April 3, 2024 • 53 mins
With Bitcoin near all-time highs, maybe you’re thinking “DANG, I need to buy some… BTC is going to the moon after all!” Well not necessarily- don’t think that you’re missing out on an opportunity of a lifetime to strike it rich. But we are going to discuss how investing in Bitcoin can not only boost your overall returns, but how it can also be a balanced and healthy strategy for investors. We’re joined today by Marko from White Board Finance to have a frank and practical conversation about Bitcoin. Marko was self-taught and started investing in the market at the age of 18. But then after studying finance and working for tech startups and in banking, he launched his YouTube channel which is currently just shy of one million subscribers! He’s an expert of all things personal finance, but we’re mainly going to focus on the future of Bitcoin, the recent events responsible for it blowing up, how much Bitcoin you should own in your portfolio, and much more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am
Matt and today this is the Bitcoin episode for Normies
with Marco from Whiteboard Finance.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
So I'm not opposed if we start naming our episodes
in the like friends fashion right where they're like the
refrigerator episode. But honestly, it makes me think about how
last week we went all in on real estate. That's
what we talked about, but that's actually not what we're
doing today with bitcoin. That being said, we are going
to discuss how investing in bitcoin can not only be
(00:48):
lucrative but also just a simply balanced and healthy strategy
for investors today, and here to share how it's done
is Marco from Whiteboard Finance. So Marco he was self taught.
He started investing in the market at the age of eighteen,
back when you had to pay for trades. But then
after studying finance, working for tech startups and working in banking,
(01:09):
he launched his own YouTube channel, which is actually just
shy of one million subscribers, and so hopefully maybe this
episode will get him to that next milestone. But he
is an expert of all things personal finance, but we're
mainly going to focus on the future of bitcoin. We're
going to talk about the recent events that might be
responsible for it blowing up. We're going to talk about
(01:30):
how much bitcoin you should own, and more. Today, Marco,
thank you for joining us on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Guys, I appreciate
you inviting me on.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, you're you're like the mister Beast of the personal
finance based on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
All right, Well, Beast is the most entertaining person on YouTube,
and my channel is somewhere in the middle between mister
Beast and the most boring classroom you've ever sat in,
So somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
All right, we guess the balance we all have to
strike here.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
You start giving away millions, I think you know that
that'll probably up your numbers, just a little bit of outside.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Advice, even though you don't need it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Our first question, though, Marco, to every guest who comes
on the show, is what's your craft beer equivalent? And
by that we mean what do you like to splurge
on in the here and now while you're diligently saving
and investing for your future.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, it's a great question. So I would say it's
two things. So one is travel, I think travel is
very important. I think the more you travel, it's kind
of like a horse with the blinders on. The more
you travel, the more those blinders are taken off, and
you can see that pretty much everyone around the world
is pretty similar and they value similar things. So I
enjoy traveling, and then I also I like grilling. So
(02:35):
I have two very expensive custom made grills and I
get a lot of pleasure out of them, and so
does my family and friends. So yeah, it's travel and
good food.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
When are you gonna invite us over Marco? That sounds awesome?
Speaker 4 (02:46):
For real, whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I got a Pellett grill for low and slow, and
then I have an adjustable charcoal grill, so we can
do you know, hot and fast, we can do direct heat,
we can do whatever you guys want.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Okay, So this is something that Joel and I both
have taken on over the past last couple of years.
But getting into smoking meats. I literally just ate some
leftover brisket that I smoked this past weekend. What's your
favorite cut? Nice?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
So for low and slow, I really like beef ribs.
So think of like Fred Flintstone when he puts the
big racked ribs in his car and it tips over
beef ribs are good, and then for more like hot
and fast.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
You can't beat a good ribbi.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, we're on the same page. We
could not be more agreement. I love it. Okay, I
feel like we could like accidentally spend the next thirty
minutes talking about talking about meat. And maybe we'll say
that for the post show, but the post interview. But
I want to talk about your your personal history, Marko,
because it sounded like your financial pedigree started early, specifically
(03:43):
with Pokemon cards. Share how that got kicked off.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Basically, Yeah, so for reference, probably aging myself, but I
don't care.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
I'm thirty six.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I was born in eighty seven, and when I was
a kid, I was probably like eleven twelve years old
in middle school when Pokemon really took off. So it
started with the video games and with the trading cards.
And then my dad actually came back from a trip
He worked for Dirt Devil, so if you guys remember
the vacuum company, so he was a mechanical engineer. He
went to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and he came back with
(04:15):
like all these ridiculously rare Pokemon cards. But I didn't
realize this at the time because I was a kid.
He was coming back with like charizzards and all these
you know cards that are very highly valued, and I'm like,
you know what, I have so many of these things
about I just sell them. And then I think I
realized this may or may not have been the case,
but I'm guessing it was the case because there's just
way too many rare cards for them to be legit.
(04:36):
I just think that they were like copies. So like
I inevitably, unknowingly was you know, selling just you know,
rare cards, trading cards, things like that. So I put
a big poster board on my mailbox in my neighborhood
and I live on a main road growing up, so
all these people would say, see this sign, it's like
Pokemon cards for sale, and it was all the crazy.
So I would just sell, you know, Pokemon cards that
(04:58):
I was buying from packs, some that my dad brought
back from China. So that was like my first endeavor
into entrepreneurship. And then also like mixtape CDs. If you
guys remember the days of like Lyonwire and Kaza and
Napster and all that stuff, So Oh my gosh y Yeah,
just just hustling, man, just entrepreneurial, and some kids sell candy.
I was selling Pokemon cards and mixtapes.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, well you got to tell yourself that those were knockoffs,
because you're like, no, only I would have held onto
those and Keta wrapped up in the plastic. I'm sure
I don't know anything about Pokemon, but I'm sure they
would have been worth vast multiples of that to tew
years down the road.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh yeah, fast forward twenty twenty five years later. Man,
it's like, who knows what those are going for now
in eBay for real?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And they're hot again too, right, so because everything nostalgia's back,
are what caused you to launch a YouTube channel? And
then like whiteboard finance like at least started off where
you're teaching lessons on a whiteboard, which sounds like going
back to high school.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
So like, why was that kind of the way the
way you wanted to present information? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
So my background in a nutshell is, like you said
in the intro, I've been investing since two thousand and six,
since I was eighteen, I opened up a trade king
accountants when you actually had to like scan documents like
you know, driver's license and you know, all this stuff
was kind of funny, and you physically mailed it to
the brokerage and then you'd hear back like a week
or two later and saying, oh, hey, this is your
log in credentials right now. You can just download an
(06:18):
app in two seconds and start you know, djen gambling
on whatever you want. But basically my story in a
nutshell was, I got a finance degree, started in six
graduated in twenty ten, and I got that finance degree
because I enjoy teaching and I wanted to be a
financial advisor. So ultimately I never actually ended up scratching
that itch because I graduated into one of the highest
(06:40):
unemployment rates in recent history. This was December of twenty ten.
I think unemployment was close to ten percent. I was
right after the global financial crisis. And I ended up
selling cars, ended up working in commercial real estate development,
commercial real estate lending, you know, commercial mortgage backed securities,
things like that, and I never really scratched the itch
of being that financial advisor. So I always had a
(07:02):
passion for like personal finance investing, you know, different types
of ways to I guess make money.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
If you will.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So I had this DSLR camera that I bought for photography.
It was just simply for a hobby for my wife
and I and I never really used it. You know,
it's collecting dust. So I'm like, hey, I have this
really nice DSLR. You know, I enjoy teaching. You know
what's the natural segue to teaching. It's the classroom setting,
as I mentioned earlier, which you know, I could go
like the chalkboard, but that would be really annoying and
(07:31):
you know, piss my wife off or make her angry.
So I went with the dry erase board. You know,
much more logical, You get way more use out of it.
So yeah, I ended up going on craigslist bought a
huge whiteboard with my brother in law and I. We
put on the roof of my car and it was
too big for my trunk. So we actually did this
in February and I'm in Cleveland, so we're like getting
(07:51):
frostbite on our hand, you know, holding this whiteboard on
the top of the car. Yeah, set it up in
my studio and the rest is history. So the reason
for the white board is because I think people pay
attention in a classroom setting, especially if you know what
you're talking about, or if you can simplify perceived to
be complex items. And that's kind of like my biggest
compliment that I get from my viewers. It's like, hey,
(08:14):
you have the ability to break this down. I don't
even speak English, it's my second or third language, and
even I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
So I like that classroom setting.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I dig it. Yeah, when you see a whiteboard, you
know that you're in to learn something, and that's what
you've been able to convey and what you've established there
with your channel. So congrats with that.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Let's talk about bitcoin, okay, Marco specifically, because when we
messaged you originally and you said that you could talk
about bitcoin specifically, but we made the air of saying,
I guess crypto generally speaking, which isn't necessarily your specialty, right,
And there are a lot of folks out there like
us that tend to lump those two things together, and
so can you draw a distinction between all other forms
(08:53):
of crypto versus bitcoin for us? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Absolutely, So in that finance journey kind of went down
the rabbit hole of kind of like Austrian economics, which
is more of like a sound money. So if you
think of like money back by gold for example, or
hard money.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Now we have fiat.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Currency, which is literally just decreed by the government. So
there's a difference between money and currency. Anything can be money,
like I can trade you my cell phone for your
Pokemon card and that transaction, those two things were money,
right with currency currencies just especially fiat currency, its just
decreed by the government. So what is our currency back by?
(09:30):
Some people would argue without going to you know, geopolitical
or you know political in general. You know, we printed
trillions of dollars after the lockdowns of twenty twenty. Why
didn't our currency hyper inflate. Well, it's because the United
States is the global reserve currency. That happened with Bretton
Woods after World War two. Europe and the rest of
the world was essentially a parking lot and United States
(09:52):
was the next superpower that was really unscathed after World
War two. So United States becomes the base layer of money.
So base layer of money, think of it like gold.
If you think of a pyramid, gold is on the bottom,
and then what people aren't going to carry around gold?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
So what do they do?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
We obviously have dollars, right, it's just representative of the
gold that's inside the vaults or that the bank is
supposed to have. Right, in nineteen seventy one, we got
off the gold standard, thus creating fiat currency. So now
the money is backed by hopefully tax receipts, your GDP,
your ability to be a good economy, you know, world
reserve currency, which is currently the dollar, but it's also
(10:30):
backed by a lot more than that. It's petro dollars.
Most oil is traded in dollars. We've been in war forever,
never ending wars. There are just a lot of things
that back the dollar outside of just Hey, the United
States is a strong economy, right, so we don't have
to go down that rabbit hole. But the reason I'm
prefacing your question with all this is because I think
it's important for people to understand what sound money and
(10:52):
hard money is versus just let's call it crypto. So,
in my opinion, bitcoin is the hardest form of money
ever created. So what do I mean by that? And
what is hard money? So the traits of money, or
that it's fungible, meaning it's interchangeable. So no matter what
a ten dollar bill is, a ten dollar bill, and
a ten dollar bill is going to buy you ten
dollars worth of stuff all throughout the nation or all
(11:14):
throughout the world. Right, there's not different versions of a
ten dollar bill. It's non consumable, so it's not like
wheat or fish that can rot. It's portable, you know.
That's why we went from having gold in our pockets
to dollar bills because you can put it in a
billfold or a wallet.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
It's durable. You know.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
The dollars, yes, they can catch on fire or get
wet or do whatever. But that's why gold is very durable.
It's highly divisible. We have dollars and cents, and then
it's secure, it's easily transactable, and it's scarce, which fiat
money is not. So in my opinion, bitcoin, if you
look at a chart of all these different traits of money,
(11:53):
bitcoin checks the box for literally every single one of these.
And it's also decentralized. It's not owned by any certain person.
So when you look at bitcoin, not crypto. Crypto has
icos initial coin offerings, they have marketing teams behind them,
they have teams of developers, they have people that pump
them on Instagram, on Twitter, on social media on x
whatever you want to call it. A lot of them
(12:14):
is just creating hype for exit liquidity. So hey, check
out this really cool shiba enu coin. Right, check out dogecoin,
check out whatever. Those are all essentially just lottery tickets.
In my opinion, only bitcoin can be hard money. There's
other forms of bitcoin. There's light cooin, there's bitcoin cash,
There's a million different forks of bitcoin. But what people
(12:36):
need to realize is the story and the network effects
behind bitcoin is that there is no there is no
centralized agency that created it. There is no founder, there
is no vitallic booterine who created ethereum, There is no
Charles Hoskinson who created cardano. It's Satoshi Nakamoto, who no
one knows who that is. It's just a t ssunonymous
pen name on these forums and these emails. When bitcoin
(12:59):
was in its infancy being created in two thousand and eight,
then it gave birth in two thousand and nine, which
is the Genesis block, and then that story has survived
ever since fifteen years later. So a lot of people
compare it to like a cult or religion, and I
guess you can see that in a lot of different ways.
But the beauty behind bitcoin is that no one knows
(13:20):
who created it, and it's just open source code. So
you and I can go on GitHub or whatever and
just literally look at bitcoin's code and see how it works.
We can create our own bitcoin, right, We can create
our own rules, but no one's going to want to
play with you if you play if you change the
rules of chess. You know, Matt and Joel could love chess.
I could love chess. But if I say, you know,
a pond has infinite possibilities to move, and I create
(13:42):
my own version of chess, well then we're not playing chess.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So, without getting super long winded, I just think that,
in my humble opinion, the network effects of so many
people adopting it at this point fifteen years later Lindy effect,
meaning that a technology that's been kind of like the
forefront of that sector, has been alive for so long
it gets harder to kill as time goes on. And
(14:07):
then also, not having a single creator or founder that's
publicly known is just all the checkboxes of what could be.
You know, who knows what it could be fifteen years
from now. But in my opinion, it's the hardest form
of money ever created, and at minimum it's a great
savings technology.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Talk to me about the difference between bitcoin as currency
and bitcoin as an investment, because to be a currency
and you need some stability there as well. Right, Granted,
inflation happens, but typically that the cycle of inflation is
is pretty understandable and until you know the printing of
money during the COVID lockdowns. But some people think of
(14:44):
bitcoin as the speculative asset they're hoping the number goes up.
And then there are other places like the Bitcoin Beach
for instance, where it's trying to be used as as
like the way that you transact, you use bitcoin to
buy and sell things. That's I think that it's hard
for me to wrap my mind or the fact that
it's it's kind of sort of trying to serve two purposes.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
So I think bitcoin is kind of email in nineteen
ninety three right now or nineteen ninety five. It's kind
of like when you're on the Today Show and they're like, oh,
I just send an email and it's magic digital mail, right, Okay, great?
More do you Cynthia more at six? Later at six right,
And everyone's just like they kind of brush it off, right,
It's almost like a job. It's almost like use it regularly,
(15:23):
and then everyone uses email every single day.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So I think bitcoin is still in its infancy and
it's going to that process of being a store of
value to be able to be a currency. The thing
that people have to realize is that if you don't
understand the technology behind it, I would recommend the book
Inventing Bitcoin by Jan Pritzker. It's kind of like a
layman's guide to understanding the technology behind bitcoin without being
(15:46):
a computer programmer, if that makes sense. So to answer
your question, it is money. It can be money. People
use it to transact all the time. Currency is when
it becomes a little bit more mainstream. Currencies are typically
dictated by governments, so like, hey, the US dollar is
the currency of the United States and it can be
the currency in other countries as well. So I don't
(16:08):
think bitcoin is there yet because of the protocol. So
the protocol, there's things called blocks. There's a million different
things that I can go into, but without losing your audience,
just think of layers. Okay, so when you think of
like master card, credit card, visa, that's not the US dollar.
You're transacting in US dollars, but that's a different layer
on top of the dollar.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So if you think of the pyramid that I talked
about earlier, you have layers of money. So it used
to be gold, and then it was dollars, and then
it was you know, whatever you want to call it.
Now we have digital dollars. I'd say ninety eight percent
of dollars or digital they're just ones and zeros. Every
time you use your credit card, you're just using a
digital form of the dollar that doesn't settle for days later.
Or if you try and move money from a bank
(16:50):
account to another, it doesn't get there right away. It
takes days. So you were just using the digital layer
of the dollar.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
So we have let's call it, you know, the US dollar,
And on top of that, we have other platforms like Visa, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo,
whatever you want to whatever example you want to use.
So once those layer two solutions on top of the
Bitcoin protocol, such as like Lightning, there's aqua wallet. There's
a bunch of different solutions that are becoming more and
(17:17):
more available. Jack Dorsey just tweeted literally three four days
ago that I think they came out with bitkey or
whatever it's called. That's going to be his solution to
easily custody bitcoin and use it as currency. Right, so
we don't think about how our phones work. If I
were to send Matt or Joel a text message, do
I understand everything that's going on behind the scenes to
be able to send that text message or that emoji
(17:39):
or that gift? Obviously not, But we use it every day.
People don't know SMTP or whatever the protocol that email
runs on, right, we just send the email.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So bitcoins so early, people are still having a hard
time understanding how it can become that currency. Until it's
so ingrained in our culture that we won't even think
twice about how it works.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
That makes sense, it does, Yeah, And as more applications
are built and it's created in such a way that
makes it easier for folks, I think a lot of
folks do have a hard time wrapping their head around it.
But I want to go back to what you said.
When you're talking about fiat currency, you're talking about essentially
it exists because it was decreed by a government, and
so much of the power of a fiat currency comes
(18:21):
down to belief and trust like that is a huge
part of what makes money work and so and again
you were talking about like the network effect. So how
important is the growing just the growing belief to the
value of bitcoin and its price essentially.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, the beauty of it is that you don't have
to believe anything. Bitcoin is trustless. There is no trust involved.
Every time I use a dollar or a deposit my
money in a bank and hope to get it out,
I'm trusting a third party.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So someone asked me inside my community, They ask me, well,
I want to store my seed phrase, the private keys
that allow me to access my bitcoin in a wallet
right anywhere in the world. I want to or that
in a vault in a bank, right. I'm like, well,
then you're trusting the bank.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So every time that we're trusting a third party that
involves trust, I need to be able to trust Matt
and Joel, Right, Matt and Joel need to be able
to trust me with bitcoin. This all lives on the
men pool. The men pool is just all the different blocks,
all the transactions. It's completely transparent currency. You can see
what any address sent anyone at any time. I guess
to answer your question, bitcoin is trustless and bitcoin is
(19:27):
for enemies. You don't have to trust each other. You know,
Russia and China and United States can transact on bitcoin
because it's literally just math. It's literally just blocks of
information on an open source ledger. There's no behind the
scenes deals. There's no money going to Ukraine, there's no
money going under the table here, there's no money going there.
It's just if you know who owns the address, you
(19:48):
know exactly what's going on.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
How does the growing printing of money in this country,
the growing national debt, how does that maybe influence your
belief in bitcoin? Is that part of people's disillusionment with
the US dollar and thinking that we need a harder
form of currency.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, I think people don't understand that. If you just
pull up a chart, people can do this, if you
just google, like Federal Reserve balance sheet. We've added trillions.
Our lizard brains can't even comprehend how big of a
number a trillion is. It's a thousand billions. We've added
thousands of billions of dollars to the Federal reserves balance
sheet just by you know, buying treasuries, right, that's what
(20:26):
the Fed does. So people in this country, they're funny
because they always have, you know, certain thoughts about like
socialism and central planning and we're not communists and this
and that. Well, it's called a central bank. Okay, we
don't know. We don't know the monetary policy of the FED.
Bitcoins protocol has every two hundred and ten thousand blocks.
It's called the having. It's gonna happen April twentieth. We
(20:47):
know bitcoin's monetary policy until the year twenty one forty. Okay,
So minors, they're rewarded in bitcoin by verifying blocks. So
right now, the daily issuance of bitcoin is nine hundred
bitcoin per day, roughly six point sorry, let me do
the math. It started with fifty, then twenty five, and
twelve and a half and six point twenty five. Then
it's going to go to three in an eighth for
(21:08):
the next two hundred and ten thousand blocks. So, without
getting too technical and losing your audience, we know bitcoin's
monetary policy until the year twenty one forty. We don't
know what the FED is doing literally hours from now.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Okay, So the predictability factor is here.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yeah, say you're a small business and you went through COVID.
Say say you're a restaurant. How many businesses went out
of business during COVID A lot because they couldn't predict
something like that. Right, Inflation went crazy, cost the goods
went crazy. If you're on a deflationary or disinflationary money
like bitcoin, you can kind of make better business decisions
and spend your time more wisely as a business owner,
(21:43):
because you know what the money's going to do. Right,
Inflation is actually going to go down on a Bitcoin standard.
And I'm not some advocate for a bitcoin standard or
hyper bitcoinization or anything like that. I think fiat and
bitcoin can live together. But the one thing I wanted
to make your audience aware of is that I think
the worst case scenario for bitcoin, my humble opinion, is
just eating up the monetary premium of gold. So when
(22:04):
you look at monetary premium, all that means is that, hey,
this thing has value above and beyond its intrinsic value
because people are using it as money. So when people
complain about high real estate prices, single moms are getting
priced out by black Rock for example, or you know,
let's look at gold for example. I'd say eighty percent
of gold's values just from its monetary premium it's not
(22:24):
really to use that much in industrial applications as mostly
uses jewelry, and the rest of that value comes from
people saving in it because it's been hard money for
five thousand years. I think bitcoin is inevitably going to
suck up all that monetary premium from things that shouldn't
be used as money in the first place, like a
single family home for example, with speculators and investors. And
the base case, in my opinion, is going to be
(22:47):
Gold's market cap is ten x of what bitcoins is.
Gold is roughly eleven to twelve trillion at the time
of this recording. Bitcoin is roughly one point three trillion
at the time of this recording. And my humble opinion,
and I know this sounds insane if you haven't done
the work, but I think bitcoin still has ten x
to go because it's simply just going to meet the
market cap of gold, and then you can look at
(23:07):
other assets as well, you know, stocks, bonds, real estate,
things like that. So just look at it as a
monetary premium, and bitcoin is the monetary premium vacuum cleaner.
I like it.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I mean, it makes sense, and it it goes to
explain a little bit why bitcoin's referred to as digital
gold the way that you've explained it here. But Marco,
we've got more to get to. Specifically, we want to
touch on Vanguard and their opinion of bitcoin. We've got
more to get to with you. Right after this, we're back.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
We're still talking about bitcoin, hopefully in a basic enough
level that we can all understand it. Matt and I
I think we would also call ourselves nubes in this space.
But Marco from Whiteboard Finance has been kind enough to
join us to walk through a bunch of stuff, and.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I'm already learning a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So Marco, let's talk about bitcoin e and especially because
the number going up sort of thing is what lends
a spotlight again on bitcoin. How do you think that's
impacting prices? And isn't that also kind of the opposite
of the gold bitcoin, the decentralized finance part of it.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Yeah, so that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
So I think obviously the number has gone up since
the ETFs were approved on January eleventh of twenty twenty four,
so there was a little bit of a dip I
think to like thirty eight thousand, and then now we're
sitting roughly at I'd say sixty four thousand at the
time of this recording, which we hit a new all
time high before the having of I think seventy three
(24:36):
five right around there. So yes, we just have more
money going into bitcoin. So what people need to realize
is is that bitcoin is it's specifically scarce. So there's
only twenty one million bitcoin ever to be released into circulation,
and I'd say about like three to four million of
those have been lost, maybe a little bit less. But
let's just say there's nineteen million bitcoin that's you know,
(24:57):
that people are able to use or recover. So what
people need to realize it's just a simple supply and
demand equation and the price of bitcoin. It's three hundred
and sixty five days a year, twenty four to seven
does not trade just Monday through Friday like a typical asset.
The ETFs do, but bitcoin does not. So what people
need to realize is that if you have all these
ETFs adding hundreds of millions of dollars a day into
(25:21):
new flow into bitcoin, since there's only twenty one million ever,
I think right now there's only about like nineteen something
in circulation based on the having numbers minus whatever has
been lost that I refer to earlier. Then it's just
simple supply and demand. So number is going to go up.
So Bitcoin is about up one hundred and thirty one
hundred and thirty five percent year over year at this point,
(25:41):
and it's up something crazy year to date as well.
But I think what people need to realize is that
you're going to get so many more passive flows from
people that are now more comfortable using a traditional brokerage
to buy I bit, you know, black Rocks ETF offering
for example. So I believe there's eleven total ETFs, of
which I think eight of those coin bases the custodium,
(26:02):
which kind of creates some of that concentration risk that
you guys were talking about. But basically it's just a
simple supply and demand equation. So if there's more inflows
and less outflows on these exchanges or into these ETFs,
the bitcoin number is typically going to go up.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Into the right makes sense, Yeah, going back to the
scarcity aspect, But let's talk about I mentioned Vanguard before
the break. On one hand, you've got Vanguard and on
the other hand you've got Fidelity. They obviously seem to
be taking different paths. But you're predicting essentially that more
and more folks are going to be are interested in bitcoin,
and it sounds like that the different brokerages that are
(26:38):
not participating in that, I mean, it seems like they're
just going to be left in the dusts.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Yeah, very well, could be. I mean I understand.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So if you guys have ever been on a bogel
Head forum, So Jack Bogel is the founder of Vanguard,
so there's a whole forum dedicated to him called the
bogel Heads and the whole different investment philosophy. So he's
typically a proponent of the three fund portfolio. So you
have globull stocks or international stocks excuse me, x Us,
then you have total US stock market, then you have bonds. Right,
(27:06):
that's typically the bogel Head three fund portfolio. If you
guys have ever been on a bogle Head form and
looked at the conversations around bitcoin or crypto in general,
people they just they don't do the work and it's
just very unproductive conversations over there. So I can see
why from pandering to their customer base, I understand why
(27:26):
Vanguard is not Uh, I don't want to say accepting.
They're just not even giving the people the option to
invest in these They're not even considering it exactly. So ultimately,
I understand it's kind of like, you know, if McDonald's
started making I don't know, spinach bites, yes, spinach bites,
keen wa quen wah bite. Yeah, it's like, obviously you're
(27:48):
not pandering to your customer base. So I understand why
Vanguard is doing it. I just think that in this
age now where people are starting to wake up just
a little bit in terms of what is money, you know,
I want to be a little bit more diversified than
just simply stocks, bonds, target date funds, you know, things
like that. I think that they're kind of creating a
competitive disadvantage to themselves because if you think about gain theory, say,
(28:12):
for example, here's a perfect example, So China they banned
bitcoin mining in twenty twenty one. All those miners they're
just opening up shop in the United States, Africa, Europe,
you know, Asia, all over the place. Right, They're just
doing it somewhere else. So that's inevitable what's going to
happen to Vanguard. People are just going to buy those
funds from somewhere else. So set exactly, so I think
(28:33):
they're kind of potentially shooting themselves in the foot in
the long term. In the near term, you know, I
don't think most of their customers are in a care
But the one tweet I did see was this gentleman
when bitcoin was pumping literally fifty percent earlier this year,
from a period of like one or two weeks, Vanguard
actually got rid of all this gentleman's I forgot what
his holdings were. I think it was in the Bitcoin ETF,
(28:55):
not the spot ETF. But I believe the future is
one and that pumped everything pump. And this guy's like, okay,
I'm now getting I'm canceling my Vanguard account.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I'm moving elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
So that's just the mini microcosm of game theory playing out.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
In my opinion, When you you're more of a bitcoin purist,
you obviously have a lot of faith in it as
an asset class and as a hard form of money.
What would you say to somebody who's like, I feel like,
after this conversation, I need more bitcoin exposure. We'll talk
about like how to think about how much you have too,
But should I be buying dollar cost averaging into one
(29:30):
of these bitcoin ETFs do I actually need to? I know,
there's like you know, owning the bitcoin itself, cold storage,
that kind of stuff. Like how how important is it
just to have like exposure versus having owning it in
the right way.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So me, you know,
the entire premise of Okay, let's just use gold for
an example. Would you rather own physical gold bouoleon or
would you rather own a gold ETF? Right, So, in
my opinion, owning the ETF defeats the purpose the asset
class in the first place.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I will say though, that it makes it easier to
buy and sell, because if you're saying you make your
put your Pokemon sign out on the mailbox of your driveway,
well I have to do the same thing with my
gold bar, right, Whereas it's it's so much easier to
trade the ETF one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
But that's where bitcoin is far superior to gold. It's
divisible to one hundred million places. I think calling a
digital gold is almost like not giving bitcoin nearly enough credit.
Its just completely It's like discovering the number zero, right,
you only do that once. And that's why bitcoin has
kind of like a cult like following, because it just
takes all the properties of gold and just it goes
from analog So like your cassette that you maybe used
(30:38):
to listen to fifteen twenty thirty years ago and turning
it into an MP three. That's all bitcoin is doing
to gold, but in a much infinitely much better way,
with the blocks, with the open ledger, with everything. So anyway,
very quickly, I think that, in my opinion, I don't
think that I know that I'd much rather custody my
own bitcoin and be my own sovereign individual and be
(30:59):
my own bank, be my own wealth manager, be my
own portfolio manager, then to rely on black Rocks sending
me a screenshot of my bitcoin, you know, quarterly or
you know whatever that you want to look at it.
So it's nice to know that you you know, the
phrase is not your keys, not your cheese, okay, not
the keys to your seed phrase, not your bitcoin. And
(31:20):
there's and I think you're gonna allude to another question
of like how much bitcoin should you own. There's a
great website called knakamoto portfolio dot com. This is created
by Swan Bitcoin. I would check it out because it
gives you the ability to run tests of your current
portfolio and what those results would be if you were
to juice it up a little bit with bitcoin, and
(31:41):
you could add anywhere from one percent to one hundred percent.
I personally have a bitcoin is at least fifteen percent
of my net worth at all times, and then it
far exceeds that once it pumps and I don't have
this Is this gonna sound wrong no matter how I
say it. My net worth isn't ten grand. Okay, my
net worth is high, and it's at least fifteen percent
(32:01):
of my networth at all times, I.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Would hope, so from the mister Beast of personal finance,
you know.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
So my point is is that I'm not just some
like Charlatan trying to sell you something. There's no kickback
from the CEO of bitcoin there because there is no
there is no CEO.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It's the beauty of it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
It's just something I've studied for a very long time
and I think it answers a lot of questions in
today's monetary system.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And that's why we want to have you on too,
because you're you're a personal finance nerd. You talk about
a lot of the stuff that Matt and I cover,
and we have very similar philosophies. You're just more into
bitcoin than we are. And part of it is because
I don't know. I think Mas's probably done more work
on this than me. I'm probably just like again Bitcoin Nube.
You also, one of the other things you talk about
is the dollar cost averaging approach, so you're not about
(32:40):
timing the market. Even on bitcoin. It seems like it's
regular study as you go buying in at regular intervals
no matter what the price is doing.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Right, I've been buying bitcoin every week since twenty eighteen.
I've bought it at two three grand, i bought it
at seventy three grand. I don't care, you know, I
literally don't care because I know what I'm buying and
I know what it is. And the way that your
audience should think about this is that if I know
it's not video, but I'm holding up a circle with
my hands. If you think of a pie or a pizza,
(33:08):
you should have every asset slice as a asset class
as a slice of that pizza. Okay, So for me,
I have a fifteen percent slice of bitcoin. I have
thirty five percent stocks, thirty five percent real estate, some
precious metals, some collectible, some you name it. Right, you
should define whatever the size of your slices are, and
you should be okay with that slice going to zero.
(33:29):
So if that slice goes to zero and you want
to jump off a building or drink yourself to death,
then that's too big of a slice, right. You need
to create it to where you sleep well at night.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I mean yeah, Like, I'm thinking about folks who are
interested in it, like they're experiencing some of that foam
because they're like, oh man, I totally should have bought
some more of it while it was you know, in
the dumps over the past year. Can I go back
in time to seventeen? Yeah, Well, like, there are a
lot of folks who are approaching it more from a
speculative standpoint. But the way you're talking about it, you
are treating it just like you are treating any other
asset class. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Absolutely? And smash by too.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I mean, my dollar cost average is you know, a
certain amount, and I haven't deviated from that for six
years now, six and a half years. But yeah, I've
bought many dips, you know, I post about it on Twitter.
I just bought a thousand dollars yesterday. And I think
it's important for your audience to understand if you have
a thesis on something and you have a general feeling
that the probability is that you're right. You know, no
(34:22):
one is right, no one has a crystal ball, But
why would you deviate from that thesis unless proved otherwise? Right?
So for me, I guess for your audience, if you're
going to go down this rabbit hole, I would highly
recommend reading these certain books. I can name them either
in the show notes or in the episode. But once
you understand what you're buying, once you see it, it
can't be unseen. Is just the solution to everything that's
(34:42):
going on right now. So when you go to Longhorn
Steakhouse and your steak is twenty one ninety nine five
six years ago, and now the same outlaw Rabbi is
thirty one ninety nine, there's a reason for that fifty
percent increase.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
So the question that I would post to your audience is,
if you had one hundred thousand dollars right now, do
you think it's to buy more or less five years
from now?
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Obviously less?
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Right, So, if you have one hundred thousand dollars in
bitcoin you think it's going to be worth more or
less than five years from now, and it's proven every
four year cycle to be multiples higher. Right, So I'm
not telling anyone to do anything. I could be one
hundred percent wrong. I don't think I am. But at
the end of the day, if you're looking for a
sound money that can't be debased by a few clicks
by the Federal Reserve that prints trillions into your balance sheet,
(35:27):
thus devaluing the value of your currency, then bitcoin may
be a good savings technology at the minimum, and then
it may be a currency that sucks up the monetary
premium of a lot of things in the future.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Sure, Okay, So getting to the tip to brass tacks,
you've mentioned you're fifteen percent essentially for you, that's how
much you believe in it. I guess it varies because
you said, you know, as it shoots up, as it pumps,
it's worth a lot more and it's more of a
percentage of your overall portfolio. But at this point, or
maybe what you strive for and the balance that you're
trying to you're trying to strike, you believe in it
(36:00):
up to fifteen percent and.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
So oh at a minimum, and I don't. I don't
call my position either if it inflates to you know,
twenty five thirty whatever. I never sell you're yeah, I've
sold bitcoin literally once in my life. I sold half
a bitcoin a couple of years ago, and then I
just ended up smashed buying it right back.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
So it's it's different, man.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
It's it changes you as a person because you have
to realize as time preference. So this may be a
new concept to your audience. When your money is being devalued,
you have high time preference. You need to do something
with that money. You make decisions today to you know,
appease your to satiate your needs today. When you know
that your money can't be debased, you make long term decisions, right.
It's kind of like building a ship in a shipyard
(36:40):
that takes years, as opposed to, you know what, my
money's not worth anything, let me buy some crap coin.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Again, it's establishing what percentage you're comfortable with if you're
networth going to zero, which I don't think is going
to happen. If I didn't have a wife and kids,
I'd probably be significantly higher. But the goal of my channel.
It's very simple. It's I'm a traditional finance guy. I
understand that the chart is going to go up into
the right as long as we have US dollar dominance, right,
(37:06):
Petro dollar, big military wars, high demand internationally for dollars.
Like let's just use a quick example so I don't
lose your audience. If I'm a manufacturing firm in Colombia
and I have the ability to borrow pasos Colombian pasos
at nine percent, or I can borrow in US dollars
at six and a half percent, on what planet would
that business decision make to borrow and paysos and I
(37:27):
can borrow dollars right now? Multiply that example for the
entire world. If you look at Lebanon right now, Lebanon's
going through quasi, you know, hyperinflation. Look at Turkey, Look
at Argentina. Argentina, I think is at like two hundred
and seventy percent inflation over the last couple of years.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
They're getting rid of.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Their crap coin aka the lira, the pound, the paso
to pay for their day to day stuff, and they're
keeping the dollar in their back pocket because it's the
world reserve currency. Actually means something, right, So it's kind
of like Gresham's law, bad money drives out good. So
this may be this may make any sense to your audience,
but that's playing out in real time. Why would someone
(38:04):
keep a unit of currency that's being debased day by day.
We're adding a trillion dollars every hundred days, I believe
now at this point, and our tax receipts are not
coming up, are They're not. They're not sufficient to keep
up with the rate of what we're spending to where
it's like, Okay, when does this become unsustainable? Why would
I want to save in dollars when I can save
in this monetary fuel cell known as bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of truth there.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
And I think the recent bout of inflation and the
ticking up of the national debt that becomes more and
more concerning to anybody who's paying attention, right, And I
think seeing the national debt, national deficit increase substantially over
the past couple of decades and especially over the past
few years, that does start. It starts to make you
ask questions. Because there are some people, the modern monetary
(38:51):
theorists out there, who would say, well, there's no limit
to the amount of the US government can print money
or can make spending obligations without increasing taxes. But I
think most level headed folks would disagree with that.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up MMT Modern monetary Theory.
There's a good book called The Deficit Myth, and if
your audience wants to hear both sides of this, because
I'm not some like bitcoin evangelists or propagandists, I'm someone
who's just been studying money for a very long time,
and bitcoin is, in my opinion, a good answer to it.
I think that the Deficit Myth, along with the books
that I would recommend, would be a good counterbalance, and
(39:25):
then they can make their own decision. But basically MMT
in a nutshell is that, hey, government balance sheet is
not like our household balance sheet. To where you and
I are teaching personal finance. You know one plus one
is two. You know when it comes to MT, you
can just print the two and hope it doesn't inflate. Right,
So that may not be a good analogy. But what
I'm trying to say is I think to balance out
(39:46):
everything that I'm saying, people just need to do their
own work.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
And come to their own conclusion.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
I don't want anyone buying bitcoin without understanding it, because
they're not going to have the conviction to hold it
during sixty seventy eighty percent drops.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, that's a good point too. Have you got to
know the why behind it so you actually can stay
the course or we got just a few more questions
to get to with you, Marco, and clude you want
to talk about criminal activity in the bitcoin or the
crypto space, We'll get to a few more questions right
after this.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Right, we're back from the break talking with Marco from
Whiteboard Finance, and obviously we're talking all about bitcoin, but
before we before we dive even deeper, Marco, I kind
of want to, I guess, back out a little bit,
maybe talk a little bit more about general personal finance,
because from what I understand, are you completely debt free?
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Uh yeah, like literally, Okay, So.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I'm curious because like what pushed you in that direction?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
I had kids?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
You know, is it kids? Because because because on one hand,
like there's okay, security, peace of mind, But on the
other hand, when you are such you know, you believe
in bitcoin, you believe in the future.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Of it where it's going to go or even taking
bitcoin out of the equation. If you had a low
let's say you had a low interest rate mortgage stot
in the historical average return of stocks, it doesn't necessarily make,
you know, sense to pay off that debt.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Or if you're if you're only looking at the numbers.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Paying off my house was the dumbest financial decision I've
ever made. But here's the double edged sword, is that
I'm an entrepreneur. I don't know what my income is
going to be tomorrow. You know, it just helps you
sleep well at night, which is an emotional thing. So
I think people need to just balance the two, right,
So it's like I reduced, you know, my biggest expense
in my life. I have no debt now, so it
(41:28):
just allows me to be way more bullish in my
convictions and in my investing. So in the yes, you're
you're foregoing the mathematics of it, because, especially in an
inflationary environment, it makes no sense to pay off you know,
low interest rate debt. But at the same time, you know,
if you want to live stress free, that's also a
benefit as well.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Sure, so dumb financial move, but smart personal move you
and I love too.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Like what you said, like it allows you to be
more bullish with your investments because if you don't have
the debt, if you don't have the recurring monthly payments
that come along with having household debt, you can be
a little more adventurous I guess when it comes to
what you're investing.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, hundred percent. And it's also a super charge as well.
And also your audience knows this because they're smart, and
you guys know this as well. I mean the time
value of money. A dollar today is worth more than
a dollar, you know, ten years from now, and when
you're investing, especially when we talked about the chart going
up into the right historically, you know, time is on
your side. So yeah, that's why I did that. I
could I could have plopped that into you know, VTI,
(42:27):
a total stock market fund for example, but at the
end of the day, I wanted to cross off that
big debt first and then I can just pile loads
of money into my investments and not have to think
about it. Perfect example. You know, I smash bought you know,
five grand a bitcoin a couple weeks ago. I bought
a thousand last week. I dollar cost average every week
into four specific index funds and ETFs and I don't
(42:49):
have to think twice about it.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
How do you think about criminal activity in the cryptocurrency
space and does bitcoin get an undeserved black eye because
of maybe things that are happening with other crypto coins
and let's say the Sam Bachman freed FTX fiasco. How
do do you think, I don't know, Bitcoin's reputation is
unfairly maligned because of some of that stuff happening. Or
(43:14):
do you think there really are some criminal enterprises using
bitcoin for nefarious purposes?
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
I think both those things are true. So I've been
tweeting for years saying that bitcoin needs to do a
better job of kind of disassociating itself from crypto, if
you will, Because crypto you have anything from you know,
great use cases that you know companies and governments are
adopting all the way down to Geo Boden, you know Shiba,
you new meme coin, right, So it runs the whole gamut. Again,
(43:43):
from my background, from my educational background and my own
personal education, I'm a sound money kind of guy, just
because I think it provides lower time preference, it helps
people make decisions for the long term, and I think
from that standpoint, I am a bitcoin maximalist. From from
a sound money standpoint, are there other cryptos or coins
(44:03):
or tokens or smart contracts or all that stuff that
we can go down that provide value for other use cases? Yes,
there can be, But again from a sound money standpoint,
I'm all about bitcoin. The other question of like, is
it used for a listed activity? Absolutely, just like the
dollar has been for hundreds of years, right, so it
just I fiat currency has been used for that as well.
(44:24):
If you look at like HSBC literally getting fined for
washing Mexican drug cartel money. You know, the dollar never
gets those articles written about it. But if someone uses
it to buy you know, some weed or ecstasy or
you know, cocaine on the dark web, then bitcoin is
the worst thing ever created. So I just think it's
whatever you know, the media wants to focus on.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, no, that's true. I think it's oftentimes it's just
a straw man argument and there's not there's not a
whole whole lot behind that. But as far as some
of the the meme coins out there and the just
even honestly some of the NFTs, do you think that
the rise. Because this is one of the interesting things
is oftentimes you do see correlated activity when it comes
(45:04):
to Bitcoin and even just ethereum. Like you said, there
are use case scenarios for different coins out there, But
even when it comes to the shibu e new coins,
are they essentially just writing on the coattails and are
they hanging out in the wake of Bitcoin and the
the actual work that it's doing.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, absolutely, Bitcoin is this, That's how you Bitcoin is
the signal. Everything else is the noise.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
All right, So let's say we wake up ten years
from now, twenty thirty four, and what's going on with
bitcoin at that point in time. Yes, Mark going to
make a prediction, not even like not even like all
those are the price it's going to be at, but
like what's happening in the bitcoin world and what's going
to happen, Like what will people be feeling Who listened
to this in twenty twenty four and they said, that's
(45:47):
great for Marco, but I think I'm gonna stick with
my my normal boring investing strategy that Matt and Joel
talk about most of the time. How are those people
going to be feeling a decade down the road.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, from like an adoption and technological standpoint, is going
to be the same as any other technology. I think
innovations are going to be made. I think those layer
two solutions are going to be become much more easier
to use, much more accessible. They're already happening. And then
also again I'm not price prediction guy, but my base
case is that it's a much much much better version
(46:17):
of gold, and that would put bitcoin at around half
a million dollars per bitcoin. And I know that sounds insane,
but whether you believe me or not, it's still the
biggest asymmetric bet that you can make with the highest
probability at this point in time without having to pick
you know, the NVIDIAs, the Tesla's, the you know metas
and you know wondering what the CEO is going to
do and what the macro environment is going to be.
(46:38):
I think the cat is out of the bag and
the network and Lindy effects are just going to make
it stronger. But that's not to say that you know,
it is volatile, it's very new. It's an infant technology essentially,
it's fifteen years old. It's still on the early adopter
side of the Bell curve. But I think ten years
from now, I think you know we're going to be
able to transact with it and use it without even
thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, now you heard it here twenty thirty four half
a million per bitcoin, and Marco, you can rub it
in our faces after you invite us over to enjoy
some of those Rabbi's right.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
I don't want to rub anything in anyone's faces. I
just I think it will behoove you to read these books.
I'm not associated with any of these people, but I
would read them in this specific order if you're genuinely interested.
They're audiobooks. You can listen to them, you can, there's
different ways to consume them. But it would be the
bullish case for bitcoin. It would be inventing bitcoin. It
(47:27):
would be the bitcoin standard gradually then suddenly layered money,
the price of tomorrow, and then broken money. So you
can you can rewind that. But I'm not associated with
any of these authors, but I think it'll help provide
some clarity.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Awesome. Yeah, no, and we will absolutely We'll link to
every single one of those books in our show notes,
and I gonna check a couple of those out myself
for sure, from our local library. But Marco, we really
appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about bitcoin,
sharing your thoughts on it, and working folks learn more
about you.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
Well.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Obviously they can head over to YouTube, white or finance
and learn more about bitcoin, but also just personal finance
in general there as well. But where else can folks
find you?
Speaker 3 (48:06):
Yeah, so whiteboard Finance on YouTube, Whiteboard finn Fin on
x or Twitter, and then whiteboard Finance on Instagram if
you guys are interested. I don't want to plug anything,
but I do have a private community where we've been
talking about bitcoin when it was significantly less than it
is now, and people are paying for that membership ten
times over. It's just Whiteboard Finance University. It's a private community,
(48:27):
we have professors.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
It's really good stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Awesome, Marco, thank you so much for joining us today. Man,
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys, Joel.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Isn't it refreshing to talk to somebody about something that
is really complex? But oftentimes there are more emotions involved
with how it is that you're thinking about something like this, Yes,
and I feel like Marco was able to just talk
about it with a bounced perspective.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
It bring with the heart of a teacher, the whiteboard
finance thing man, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
That's what I felt the entire time.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And I felt like I was being taught because honestly,
I feel like I'm a second grader here.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
On this stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
So it comes to bitcoin, Yeah, I mean, well, I
feel like there's I know something, but like market does
a whole heck of a lot more. Obviously he's he's
done the work, and so I really appreciate hearing his perspective,
and I feel like it's it's worth having someone who's thoughtful,
who kind of stems from in a lot of ways
our thought process on how to handle money, but is
also more pro bitcoin and it's reasons for it.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Multiple levels deeper when it comes to understanding it, to
the point that he is comfortable with investing, you know,
over fifteen percent of his overall portfolio within within bitcoin.
But yeah, is that your big takeaway that you're going
to go all in, go ahead and sell.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
You're going to sell all your sc rocks, Yes, go
all in everything. I am TC baby, yep, even all
my clothing items. Like I'm just gonna walk around in alloyingcloth,
but I'll loan a lot of bitcoin. I think my
big takeaway was when he said, like, what allocation is
not going to cause you to lose sleep? And that
is a really important thing, like as possible to see
other investments to climb precipitously too, right, Volatility is the
price of admission into the stock market. We discussed that regularly,
(49:54):
and so if you don't feel comfortable seeing a forty
plus percent drop in your portfolio potentially for multiple years
on end, then you probably need to change it. Change
your allocation so that you can sleep better at night
when things get tough. And that is even more true
of bitcoin. So if you decide to read the books,
and if you think that you know Marco's stance about
(50:15):
bitcoin being the hardest form of money ever created, if
that makes sense to you, that resonates with you. Well,
I love the dollar cost averaging, goes slowly into it,
and then just don't bite off more than you can chew,
don't take don't take on so much risk that when
that inevitable eighty percent decline happens, sixty percent de client
Because Bitcoin, like I said, is even more volatile that
(50:36):
it's not going to.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Cause you to freak out. Yeah, my big takeaway is
going to have to do with essentially around the having
event and less and less of bitcoin is being created.
There's a set amount that's ever going to be created.
And going back to when he was outlining some of
the different properties of what makes money, what makes a
currency in scarcity, like the facts that we know exactly
how much there's going to be in the parallel to
(50:58):
the US and the ability it's a print money and
deciding Jay Powell like it all kind of comes down
to him and how he says certain words. Doesn't that
make that It really makes that seem kind of crazy,
like you're trying to balance this ship on the head
of a pin as opposed to the predictability of knowing
what's in store for us when it comes to bitcoin. So,
(51:20):
I don't know, the scarcity argument that he made really
stood up to me during this conversation. And I also
just appreciate his kind of delineation between bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
And there's there's the proof of work versus the proof
of steak. There's a whole lot of reasons that Marco
takes that approach and believes that bitcoin is wholly different
than crypto and crypto products are writing the Bitcoin cottails,
(51:41):
and so it does make me think more about not
increasing my bitcoin exposure past five percent, but at least
making that kind of experimental five percent more bitcoin heavy.
It certainly puts bitcoin in a different light. Yeah, yeah, certainly.
But uh okay. The beer Joel that you and I
enjoyed during this episode was a diamond Dust. This is
a by Pure Project, donated to the show by Christy.
(52:04):
What were your thoughts, M I do this was a
delicious idea. Well, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
I thought I was gonna say three adjectives light, zippy,
and juicy, So I juice really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Hoppy, the tropical fruity notes were coming through like crazy.
They describe it as a murky ipa. But Pure Project
it makes me I don't know anything about this brewery,
but we've got another beer from her, and before we
have that beer, I'm going to look into Pure Project
and see what they're all about, because it makes me
think that it sounds like they do something good, right, Yeah,
but I just don't know what that thing is. Sodime
(52:34):
on dirty folks. So we'll report back. But Christy, thank
you so much for donating this beer to the episodes.
I feel like it's been a minute since I've had
like a really good, surprisingly good IPA like this.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
Yeah, this one delighted me. Definitely top notch. Thank you, Christy.
All right that Matt's going to do it for this episode.
We'll have links in the show notes to all those
books that Marco mentioned and some other resources too, including
Marco's YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
But Matt's going to do it this one. Until next time,
best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am
Matt and today this is the Bitcoin episode for Normies
with Marco from Whiteboard Finance.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
So I'm not opposed if we start naming our episodes
in the like friends fashion right where they're like the
refrigerator episode. But honestly, it makes me think about how
last week we went all in on real estate. That's
what we talked about, but that's actually not what we're
doing today with bitcoin. That being said, we are going
to discuss how investing in bitcoin can not only be
(00:48):
lucrative but also just a simply balanced and healthy strategy
for investors today, and here to share how it's done
is Marco from Whiteboard Finance. So Marco he was self taught.
He started investing in the market at the age of eighteen,
back when you had to pay for trades. But then
after studying finance, working for tech startups and working in banking,
(01:09):
he launched his own YouTube channel, which is actually just
shy of one million subscribers, and so hopefully maybe this
episode will get him to that next milestone. But he
is an expert of all things personal finance, but we're
mainly going to focus on the future of bitcoin. We're
going to talk about the recent events that might be
responsible for it blowing up. We're going to talk about
(01:30):
how much bitcoin you should own, and more. Today, Marco,
thank you for joining us on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Guys, I appreciate
you inviting me on.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, you're you're like the mister Beast of the personal
finance based on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
All right, Well, Beast is the most entertaining person on YouTube,
and my channel is somewhere in the middle between mister
Beast and the most boring classroom you've ever sat in,
So somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
All right, we guess the balance we all have to
strike here.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
You start giving away millions, I think you know that
that'll probably up your numbers, just a little bit of outside.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Advice, even though you don't need it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Our first question, though, Marco, to every guest who comes
on the show, is what's your craft beer equivalent? And
by that we mean what do you like to splurge
on in the here and now while you're diligently saving
and investing for your future.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, it's a great question. So I would say it's
two things. So one is travel, I think travel is
very important. I think the more you travel, it's kind
of like a horse with the blinders on. The more
you travel, the more those blinders are taken off, and
you can see that pretty much everyone around the world
is pretty similar and they value similar things. So I
enjoy traveling, and then I also I like grilling. So
(02:35):
I have two very expensive custom made grills and I
get a lot of pleasure out of them, and so
does my family and friends. So yeah, it's travel and
good food.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
When are you gonna invite us over Marco? That sounds awesome?
Speaker 4 (02:46):
For real, whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I got a Pellett grill for low and slow, and
then I have an adjustable charcoal grill, so we can
do you know, hot and fast, we can do direct heat,
we can do whatever you guys want.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Okay, So this is something that Joel and I both
have taken on over the past last couple of years.
But getting into smoking meats. I literally just ate some
leftover brisket that I smoked this past weekend. What's your
favorite cut? Nice?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
So for low and slow, I really like beef ribs.
So think of like Fred Flintstone when he puts the
big racked ribs in his car and it tips over
beef ribs are good, and then for more like hot
and fast.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
You can't beat a good ribbi.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, we're on the same page. We
could not be more agreement. I love it. Okay, I
feel like we could like accidentally spend the next thirty
minutes talking about talking about meat. And maybe we'll say
that for the post show, but the post interview. But
I want to talk about your your personal history, Marko,
because it sounded like your financial pedigree started early, specifically
(03:43):
with Pokemon cards. Share how that got kicked off.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Basically, Yeah, so for reference, probably aging myself, but I
don't care.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
I'm thirty six.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I was born in eighty seven, and when I was
a kid, I was probably like eleven twelve years old
in middle school when Pokemon really took off. So it
started with the video games and with the trading cards.
And then my dad actually came back from a trip
He worked for Dirt Devil, so if you guys remember
the vacuum company, so he was a mechanical engineer. He
went to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and he came back with
(04:15):
like all these ridiculously rare Pokemon cards. But I didn't
realize this at the time because I was a kid.
He was coming back with like charizzards and all these
you know cards that are very highly valued, and I'm like,
you know what, I have so many of these things
about I just sell them. And then I think I
realized this may or may not have been the case,
but I'm guessing it was the case because there's just
way too many rare cards for them to be legit.
(04:36):
I just think that they were like copies. So like
I inevitably, unknowingly was you know, selling just you know,
rare cards, trading cards, things like that. So I put
a big poster board on my mailbox in my neighborhood
and I live on a main road growing up, so
all these people would say, see this sign, it's like
Pokemon cards for sale, and it was all the crazy.
So I would just sell, you know, Pokemon cards that
(04:58):
I was buying from packs, some that my dad brought
back from China. So that was like my first endeavor
into entrepreneurship. And then also like mixtape CDs. If you
guys remember the days of like Lyonwire and Kaza and
Napster and all that stuff, So Oh my gosh y Yeah,
just just hustling, man, just entrepreneurial, and some kids sell candy.
I was selling Pokemon cards and mixtapes.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, well you got to tell yourself that those were knockoffs,
because you're like, no, only I would have held onto
those and Keta wrapped up in the plastic. I'm sure
I don't know anything about Pokemon, but I'm sure they
would have been worth vast multiples of that to tew
years down the road.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh yeah, fast forward twenty twenty five years later. Man,
it's like, who knows what those are going for now
in eBay for real?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And they're hot again too, right, so because everything nostalgia's back,
are what caused you to launch a YouTube channel? And
then like whiteboard finance like at least started off where
you're teaching lessons on a whiteboard, which sounds like going
back to high school.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
So like, why was that kind of the way the
way you wanted to present information? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
So my background in a nutshell is, like you said
in the intro, I've been investing since two thousand and six,
since I was eighteen, I opened up a trade king
accountants when you actually had to like scan documents like
you know, driver's license and you know, all this stuff
was kind of funny, and you physically mailed it to
the brokerage and then you'd hear back like a week
or two later and saying, oh, hey, this is your
log in credentials right now. You can just download an
(06:18):
app in two seconds and start you know, djen gambling
on whatever you want. But basically my story in a
nutshell was, I got a finance degree, started in six
graduated in twenty ten, and I got that finance degree
because I enjoy teaching and I wanted to be a
financial advisor. So ultimately I never actually ended up scratching
that itch because I graduated into one of the highest
(06:40):
unemployment rates in recent history. This was December of twenty ten.
I think unemployment was close to ten percent. I was
right after the global financial crisis. And I ended up
selling cars, ended up working in commercial real estate development,
commercial real estate lending, you know, commercial mortgage backed securities,
things like that, and I never really scratched the itch
of being that financial advisor. So I always had a
(07:02):
passion for like personal finance investing, you know, different types
of ways to I guess make money.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
If you will.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So I had this DSLR camera that I bought for photography.
It was just simply for a hobby for my wife
and I and I never really used it. You know,
it's collecting dust. So I'm like, hey, I have this
really nice DSLR. You know, I enjoy teaching. You know
what's the natural segue to teaching. It's the classroom setting,
as I mentioned earlier, which you know, I could go
like the chalkboard, but that would be really annoying and
(07:31):
you know, piss my wife off or make her angry.
So I went with the dry erase board. You know,
much more logical, You get way more use out of it.
So yeah, I ended up going on craigslist bought a
huge whiteboard with my brother in law and I. We
put on the roof of my car and it was
too big for my trunk. So we actually did this
in February and I'm in Cleveland, so we're like getting
(07:51):
frostbite on our hand, you know, holding this whiteboard on
the top of the car. Yeah, set it up in
my studio and the rest is history. So the reason
for the white board is because I think people pay
attention in a classroom setting, especially if you know what
you're talking about, or if you can simplify perceived to
be complex items. And that's kind of like my biggest
compliment that I get from my viewers. It's like, hey,
(08:14):
you have the ability to break this down. I don't
even speak English, it's my second or third language, and
even I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
So I like that classroom setting.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I dig it. Yeah, when you see a whiteboard, you
know that you're in to learn something, and that's what
you've been able to convey and what you've established there
with your channel. So congrats with that.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Let's talk about bitcoin, okay, Marco specifically, because when we
messaged you originally and you said that you could talk
about bitcoin specifically, but we made the air of saying,
I guess crypto generally speaking, which isn't necessarily your specialty, right,
And there are a lot of folks out there like
us that tend to lump those two things together, and
so can you draw a distinction between all other forms
(08:53):
of crypto versus bitcoin for us? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Absolutely, So in that finance journey kind of went down
the rabbit hole of kind of like Austrian economics, which
is more of like a sound money. So if you
think of like money back by gold for example, or
hard money.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Now we have fiat.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Currency, which is literally just decreed by the government. So
there's a difference between money and currency. Anything can be money,
like I can trade you my cell phone for your
Pokemon card and that transaction, those two things were money,
right with currency currencies just especially fiat currency, its just
decreed by the government. So what is our currency back by?
(09:30):
Some people would argue without going to you know, geopolitical
or you know political in general. You know, we printed
trillions of dollars after the lockdowns of twenty twenty. Why
didn't our currency hyper inflate. Well, it's because the United
States is the global reserve currency. That happened with Bretton
Woods after World War two. Europe and the rest of
the world was essentially a parking lot and United States
(09:52):
was the next superpower that was really unscathed after World
War two. So United States becomes the base layer of money.
So base layer of money, think of it like gold.
If you think of a pyramid, gold is on the bottom,
and then what people aren't going to carry around gold?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
So what do they do?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
We obviously have dollars, right, it's just representative of the
gold that's inside the vaults or that the bank is
supposed to have. Right, in nineteen seventy one, we got
off the gold standard, thus creating fiat currency. So now
the money is backed by hopefully tax receipts, your GDP,
your ability to be a good economy, you know, world
reserve currency, which is currently the dollar, but it's also
(10:30):
backed by a lot more than that. It's petro dollars.
Most oil is traded in dollars. We've been in war forever,
never ending wars. There are just a lot of things
that back the dollar outside of just Hey, the United
States is a strong economy, right, so we don't have
to go down that rabbit hole. But the reason I'm
prefacing your question with all this is because I think
it's important for people to understand what sound money and
(10:52):
hard money is versus just let's call it crypto. So,
in my opinion, bitcoin is the hardest form of money
ever created. So what do I mean by that? And
what is hard money? So the traits of money, or
that it's fungible, meaning it's interchangeable. So no matter what
a ten dollar bill is, a ten dollar bill, and
a ten dollar bill is going to buy you ten
dollars worth of stuff all throughout the nation or all
(11:14):
throughout the world. Right, there's not different versions of a
ten dollar bill. It's non consumable, so it's not like
wheat or fish that can rot. It's portable, you know.
That's why we went from having gold in our pockets
to dollar bills because you can put it in a
billfold or a wallet.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
It's durable. You know.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
The dollars, yes, they can catch on fire or get
wet or do whatever. But that's why gold is very durable.
It's highly divisible. We have dollars and cents, and then
it's secure, it's easily transactable, and it's scarce, which fiat
money is not. So in my opinion, bitcoin, if you
look at a chart of all these different traits of money,
(11:53):
bitcoin checks the box for literally every single one of these.
And it's also decentralized. It's not owned by any certain person.
So when you look at bitcoin, not crypto. Crypto has
icos initial coin offerings, they have marketing teams behind them,
they have teams of developers, they have people that pump
them on Instagram, on Twitter, on social media on x
whatever you want to call it. A lot of them
(12:14):
is just creating hype for exit liquidity. So hey, check
out this really cool shiba enu coin. Right, check out dogecoin,
check out whatever. Those are all essentially just lottery tickets.
In my opinion, only bitcoin can be hard money. There's
other forms of bitcoin. There's light cooin, there's bitcoin cash,
There's a million different forks of bitcoin. But what people
(12:36):
need to realize is the story and the network effects
behind bitcoin is that there is no there is no
centralized agency that created it. There is no founder, there
is no vitallic booterine who created ethereum, There is no
Charles Hoskinson who created cardano. It's Satoshi Nakamoto, who no
one knows who that is. It's just a t ssunonymous
pen name on these forums and these emails. When bitcoin
(12:59):
was in its infancy being created in two thousand and eight,
then it gave birth in two thousand and nine, which
is the Genesis block, and then that story has survived
ever since fifteen years later. So a lot of people
compare it to like a cult or religion, and I
guess you can see that in a lot of different ways.
But the beauty behind bitcoin is that no one knows
(13:20):
who created it, and it's just open source code. So
you and I can go on GitHub or whatever and
just literally look at bitcoin's code and see how it works.
We can create our own bitcoin, right, We can create
our own rules, but no one's going to want to
play with you if you play if you change the
rules of chess. You know, Matt and Joel could love chess.
I could love chess. But if I say, you know,
a pond has infinite possibilities to move, and I create
(13:42):
my own version of chess, well then we're not playing chess.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So, without getting super long winded, I just think that,
in my humble opinion, the network effects of so many
people adopting it at this point fifteen years later Lindy effect,
meaning that a technology that's been kind of like the
forefront of that sector, has been alive for so long
it gets harder to kill as time goes on. And
(14:07):
then also, not having a single creator or founder that's
publicly known is just all the checkboxes of what could be.
You know, who knows what it could be fifteen years
from now. But in my opinion, it's the hardest form
of money ever created, and at minimum it's a great
savings technology.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Talk to me about the difference between bitcoin as currency
and bitcoin as an investment, because to be a currency
and you need some stability there as well. Right, Granted,
inflation happens, but typically that the cycle of inflation is
is pretty understandable and until you know the printing of
money during the COVID lockdowns. But some people think of
(14:44):
bitcoin as the speculative asset they're hoping the number goes up.
And then there are other places like the Bitcoin Beach
for instance, where it's trying to be used as as
like the way that you transact, you use bitcoin to
buy and sell things. That's I think that it's hard
for me to wrap my mind or the fact that
it's it's kind of sort of trying to serve two purposes.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
So I think bitcoin is kind of email in nineteen
ninety three right now or nineteen ninety five. It's kind
of like when you're on the Today Show and they're like, oh,
I just send an email and it's magic digital mail, right, Okay, great?
More do you Cynthia more at six? Later at six right,
And everyone's just like they kind of brush it off, right,
It's almost like a job. It's almost like use it regularly,
(15:23):
and then everyone uses email every single day.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
So I think bitcoin is still in its infancy and
it's going to that process of being a store of
value to be able to be a currency. The thing
that people have to realize is that if you don't
understand the technology behind it, I would recommend the book
Inventing Bitcoin by Jan Pritzker. It's kind of like a
layman's guide to understanding the technology behind bitcoin without being
(15:46):
a computer programmer, if that makes sense. So to answer
your question, it is money. It can be money. People
use it to transact all the time. Currency is when
it becomes a little bit more mainstream. Currencies are typically
dictated by governments, so like, hey, the US dollar is
the currency of the United States and it can be
the currency in other countries as well. So I don't
(16:08):
think bitcoin is there yet because of the protocol. So
the protocol, there's things called blocks. There's a million different
things that I can go into, but without losing your audience,
just think of layers. Okay, so when you think of
like master card, credit card, visa, that's not the US dollar.
You're transacting in US dollars, but that's a different layer
on top of the dollar.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So if you think of the pyramid that I talked
about earlier, you have layers of money. So it used
to be gold, and then it was dollars, and then
it was you know, whatever you want to call it.
Now we have digital dollars. I'd say ninety eight percent
of dollars or digital they're just ones and zeros. Every
time you use your credit card, you're just using a
digital form of the dollar that doesn't settle for days later.
Or if you try and move money from a bank
(16:50):
account to another, it doesn't get there right away. It
takes days. So you were just using the digital layer
of the dollar.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
So we have let's call it, you know, the US dollar,
And on top of that, we have other platforms like Visa, PayPal, Stripe, Venmo,
whatever you want to whatever example you want to use.
So once those layer two solutions on top of the
Bitcoin protocol, such as like Lightning, there's aqua wallet. There's
a bunch of different solutions that are becoming more and
(17:17):
more available. Jack Dorsey just tweeted literally three four days
ago that I think they came out with bitkey or
whatever it's called. That's going to be his solution to
easily custody bitcoin and use it as currency. Right, so
we don't think about how our phones work. If I
were to send Matt or Joel a text message, do
I understand everything that's going on behind the scenes to
be able to send that text message or that emoji
(17:39):
or that gift? Obviously not, But we use it every day.
People don't know SMTP or whatever the protocol that email
runs on, right, we just send the email.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So bitcoins so early, people are still having a hard
time understanding how it can become that currency. Until it's
so ingrained in our culture that we won't even think
twice about how it works.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
That makes sense, it does, Yeah, And as more applications
are built and it's created in such a way that
makes it easier for folks, I think a lot of
folks do have a hard time wrapping their head around it.
But I want to go back to what you said.
When you're talking about fiat currency, you're talking about essentially
it exists because it was decreed by a government, and
so much of the power of a fiat currency comes
(18:21):
down to belief and trust like that is a huge
part of what makes money work and so and again
you were talking about like the network effect. So how
important is the growing just the growing belief to the
value of bitcoin and its price essentially.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, the beauty of it is that you don't have
to believe anything. Bitcoin is trustless. There is no trust involved.
Every time I use a dollar or a deposit my
money in a bank and hope to get it out,
I'm trusting a third party.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So someone asked me inside my community, They ask me, well,
I want to store my seed phrase, the private keys
that allow me to access my bitcoin in a wallet
right anywhere in the world. I want to or that
in a vault in a bank, right. I'm like, well,
then you're trusting the bank.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So every time that we're trusting a third party that
involves trust, I need to be able to trust Matt
and Joel, Right, Matt and Joel need to be able
to trust me with bitcoin. This all lives on the
men pool. The men pool is just all the different blocks,
all the transactions. It's completely transparent currency. You can see
what any address sent anyone at any time. I guess
to answer your question, bitcoin is trustless and bitcoin is
(19:27):
for enemies. You don't have to trust each other. You know,
Russia and China and United States can transact on bitcoin
because it's literally just math. It's literally just blocks of
information on an open source ledger. There's no behind the
scenes deals. There's no money going to Ukraine, there's no
money going under the table here, there's no money going there.
It's just if you know who owns the address, you
(19:48):
know exactly what's going on.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
How does the growing printing of money in this country,
the growing national debt, how does that maybe influence your
belief in bitcoin? Is that part of people's disillusionment with
the US dollar and thinking that we need a harder
form of currency.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, I think people don't understand that. If you just
pull up a chart, people can do this, if you
just google, like Federal Reserve balance sheet. We've added trillions.
Our lizard brains can't even comprehend how big of a
number a trillion is. It's a thousand billions. We've added
thousands of billions of dollars to the Federal reserves balance
sheet just by you know, buying treasuries, right, that's what
(20:26):
the Fed does. So people in this country, they're funny
because they always have, you know, certain thoughts about like
socialism and central planning and we're not communists and this
and that. Well, it's called a central bank. Okay, we
don't know. We don't know the monetary policy of the FED.
Bitcoins protocol has every two hundred and ten thousand blocks.
It's called the having. It's gonna happen April twentieth. We
(20:47):
know bitcoin's monetary policy until the year twenty one forty. Okay,
So minors, they're rewarded in bitcoin by verifying blocks. So
right now, the daily issuance of bitcoin is nine hundred
bitcoin per day, roughly six point sorry, let me do
the math. It started with fifty, then twenty five, and
twelve and a half and six point twenty five. Then
it's going to go to three in an eighth for
(21:08):
the next two hundred and ten thousand blocks. So, without
getting too technical and losing your audience, we know bitcoin's
monetary policy until the year twenty one forty. We don't
know what the FED is doing literally hours from now.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Okay, So the predictability factor is here.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yeah, say you're a small business and you went through COVID.
Say say you're a restaurant. How many businesses went out
of business during COVID A lot because they couldn't predict
something like that. Right, Inflation went crazy, cost the goods
went crazy. If you're on a deflationary or disinflationary money
like bitcoin, you can kind of make better business decisions
and spend your time more wisely as a business owner,
(21:43):
because you know what the money's going to do. Right,
Inflation is actually going to go down on a Bitcoin standard.
And I'm not some advocate for a bitcoin standard or
hyper bitcoinization or anything like that. I think fiat and
bitcoin can live together. But the one thing I wanted
to make your audience aware of is that I think
the worst case scenario for bitcoin, my humble opinion, is
just eating up the monetary premium of gold. So when
(22:04):
you look at monetary premium, all that means is that, hey,
this thing has value above and beyond its intrinsic value
because people are using it as money. So when people
complain about high real estate prices, single moms are getting
priced out by black Rock for example, or you know,
let's look at gold for example. I'd say eighty percent
of gold's values just from its monetary premium it's not
(22:24):
really to use that much in industrial applications as mostly
uses jewelry, and the rest of that value comes from
people saving in it because it's been hard money for
five thousand years. I think bitcoin is inevitably going to
suck up all that monetary premium from things that shouldn't
be used as money in the first place, like a
single family home for example, with speculators and investors. And
the base case, in my opinion, is going to be
(22:47):
Gold's market cap is ten x of what bitcoins is.
Gold is roughly eleven to twelve trillion at the time
of this recording. Bitcoin is roughly one point three trillion
at the time of this recording. And my humble opinion,
and I know this sounds insane if you haven't done
the work, but I think bitcoin still has ten x
to go because it's simply just going to meet the
market cap of gold, and then you can look at
(23:07):
other assets as well, you know, stocks, bonds, real estate,
things like that. So just look at it as a
monetary premium, and bitcoin is the monetary premium vacuum cleaner.
I like it.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I mean, it makes sense, and it it goes to
explain a little bit why bitcoin's referred to as digital
gold the way that you've explained it here. But Marco,
we've got more to get to. Specifically, we want to
touch on Vanguard and their opinion of bitcoin. We've got
more to get to with you. Right after this, we're back.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
We're still talking about bitcoin, hopefully in a basic enough
level that we can all understand it. Matt and I
I think we would also call ourselves nubes in this space.
But Marco from Whiteboard Finance has been kind enough to
join us to walk through a bunch of stuff, and.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I'm already learning a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So Marco, let's talk about bitcoin e and especially because
the number going up sort of thing is what lends
a spotlight again on bitcoin. How do you think that's
impacting prices? And isn't that also kind of the opposite
of the gold bitcoin, the decentralized finance part of it.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Yeah, so that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
So I think obviously the number has gone up since
the ETFs were approved on January eleventh of twenty twenty four,
so there was a little bit of a dip I
think to like thirty eight thousand, and then now we're
sitting roughly at I'd say sixty four thousand at the
time of this recording, which we hit a new all
time high before the having of I think seventy three
(24:36):
five right around there. So yes, we just have more
money going into bitcoin. So what people need to realize
is is that bitcoin is it's specifically scarce. So there's
only twenty one million bitcoin ever to be released into circulation,
and I'd say about like three to four million of
those have been lost, maybe a little bit less. But
let's just say there's nineteen million bitcoin that's you know,
(24:57):
that people are able to use or recover. So what
people need to realize it's just a simple supply and
demand equation and the price of bitcoin. It's three hundred
and sixty five days a year, twenty four to seven
does not trade just Monday through Friday like a typical asset.
The ETFs do, but bitcoin does not. So what people
need to realize is that if you have all these
ETFs adding hundreds of millions of dollars a day into
(25:21):
new flow into bitcoin, since there's only twenty one million ever,
I think right now there's only about like nineteen something
in circulation based on the having numbers minus whatever has
been lost that I refer to earlier. Then it's just
simple supply and demand. So number is going to go up.
So Bitcoin is about up one hundred and thirty one
hundred and thirty five percent year over year at this point,
(25:41):
and it's up something crazy year to date as well.
But I think what people need to realize is that
you're going to get so many more passive flows from
people that are now more comfortable using a traditional brokerage
to buy I bit, you know, black Rocks ETF offering
for example. So I believe there's eleven total ETFs, of
which I think eight of those coin bases the custodium,
(26:02):
which kind of creates some of that concentration risk that
you guys were talking about. But basically it's just a
simple supply and demand equation. So if there's more inflows
and less outflows on these exchanges or into these ETFs,
the bitcoin number is typically going to go up.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Into the right makes sense, Yeah, going back to the
scarcity aspect, But let's talk about I mentioned Vanguard before
the break. On one hand, you've got Vanguard and on
the other hand you've got Fidelity. They obviously seem to
be taking different paths. But you're predicting essentially that more
and more folks are going to be are interested in bitcoin,
and it sounds like that the different brokerages that are
(26:38):
not participating in that, I mean, it seems like they're
just going to be left in the dusts.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Yeah, very well, could be. I mean I understand.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So if you guys have ever been on a bogel
Head forum, So Jack Bogel is the founder of Vanguard,
so there's a whole forum dedicated to him called the
bogel Heads and the whole different investment philosophy. So he's
typically a proponent of the three fund portfolio. So you
have globull stocks or international stocks excuse me, x Us,
then you have total US stock market, then you have bonds. Right,
(27:06):
that's typically the bogel Head three fund portfolio. If you
guys have ever been on a bogle Head form and
looked at the conversations around bitcoin or crypto in general,
people they just they don't do the work and it's
just very unproductive conversations over there. So I can see
why from pandering to their customer base, I understand why
(27:26):
Vanguard is not Uh, I don't want to say accepting.
They're just not even giving the people the option to
invest in these They're not even considering it exactly. So ultimately,
I understand it's kind of like, you know, if McDonald's
started making I don't know, spinach bites, yes, spinach bites,
keen wa quen wah bite. Yeah, it's like, obviously you're
(27:48):
not pandering to your customer base. So I understand why
Vanguard is doing it. I just think that in this
age now where people are starting to wake up just
a little bit in terms of what is money, you know,
I want to be a little bit more diversified than
just simply stocks, bonds, target date funds, you know, things
like that. I think that they're kind of creating a
competitive disadvantage to themselves because if you think about gain theory, say,
(28:12):
for example, here's a perfect example, So China they banned
bitcoin mining in twenty twenty one. All those miners they're
just opening up shop in the United States, Africa, Europe,
you know, Asia, all over the place. Right, They're just
doing it somewhere else. So that's inevitable what's going to
happen to Vanguard. People are just going to buy those
funds from somewhere else. So set exactly, so I think
(28:33):
they're kind of potentially shooting themselves in the foot in
the long term. In the near term, you know, I
don't think most of their customers are in a care
But the one tweet I did see was this gentleman
when bitcoin was pumping literally fifty percent earlier this year,
from a period of like one or two weeks, Vanguard
actually got rid of all this gentleman's I forgot what
his holdings were. I think it was in the Bitcoin ETF,
(28:55):
not the spot ETF. But I believe the future is
one and that pumped everything pump. And this guy's like, okay,
I'm now getting I'm canceling my Vanguard account.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I'm moving elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
So that's just the mini microcosm of game theory playing out.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
In my opinion, When you you're more of a bitcoin purist,
you obviously have a lot of faith in it as
an asset class and as a hard form of money.
What would you say to somebody who's like, I feel like,
after this conversation, I need more bitcoin exposure. We'll talk
about like how to think about how much you have too,
But should I be buying dollar cost averaging into one
(29:30):
of these bitcoin ETFs do I actually need to? I know,
there's like you know, owning the bitcoin itself, cold storage,
that kind of stuff. Like how how important is it
just to have like exposure versus having owning it in
the right way.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So me, you know,
the entire premise of Okay, let's just use gold for
an example. Would you rather own physical gold bouoleon or
would you rather own a gold ETF? Right, So, in
my opinion, owning the ETF defeats the purpose the asset
class in the first place.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I will say though, that it makes it easier to
buy and sell, because if you're saying you make your
put your Pokemon sign out on the mailbox of your driveway,
well I have to do the same thing with my
gold bar, right, Whereas it's it's so much easier to
trade the ETF one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
But that's where bitcoin is far superior to gold. It's
divisible to one hundred million places. I think calling a
digital gold is almost like not giving bitcoin nearly enough credit.
Its just completely It's like discovering the number zero, right,
you only do that once. And that's why bitcoin has
kind of like a cult like following, because it just
takes all the properties of gold and just it goes
from analog So like your cassette that you maybe used
(30:38):
to listen to fifteen twenty thirty years ago and turning
it into an MP three. That's all bitcoin is doing
to gold, but in a much infinitely much better way,
with the blocks, with the open ledger, with everything. So anyway,
very quickly, I think that, in my opinion, I don't
think that I know that I'd much rather custody my
own bitcoin and be my own sovereign individual and be
(30:59):
my own bank, be my own wealth manager, be my
own portfolio manager, then to rely on black Rocks sending
me a screenshot of my bitcoin, you know, quarterly or
you know whatever that you want to look at it.
So it's nice to know that you you know, the
phrase is not your keys, not your cheese, okay, not
the keys to your seed phrase, not your bitcoin. And
(31:20):
there's and I think you're gonna allude to another question
of like how much bitcoin should you own. There's a
great website called knakamoto portfolio dot com. This is created
by Swan Bitcoin. I would check it out because it
gives you the ability to run tests of your current
portfolio and what those results would be if you were
to juice it up a little bit with bitcoin, and
(31:41):
you could add anywhere from one percent to one hundred percent.
I personally have a bitcoin is at least fifteen percent
of my net worth at all times, and then it
far exceeds that once it pumps and I don't have
this Is this gonna sound wrong no matter how I
say it. My net worth isn't ten grand. Okay, my
net worth is high, and it's at least fifteen percent
(32:01):
of my networth at all times, I.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Would hope, so from the mister Beast of personal finance,
you know.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
So my point is is that I'm not just some
like Charlatan trying to sell you something. There's no kickback
from the CEO of bitcoin there because there is no
there is no CEO.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It's the beauty of it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
It's just something I've studied for a very long time
and I think it answers a lot of questions in
today's monetary system.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And that's why we want to have you on too,
because you're you're a personal finance nerd. You talk about
a lot of the stuff that Matt and I cover,
and we have very similar philosophies. You're just more into
bitcoin than we are. And part of it is because
I don't know. I think Mas's probably done more work
on this than me. I'm probably just like again Bitcoin Nube.
You also, one of the other things you talk about
is the dollar cost averaging approach, so you're not about
(32:40):
timing the market. Even on bitcoin. It seems like it's
regular study as you go buying in at regular intervals
no matter what the price is doing.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Right, I've been buying bitcoin every week since twenty eighteen.
I've bought it at two three grand, i bought it
at seventy three grand. I don't care, you know, I
literally don't care because I know what I'm buying and
I know what it is. And the way that your
audience should think about this is that if I know
it's not video, but I'm holding up a circle with
my hands. If you think of a pie or a pizza,
(33:08):
you should have every asset slice as a asset class
as a slice of that pizza. Okay, So for me,
I have a fifteen percent slice of bitcoin. I have
thirty five percent stocks, thirty five percent real estate, some
precious metals, some collectible, some you name it. Right, you
should define whatever the size of your slices are, and
you should be okay with that slice going to zero.
(33:29):
So if that slice goes to zero and you want
to jump off a building or drink yourself to death,
then that's too big of a slice, right. You need
to create it to where you sleep well at night.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I mean yeah, Like, I'm thinking about folks who are
interested in it, like they're experiencing some of that foam
because they're like, oh man, I totally should have bought
some more of it while it was you know, in
the dumps over the past year. Can I go back
in time to seventeen? Yeah, Well, like, there are a
lot of folks who are approaching it more from a
speculative standpoint. But the way you're talking about it, you
are treating it just like you are treating any other
asset class. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Absolutely? And smash by too.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I mean, my dollar cost average is you know, a
certain amount, and I haven't deviated from that for six
years now, six and a half years. But yeah, I've
bought many dips, you know, I post about it on Twitter.
I just bought a thousand dollars yesterday. And I think
it's important for your audience to understand if you have
a thesis on something and you have a general feeling
that the probability is that you're right. You know, no
(34:22):
one is right, no one has a crystal ball, But
why would you deviate from that thesis unless proved otherwise? Right?
So for me, I guess for your audience, if you're
going to go down this rabbit hole, I would highly
recommend reading these certain books. I can name them either
in the show notes or in the episode. But once
you understand what you're buying, once you see it, it
can't be unseen. Is just the solution to everything that's
(34:42):
going on right now. So when you go to Longhorn
Steakhouse and your steak is twenty one ninety nine five
six years ago, and now the same outlaw Rabbi is
thirty one ninety nine, there's a reason for that fifty
percent increase.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
So the question that I would post to your audience is,
if you had one hundred thousand dollars right now, do
you think it's to buy more or less five years
from now?
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Obviously less?
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Right, So, if you have one hundred thousand dollars in
bitcoin you think it's going to be worth more or
less than five years from now, and it's proven every
four year cycle to be multiples higher. Right, So I'm
not telling anyone to do anything. I could be one
hundred percent wrong. I don't think I am. But at
the end of the day, if you're looking for a
sound money that can't be debased by a few clicks
by the Federal Reserve that prints trillions into your balance sheet,
(35:27):
thus devaluing the value of your currency, then bitcoin may
be a good savings technology at the minimum, and then
it may be a currency that sucks up the monetary
premium of a lot of things in the future.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Sure, Okay, So getting to the tip to brass tacks,
you've mentioned you're fifteen percent essentially for you, that's how
much you believe in it. I guess it varies because
you said, you know, as it shoots up, as it pumps,
it's worth a lot more and it's more of a
percentage of your overall portfolio. But at this point, or
maybe what you strive for and the balance that you're
trying to you're trying to strike, you believe in it
(36:00):
up to fifteen percent and.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
So oh at a minimum, and I don't. I don't
call my position either if it inflates to you know,
twenty five thirty whatever. I never sell you're yeah, I've
sold bitcoin literally once in my life. I sold half
a bitcoin a couple of years ago, and then I
just ended up smashed buying it right back.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
So it's it's different, man.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
It's it changes you as a person because you have
to realize as time preference. So this may be a
new concept to your audience. When your money is being devalued,
you have high time preference. You need to do something
with that money. You make decisions today to you know,
appease your to satiate your needs today. When you know
that your money can't be debased, you make long term decisions, right.
It's kind of like building a ship in a shipyard
(36:40):
that takes years, as opposed to, you know what, my
money's not worth anything, let me buy some crap coin.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Again, it's establishing what percentage you're comfortable with if you're
networth going to zero, which I don't think is going
to happen. If I didn't have a wife and kids,
I'd probably be significantly higher. But the goal of my channel.
It's very simple. It's I'm a traditional finance guy. I
understand that the chart is going to go up into
the right as long as we have US dollar dominance, right,
(37:06):
Petro dollar, big military wars, high demand internationally for dollars.
Like let's just use a quick example so I don't
lose your audience. If I'm a manufacturing firm in Colombia
and I have the ability to borrow pasos Colombian pasos
at nine percent, or I can borrow in US dollars
at six and a half percent, on what planet would
that business decision make to borrow and paysos and I
(37:27):
can borrow dollars right now? Multiply that example for the
entire world. If you look at Lebanon right now, Lebanon's
going through quasi, you know, hyperinflation. Look at Turkey, Look
at Argentina. Argentina, I think is at like two hundred
and seventy percent inflation over the last couple of years.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
They're getting rid of.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Their crap coin aka the lira, the pound, the paso
to pay for their day to day stuff, and they're
keeping the dollar in their back pocket because it's the
world reserve currency. Actually means something, right, So it's kind
of like Gresham's law, bad money drives out good. So
this may be this may make any sense to your audience,
but that's playing out in real time. Why would someone
(38:04):
keep a unit of currency that's being debased day by day.
We're adding a trillion dollars every hundred days, I believe
now at this point, and our tax receipts are not
coming up, are They're not. They're not sufficient to keep
up with the rate of what we're spending to where
it's like, Okay, when does this become unsustainable? Why would
I want to save in dollars when I can save
in this monetary fuel cell known as bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of truth there.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
And I think the recent bout of inflation and the
ticking up of the national debt that becomes more and
more concerning to anybody who's paying attention, right, And I
think seeing the national debt, national deficit increase substantially over
the past couple of decades and especially over the past
few years, that does start. It starts to make you
ask questions. Because there are some people, the modern monetary
(38:51):
theorists out there, who would say, well, there's no limit
to the amount of the US government can print money
or can make spending obligations without increasing taxes. But I
think most level headed folks would disagree with that.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up MMT Modern monetary Theory.
There's a good book called The Deficit Myth, and if
your audience wants to hear both sides of this, because
I'm not some like bitcoin evangelists or propagandists, I'm someone
who's just been studying money for a very long time,
and bitcoin is, in my opinion, a good answer to it.
I think that the Deficit Myth, along with the books
that I would recommend, would be a good counterbalance, and
(39:25):
then they can make their own decision. But basically MMT
in a nutshell is that, hey, government balance sheet is
not like our household balance sheet. To where you and
I are teaching personal finance. You know one plus one
is two. You know when it comes to MT, you
can just print the two and hope it doesn't inflate. Right,
So that may not be a good analogy. But what
I'm trying to say is I think to balance out
(39:46):
everything that I'm saying, people just need to do their
own work.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
And come to their own conclusion.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
I don't want anyone buying bitcoin without understanding it, because
they're not going to have the conviction to hold it
during sixty seventy eighty percent drops.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, that's a good point too. Have you got to
know the why behind it so you actually can stay
the course or we got just a few more questions
to get to with you, Marco, and clude you want
to talk about criminal activity in the bitcoin or the
crypto space, We'll get to a few more questions right
after this.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Right, we're back from the break talking with Marco from
Whiteboard Finance, and obviously we're talking all about bitcoin, but
before we before we dive even deeper, Marco, I kind
of want to, I guess, back out a little bit,
maybe talk a little bit more about general personal finance,
because from what I understand, are you completely debt free?
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Uh yeah, like literally, Okay, So.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I'm curious because like what pushed you in that direction?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
I had kids?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
You know, is it kids? Because because because on one hand,
like there's okay, security, peace of mind, But on the
other hand, when you are such you know, you believe
in bitcoin, you believe in the future.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Of it where it's going to go or even taking
bitcoin out of the equation. If you had a low
let's say you had a low interest rate mortgage stot
in the historical average return of stocks, it doesn't necessarily make,
you know, sense to pay off that debt.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Or if you're if you're only looking at the numbers.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Paying off my house was the dumbest financial decision I've
ever made. But here's the double edged sword, is that
I'm an entrepreneur. I don't know what my income is
going to be tomorrow. You know, it just helps you
sleep well at night, which is an emotional thing. So
I think people need to just balance the two, right,
So it's like I reduced, you know, my biggest expense
in my life. I have no debt now, so it
(41:28):
just allows me to be way more bullish in my
convictions and in my investing. So in the yes, you're
you're foregoing the mathematics of it, because, especially in an
inflationary environment, it makes no sense to pay off you know,
low interest rate debt. But at the same time, you know,
if you want to live stress free, that's also a
benefit as well.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Sure, so dumb financial move, but smart personal move you
and I love too.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Like what you said, like it allows you to be
more bullish with your investments because if you don't have
the debt, if you don't have the recurring monthly payments
that come along with having household debt, you can be
a little more adventurous I guess when it comes to
what you're investing.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, hundred percent. And it's also a super charge as well.
And also your audience knows this because they're smart, and
you guys know this as well. I mean the time
value of money. A dollar today is worth more than
a dollar, you know, ten years from now, and when
you're investing, especially when we talked about the chart going
up into the right historically, you know, time is on
your side. So yeah, that's why I did that. I
could I could have plopped that into you know, VTI,
(42:27):
a total stock market fund for example, but at the
end of the day, I wanted to cross off that
big debt first and then I can just pile loads
of money into my investments and not have to think
about it. Perfect example. You know, I smash bought you know,
five grand a bitcoin a couple weeks ago. I bought
a thousand last week. I dollar cost average every week
into four specific index funds and ETFs and I don't
(42:49):
have to think twice about it.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
How do you think about criminal activity in the cryptocurrency
space and does bitcoin get an undeserved black eye because
of maybe things that are happening with other crypto coins
and let's say the Sam Bachman freed FTX fiasco. How
do do you think, I don't know, Bitcoin's reputation is
unfairly maligned because of some of that stuff happening. Or
(43:14):
do you think there really are some criminal enterprises using
bitcoin for nefarious purposes?
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
I think both those things are true. So I've been
tweeting for years saying that bitcoin needs to do a
better job of kind of disassociating itself from crypto, if
you will, Because crypto you have anything from you know,
great use cases that you know companies and governments are
adopting all the way down to Geo Boden, you know Shiba,
you new meme coin, right, So it runs the whole gamut. Again,
(43:43):
from my background, from my educational background and my own
personal education, I'm a sound money kind of guy, just
because I think it provides lower time preference, it helps
people make decisions for the long term, and I think
from that standpoint, I am a bitcoin maximalist. From from
a sound money standpoint, are there other cryptos or coins
(44:03):
or tokens or smart contracts or all that stuff that
we can go down that provide value for other use cases? Yes,
there can be, But again from a sound money standpoint,
I'm all about bitcoin. The other question of like, is
it used for a listed activity? Absolutely, just like the
dollar has been for hundreds of years, right, so it
just I fiat currency has been used for that as well.
(44:24):
If you look at like HSBC literally getting fined for
washing Mexican drug cartel money. You know, the dollar never
gets those articles written about it. But if someone uses
it to buy you know, some weed or ecstasy or
you know, cocaine on the dark web, then bitcoin is
the worst thing ever created. So I just think it's
whatever you know, the media wants to focus on.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, no, that's true. I think it's oftentimes it's just
a straw man argument and there's not there's not a
whole whole lot behind that. But as far as some
of the the meme coins out there and the just
even honestly some of the NFTs, do you think that
the rise. Because this is one of the interesting things
is oftentimes you do see correlated activity when it comes
(45:04):
to Bitcoin and even just ethereum. Like you said, there
are use case scenarios for different coins out there, But
even when it comes to the shibu e new coins,
are they essentially just writing on the coattails and are
they hanging out in the wake of Bitcoin and the
the actual work that it's doing.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, absolutely, Bitcoin is this, That's how you Bitcoin is
the signal. Everything else is the noise.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
All right, So let's say we wake up ten years
from now, twenty thirty four, and what's going on with
bitcoin at that point in time. Yes, Mark going to
make a prediction, not even like not even like all
those are the price it's going to be at, but
like what's happening in the bitcoin world and what's going
to happen, Like what will people be feeling Who listened
to this in twenty twenty four and they said, that's
(45:47):
great for Marco, but I think I'm gonna stick with
my my normal boring investing strategy that Matt and Joel
talk about most of the time. How are those people
going to be feeling a decade down the road.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, from like an adoption and technological standpoint, is going
to be the same as any other technology. I think
innovations are going to be made. I think those layer
two solutions are going to be become much more easier
to use, much more accessible. They're already happening. And then
also again I'm not price prediction guy, but my base
case is that it's a much much much better version
(46:17):
of gold, and that would put bitcoin at around half
a million dollars per bitcoin. And I know that sounds insane,
but whether you believe me or not, it's still the
biggest asymmetric bet that you can make with the highest
probability at this point in time without having to pick
you know, the NVIDIAs, the Tesla's, the you know metas
and you know wondering what the CEO is going to
do and what the macro environment is going to be.
(46:38):
I think the cat is out of the bag and
the network and Lindy effects are just going to make
it stronger. But that's not to say that you know,
it is volatile, it's very new. It's an infant technology essentially,
it's fifteen years old. It's still on the early adopter
side of the Bell curve. But I think ten years
from now, I think you know we're going to be
able to transact with it and use it without even
thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, now you heard it here twenty thirty four half
a million per bitcoin, and Marco, you can rub it
in our faces after you invite us over to enjoy
some of those Rabbi's right.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
I don't want to rub anything in anyone's faces. I
just I think it will behoove you to read these books.
I'm not associated with any of these people, but I
would read them in this specific order if you're genuinely interested.
They're audiobooks. You can listen to them, you can, there's
different ways to consume them. But it would be the
bullish case for bitcoin. It would be inventing bitcoin. It
(47:27):
would be the bitcoin standard gradually then suddenly layered money,
the price of tomorrow, and then broken money. So you
can you can rewind that. But I'm not associated with
any of these authors, but I think it'll help provide
some clarity.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Awesome. Yeah, no, and we will absolutely We'll link to
every single one of those books in our show notes,
and I gonna check a couple of those out myself
for sure, from our local library. But Marco, we really
appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about bitcoin,
sharing your thoughts on it, and working folks learn more
about you.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
Well.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Obviously they can head over to YouTube, white or finance
and learn more about bitcoin, but also just personal finance
in general there as well. But where else can folks
find you?
Speaker 3 (48:06):
Yeah, so whiteboard Finance on YouTube, Whiteboard finn Fin on
x or Twitter, and then whiteboard Finance on Instagram if
you guys are interested. I don't want to plug anything,
but I do have a private community where we've been
talking about bitcoin when it was significantly less than it
is now, and people are paying for that membership ten
times over. It's just Whiteboard Finance University. It's a private community,
(48:27):
we have professors.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
It's really good stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Awesome, Marco, thank you so much for joining us today. Man,
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys, Joel.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Isn't it refreshing to talk to somebody about something that
is really complex? But oftentimes there are more emotions involved
with how it is that you're thinking about something like this, Yes,
and I feel like Marco was able to just talk
about it with a bounced perspective.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
It bring with the heart of a teacher, the whiteboard
finance thing man, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
That's what I felt the entire time.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
And I felt like I was being taught because honestly,
I feel like I'm a second grader here.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
On this stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
So it comes to bitcoin, Yeah, I mean, well, I
feel like there's I know something, but like market does
a whole heck of a lot more. Obviously he's he's
done the work, and so I really appreciate hearing his perspective,
and I feel like it's it's worth having someone who's thoughtful,
who kind of stems from in a lot of ways
our thought process on how to handle money, but is
also more pro bitcoin and it's reasons for it.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Multiple levels deeper when it comes to understanding it, to
the point that he is comfortable with investing, you know,
over fifteen percent of his overall portfolio within within bitcoin.
But yeah, is that your big takeaway that you're going
to go all in, go ahead and sell.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
You're going to sell all your sc rocks, Yes, go
all in everything. I am TC baby, yep, even all
my clothing items. Like I'm just gonna walk around in alloyingcloth,
but I'll loan a lot of bitcoin. I think my
big takeaway was when he said, like, what allocation is
not going to cause you to lose sleep? And that
is a really important thing, like as possible to see
other investments to climb precipitously too, right, Volatility is the
price of admission into the stock market. We discussed that regularly,
(49:54):
and so if you don't feel comfortable seeing a forty
plus percent drop in your portfolio potentially for multiple years
on end, then you probably need to change it. Change
your allocation so that you can sleep better at night
when things get tough. And that is even more true
of bitcoin. So if you decide to read the books,
and if you think that you know Marco's stance about
(50:15):
bitcoin being the hardest form of money ever created, if
that makes sense to you, that resonates with you. Well,
I love the dollar cost averaging, goes slowly into it,
and then just don't bite off more than you can chew,
don't take don't take on so much risk that when
that inevitable eighty percent decline happens, sixty percent de client
Because Bitcoin, like I said, is even more volatile that
(50:36):
it's not going to.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Cause you to freak out. Yeah, my big takeaway is
going to have to do with essentially around the having
event and less and less of bitcoin is being created.
There's a set amount that's ever going to be created.
And going back to when he was outlining some of
the different properties of what makes money, what makes a
currency in scarcity, like the facts that we know exactly
how much there's going to be in the parallel to
(50:58):
the US and the ability it's a print money and
deciding Jay Powell like it all kind of comes down
to him and how he says certain words. Doesn't that
make that It really makes that seem kind of crazy,
like you're trying to balance this ship on the head
of a pin as opposed to the predictability of knowing
what's in store for us when it comes to bitcoin. So,
(51:20):
I don't know, the scarcity argument that he made really
stood up to me during this conversation. And I also
just appreciate his kind of delineation between bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
And there's there's the proof of work versus the proof
of steak. There's a whole lot of reasons that Marco
takes that approach and believes that bitcoin is wholly different
than crypto and crypto products are writing the Bitcoin cottails,
(51:41):
and so it does make me think more about not
increasing my bitcoin exposure past five percent, but at least
making that kind of experimental five percent more bitcoin heavy.
It certainly puts bitcoin in a different light. Yeah, yeah, certainly.
But uh okay. The beer Joel that you and I
enjoyed during this episode was a diamond Dust. This is
a by Pure Project, donated to the show by Christy.
(52:04):
What were your thoughts, M I do this was a
delicious idea. Well, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
I thought I was gonna say three adjectives light, zippy,
and juicy, So I juice really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Hoppy, the tropical fruity notes were coming through like crazy.
They describe it as a murky ipa. But Pure Project
it makes me I don't know anything about this brewery,
but we've got another beer from her, and before we
have that beer, I'm going to look into Pure Project
and see what they're all about, because it makes me
think that it sounds like they do something good, right, Yeah,
but I just don't know what that thing is. Sodime
(52:34):
on dirty folks. So we'll report back. But Christy, thank
you so much for donating this beer to the episodes.
I feel like it's been a minute since I've had
like a really good, surprisingly good IPA like this.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
Yeah, this one delighted me. Definitely top notch. Thank you, Christy.
All right that Matt's going to do it for this episode.
We'll have links in the show notes to all those
books that Marco mentioned and some other resources too, including
Marco's YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
But Matt's going to do it this one. Until next time,
best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
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