We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC069: Bitcoin Retirement Planning & Self Custody w/ Parker Lewis & Jeff Vandrew

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the podcast where we're talking about Bitcoin. Back by popular demand, we have the one and only Parker Lewis, and he's joined with Jeff Van Drew, who's an expert in retirement planning for self-custody Bitcoin. During the show, we cover a lot of topics to include their thoughts on the legal framework that's currently being constructed around Bitcoin, why self-custody is so important based on all the world events that are currently happening, we talk about IRA planning, and much, much more. So without further delay, here's my chat with Parker and Jeff.

Starting point is 00:00:36 You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. Like we said in the introduction, I'm here with Parker Lewis and Jeff Van Drew. Guys, welcome to the show. Great to be here.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Yeah, good to see you, Preston, and good to be back on. Yeah, great having you guys. Hey, so this is where I want to start this conversation off. We've had news of epic proportions. Lynn Alden had this tweet today that I just found just so on point. And this is what she tweeted out. She said, the difference between assets that are someone else's liabilities and assets that are nobody's liabilities probably got a lot clear to people in recent weeks.

Starting point is 00:01:33 What are your thoughts? Why is that comment so important right now and just help educate us on? your points of view on what's happening in the world right now. I'll take a start, but I'd love for Jeff to hop in too, is we talk a lot about, not just that unchain, but a lot in the Bitcoin community about counterparty risk. And in the Bitcoin community, there's a saying of not your keys, not your Bitcoin, but really that Lynn Alden quote of talking about assets that are not someone else's liabilities is getting to the heart of that idea of what counterparty risk is.

Starting point is 00:02:11 And that there's also an idea that is that markets have no memory, which as a, you know, somebody who came into my career just before the financial crisis, at that point in time, at least, everyone very much felt and learned the pain of counterparty risk as virtually every bank in the United States, potentially in the world, was on the verge of collapsing. But fast forward, you know, 13 years into Bitcoin, and a lot of people have forgotten that. Markets have no memory. But Bitcoiners and people that are engaged in paying attention to the value proposition of Bitcoin, recognize that that is one of the principal problems that Bitcoin solves, that you can hold your Bitcoin in a way that you are not exposed to the counterparty risk

Starting point is 00:02:59 or the financial risk of a financial institution. And that while I think historically, most people have looked at that risk for the ones paying attention as associated with potential insolvence. And it is that. But it's also far greater than that. And what we've seen in the context of Canada, where normal everyday people for donating to a protest have gotten cut off from their life savings, it's a little bit different than counterparty risk, but the effects are very similar. And now what we're seeing play out in Russia and Ukraine and, and you can agree or disagree with it, but the weaponization of a financial system, you know, normal people in Canada, people in Russia, it's a greater risk that everyone needs to be cognizant of

Starting point is 00:03:45 and that Bitcoin really fixes it. It is a risk, but it's a risk that Bitcoin solves, not because Bitcoin just provides a better form of money, but that you can hold that form of money by holding your own keys. That's core to what we help clients do it unchained, but it's a principal idea that is close to the hearts of many people building around Bitcoin, not just our company. What do you say, Jeff? Well, I don't want to, I mean, everything Parker just said there is obviously incredibly true. So to avoid sort of rehashing anything, the point that I kind of want to emphasize is there may

Starting point is 00:04:17 have been times in the past where you might have felt confident in your property rights in something like a deposit account or a securities account or something along that nature, right? the United States historically has kind of had a long history of respecting those rights. Well, over the past, I'd say roughly maybe two years, you know, we've kind of seen that go out the window. And I would not feel very confident about a court system or government respecting my property law rights because we've sort of devolved into a situation where there's not a particularly strong rule of law remaining anymore. Things are kind of devolving into a friend, enemy distinction. And when you get to that point, you want to have that sort of level of security like you do with, say, Bitcoin when you're holding your own keys or holding those keys hopefully collaboratively with Unchained, where that, those sort of risks are outside of the picture.

Starting point is 00:05:12 You're not left in a position where you have to trust the fact that there will be a continuous rule of law that's not based on sort of what I'm referring to is that friend, enemy distinction. I think so many people just lose sight of the fact that one person's asset on their balance sheet is another person's liability in the first place with respect to debt especially. And when we look at how much of the quote unquote money or what people think is money in the system is debt. And we're seeing firsthand of how, I mean, I don't agree with anything that Russia is doing, point blank, right? And I want to make that clear before I say this next part.

Starting point is 00:05:51 So all their sovereign wealth that had been saved just became optional whether they actually have it or not, whether they continue to hold that if it was in USDA now. In 2018, they sold all this. And I would suggest that this big event that we just are witnessing here in 2022 was probably preconceived and thought up back then whenever they got rid of all these treasuries. But those types of situations where the bank can come in and literally cut them off from the financial system is like Parker alluded to a situation that. that what you thought was yours, you found out, isn't because you don't actually control the, quote unquote, private keys of those units that represent that buying power.

Starting point is 00:06:33 I think Preston kind of to that point, and I actually knew this, but just recently kind of going through creating a new bank account, if you actually read a bank account, it makes it very clear that that is not your money, right? And, you know, kind of set what's happening in Russia or surrounding Russia and the sovereign assets and what other central banks are doing to prevent access. But just think about the individual that in a bank account agreement, it basically says, or technically says in almost all bank account agreements, this is not your money. It's the bank's money and the bank has a liability to you. And that's very functionally what also happens with large financial institutions or that hold reserves with a central bank or potentially a sovereign that

Starting point is 00:07:20 holds reserves with other central banks. And the consequence of that is, it is, and I won't speak necessarily to the case of Russia, but in the case of a deposit with a bank, it is a liability of theirs, right? And what that means is that money is not yours, but everyone thinks of it as their money. And when someone is in that situation, it does expose them then for whatever the reason might be, to be in a position where that could be cut off. And like Jeff was talking about, where historically, we have had very, you know, into varying degrees in different countries, whether it's a strong respect for a rule of law and that that might be degrading, that when people start to understand that, and I like to think of it as someone ever read a bank account agreement that a Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:08:04 address starts to make a lot more sense. Yeah, and just to piggyback on that, since I guess I'm kind of a lawyer on this chat here today, I mean, to clarify and just emphasize, not even clarify, but emphasize what Parker is saying. On a legal basis, when you deposit money in a checking account with your bank, that is not your money. You have actually issued a loan to the bank. It's a payable on demand loan effectively, but that is now the bank's money. The bank has title to your money, and you now have effectively an I owe you for your money. And that's all you have. You have nothing, you have nothing more than that. Most people are under the mistaken belief

Starting point is 00:08:42 that when they're dealing with a bank, that they don't know this term, but what they assume they have is what's called a bailment arrangement. And what a bailment is at law means that's like a storage arrangement. In other words, if I pay you Preston to hold my gold bars for me,

Starting point is 00:08:58 but I retain legal title to that gold, that's my goal. If I have a bailment arrangement with you, I mean, there's a lot of risks there, right? You could run away with my gold. you know, et cetera. But at least if you were to go bankrupt, you don't have title of that asset. So it's not subject to your creditors. With a bank deposit, you don't even have that level of protection. So it's, it really, as Parker said there, I mean, you have next to nothing. Yeah. One of the thing that I just thought of as Jeff was describing that is that kind of

Starting point is 00:09:28 we're talking in the context of the relationship between an individual and a bank and the nature, you know, kind of what people believe to be an asset, not recognizing that the asset is actually different, that it's a loan, but that what's also playing out here is we're talking about the relationship to an individual and financial institution. But because all financial systems have become so centralized, that it's actually the centralization that allows for censorship, weaponization, however you want to think about it. And what I mean by that, it's not necessarily kind of in the Russia instance it is, but then if you think about the people who were having their funds censored or seized in Canada, what effectively happened there was the central

Starting point is 00:10:17 authority went to banks. And the banks don't really have a choice but to go along. And if the system wasn't centralized, that wouldn't necessarily be the case. Yeah, and we're going to see more and more of that. I'd like to point out Canada is a good example. Because as Parker mentions, due to the level of centralization and central banking, what you end up with is a situation where when the government issues an edict like that, banks are forced to fall in lining. They're never going to not comply. You have a much easier time getting a bank to comply than you do a police officer, right? We saw that in Canada, where the police regularly did not want to enforce orders against the truckers. They actually, had to bring in, you know, external police from other places like Toronto to start doing stuff because local police did not want to. They don't have that problem with the banks. The banks will always comply 100% of the time. I think we're going to see that more and more, even though it's actually less effective. Like if you wanted to just do tyranny, it's actually much, let me be clear that I'm not advocating for this for saying it's good. It's much easier just to

Starting point is 00:11:24 lock people up and throw away the key. Because when you, enact, let's say, tyranny on someone through use of financial sanctions, then you're left with like a really angry person with nothing to lose who's still free roaming around on the street, right? And that's a very, very dangerous situation. So the fact that these governments are turning to financial sanctions, which are just objectively less effective in accomplishing what they're trying to do, shows a sort of a level of desperation as well. So I think that's very important to keep in mind because, you know, when things start to get desperate, start to get crazy. Again, that really emphasizes the value there of holding your own keys

Starting point is 00:12:03 with something like Bitcoin. Yeah, I love that point that you're making there. It's easier for them to implement it because they're not having to actually look at the person that they're employing it against. So it's just kind of clacking on some keys and, oh, well, that person's no longer an issue. But in the long term is what you're getting at is that person is still out there and they're very upset. And then they're telling all their family members and it's causing a much bigger long-term problem for the governments that we choose to implement that type of policy over something that's much more enforcement-like. To emphasize one of your points there, too,

Starting point is 00:12:38 it's not just that it's easier because you don't have to look at the person in the eye, but you don't have to filter that directive down, right? Some administrator in an office 30 stories up, it's easy for him to say, like, oh, I want to go after this guy. But if you tell, like, an actual human being, like, oh, you've got to break into your neighbor's house and round them up, You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. You're going to get pushback on that more so than people would think. And that's why we're seeing stuff like financial sanctions, whereas you said, you click a couple

Starting point is 00:13:05 buttons on a keyboard and you just go to Ben, you don't think about it. Yeah. Yeah, I think the whole Canada situation is probably a whole lot easier for people to kind of understand why this is so important than maybe the Russia situation. Because you saw the banking sector weaponized against people who made $50 donations to a political, whether you agree with the politics of what was happening or not, it could have very well been just the opposite of whatever your political belief was that could have been used against you for literally $50.

Starting point is 00:13:37 I mean, to me, that's crazy. And I don't want to get too political on this, but it's really kind of emphasizing a key point, which is not your keys, not your coins, and you have counterparty risk in a system that I think so few have ever experienced in their life. Well, just think about because I think it's also when we kind of get into the technicals about you know, kind of helping people understand that a deposit in the bank is not actually their money, even though the people think that it is. And historically because there have been this strong respect for property rights that

Starting point is 00:14:11 those type of actions were not common historically. It's not to say seizures never happened, but they would generally happen with a, you know, a court order or warrant rather than carte blonde. But then when we abstract up a level, though, and we just think about what money is, setting aside technically a deposit is not someone's money, what it represents is someone's life savings oftentimes. And what that represents is savings in a monetary good is the delta between what you have produced for others and what you have not yet consumed from others.

Starting point is 00:14:50 And that that is the surplus of what essentially you've delivered to other people in your community in terms of work. And to be in a position to just have that zapped and shut off from you from someone in a far off land or a far off city is crazy. Like it is just flat out crazy. And that for people that were paying attention to what happened in Canada, it did wake a lot of people up. And realistically, the media, you know, because propaganda is not just what they cover,

Starting point is 00:15:19 but what they don't cover that, you know, might just memory whole, that whole episode, but that the people that were paying attention learned something, that it was far different, that it was broad-based, and that, like you said, Preston, it was happening to people that just donated, you know, donated to what they believe is a protest. And I love the response that one of the wallet applications, they went back to the government, and I guess they got pinged about their response or the way that they needed to provide the account information for people that had made donations. And they were like, well, sorry, we don't really even know the accounts for any of this stuff. And there's no way for us to even give

Starting point is 00:15:59 it to you. All we do is kind of route digital packets. And that's all we know. So did see Ted Cruz. Not only did he, not only did he read it, but he read it. Yes, I did see that. Out at a conference. And I think the last line was something along the lines of, you should learn about self-custody and private keys, and, you know, when the Canadian dollar is worthless, we'll be here to help you, too. That's how they ended the letter, yeah. And then he read that. It was crazy.

Starting point is 00:16:31 It was crazy for me to see some, an elected official, literally reading that letter at a major event. We've come very far in the last few years. What do you say to a person who is very skeptical of everything we're talking about right now? and they're saying, okay, yeah, you got your private keys, you got your imaginary coins, but you still have to interact with exchanges. And so they can put all of this, they can shut all this down. What would you say to the person who comes to you with that argument?

Starting point is 00:17:02 I'll let Parker take this one first because I have a feeling if I take this one, you might get kicked off your podcast network. So you go, Parker. I'll give the more sanitized version. But, you know, kind of, I guess, building on top of like how crazy it is that a senator like Ted Cruz is, you know, reading out a letter about private keys and self-custody that, you know, Marty Bent went on Tucker Carlson, you know, and regardless of what you think, whatever end of the political spectrum you're at, that after that Canadian episode,

Starting point is 00:17:35 Marty, who runs a Bitcoin podcast, was invited on, and he received a very similar question to that. And then these messages start being broadcast to millions of people, and that it is that if you are working with, if you have your Bitcoin with a custodian or with an exchange, that all of these things that we've been talking about can also happen in the world of Bitcoin, that you can be prevented from accessing your Bitcoin. And that I think that there is a knowledge gap for a lot of people that think whenever they hear that someone was hacked or that someone was prevented from accessing their Bitcoin, that is a signal of a failure of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:18:15 But it really is just a lack of understanding because if people are taking on the responsibility, which there is greater responsibility, with great power comes great responsibility, that there are very low barriers in practicality to being able to hold your own keys to your Bitcoin. And so that the same problems that exist in the legacy world exist in the Bitcoin world so long as you're working with a third party. and that third party holds the keys to your Bitcoin because they, you know, in a similar parallel, they aren't your keys. You know, if you have your Bitcoin with a custodian, oftentimes people

Starting point is 00:18:53 think, oh, they have my keys. No, they are their keys and, you know, there might be varying different legal arrangements. But what that means is you are building all of your security based on a set of principles anchored to permissions. And if you live in that world, then you can be cut off from your lifeblood, which is your money. But if you're holding your own keys in the Bitcoin world, then that is not possible. And Marty did a great job of explaining that on Tucker Carlson. But what that actually means is you are holding keys to Bitcoin, and those keys are what need to be accessed in order to transfer any Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:19:33 And if they are in your possession or you're controlling quorum of keys in a multi-sig, where Bitcoin can either be secured by a single key or multiple keys, then there is no ability for any financial institution from being able to prevent that access. And that I think what we've all seen in Bitcoin is that as a function of time, knowledge distributes and as more people understand that fact, they take possession of their keys. And that when we look out into the future, that the majority of people will be doing that. And I really think about keys and the more people that have keys. It's like the Second Amendment that, you know, oftentimes people don't understand the Second Amendment, but the reason why we have the right to bear arms is because it's

Starting point is 00:20:13 a deterrent, that it will actually deter a tyrannical government. I think there was a quote from a Japanese general talking about how, you know, no one will ever attack the United States because I don't know if we quote the number, but there's 40 million guns or, no, I think there's like 400 million guns. I can't tell you the number, but there's a lot of guns in the United States. And what that is designed to do is to prevent tyrannical government from warring on its people because you actually have something that you can fight back with. Well, keys do the same thing. The more people that have keys and the more distributed those keys are, the less likely a government is to take an action because it would really be futile. And so not only does it

Starting point is 00:20:51 improve individual security, but in aggregate, the more people that are holding keys, the more distributed currency supplies are is the less honeypots that exist that you actually create the environment where in the case of Coinbase, a government could go to Coinbase's door, knock on it and say, like, don't send anybody, Bitcoin here's a court order. If that same court order came to unchained, we wouldn't be able to prevent our vault clients from being able to access their funds. That actually reduces the likelihood that that would happen. It reduces the incentive because we've actually reduced our own power in that equation and that we are all, our clients and us are all greater or in a position of greater security because the incentives

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Starting point is 00:25:40 All right. Back to the show. I think Jesse Powell had an amazing response to all of this that you're talking about where, I mean, he just came out in a very public way. And for people that don't know who Jesse is, he's the CEO at Cracken. And he said, listen, if I get a court order, there's nothing I can do. I'm going to have to shut down your access or whatever it is. Therefore, remove your coins off the exchange, pull your stuff off there.

Starting point is 00:26:04 And what I found just mind blowing is the Canadian government, officials from the Canadian government came out and were wanting Jesse and others like him who are running large exchanges to stop telling people to take self-custody of their coins like he had just told people to do. That's not something you're going to see out of JP Morgan. And that is not something you're going to see out of fidelity. I think it just speaks to the culture of this community, which is just amazing. Jeff, did you have anything you wanted to throw in on this particular topic? I'm going to stay out of trouble.

Starting point is 00:26:42 I don't know, Jeff. I say don't hold back, but we can go to the next question. You were talking about how Parker, you're seeing more and more people take possession of their keys. This is a stat that I just saw here in the last couple days that I think is an amazing. Amazing stat. Right now, we are nearly seeing the highest percent ever recorded with 61.7 percent of Bitcoin in existence not moving for a year plus. 61 percent. And this is coming on the tail of a, we're now at about a 35 percent drawdown from the all-time high. So I'm just curious your thoughts on this, the fact that we're seeing it now opposed to whenever you had previously seen numbers like

Starting point is 00:27:30 this where you haven't seen the coins really move too much was always when you were making a new all-time high. Not when you've been down for 100 plus days and you're down 35% were you seeing numbers this high. 61% of all Bitcoin have not moved in more than a year. What does that mean to mean to me it means people buy Bitcoin for all different types of reasons, at least the first time they buy Bitcoin they do, right? So some people really believe in the value proposition of Bitcoin for a bunch of the reasons that Parker is written about, and we've been talking about on the podcast here tonight. And there's other people that think like, oh, I think, you know, Bitcoin's in an up cycle, so I'm going to try to grab some and sell at the top, right? So what I've

Starting point is 00:28:11 noticed, though, is every time we go through a price cycle, more true believers get won over, even if they, when they made their initial purchase, we're just trying to make a quick buck, right? So that percentage over time seems to get larger and larger of people that are really buying to hold for the long term rather than trying to time the market and get in and out. And related to that is, you know, I have this concept that not all price increases are the same. You know, I tend to try and look at Bitcoin price increases compared to the NASDAQ 100 and then also compared to if you get into, I'll be polite, really speculative stuff like say, you know, the ARC innovation ETF. right. If Bitcoin is rising on a correlation with like the ARC innovation ETF, I know that that's a lot of, for lack of better term, garbage buying. Like, that's not going to be people that are going to stick. And when that comes back down,

Starting point is 00:29:06 a lot of those purchases are going to flip and become sellers. If Bitcoin is price rising, and it's not necessarily, you know, the speculative stuff like ARC or even stuff that's a little broader like the NASDAQ 100 are not rising along with it, that's a more interesting price increase to me because it tells me that people are buying Bitcoin for a different reason. But in both cases, even in the case where Bitcoin is rising as part of a larger speculative mania, there's always a certain percentage of people, even in that situation, that once they buy, they sort of in the process of educating themselves about the asset they're buying. You know, maybe they read something that Parker wrote or someone else or that

Starting point is 00:29:54 Safedine wrote or anyone like that. And they become a true believer sort of on accident in the process, which is a great thing. And we really see a compounding effect of that, I think, over time. The only thing I'd add is there's a chart, or at least a visualization. I don't know Drew, our co-founder originally created it, but certainly helped popularize it, called the Hoddle Waves. And so people Google Haudel Waves, or they go to our website, they can find the Haudill Waves. But it's this visualization to see the bands of age and how they trend over time. And I think that one idea, you know, kind of that you brought up Preston is that, you know,

Starting point is 00:30:31 kind of historically we've seen this range of, you know, coins that haven't moved in over a year kind of oscillate between 60% and 40% and that when 20% of the supply goes from having been held for long periods of time to being unlocked, that typically happens only when there's an astronomical increase in price. And that what it signals when the coins are in effect getting older, where more of the coins are being held for long terms, it's effectively more diamond hands are being created. We're sitting here and at a time where Bitcoin, drops from 60,000 to 30,000 or 35,000 that people aren't selling. Now, of course, people are selling every day, but on average, people are converting to long-term holders. So I think that's a

Starting point is 00:31:19 real, it's a really healthy sign as more people decide to save Bitcoin for the long term and don't get caught up in the, you know, kind of near-term or short-term volatility. So I'm sure there's tons of people listening to this that they get the investment narrative to this. They are looking at it from a long-term horizon and they immediately start saying, all right, well, what can I do to own this in the most tax-advantaged kind of way and quickly step into retirement planning and how I can own this for the long haul, but do it in the most efficient and intelligent way possible. Jeff, really, this is your lane. This is your expertise in this particular segment of Bitcoin. So right out of the gate, what are some of the big nugget pieces that

Starting point is 00:32:08 you think are takeaways for people who are thinking like this? They don't need to hear the pitch on why I own Bitcoin. They really want to hear like, how can I do this from the most optimized kind of way from a tax efficiency standpoint? Yeah. So, I mean, it's important to keep in mind, you know, a figure that our head of concierge at Unchained Phil always likes to bring up. And that's that we have $35 trillion in assets in the United States locked up in retirement accounts. Before I came to Unchained, then Unchained sort of purchased my IRA product. I was a private practice attorney in CPA. So I sort of got a good feeling of what most people's assets were. And when it comes to people my age and older, so basically middle age and senior citizens,

Starting point is 00:32:52 the bulk of their assets tend to be in retirement accounts. You know, it's not at all unusual that I would have a client back then who, you know, let's say their net worth was $3 million, $2,2.2,000, even sometimes 2.5 of that may have been in their retirement accounts, that's not unusual at all. So the thing about that is, is, you know, most people, once they've been sold on the value proposition of Bitcoin, would be able to unlock those assets and move them into Bitcoin without having a massive negative tax consequence, right? Because that's the thing that you don't want to do. So what you could do, obviously, is liquidate your retirement account and just buy Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:33:31 Well, there's a big problem with that, right? You're going to have to pay income tax on the liquidation and assuming you're under age 59 and a half, you're also going to have to pay a 10% penalty, right? So that's bad because that results in you being able to buy less Bitcoin because you're going to have to pay a bunch of money off the top before you can start going and buying Bitcoin. So on the other hand,

Starting point is 00:33:52 what you probably isn't going to be satisfactory to you is just to roll it over into a brokerage IRA and buy one of the new ETFs or, you know, Bitcoin proxies like, you know, Bitcoin companies that hold a lot of Bitcoin, stuff like that, right? Because that, you know, the problem you run into there is the whole not your keys, not your Bitcoin angle that we just sort of spent the last 40 minutes talking about why that's so important to be able to have some level of control over your keys. So in IRAs, this has classically been a problem regulatory and legally, because with an IRA, one of the issues is the statute, the section of the Internal Revenue Code, that dictates the creation of IRAs is 408.

Starting point is 00:34:35 And one of the main requirements under 408 is that an IRA has to be a custodial account. There has to be a licensed financial institution acting as custodian of the assets in the IRA. So classically, the way that we dealt with this. And when I say classically, for those that aren't aware, so I've been a lawyer and a CPA for 15 years since 2014, I had been primarily in the business of helping people hold Bitcoin in their IRAs while holding their own private keys. It actually goes back before Unchained was a company. And since this past summer, I've been a part of Unchained, bringing that product over to Unchained and making it a lot more powerful. So historically, the way that was handled is through something called a checkbook IRA. And we won't go too far into the weeds on this, but it was basically a clever setup where

Starting point is 00:35:24 the custodian of the IRA would custody the IRA's one and only asset, which was a limited liability company. And then you as the IRA account holder would be appointed manager of that LLC. The LLC would go out and actually buy the Bitcoin. And then you as the manager could hold the private key. to that Bitcoin. Well, this past November, a lot of cold water was thrown on that strategy. There's a case called the McNulty case that came out that sort of created a very novel legal theory under which that does not comply with the language of 408. And I wrote sort of a long form article on the

Starting point is 00:36:03 Unchained blog about that. People want to check that out. You can kind of go into my legal analysis of the case. It's frankly not a very well-reason case. It's the rationale is very poor. But the issue there is the IRS has always hated checkbook IRAs and had attacked them for years. They only became popular after the IRS lost a string of cases in court. But now that the IRS has one, one on an entirely new legal grounds that they hadn't even tried before in the past, I think there's going to be new life breathed into audits of those type of IRAs. So what's good about, you know, the product that we have, the unchained IRA is we try to offer you the best of both worlds. We offer a way for you to have a classic custodial IRA that is not a checkbook IRA of the type that got the taxpayer in Hotwooder and McNulty while still having a, you know, access to a quorum of keys.

Starting point is 00:36:59 And the way we accomplish that on a basic level is we open up an unchained vault for you, for those that are unfamiliar with unshamed vaults. That's a multi-signature wallet on our platform. And title to that vault is held by the IRA custodian part. So the IRA custodian has to be a banker trust company. So we use Salara National Bank for that purpose. Title to that vault is, you know, Salera National Bank for your benefit. That's how every IRA is titled. However, at the time of account opening, the custodian executes what's called a tri-party delegation agreement, where the custodian actually appoints both you as the account holder and unchained as its key agents responsible for protecting the Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:37:44 And the way it does that is it delegates private key responsibility, two keys to you. So you have the quorum in the two of three multi-signature vault. So two of three to you and then unchained holds one key as a backup. So the IRA custodian, to touch on a point that we discussed earlier, does not have access to the private keys. So they would not be able to turn your assets over. They do, however, to keep us in compliance with the IRS, have access to the, the public keys and the wallet configuration. And the reason that's important is the McNulty case did

Starting point is 00:38:20 make very clear that if the IRA custodian isn't able to monitor the underlying transactions as they go on, that's a problem under its legal rationale under 408. So while the custodian is not able to actually move your coins, it does have eyes through unchained on all your transactions. So for instance, if you were to make a withdrawal out of your IRA vault and not report it, thinking like you were trying to do a tax evasion thing, it wouldn't fly. It would be picked up. It would be reported to the IRS. That doesn't sound great, except for the fact that if we don't do that, then you're not compliant at all. So the point of sort of the unchained IRA is we want to offer you the best of both worlds. We want this to be a tax compliance setup. We don't want it to be a checkbook IRA due to the

Starting point is 00:39:09 you know, sort of cold water that's been thrown on them recently in the courts, but we still want you to have a quorum of key control so that you can be secure that your Bitcoin is really there and that no one can seize it or move it without your permission. I think as Bitcoin, we always think about, it's very adversarial in thinking around security. But when we relate it to what has happened kind of in the world around financial censorship, that retirement assets in many ways, and I wrote about this in a piece and gradually and suddenly called Bitcoin is the great de-financialization, which is that so many people just, you know, kind of sleepwalk through hitting a button, contributing funds, take risk,

Starting point is 00:39:53 you know, buy a bunch of equities in a retirement account, but what it actually represents is protecting those later years in life and that if we relate that also to this idea of holding Bitcoin for the long term, seeing these coins, you know, the 61% of Bitcoin are held over, you know, one year, but that in most instances when people adopt Bitcoin, they're holding for a lot longer than one year. And that particularly, in my case, when I went through it even before Jeff was part of Unchain, I literally converted my entire IRA, which at the time was just sitting in treasuries, to Bitcoin. And then not only was it the best savings, technology that ever existed, it was entirely outside the financial system by holding keys.

Starting point is 00:40:41 And that when we think about, I'm not going to be retired for over 30 years. But that one financial decision in my mind, it was like this calming effect that happened. I was like, ah, that one decision will protect my entire retirement. But it wasn't just because I was speculating in Bitcoin. I have a very deep and intuitive understanding of why Bitcoin is being adopted as a monetary standard, but it was because that was realistically the only way to have, you know, a liquid asset outside of the financial system. And oftentimes when people are thinking about their retirement, that this is Bitcoin. It's like the best Bitcoin to hold. And I really thought like, you know, as I was in the process of doing it, again, it was before Jeff, I joined Unchained. But it was like,

Starting point is 00:41:25 it was like, this is peak savings. It is tax advantage. It's Bitcoin. And it's being held without counterparty risk. And that realistically that, you know, a lot of people that think about this, they're like, okay, well, this Bitcoin is a long-term, you know, asset to hold. And it's like a forced hoddle. I'm hoddling for, you know, at least 30 years with this Bitcoin that are in retirement funds, but at a more macro level with all the uncertainty in the world, not just as it relates to censorship, because what we didn't even talk about before was that all of this economic uncertainty only results in more printing of money. And that's the very problem that Bitcoin stands to solve. And that when we think about those long-term assets that really are protecting your retirement,

Starting point is 00:42:09 those are the most consequential. And so doing that in a way and then approaching it from a security perspective where you know that those assets are going to be there and that the best way to ensure that is by not taking counterparty risk and actually taking possession of the private keys, albeit in a structure where there is a legal custodian and that it fits very tightly into regulatory structure that works is a very valuable thing. Yeah, and just sort of echo one of Parker's points there. Bitcoin is kind of the perfect retirement asset, right? Because when it comes to your retirement assets, I'll be retiring sooner than Parker.

Starting point is 00:42:44 I'm a little bit older. But still, even me, I'm not supposed to be worrying about short-term volatility, right? I shouldn't be sweating if we have a 20% draw down in the short term. When I'm thinking about retirement assets, I'm not thinking about accessing them for a while for maybe 20 years. You know what I mean? So in that situation, it is the perfect retirement asset in that you don't have to worry about those short-term price swings. All you have to have confidence in is that Bitcoin in the long term, in the very long term, is eventually going to be, well, I was going to say the last asset standing, but that's not exactly right, right? Like people are still going to live in houses and things like that.

Starting point is 00:43:23 but you get what I mean. For a person who's trying to look at this from a fundamental standpoint, who is suspect when they just look at the price action and they're saying, well, yeah, I got it. It's been going up for the last decade plus. And I guess that's a reason to own it. What would you tell that person to focus on? Would you tell them look at how many wallet addresses are there or the utility?

Starting point is 00:43:47 Like what are some of the fundamental things that you guys look at that speak to how the network is growing? and how it's becoming stronger beyond just the basic price action? Well, first, I tell people always to focus on 21 million Bitcoin, because if people start to develop an understanding for how Bitcoin enforces a fixed supply of 21 million and why it's relevant, that that is the most fundamental thing about Bitcoin and that that is what drives all global monetary adoption and will continue to. And that does not mean that certain people buy for FOMO reasons and buy for reasons that they don't understand and that there isn't speculation and there isn't a lot of that.

Starting point is 00:44:30 But that that is the underlying fundamental such that when the wins change and people that FOMO bought it and then irrationally sell it, or China does something that, you know, it's kind of a fooled by randomness and people sell because China did something that I always ask myself and then the advice that I give people is that if you've devised. that understanding of how Bitcoin credibly enforced the fixed by $21 million and why it's relevant, then the simple question to ask yourself is, did whatever happened today change the fact that there will only ever be $21 million? If no, hold by more, essentially is my philosophy. Now, I think that there are probably two things that I would look to, and one of them actually is the price. The price is the greatest signal. of increasing adoption. They're not making any more Bitcoin, and as more people rush in to save in the best form of money that's ever existed, it forces the price higher. It just distributes the

Starting point is 00:45:34 supply over a larger number of people. People are willing to transfer an increasing number of dollars that are depreciating because trillions are being printed for less and less nominal units of the currency. So price is a indicator of itself, but underlying that, I would look at things like Bitcoin addresses. And oftentimes we'll look at the number of addresses that have more than, you know, 0.1 Bitcoin or, you know, 0.2 Bitcoin to see like that there's actually more and more people, more and another metric might be UTXOs, you know, kind of probably maybe getting a little bit too technical. But if you're going to hold your own keys, you're going to have to have at least one of your own UTXOs. Then a growing number of addresses and a growing number

Starting point is 00:46:16 of UTXOs are both signals of increasing adoption, but ultimately price is that arbiter. And as global adoption increases, there's only one way in the long term for price to go, but that if everyone always kind of emits volatility anchors back to that core fundamental of did whatever happen in the world today change this most fundamental fact of Bitcoin, that is really what allows the noise to disappear. and that as we see, you know, people look at Bitcoin crashes, what we often see as corrections, because the base always resets higher, right? And that happens because knowledge distributes. More people figure out through the noise, through an incredible amount of noise, that people

Starting point is 00:46:58 are understanding that Bitcoin is a monetary asset, it is a better form of money, and that when we see those bases reset at higher levels, even when sentiment is extremely low, that that is a sign that more people, not less, are accumulating. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer.

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Starting point is 00:50:52 immediate future, you know, for a couple reasons. Number one, Congress is not all that Well, let's say it's gridlocked. I guess that's a good way to put it, right? Like, there's a lot of gridlock there and there has been for several years now. And then, you know, in order to avoid accountability for a whole host of things, Ukraine is going to be used as just like this horrible catchall to just shrug off accountability for everything. Instead of, and, you know, instead of legislation that actually addresses something that matters to Americans, we're going to get stuff like, oh, liquor stores have to pour out their vodka. You know, I would expect a couple years of that sort of nonsense. garbage. How about the sanctions, Jeff? How about everybody calling for sanctions right now and they're seeing Bitcoin as a potential way to bypass sanctions and how that might get roped into? Yeah, so that's interesting. I wonder how long sanctions in their current form are going to be able to continue. These are going to be disastrous for the United States, but also especially for Europe. I don't know if you've looked into it all, the fertilizer situation. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. So for people that are listening that aren't aware of this, around 40% of the chemicals that Europe

Starting point is 00:52:06 needs for fertilizer come from Russia. Russia is also the breadbasket of Europe, just in terms of exporting wheat and other agricultural products. So, you know, the sort of global ruling class seems to be willing to shoot their citizens in the face to make a point about this for somebody that's not playing ball the way that they would like. So as a result, you know, I think a lot of really bad stuff is going to happen on the ground in a lot of these countries, including the United States, but especially Western Europe. And when people get, you know, when their food gets real, I mean, you know, it's one gas getting expensive. Yeah, that sucks. But we're talking about food getting expensive. I don't know, man. I don't know that if you're in a supposed democracy in

Starting point is 00:52:56 Western Europe, if you're going to be able to continue winning elections when people are pretty mad about their grocery bill. So I wonder if these sanctions aren't going to prove to be really porous right from the get-go. For instance, I don't know if you saw this, but the, you know, the oil companies have been partially exempted from the sanctions already. They've all been able to open bank accounts in Austria and Italy that happened yesterday. So we'll see what goes on with things like agriculture, right? Like if there'll be easy workarounds there through third countries or even if it's not a formal carve out, if there'll just be workarounds through third countries. So I don't know because of all of that, if Russia will be making large use of Bitcoin, they may, and there may just

Starting point is 00:53:49 be businesses on the ground in Russia that start using it more, right? Like a lot of people, for instance, get their web hosting from Russia. If I'm not able to pay my web hosts with my credit card anymore, well, then I may be forced to pay in Bitcoin, right? And that may have some impacts on adoption. But I don't know that necessarily that at like the state level, there's going to be a lot of going around because actually, and in addition to everything I just said, you know, Russia and China have been demoing over the last few years, their own sort of, you know, financial system. When I say financial system, I mean as a competitor, a replacement to Swift. And just today on that point, I believe Jerome Powell said, you know, the world can have more than one reserve currency.

Starting point is 00:54:27 So I don't know how much the sanctions directly are going to matter. It's a long answer to what should have been a short question. Well, no, no, no. I think those are all fantastic points. And I think really kind of the essence of what you're getting at is it could swing. The pendulum could swing that way, but you don't see it being able to be sustained because of the pressure and the impacts that it's going to really kind of rot throughout the globe. So Parker? Yeah. I think that, you know, there are certainly going to be politicians that sling mud at the wall and say Bitcoin is used to evade sanctions. You know, and this thing, Bitcoin is bad because. Bitcoin help bad man Russia, right? The reality is that those politicians hate Bitcoin because they don't control it. And that was really, you know, the part that Ted Cruz zeroed in on, and again, like Ted Cruz, hate Ted Cruz, but that is what it is about, that they don't like something that they can't control. And so there's a, there's a lot of memes in Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:55:32 but one of them is everything is good for Bitcoin. And that in this instance, the broader setup is waking people up to. And I had a client or prospective client that's in the process of onboarding reach out that I'd given a presentation to go around and give these Bitcoin and one lesson presentations. I was like, you know, I had a few aha moments when half the world was shutting the other half of the world off from their financial systems. And so it's like, I think we're all adults and we recognize that people are going to say some mean things and we're going to try to use what's happening to, you know, without any,

Starting point is 00:56:06 you know, justification or, you know, statistics backing up or evidence to say that Bitcoin is being used to evade regulation. My former Ross Kyle Bass came out and said something like, you know, some very shady people have had a very sunny day using Bitcoin and I, you know, fired back in a good spirited way that, you know, there's no invention more consistent with the principles, or at least the founding principles of America, individual liberty and private property than Bitcoin. and that everyone who is using it to avoid the debasement that comes from unelected private boards is really the signal. And when politicians talk about regulation deriving from the fact that Russia's evading sanctions via Bitcoin, whether or not they are or aren't, that the signal that is

Starting point is 00:56:52 actually sent and why everything is good for Bitcoin is that the signal that it's sent is that no one controls Bitcoin. And that the then derivative impact of that is that Bitcoin starts to make more sense for more people. It's like the Honey Badger don't care. Bitcoin is the Honey Badger and it's going to take all things that, you know, whether it's Brad Sherman or Elizabeth Warren or whoever the next person is and it won't, you know, won't be, you know, just one party. There will be many people that say Bitcoin is bad for X, Y, or Z without recognizing the value that is delivering to everyday people, like, you know, the three of us who just want to save, you know, in a form of money that's not getting destroyed. And to want of Parker's points there, I mean, the number one

Starting point is 00:57:36 thing that's used for to just refer back to the quote he made for shady business is not Bitcoin, it's physical $100 bills, right, by a mile. There's statistics on this that I wasn't prepared for the conversation to go in this direction so I don't remember exactly what they are. but some just massive percentage of actual physical $100 bills are used for illegal activity. It's like the majority of them or something like that, right? Because some people do carry physical hundreds in their wallet, but not nearly as commonly as they're used to be able to transport money in like a briefcase, right?

Starting point is 00:58:12 When you're dealing with hundreds, you can actually transfer a lot of money in a briefcase, much more so than if you were just dealing with 20s. And there are people that have noticed this and have, you know, there have been arguments that have been, I'm not anti-cash, so I would never make this argument, but there have been arguments that have been made by people that, look, we should just stop printing $100 bills. Like, we could, you know, end a lot of crime if we just stopped printing hundreds and made the largest bill of 20 because it would be so much less convenient to be able to carry out this sort of activity in an untraceable manner. And that never goes anywhere because the government

Starting point is 00:58:46 benefits from demand for those $100 physical bills, right, in a variety of ways. ways. So the argument that Bitcoin is somehow money for shady people, I mean, I just think that that's a ridiculous argument when you look at it in the context of comparing it to dollars in that regard. Yeah, I think everyone forgets that we gave around $400 billion of like physical cash, that then nobody has control over. And the entire Bitcoin network is worth $800 billion-ish today or, you know, they're around. So you got to start making some really wild, unfounded claims and everyone just figures out that, you know, you really just don't like Bitcoin. I know you guys can't name names here, but I'm curious if you've seen an uptick in corporate

Starting point is 00:59:36 entities wanting to do custody type services from call it a year ago or two years ago. Definitely. Yeah, I think the idea of businesses figuring out that Bitcoin is a better balance sheet reserve currency has certainly picked up. I don't think that it's necessarily accelerated, you know, in a disproportionate way to individuals, like more individuals are still figuring out. It's easier for individuals to come to these conclusions than a consensus of people, say, on a corporate board. But from a percentage base, just because the percentage of businesses that we're figuring this out was so low, that may be on a percentage basis it is higher, but probably not on a nominal basis. But yeah, definitely seeing it accelerate and also seeing it accelerate,

Starting point is 01:00:25 not just mom and shop, not, you know, just sole proprietorships, actual operating businesses, kind of having that aha wake up moment to Bitcoin. So we're definitely seeing it from our side. Any other stats or figures that have kind of made your eyebrows go up in the past six months? Do you know how many dollars the Fed printed in the last month? It was like a, it was like a It was like $120. It was like $122 billion. The comedy of it is, I mean, it's not, I mean, it's really serious, but, you know, everyone talks about it's pretty, it is comical that so much of like the hedge fund class,

Starting point is 01:01:02 they would like literally read every word that Powell says and then the market trades it. And now there's like algorithms that are built around the differences between these Fed Minutes and the next Fed Minutes and they literally look for insertions of words and then have automated trades on financial assets and everyone's talking about, is the Fed going to raise rates or are they not going to raise rates? It's like, hey, guys, they're printing $122 billion a month. It's like very simple. Your dollars are getting worse or less for that reason. That's the problem that Bitcoin solves. And it doesn't matter what the Fed does in a week, in a month, in three months, and six months. Like, yes, we do have to be kind of considerate of short-term volatility,

Starting point is 01:01:47 but we're playing long-term games. And there's only one. way that it's going. And when they talk about, you know, what they're going to do in the future, just look at what they're doing right now, right? They're printing $120 billion a month, more than any time post-financial crisis QE. And even if they slightly reduce it or stop it for a period of time, they're going to print more in the future and they're going to have to print even more than they're doing right now. And so when people find that signal, you know, again, Bitcoin starts to make a lot more sense. We're here at the beginning of March and the amount that they've inserted into the economy just since the start of this year of 2022 is approaching the level that they did for TARP

Starting point is 01:02:29 during the 2008 crisis. And I know back then having lived through that experience and being involved in the markets through that experience, I mean, everybody was flipping out and just saying, oh my God, this is going to, you know, cause hyperinflation. It's going to cause the markets to melt down and this and that and everything else. And here we are. We've done nearly that amount just in the past couple months. And not a word of it

Starting point is 01:02:52 in the news or anything. It's almost like it's imaginary. Like it's not even real. And in fact, Powell today said, basically indicated that the first interest rate hike in two weeks that they're only going to do 25 basis points.

Starting point is 01:03:07 A lot of people had thought it was going to be 50 because inflation was so high. So, you know, obviously they're not very strongly prioritizing this. Yeah, and I'll also point out for people that when the Fed increases short-term interest rates, if they're still printing money, they're actually reducing interest rates. The only thing that dictates the dollar interest rate from the Fed side is the supply of dollars. Again, people

Starting point is 01:03:30 might trade it. But that idea that you brought up Preston is this, the degree to which they're doing this is numbing, right? The numbers are getting so large that people are numb to it. And people that are not doing something about it, that are just sitting back, taking the punches to the stomach, to the stomach, to the stomach, they are the boiling frog. And going back to your last question of businesses, the interesting thing that I find, because I do go around and educate and sit down across the table from executives of all sorts and not just executives, but many of them, when I sit down and I talk to people that are some way levered to the legacy financial system, wealth managers, asset managers, hedge fund.

Starting point is 01:04:13 Like, they listen to these ideas and they're like, but the Fed will never let it happen. I'm like, did you not just hear what I said? Like, they're printing money and that's a problem for you and you're not anchoring it to a principle. It's like you've got a problem. And it doesn't mean that you would necessarily have to agree that Bitcoin's a solution. You will at the end of the day. Everyone's going to figure it out.

Starting point is 01:04:32 Everyone gets Bitcoin at the price that they deserve. But the conversations could not be more different. than when I sit down with an actual operating business. When I share these ideas with an operating business to a company, it's like I'm connecting dots. And when they're in the market and they're experiencing the inflation and they experience literally every day the disruption to their business that's caused by all of this uncertainty, it dawns on them.

Starting point is 01:05:00 Like the light bulbs go off. You can see it sitting across the table with someone. It's like they all knew something didn't make sense. and that this thing Bitcoin explained not just what didn't make sense, but also prevents a solution. And so the contrast between like the people actually building and delivering real goods and services to a market versus the people that live in this financial world, this hyper-financialized system, their ability to get Bitcoin and understand why it's important and why is a tool, why it literally solves a problem for practically speaking everyone in the world, it could not be

Starting point is 01:05:38 a greater contrast. And so it's not just kind of quote businesses, but it is a very, you know, kind of contrasted reality of predeposition to be able to understand it that if people are in the market, and I mean in the market, not the financial markets, but in the market of producing actual goods and services, that these ideas resonate and that they do something about it. I love this point because you're talking about an entity that's actually creating value in the marketplace as opposed to financial organizations that are controlling the flow of capital and effectively scraping a tax out of it in order to fund their, you know, that's how their organization, quote unquote, adds value to the system.

Starting point is 01:06:25 When you're seeing this stuff real time because you're managing inventory or you're handling all the contracts as they're flowing in and you're looking at the prices go up 100% because you're building a house or you're building whatever. I think it's just so common sense to them. They're like, I'd never see anything like this in my life. And two years ago, we had less than 1% inflation or whatever the number was before COVID, right? So I'm with you. I think your businesses that are actually performing services and putting products into the marketplace are finding out real fast that they can't outpace the debasement rate that's happening here. And all the economic calculation is pointing towards there's something seriously wrong

Starting point is 01:07:09 until maybe Parker Lewis shows up at the door and gives us a pitch on this thing called Bitcoin. It didn't really kind of click as to why everything was getting so warped and difficult to understand. And to your other point, Parker, about them shutting, the common argument that you hear is the Fed will never let it happen. I'll shut it down. Coin Telegraph has a stat. 61% of Americans expected to purchase or own some type of crypto asset in 2022. Those numbers are insane. I think you're at a point now for these people that make the policy arguments that they're going to regulate the living heck out of it, this and that. I think you've got so many people that have some type of exposure to this in their portfolio that it's almost a laughable argument because if they would do this, and maybe I'm wrong,

Starting point is 01:07:55 Maybe I'm too close to this, but I just think you're going to have people flip out on such a grand scale if they try to do anything to pump the brakes on this. There's another point in there too. So the people, sometimes when they analyze things, forget the institutions are made up. Right. There is no like Mr. Federal Reserve who is out to, you know, protect the Federal Reserve. There are a bunch of people that work at the Federal Reserve and the banks and all these other places that are out looking out for themselves, right, themselves and their families, presumably. So if you're in a situation where you know ahead of time, far enough ahead of time that Bitcoin's going to be the thing and you know far enough ahead of time that you would have the ability to ban it, which would you do? Would you ban it to preserve the integrity of your institution? or if you're that far ahead of the curve, would you just buy a bunch of it to make yourself and your family rich? Most people are not going to sacrifice their future family's well-being in order to protect some amorphous, intangible institution, right?

Starting point is 01:09:09 Like, this is not how things work. I think when you look at it through that lens and that perspective, you can sort of gain some clarity as well. Yeah. And I also anchor people back to that core question of how does Bitcoin credibly enforce a fixed supply of $21 million? And why is it relevant? Because if somebody figures out how Bitcoin credibly enforces a fixed supply of $21 million, they will realize it because of the degrees of decentralization and that it would be the

Starting point is 01:09:39 biggest game of whack a mole that ever existed and that anyone attempting to seriously impair that, realistically only causes it to spread like wildfire. Because it's not practically possible, but it does signal to everyone, hey, you should be paying attention to this thing, Bitcoin, because it's working so well that it threatens us in some way. When we told you that it was not money and that it was a toy, it was too volatile, and that it consumed too much energy, but it was the only thing that was actually preserving value relative to any other currency are all other goods and services. It was the only thing preserving purchasing power. And that is what money is designed to do. And so it's just like someone's, you know, moving around in a straight

Starting point is 01:10:24 jacket. You know, so anyone that attempts to take those type of actions is actually playing into Bitcoin's hands. It doesn't mean that governments can't make things marginally harder than on any certain people, if not, you know, materially harder. But, you know, everything is good for Bitcoin. And Bitcoin wins in the end because of how it's actually constructed, that it's actually designed to route around and immunize every threat. And it's actually the threats that make Bitcoin stronger. It's the ultimate Fools Aaron to try to stop it or try to censor it. Yeah. And I think that regulators, even the ones like Brad Sherman that, you know, hate Bitcoin because they hate America, that the smarter ones when they, when they think about this,

Starting point is 01:11:15 that they go through that, you know, 4D chess, their first instance is like, oh, we got to ban this. And then they go through the actual, well, how, the game theory, how does this actually play out? You know, do we actually make our problem larger? And it's not to say that they then don't attempt other things that are, that are more coercive and less overt, but that when they play the game out,

Starting point is 01:11:39 they realize that they'd be shooting themselves on the foot. And so they'd rather try to tackle it via some sort of increased, you know, coercion or financial surveillance, taxes, you know, kind of however you want to look at it. But Bitcoin won in the end and people that hold, you know, the hardest form of money that ever existed will benefit disproportionately. Because at the end of the day, you would have to have the opinion that you can, A, control every entity in the world, which is obviously false, or B, you just don't understand what's happening or how it works.

Starting point is 01:12:10 It's one of those two. And either one, and both of them lead you down a path that you're going to, you're going to be unsuccessful. Just imagine, and again, not everybody in the United States has Bitcoin, but imagine there's hundreds of millions of Bitcoin keys spread out all over the world. No one knows exactly where any of them are. You know, you might know where one is or you might be able to go to a company and, you know, get a warrant and figure it out. But just like visualize what hundreds of millions of Bitcoin keys distributed literally across every jurisdiction in the world. That's what they're up against. That's all.

Starting point is 01:12:44 ultimately what secures Bitcoin, that's what decentralization is. And as Bitcoin gets larger, it only gets more and more decentralized at every layer. And so with each passing moment, it's like once they figure out that, you know, this thing can't be stopped, it's too late. You know, once they figure out what it really is on how it operates, that it just gets bigger and bigger and more and more decentralized. But that visualization of keys being distributed, that's the game of whackamol. And that's ultimately what protects Bitcoin. Jeff, if people want to learn more about the IRA stuff that you were talking about earlier, give them a handoff where they can learn more about it.

Starting point is 01:13:21 Yeah, so if you head over to Unchained.com right there on the website, you can schedule a consultation with one of the fantastic members of our client Solutions team. They will walk you through the process, teach you everything you need to know about it, and get you onboarded and good to go. guys, we'll have links to both of your Twitter accounts. Parker, I know you're pretty active on Twitter. Jeff, are you active on Twitter? Not so much.

Starting point is 01:13:48 Pretty low-key on there. You know how Jeff was saying, he's like, you know, I'll let Parker take that. I'm not going to go off the rails. I mean, I wouldn't mind Jeff being out there expressing his views to the world, but, you know, you can find me on Twitter, at least, Parker A. Lewis. And then also, all of my writing is on our website as well. So my series is called Gradually and Suddenly talks about the fundamentals of Bitcoin. People would not do wrong by themselves to go grab the Gradually and Suddenly series, read it.

Starting point is 01:14:16 Because once you figure out Bitcoin, then protecting retirement with it, protecting all of your savings with it, something that you're going to want to do. But that it all starts with education. Verify, don't trust. But that the more that people understand Bitcoin, and so our educational content is there for everyone. It's free. You can go, learn, distribute the knowledge. You can find on our website. And if people are interested in the IRA,

Starting point is 01:14:41 they can also find that on our website under services. And people now know, Jeff, even though you might not be very active on Twitter, you know what you're talking about when it comes to this stuff. So, folks, if you want to ask questions, hit these guys up on Twitter. We'll have the links in the show notes. We'll have the links to the Unchained Capital website in the show notes.

Starting point is 01:15:01 Parker, Jeff, thank you guys for making time and coming on the show. I love talking with you guys. This was a blast. Thanks for having me, man. It's been great. Yeah, thanks, Preston. Always enjoy it. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it's something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate.

Starting point is 01:15:41 And with that, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC069: Bitcoin Retirement Planning & Self Custody w/ Parker Lewis & Jeff Vandrew

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