got a show. And I know that on that show, I've got to deliver the best, best, best information. And for me to do that means I've got to be reading and sifting through tons and tons and tons of information. As I mentioned to you, before I do my show every single day, I've listened to eight hours of podcasts, eight hours of news podcasts. I know exactly what's happening. And it's very hard to floor me around what's

happening. I've got a full research team behind me, 60 people in an organization that feed me research every single day. And so what we're building, we're building live, 24-7, 365, credible crypto streaming. And the objective is that we want to be the one place where you can switch it on, and you know that within 20 minutes, no matter what time of day or night, you will have a credible view on the crypto markets. And when shit's going down, we'll cover that for you live. When there's an interest rate decision, we're always live. When Powell's speaking, we do a live broadcast.

You watch it with our community. Interesting stat. Powell was speaking about interest rates one or two cycles ago, and there was a stream, the actual Powell stream, you know the one that... Yeah. And they had like, I don't know, like 14,000 people watching it live. And we streamed their stream on CryptoBank, and we had 19,000 people watching us live. So we haded their stream on CryptoBank and we had 19,000 people watching us live.

So we had more people than PalStream sitting and watching our stream. And all I was doing was just watching and occasionally commenting. And we just had this, like a great viewing party. And so that's what we want to build. We want to build a live, credible, 24-7, 365 crypto streaming platform,

which is completely authentic. We are who we are. We tell you exactly what we trade, like it or not. We have, like, do we tell people if we think it's irresponsible? Like, there's sometimes, I'm an irresponsible guy. I like risk. I'm irresponsible.

I do some things that I invest, maybe sometimes too much in small caps. I came on your show and you told me you were all in Luna a couple months ago. And I was. And not even because of Luna. I was ago. And I was. And I was. And I was. And I blew myself up. I was. I blew myself up. I blew 50% of my portfolio up as a result of that stupidity, which you warned me against, right? But that's the whole thing about banter. Banter is a reality show. It's a crypto reality show. And through

being authentic and who we are and telling everybody too much and giving everybody our life stories and showing how my partner Sheldon came from being a carpenter to being a success story and how we found a gamer called Hustle and he's now got his own show. And we're building this amazing community. We've built a community all around the world, which is one of the biggest and statistically the most loyal community, we've built a community all around the world, which is one of the biggest and statistically the most loyal community, crypto community in the world. And we run this crypto reality show, which is, it's not 24-7 yet. It's about five hours a day now.

But we're heading towards 24-7 now. And when the market needs it, we have the systems and processes. We can go to 24-7 tomorrow. Right, and Sheldon will show up five hours at a time. Sheldon trades for five hours at a time. Sheldon's an atkins, but he'll trade for five hours at a time. So that's what we're building. That's why we're building it.

That's the backstory of pretty much how we got here. And I'll go, obviously, and watch your streams. And the numbers for crypto are astounding. Like you said, 15,000 people watching at a time, 20,000 people. It's crazy. And frankly, now, I was shocked recently when I saw how much viewership Fox and CNN have. But it's only a few hundred thousand people a day. So it's actually very close to you becoming a mainstream media.

But how do we now go from 15,000 to 150,000 people? People watch guys play video games live, millions of people at a time. So I think you hit the nail on the head there. What we found is that we've got a mixed reality show, real reality show, unscripted, unprepared, with crypto content. And so what we recently piloted, which was really successful, was Sheldon. Sheldon trades a lot. Sheldon is a trader. That's what he does. He trades a lot. And we had an idea to just switch the cameras on. So just don't do anything different. Just switch the cameras on. So what Sheldon does is he hosts a call. Not a call. He wants to trade. So he jumps onto Zoom with another friend of his that's trading.

He says, look, I'm about to trade. Do you want to chat? So they're both trading and they're both chatting. And then the third and the fourth and the fifth. And sometimes those calls are up to 10 people. And they're all trading the same things or maybe slightly different things. But they're trading them on like 15-minute charts, like stupid stuff. Really trading.

And on leverage, like 10x leverage, 15-minute charts, stop loss within 1.5% of entry point. Like that kind of shit. And we had an idea. Just switch on the camera. Don't talk to the audience. Don't explain what you're doing. Just be who you guys are.

That's like unboxing videos and people playing video games and people watching them. The difference with those things is that they're done with an audience in mind. So when you unbox, you show... This is like, ignore the fucking camera. And we saw we had 15,000 people watching that live. And they stayed on for five hours. No one

logged off. No one logged off for five hours. And it was so addictive that I was watching this i got onto a plane to i got onto a plane i lost internet and the minute i landed the first thing i wanted to do was like who's in the trade who's not because they kept missing trades because you know one guy gets filled another guy doesn't get filled because he's behind him and it there's a lot of excitement in it so we're bringing this absolute authenticity. And we are, listen, everyone's like, how dare you trade leverage in front of people?

I was going to say it doesn't come without risk and criticism, right? We prefer to be authentic. And if we're doing it, then you should know about it. And yes, we'll warn you that leverage is dangerous, but we're not doing this for the cameras. Seriously, we're not doing this for the cameras. We're doing this because this is who we are. So, like, people say to me on my show, like, are you sure you want to do that?

Are you sure you want to say that? I'm like, that's me. I'm being authentic. Like, people say to me, deny your lunar losses. Don't tell the community how much money you lost on lunar. I was like, no, but that's not authentic. The community must know why I'm down. The community must know that I was irresponsible and I got wiped.

The community must know that I'm resilient enough and I'm standing up and I'm fighting back with more vigor than I've ever had in my life. And that becomes a bit of an inspiration to people. Because that's the days of our lives. And that's what I did. It's not a scripted show. It is what it is. End of story. And the one thing that we've realized, you know this, there's no better truth checkers in the world than crypto Twitter. Because if you sneeze the wrong way, they will find it. They will find it. If you sneeze the wrong way six years ago, they will find it. They will find it.

And so the problem with being unauthentic, inauthentic, I'm not sure what the right word is, but the problem with not being authentic is that they will catch you out. And so we think that the best approach is just live your life and switch the camera on and just be who you are and stop worrying about how the audience perceive it. And if they like it, they like it. And if they don't, they don't. And that's truly how I feel about the station.

We are DJs. We sometimes do irresponsible things. And if you like it, great. And if you don't like it, well, tough luck. Don't watch another station. You're not for us. The reason why I bring that up is because I know that you had a bit of a hard time. And one of the things that you did was decided not to do small cap alts anymore.

We thought of doing the same thing. We thought maybe the responsible strategy is not to do small cap alts.. We thought of doing the same thing. We thought maybe the responsible strategy is not to do small cap alts. No, fuck it. If you can't handle what we do, I have fun trading small cap alts in the bull market. In the bear market, I don't have fun. In the bull market, I love trading small cap alts. I do too, by the way. I just don't talk about it. Well, you see, I don't want to think about it. I am who I am. I'm an open book. That's it. And so I don't want to change my approach. I would rather just change my audience and say,

you know what, if you don't want to watch small cap holds, if you're a Bitcoin maxi, don't watch. And if you want to watch this to torture yourself, that's also cool. But we are who we are. It's authentic. It's honest and it's authentic. It's unscripted. We open up. We show people our lives. We give our lives to people. We come in on weekends. We stream on weekends, etc. That is who we are. And if you're part of that, great. And if you're not part of that, cool. That's also cool. There's, you know, nature, there's space for bees and for wasps. You know, it's it's interesting. And I think we all go through these sort of struggles. You less, obviously, because I think you just know what you are and what you want to do of what's appropriate to share does that mean you have to start thinking about the content that will appeal to grandma somewhere who's going to eventually be into crypto? We are who we are.

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You know this, you know the checks that you get. You know the check that you get every month from YouTube. We do it for fun. Now I do it also because we've built an amazing community and I feel a servant leader responsibility to the community. I kind of feel that I've built a bunch of, a community of a bunch of DJs worldwide.

Everywhere I go, I mean, when I was on the plane here, the air stewards all recognized me. When I went through the customs at Newark, the guy was smiling and he stamped my passport. He asked me a lot of questions. I thought, shit, what have I done? And then as soon as he gave me the passport back he said to me just one question i said to him what he said i'm still holding litecoin what do you think i was like i was like uh let me tell you what i think about litecoin and so it's like i pretty much

realized that i got into a cab in london the other day and you know the cab driver don't really speak and it's funny like the guy said to me, you're Ray Nuna, right? And I was like, yeah. He says, cool. He says, I used to watch your show. Used to? Yeah.

And so I said, well, tell me, why don't you watch anymore? He ripped me apart. And I was like, I can't actually thank you enough for telling me what you just told me. What did he say? He ripped me apart. He said he got carried out.

We weren't clear enough in terms of some low caps about how risky it was, and he got in at the top, and we didn't tell him that he shouldn't be buying the pump. We did. In most cases, we did. He just didn't listen. And also, that's the thing. You tweet one thing, you tweet another thing, they see one of the tweets, they don't see one of the other tweets, and it means you never did it.

I've come to a point now where I'm tired of what i walked on eggshells and to be honest like i saw you you were attacked and when you were attacked i saw the attack that happened to you and i don't know if you remember but i defended you yes every time we weren't even we weren't even like real friends and i remember i just saw because i know how hard you work and i know i know how hard you work and i know how unnecessarily you were attacked and also know how the mob of twitter works and so i jumped in and i protected you but i also watched so i was watching what worked and what didn't and i don't even know if you remember this but you did something you said something to me, one sentence, and that one sentence saved me a lot. When I met you at Bitcoin 2021, I met you and Emmy backstage.

I don't know if you remember. Of course. We spoke about the attack that happened to you, and I said to you— It was very fresh. Yeah, and you said to me, you lost a couple of pounds, and I said to you, so what happened? You said, I went live on a Twitter spaces on a channel. And you said to me, and then you said, people just let it all out. And then it was just back to business, right? Yeah.

And I don't know to you, that was, you're just telling me the story, but to me, we got attacked. And immediately the switch that went off in my head was, okay, what you need to do is you need to go live. You need to let them throw everything at you, and then it'll be clean. And so that's exactly what I did. We were attacked on the Friday. On the Sunday night, I went live.

And then Monday morning, it was back to business as usual. And so these are the things that you go through. You know this as a content creator. It's the hardest thing in the world. What I find extremely, extremely demotivating, almost sometimes to the point, to break point. I've been very close to break point a couple of times. We do things in good faith.

Yes, we are running a business. Yes, as a business, we have bills to pay. And constantly, I think we have the highest level of ethics in the industry. Okay? Up until a long time ago, we never had one sponsor. Now we have sponsors, but we insist that they are highlighted in red. It's red. It's not even like green.

It's fucking flashing red. Station sponsor. We don't do paid token reviews. We never accept money for paid token reviews we never accept money for paid tweets we never accept money for mentions in articles we never accept money for mentions we don't accept money for exposure unless you're a station sponsor and then what you're buying is you're buying a logo on the screen and maybe the opportunity to give a special offer but that's clearly disclosed right we're one of the only guys that have never accepted, we never accept investment in return for a shill. So in other words, we will let you invest in a round that is closed

if you shill. We don't do that shit. We're not those people. We actually, to the point where now we actually even give every project a document that says, look, you've allowed us to invest and you know that we probably won't talk about your thing and that there's no link between the channel and the fund and et cetera.

We give them a document to sign, so it's not unclear, because otherwise it can be unclear. So we give everything. We overshare information. I overshare the size of my positions. I overshare how I'm feeling. I work like a dog,

and I work like a dog with the responsibility of the community on my shoulders. Like I know when I enter a trade, I know that I'm not entering on my own. I know that I'm entering with a lot of people. Which is monumental. And sometimes trades go wrong because even the best traders go wrong. Luna went wrong. Luna went very wrong and just think about luna i lost more money on luna than anyone i ever know has ever lost in a day personally okay over nine figures huge numbers and so one is don't know how you would feel if you lost nine figures in a day and lost 50% of your portfolio in a day. Helpless. Nothing you could do about it.

It was all staked. There's a 21-day unstaked. You couldn't even get it out. Well, now in hindsight, what I could have done was I could have gone to FTX Perpetual and I could have shorted Luna on the Perpetual. You could have hedged. Oh, my God. Well, at the time.

Size. Size. I probably couldn't have done it. So I could have done but yeah so i could have done so got i mean the feeling that i had with luna was it's the worst feeling i've ever had in my life it was i mean i never thought about suicide but at that point i could understand why some people commit suicide the biggest failure got home morbid couldn't think i i can't even imagine that's what it feels like to lose a loved one. That's how bad it was.

It was a lot of money. It's not only that you lose money because money comes and money goes, but it's the ability, it's the plans that you had with that money, the confidence that you had because you had the money, the expansion plans

because you always knew you had the backstop. Now you don't have it anymore. The story ends very well though. So I lost it. I lost it over two days. Day one, I lost half. Day two, I lost. I talked to you on the phone and you said, I lost $70 million since I talked to you. It was even more. Yeah. I don't want to talk about numbers, but let's just say it was nine figures. And also when I lost it, I didn't actually realize that I also lost my UST and I also lost my ecosystem development because at the time I was so focused on Luna that I didn't actually realize that I also lost my UST and I also lost my ecosystem development because at the time I was so focused on Luna that I didn't actually look

at like Astroport, the DEXs, the Metaverses. I didn't look at that shit. And then, you know, we have a weekly, we have a daily call and in the daily call the guy said look, this is the portfolio today and I was like, what the fuck happened here? Like Bitcoin's down because Luna smashed Bitcoin.

Luna's gone your ust is now worth nine cents in the dollar you know and all my dry powder was on anchor because it was safe just a risk-free 20 it was risk-free of course it's totally no risk yeah so i realized how much money i've lost and you have zero motivation at that point like that's more money than i've ever made in my life and more money than most people will ever make in their lives or ever see in their lives and that was my the money i was planning on giving to my kids and that was the money that i was planning on family holidays for the rest of our lives and i know how it's just gone it's just gone just gone

and so and the whole office saw this so you, you now have a team of 60 people who are completely demotivated because the leader is, I mean, it was a big knock. It was as simple as that. I mean, my assistant, who's very close to me, she's new, but she's very close to me. And, like, I remember looking at her and thinking to myself, she's probably going to want to leave because she wants to work for me because I've just lost everything. And then what happened was I had probably a two- or three-day pity party. That took me into the weekend. The weekend I switched off my phone completely.

I didn't look at crypto Twitter once. I didn't look at – oh, so just to go one step backward, made it a million times worse. Just think of all that falling onto your shoulders. And then you go into crypto Twitter. You got attacked right when that happened. And then you get attacked. You know, at one point I thought to myself, let me go look in the mirror and just make sure that I'm not Doquan. Because people are blaming this whole collapse on me like people are

blaming crypto man ran you showed it to me there were tweets going around going who got you into luna and then i mean i know i got a lot of people into there because i really believed in it because i was in it that's part of the authenticity and so what you get is you get it's the worst day of your life regardless and to the point where I thought, I remember sitting thinking, at what point does your body actually collapse? Like at what point of heartache and pain and pressure and stress does your body actually shut?

I remember saying, like, is this actually gonna, is my body gonna shut down? Because I don't know how much more you can take. And then you switch on Twitter and then there's an attack. And it's not one attack, it's millions of attacks. And then you switch on Twitter, and then there's an attack. And it's not one attack. It's millions of attacks. And then it's, I did. I made a stupid tweet.

When I saw Luna depeg and Luna went down to $10, I thought, I posted a tweet and I said, look, Luna's either, I don't remember exactly how the tweet went, but it's either Luna's going to zero or this is the cheapest you're ever going to be able to buy it. And that tweet now went, because 10 minutes later, Luna went to one. And you were the irresponsible guy who was shilling the time. And then it was, you know, everybody took the tweet. And then at that point, I guess I got to my, it wasn't a very low point, but it was the lowest point.

I switched off my phone for a weekend, and I spent time with the family, and I just didn't want to read Twitter, and I didn't want to know about prices, and I just, and then the most incredible thing happened to me i got back to work on monday i had my pity party i picked up the pieces and then i started to i got this i don't know if it's hormonal or something but i got this hunger that i haven't had since i was 18 years old and the hunger is

I started to see my own ability and my own wealth as a chart and I said okay so what I did was I hit a higher high and then I went down but it was a it was a higher low so I was still at a higher low I still I still even after that I still had more money than in the beginning of the of the bull market so like I'm still and I just thought, my next point, obviously, is a higher high. And I thought, okay, so I got into this laser focus. It's almost like something took over inside me and said, it was not conscious. Consciously, I tapped out. Consciously, I was like, look, I'm going to work.

I'll work. I've got enough money. I'll work. Butciously, I was like, look, I'm going to work. I don't need to. I'll work. I've got enough money. I'll work. But I don't actually feel like working. I don't feel like rebuilding. I've built businesses before. I don't care about building businesses again.

Something inside me took over and basically I became laser focused on the business. And what I realized was that I was making so much money on investments that I wasn't nurturing the business. Because it's like, if you're making $10 million on investments and you're making $1 million in the business. It seems like it's nothing. It's like the business is fine and the money is actually there. Anyway, so that now collapsed.

I mean, I still have a reasonable size crypto profit. I'm not at zero. I'm lucky I didn't get to zero. But I then started to be laser-focused in my business, and then something incredible happened. First of all, the business is like 10x in a bear market because now it's out of necessity and out of hunger. And not only is it hunger, but it's the biggest hunger

that I've ever had since I was 18 years old. And I've done some amazing shit in my life, and this is the most hunger that I've ever had. When that happened, the staff became absolutely motivated about being part of this business. And I had staff that actually resigned, and they wrote me an email and said, look, we retract, we want to stay. Sure. And the momentum of the business completely started to you're talking

about you're not talking about matter of weeks you're talking about like two weeks and and everything turns and now i'm operating a with the hunger that i haven't operated in my life with the clarity that i haven't operated with a motivated team that I haven't seen in years and years and years, and with results that are growing exponentially every single day in a bear market. And I just realized that I reckon that in two months, if we keep this momentum, I would have built more value in our business than the money that I lost on Luna. And so you want to talk about a silver lining

is that I think that actually what happened, it's not a good thing, but I actually think that there's... If I could go back and you said to me, look, the outcome is going to be either X or Y. You're either going to have a huge Luna bag, but you're going to have that business but you're going to have that business, or you're going to have that business and no lunar bag.

And you took me to the end point and eliminated all the emotions. I think I would have taken this option. I think I would have taken this option. Like, you know, we now, we had a call this morning where the guy, one of the financial guys said, he said, you know, I actually think that the business has grown in value by X, Y, Z. I'll give you one example just because you know this. In this hype and momentum, we launched, someone said, our sponsorship guy ran out of things to sell

because he just, he got so good that he ran out of things to sell because he just you got you got so good that he ran out of shit to sell said look guys i'm running out of shit to sell why don't you start a newsletter for me i was like okay well he wants to write a newsletter okay kyle you like charts you write the newsletter so we wrote a newsletter a newsletter is very simple it's five five trades every single day but it's got to be trades so don't we don't want we don't want waffle waffle five trades

no bullshit five trades so we launched it it's five trades every single day within a week it's got 30,000 subscribers it's a week old you know what the value is

of a newsletter that has 30,000 subscribers in a week that took me years to accomplish it is of a newsletter that has 30 000 subscribers in a week took me years to accomplish it took us a week we're on 30 000 subscribers one week 30 000 subscribers the best thing is the guys gave me like the open rate and like the open rate is like one third like one third of the people that get the thing actually open the newsletter like it's very high i was like whoa, where am I having more fun? Building this monster business, which is effectively the best ride I've ever had in my life,

or building a bag of Luna? I would have liked to have both, but to be honest, I'm going there. I absolutely love it, and it's inspiring because I think that you could have gone down a very different path. And I can tell you that nobody knows that there's people watching when we film this. You know, we've got a crew here, but everybody usually is checking their phones and looking elsewhere. But in this case, everybody was riveted listening to the story.

So I think it's a testament to how incredible that is. And I know that those are fresh wounds. Yeah, it's all sets. This isn't like something that happened 10 years ago. And you know what? I think it's... I think everybody's going to take losses in their lives. And I thought... I got to a point where I didn't really care about taking losses.

I made money before and I had money. The rest is just fun. The rest is you're playing with the casino's money. Really, it's like playing with the casino's money. But when I took a big loss, I took a massive loss. It's huge. And I think that a lot of people are inspired by the way that I handled them. I've got a lot of people that said, look,

people are walking to me here in the street. We all lost money on Luna, but we're in this together and you're bringing us back. You're taking us back. You're carrying us back. You're helping us. And so, yeah, going back to it, I now feel like I'm a servant leader to the community.

I certainly don't own the community because the community is way bigger than me. There's meetups, banter meetups that happen all over the world and banter fam and, you know, people have sent me plans to build a banter house. And we don't touch any of this.

You want to do it, you guys do it. But I think that they look up to what I've done and how I've handled it, and I think it's inspired a lot of people. And that's a great lesson for me. I learned it. We're talking a month ago. A month ago, I took the biggest knock in my life. i can tell you today i'm the happiest man out there like i am so motivated can't tell you bro just this new energy which i didn't have and it's so much fun having this

energy it's like i want to work harder and i want to like i want to meet more people and i want to go to more conferences and i want to i want to build new shows and it's i just want to meet more people, and I want to go to more conferences, and I want to build new shows. And I just want to do more and more and more. And I wouldn't have had that if I just kept making passive money. It's weird. Absolutely lovable. Thank you, man, for sharing that story. I watched the show, but I never heard you sort of express it in this manner. So I appreciate you doing that here.

And hopefully we'll see those nine figures returning rapidly on the next one. I must say, as I've said to you a million times before, I love your channel. I'm a big viewer of the channel. I watch it. I think your long-form stuff is absolutely, absolutely insane. And I know that sometimes it does get a bit demotivating with all the attacks and all the limitations that you have to put in yourself but don't let them get to you because that's i think the service and the value that you're adding i think you went through

a point where i don't know what it was maybe it was also when you got attacked where you upped your game like something happened where you were doing something something something and you went you did that. I think you started to get bigger guests on your show. You started asking them more deeper questions. To be frank, I was on the verge of quitting. Yeah. Same.

I was on the verge that it kind of wasn't worth it, and I said, actually, if I'm going to do it, we're going to go a lot bigger. I went the other way. I mean, I might say it worked. You started getting people like SPF on your show. You started getting real big interviews. That might have something to do with my... Yeah, you've got a great team. You've got a great team. But I'm saying listen, first of all, don't stop. Second of all,

I know sometimes it doesn't reflect in the immediate numbers and the immediate gratitude, but I can tell you that the value that you bring is 10 out of 10 appreciate it thank you brother next time uh we're gonna eat less barbecue though thank you so much for listening to this episode if you haven't already left a rating or a review on apple podcasts or spotify please do that now spotify just added rating so please go ahead and

click that five star i'll see you guys next time.