← Digital Social Hour
Loading summary
Transcript144 lines
- [00:00]
A
People just don't feel comfortable about retirement. This isn't our grandfather's economy. You can't just go buy a few stocks, bonds, live off dividends, and that's because of how expensive things are getting. This is, I think a common misnomer for most folks is they think inflation's like a reset button every year, but it's actually cumulative. My favorite comparison is there was a meme on X where I was like, I'm on a weight loss program. I gained 5 pounds a year ago. I gained 10 pounds a year before that, 11 pounds a year before that. But this year I lost 4 pounds. So why am I still fat? Well, well, because it's cumulative. Prices are rising exponentially. We're printing more money than we were having before. So at the same time where you're paying more today, if you put even just $100,000 in the savings account and just let it sit there, the yield you're getting is not keeping up with inflation itself.
- [00:43]
B
Okay, guys, Chris Klein here. It's his 1500th or so interview, so my most interviewed guest of all time. Thanks for coming, man.
- [00:50]
A
Hey, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. This is great. Yeah.
- [00:53]
B
We're going to talk bitcoin today. Bitcoin. Ira, that's your company, right?
- [00:56]
A
Yes.
- [00:56]
B
Could you explain for those that don't know what that is, what it's about?
- [00:58]
A
Yeah. So we sit. I mean, we all know what bitcoin is. I'm sure on your audience has a good feeling. We sit at the intersection of crypto and retirements. About a decade ago, we had this crazy idea that it was that the world, we're in a retirement crisis in this country, at the end of the day, whether it's our grandparents that don't know if they're going to live longer than their money or kids a little bit younger than you, or Gen Z's Gen Alphas that are saying, I kind of think retirement is kind of like this steep cliff, it'll never happen. Or the middle group, which is paying for their kids and paying for their parents and getting squeezed on pricing, people just don't feel comfortable about retirement. And so you have, this isn't our grandfather's economy. You can't just go buy a few stocks, bonds, live off dividends.
- [01:34]
B
Yeah.
- [01:35]
A
We built and designed the first platform that allowed folks to go into first Bitcoin. That's why our name is Bitcoin, Ira. We're OG like that. It was the only one in the space. We're up to 80 now. So. So people are investing in all kinds of different things on the platform these days.
- [01:47]
B
Wow. I've seen some crazy stats. I'd love to see if this is true. But the average retirement account is, like, super low these days when people retire.
- [01:55]
A
Yes. And it's also. You get that big income gap just like you have in the real world. So there's people that are. Northwest Mutual just came out with a piece right before COVID They surveyed a bunch of folks and asked, how much do you think you need to comfortably retire? And this was four or five years ago. It was a half a million bucks. They just surveyed the same folks. This year or last year, it jumped to 1.8 million. And that's because of how expensive things are getting inflation is, people. This is, I think, a common misnomer for most folks is they think inflation is like a reset button every year, but it's actually cumulative. My favorite comparison is there was a meme on X where I was like, I'm on a weight loss loss program. I gained 5 pounds a year ago. I gained 10 pounds a year before that, 11 pounds a year before that. But this year I lost 4 pounds. So why am I still fat? Well, because it's cumulative. Right. You can't. You can't actually just have one good year of losing inflation and it doesn't erase the rest of it. So pricing prices are rising exponentially. We're printing more money than we were having before. So at the same time where you're paying more today, if you put even just $100,000 in the savings account and just let it sit there, the yield you're getting is not keeping up with inflation itself. So you're kind of getting this double whammy effect. I can't save enough because everything's getting so expensive. And what I do save is kind of disappearing right before my eyes. And so alternatives like bitcoin make sense. It's scarcity that. I mean, scarcity. Scarcity. Scarcity. When you're thinking about retirement.
- [03:15]
B
Yeah. Is there a minimum they got to contribute if they want to do a Bitcoin IRA?
- [03:18]
A
For a Bitcoin IRA, our minimum is $1,000 for your annual contribution. Most folks don't know this. If you're under 50, you can contribute up to $7,500 a year. And you really should, because there's no reset button on that either. You can't go back five years from now be like, okay, I finally have money. I'd like to do the last five years of contributions. That's not how the IRS works. They only give you the year by year. And if you're over 50, which surprisingly enough, we have, 75% of our clients are born before 1976. You can do up to 8,500. It's kind of. They call it the catch up. And actually, when I started in the retirement industry just 14 years ago, that number was 5,500. And now it's all the way got up to 8,000. Because the government sees. What we see is it's taking more to meet those levels because of inflation and the amount of money in supply. Yeah.
- [04:01]
B
When I first became an entrepreneur, I had a really old accountant. He told me to set up a Roth ira.
- [04:04]
A
Yep, absolutely good accountant. I hope you gave him a bonus.
- [04:07]
B
Yeah, well, I, I donated or. Or not donated. I put money in the first, like three, four years. But then I started thinking about it with the inflation, and I can't pull out till 65.
- [04:16]
A
Yep.
- [04:16]
B
Is this even worth putting 6k a year?
- [04:18]
A
Depends on what you invest in.
- [04:19]
B
Yeah.
- [04:19]
A
So I was just in Dallas when we connected before. I came this week and I was on another podcast with two old guys, can tankers, old guys. And we were talking about, I said this avocado toss, avocado toast, coffee is a bunch of bs. The boomers have told us as younger generations, well, if you just skip that avocado toast and you skip that coffee, you could also own a home like we did. I ran the math on it and let's say modestly, $17.50 a day for 10 years on coffee and avocado toast. And that's probably, it's now probably 25. But you go, you go to the last 10 years, 17, 50, you would have saved about $63,000. But you have to account for that cumulative inflation effect. That 63 is worth about 40, $42,000 now. Well, the median home price in America is 420,000. So a down payment on that is about 80. Right. So you're only halfway there by just saving. You have to now take it the next step and invest it in things that give you yield or give you growth. And while it seemed crazy 10 years ago when they were like, kid, you're going to put bitcoin in a retirement account. If you look now, looking back, hindsight's always 20 20. It's arguably one of the best investment vehicles you could have done. Our first client was, you know, the director of the U.S. mint. There's one of those that are appointed by the President. He was the former Director of the US Mint, Ed Moy. And his entry level price was $250 a Bitcoin. Holy crap. And he did it in a Roth, just like you. So he only did one year. He did like $5,000 a contribution in that Roth, and it's now up to well over a half a million dollars.
- [05:43]
B
Okay, so I was misguided. I didn't know what the funds and the Roth.
- [05:46]
A
A lot of people think you just sit it and you don't. And this happens with 401ks. We have a problem with financial literacy in this country. And as a business, our mission is to help Americans retire. My vision is to help bridge the gap of financial literacy. If you looked at my Twitter handle, it's at Senator Klein. Not because I'm a senator, but when I was in college, I was destined. I was like, I'm going to be a senator by the time I'm 40 or I'm going to be retired.
- [06:08]
B
I was confused when I saw it because I thought, wait, did he run for senator?
- [06:11]
A
No, I was my plan. And you never know, I still might do it. And it just rolls off the tongue nicely. Senator Klein. Chris Klein's a good name for running.
- [06:18]
B
For office next year. You're 40 now?
- [06:19]
A
Yeah, I'm eligible. I've been eligible for a while now. We'll see what happens. But my ultimate goal is to help bridge that financial literacy gap, people. That's a simple thing. It's like, oh, I'll put the money aside. But you're right, if I just sit it there in a yield fund, like an index fund or a money market, no way am I going to make enough to get to $1.8 million to comfortably, comfortably retire.
- [06:39]
B
Yeah. I'm almost at the point now where I don't think saving dollars is a smart move.
- [06:43]
A
Pretty much anything that's in my portfolio that is long term, more than six months or nine months, that's like what you put on the side for liquid capital is either in real estate or cryptocurrency. And some gold and silver as well.
- [06:55]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know you started with gold and silver IRAs, right?
- [06:57]
A
Yeah, that was real estate. And gold and silver IRAs were my. Where I sharpened my teeth in this space. And then we changed the world with the first Bitcoin IRA. And you really did.
- [07:05]
B
I mean, it's only 10 years in, but you, you're going to change a lot of lives, if not already.
- [07:09]
A
That's my favorite part. So if you ask anybody that's in financial Services. It's like I'm here in Vegas with you. It's like the casino, the house always wins, right? The financial advisor makes the money. We've all seen Wolf of Wall street, the revolutions, right? He's like, you got to keep the money moving and moving and moving. This is a space where I've watched people's lives change. I've watched a nurse that had a 403B that was 40 or $50,000 and never thought she could retire. She was going to work well into her 70s, get into Bitcoin with us in 2017, and now she's retired early and spending that time with her grandkids. So it really changes that paradigm of the things that can happen and that doesn't normally happen in financial services. This is one of those where I wake up every morning just amped to help more Americans retire.
- [07:49]
B
Who convinced you in 17 to get a big one?
- [07:51]
A
Uh, my business partner actually. He said he read the white paper. Somebody referred to him the white paper. And I was, we were in other hard tangible assets at the time. And I'll be honest, I was like, bitcoin, what is this stuff? The minute I read the white paper, what got me intrigued the most was the having concept. So having been born in 1985, I've watched abundance, abundance, abundance. Like literally what was $20 to fill a grocery cart when I was kids is now $200 at Target. Because we've just kept. We needed to have more and more and more, whether it was materialism or what we put in the monetary supply since we took ourselves off the gold standard in the 70s. And so once I saw that the difference, like the exact opposite of that is bitcoin, there's only 21 million because I hate to say this word, but we kind of punish producers for making more. It gets harder. The block gets cut in half. Gets cut in half. While it's also getting harder and more and harder to mine bitcoin. And that's true for other groups like litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. And, and when you think about the.
- [08:48]
B
Tri light from therasage is no joke. Medical grade red and near infrared light with three frequencies per light. Deep healing, real results and totally portable. It's legit photo biomodulation tech in a flexible on body panel. This is the trilite from therasage and it's next level red light therapy. It's got 118 high powered polychromatic lights each delivering three healing frequencies, red and near infrared from 580 to 980 nanometers. It's sleek, portable, and honestly, I don't.
- [09:16]
A
Go anywhere that we actually reward producers of the US dollar with things called reelections. So when, when whatever party, doesn't matter, I'm pretty agnostic to the whole thing. But whenever party decides, hey, let's put stimulus checks out there during COVID or let's do this to help the American people, no, no Child left Behind. Everyone should have an American dream and have the house, they break things, but in the meantime, they get reelected. Because you're putting money in the pockets of Americans, which most Americans, whether they admit it or not, they go into that voting booth with one big thing in mind, their pocketbook. Because that's what, that's their kind of litmus test for, am I better than I was a year ago or four year, four years ago?
- [09:51]
B
As the price of bitcoin keeps climbing higher and higher, does your conviction go up or down?
- [09:55]
A
Oh, man, I'm definitely my, I don't know if my conviction can go any higher. I'm orange pilled to beyond belief. What, you know, what's, what scares me though is it's not scares me, it's sad because there's so many people, you know, I'm all over the country all the time. I stay in hotels, I have my bitcoin gear on, I have my bitcoin backpack. I've been on so many flights and people always say, oh, you know, I missed out on that and you really didn't. There's never, it's never too late or too early to get into crypto because of that scarcity component. Yes. Is it $112,000 now for a Bitcoin? A lot more than $12,000 or 12, $250 with our first client. But I don't doubt that 2030, 2035, that concept of a bitcoin at a million dollars will reign true. So that means being a one bitcoiner could change your life.
- [10:42]
B
Yeah. If you buy one now, if you.
- [10:44]
A
Buy one now and now it seems expensive. And I think the other thing people don't realize with bitcoin is it's fractionalization. You don't actually have to buy one bitcoin or one Ethereum. And I think that's where you get these smaller coins, whether they're memes or others that are lower priced, they get a lot of attention. Right. You're on X all the time. You see it, they're everywhere. Right. And they're great coins, they have great purposes, but people are like oh well I, that's. I can't afford this one, so I'll get this one. But you can buy one satoshi of bitcoin. It's about three or four dollars today. You can do that and build up your stacking sats is what we call it. And just build up your satoshis over time. And there'll be a moment by the time you and I reach retirement age where you just having 02 bitcoin or 0.1 bitcoin could be life changing because that's now you could turn $10,000 today into a hundred. That's a still a 10x gain potential. And in this time period and after you get to a million. I don't think people understand this scarcity part. The last generation that understood scarcity was my great grandparents. Maybe your great grandparents or great great grandparents that lived through the depression where there wasn't enough of anything to go around. Ever since then it's just been, there's, there's everything. Everybody can have something as long as you work hard enough and you have the money to buy it. With bitcoin, that's the opposite. There will. We are not going to turn around and make more of this. And I don't think that paradigm has really kicked into the minds the psyche of the American investor yet.
- [12:03]
B
I just had on Michael Turpin, who you probably know.
- [12:04]
A
Oh yeah, absolutely. Met him in Puerto Rico years ago.
- [12:07]
B
Yeah. And he was talking about what you're talking about with the scarcity. Only 5% of the population owns bitcoin right now. But what happens when that gets to 15 to 20%?
- [12:13]
A
What happens when J.D. vance's concept that he put at the Vegas conference in May, that there'll be 100 million American households that have bitcoin when that comes to fruition, which I think it will. I mean it takes time to get people to adopt to things. But it's, you know what, what drives American investors? Greed. Fear. It's that simple. So right now, bitcoin, when it runs drive is the greed factor. I need to get in on that. The fear factor. We, I sound like old school Joe Rogan there. The fear factor we haven't actually seen here yet. They've seen it in El Salvador, they've seen it in Argentina, they've seen it in Turkey, Zimbabwe. Watch your money. Or if the 1920s Weimar Republic in Germany. Watch your money overnight lose 50 or 60% of its value. And the crisis and the fear that takes place at that moment in time, that's when the Fear kicks in and then it's off to the races. As far as what a price of.
- [13:02]
B
Bitcoin could be, you still think the having cycle will continue?
- [13:05]
A
Yeah, I mean we just had the one in April. I was on Bloomberg the day of the having and I think Bitcoin was 35, $40,000 at that moment in time. That was about a year and a half ago now. And look where we're at now. The big question is I think we're going to get this. September should be interesting to. September is traditionally not the strongest for all financial vehicles, including cryptocurrency. It's one of our historically worst months, but we just came off of. I think we did solid for this August, which was a great August and they call it uptober always. So you get around 450 to 500 days post halving is where you see peaks. I think the conversation is, are we past the traditional cycle and is there a potential for a super cycle? Because every other cycle before was mostly. I call bitcoin and crypto the people's currency. This was retail driven. It's you guys like you and me that are saying, and I love that about it, by the way, because it's a grassroots concept. And now you've got the institutions here, you've got billions. The large, the fastest growing to 80 to 100 billion ETF ever was the. Was the IBIT ETF. So now you got institutions, you've got reserve race to reserve from major countries stacking it, whether the United States and none of them are admitting to what they're doing. Because if you were going to go buy $100 billion worth of Bitcoin, would you tell anybody?
- [14:14]
B
No.
- [14:15]
A
You would spread it across, you'd t wop your way through. You'd be very strategic off an on chain OTC so that you could get the best price for it. And that's what's happening. A lot of posturing if that hits at the same time. When I was at the bitcoin conference, I used to say, you know, the, the third oceans. I think it's like oceans 13 where they have the drill that's under the casino and they're trying to scare everybody out of the casino to take the money. And the first one like it shakes a little bit and then everybody goes right back to gambling and they're like, you got to hit them harder. We haven't seen the tsunami retail wave yet. This one, 2124 people are like, well, it's kind of been over 100 for years. It goes back and down. Even just in the last week people were like, oh, it's a doom. We're back from 124. We're at 108. Oh, it's over. We're going back to 80 now we're. But I think it's got to get to like 1:35, 1:45 and then that FOMO is going to happen again. And that could. I said on April where I was on I camera, CNBC or somewhere and I bold, I hardly ever make predictions because my compliance team kills me when I do it. I said I think we're, I think we hit 180k this year. And this was in April when bitcoin was at 76,000. I don't look as crazy and there's going to be this moment. It just that that wave hits and getting an early DCA and dollar cost averaging is strategic. And why do I say do it in an ira? Tax advantage settings if you're going to have this benefit, the government very rarely gives us something, right. They usually just give us more taxes and bills and problems. Reagan said it best. If the last words you want to hear is I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And so but with, with IRAs they gave us this ability to, if you're in a Roth for yours, for example, you can trade and buy and sell all day long. Never have a tax capital gains implication. So it's tax free growth. And then once you reach retirement, you'll be able to take that money out tax free. That's 100. So if a half 5,000 turns into 5 million, all of that is tax free. You do that on any major exchange, crypto, coinbase, Kraken, any of those, you're going to have to belly up that and most in most bitcoiners I know don't realize they have about 25% less Bitcoin than they think they do because at some point you have to sell it off and you will have to ante up.
- [16:20]
B
Right.
- [16:20]
A
That's just the reality. The financial system is not designed for workarounds. I mean, I guess you could go live in Puerto Rico. I went down there. That's how I met Turpin. Yeah. And it's low, but there's not a lot of infrastructure down there. I have a young daughter, she's 12. There's not. The schools aren't great. Crime's a little bit of an issue there too. And I've had a lot of friends that have moved there and come back so many. Yeah. I've lived in expensive states. California, for example. I now am out in Arizona for tax purposes. Nevada is a really great state for it. But those things are inevitable. So you have to use the tools that the government gives you to minimize and maximize your tax advantages.
- [16:54]
B
Yeah. What do you think about these crypto credit cards? I use the Gemini one.
- [16:57]
A
I got the one. I got it in Vegas.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah.
- [16:58]
A
I think it's great. It's amazing.
- [17:00]
B
Yeah.
- [17:00]
A
Because it's not just a percentage. Right. You're getting it in satoshis. And so if you spend. I mean, if you're a heavy spender, you say $50,000 a year and you're getting that reward and you're just stacking those sats, that reward could be. Besides 3 or 4%. It could be 12, 15, 25% by the time you actually do the math of where that bitcoin price is, which.
- [17:19]
B
Is crazy for credit card.
- [17:20]
A
And that was actually. Did you notice that was like the.
- [17:22]
B
Biggest booth, Gemini at bitcoin conference.
- [17:25]
A
They had the Teslas there, the orange Teslas. Yeah.
- [17:28]
B
And now Coinbase announced a credit card.
- [17:29]
A
Yep.
- [17:30]
B
So I'm excited. That's a good way for the average person in dca.
- [17:33]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a. I think it's really cool. I've been using my Gemini card. It's also kind of fun to pull it out.
- [17:38]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [17:39]
A
Because people. Yeah. They're always. It's orange and it's metal and they're like, what is that? And I'm like. And then, of course, then you got a spare 20 minutes to just like every Uber driver you get in with. Right? Yeah.
- [17:47]
B
I'm sure you talk about bitcoin every day.
- [17:49]
A
Pretty much all the time. In fact, my daughter, who's 12, she's been. So the company's just about a day. She's been in bitcoin herself. She. Early on she was in a few commercials in la. And then once she reached age where she could actually work for me on the company, I put her on the payroll. And so she gets paid enough for her school education and her contribution to a Roth every year. So she's got Bitcoin and Ethereum and XRP in there and that. What's nice about those Roths is she can take it out for higher education expenses penalty free and tax free after a seating period of five years. So she's pretty much set for college if she chooses to go. Because this whole new generation, we were force fed. My group at least was, you Got to go to college, but I'm not going to push that on her.
- [18:28]
B
I don't think she'll need to go.
- [18:29]
A
And when she was 4, she. We had all these. My dad gave me these commemorative coins. It was a Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and a litecoin. And I taught her one word associations. So it was like Bitcoin is money, Litecoin is for shopping, which she loves. Every girl loves shopping. XRP is for banks and Ethereum is for contracts. And to this day, she's actually been on a few podcasts with me and she's coming to New York with me in October. She's going to be on the stock exchange floor with me and at the NASDAQ with me. So, you know, that's where. If I can't change the world's financial literacy, I can promise you my daughter is going to be very financially literate. I pray for her future boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever.
- [19:06]
B
Amazing parenting to teach your kids. Crypto at age five, you said?
- [19:08]
A
Yeah, well, four. Four.
- [19:10]
B
Phenomenal. I hope to do the same.
- [19:12]
A
Absolutely.
- [19:12]
B
Yeah. I'll probably set them up with a wallet as soon as they can understand them.
- [19:16]
A
Up with an IRA as soon as you can to. The earlier you start, the better. Just like your CPA told you, if you. But you got to invest, you can't just let it sit there. Because compounding interest, Warren Buffett's what, like 98 years old now? Yeah, that concept is great. If you can keep up with inflation. If, if we're, if we're pumping so much money into the. And diluting the crap out of the dollar. There's a day where the rooster comes home to roost on that. And I think we're getting closer and closer to it, sadly. I know my kids and your kids will definitely feel the pain of the decisions we made since the 1970s.
- [19:45]
B
I mean, the debt on the country is insane.
- [19:47]
A
I just hit 2 trillion in additional. $2 trillion in a matter of 60 days. That's mind blowing.
- [19:52]
B
Nuts.
- [19:53]
A
It's almost to a point where it's like if you were. If it was us as human and regular people, we'd have so much debt that we'd have no choice but to declare bankruptcy. There'd be no way. You can't even function with that kind of debt over your head.
- [20:03]
B
Yeah. What do you think if you had a ballpark? Inflation, percentage wise actually is per year.
- [20:08]
A
So that's the other interesting thing that, you know, a lot of folks just like the Dow, they can Dow Jones, they're like oh the Dow is up or the s and P500 so they can pick and choose which assets are in there. Right. So if there's one that's languishing, they pull it out and they replace it. And so that's what, that's why those indexes do well. So same is true also with unemployment. So a lot of times they talk about after 13 months of being unemployed you actually fall off of the records. Oh really? So yeah. So if we, if true unemployment numbers are usually much higher and you also have. We're in a gig economy. You're a gig guy, right? This is what you do. We're in a whole different economy than we were where we were running non farm and farm payrolls back to 100 years ago. But and that's also true with, with inflation. The CPI index doesn't include some major things like housing, transportation, higher education costs, medical, medical and healthcare costs. And those things have been skyrocketing. So if you were actually to take those and put them back in the basket and measure cpi, I'd say that we're somewhere where I feel it is probably in the, in double digits for sure. Like I think per year in certain places like some things. And this is the, this is them chasing the headlines. Right. So eggs are down. Great. So we got more chickens to make more eggs and we figured out the supply. But not if you buy like the expensive eggs. You know those haven't gone pasture raised. Yeah you get the cage free ones. Those haven't gone down in price. Some staples go down but the other things just there's this stubborn inflation to it and it's going to get, it's going to get worse. I always try to price things in my head in terms of bitcoin. Makes me feel a about life. So if you thought about a house five years ago was about eight, nine bitcoin, now it's about three and a half, four bitcoin. So if you're sitting in that asset that's stable, I know that sounds like a crazy word with bitcoin but is stable and scarce. You're going to watch prices go down in your lifetime as opposed to them going up.
- [21:52]
B
What percentage of your net worth is in crypto? Liquid net worth?
- [21:55]
A
Way more than I'd like it to be. My financial advisor probably wouldn't be thrilled with it but you know I'm an entrepreneur so I've got, I mean most entrepreneurs, if you build a company, most of your net worth is tied into building your business. You, you forego you sacrif the American dream, the do this, get married, have two kids, buy a white house with a white picket fence. And so I've. I've pretty much stayed. I love it because of this. I mean, it's been good years and bad years. They. What's Tupac say? Don't get high on your own supply. Or was that Biggie? I can't remember.
- [22:19]
B
I'm too young for either.
- [22:21]
A
Oh, man. I just age myself drastically.
- [22:23]
B
They're both dead by the time.
- [22:25]
A
Well, they're still classics. They're still great. But they had a song about don't get any high. Don't get high on your own supply. I try not to do that, but I can't help myself because when I'm looking out into the future, I'm convicted that this is where we're headed. And I watch, you know, the spectrum of people that come. My early adopters were the mint director, but then a bunch of engine nerds, former NASA rocket science, IBM, intel super nerds. But that spread to the average Joe, the plumber, the welder, the bus. Like the people that are embracing this, it convicts me every day. We've gone up to, I think 250,000 users.
- [23:01]
B
Wow.
- [23:01]
A
So. And I don't know, I know the first, like hundred by name. In fact, Rocket ron is number 11. And he came. We had a holiday party in 21 here at MGM Hakkasan, I think is. So we did our holiday party there. We have about 200 employees around the country and so we came together and him and his wife actually crashed our holiday party. And he brought me. He's a big hockey guy. He brought me a hockey Jersey, a Bitcoin IRA hockey jersey. And mine's number one and his is number 11.
- [23:27]
B
I love it.
- [23:28]
A
Yeah. And it's framed up in my office now. But that's. I think those are the things that. The excitement they have. You know, he texts me. I always joke about this. I think I talk to Ron sometimes more than I talk to my own wife. And I don't know if that's a good thing. Yeah. And he's also changed mine because he's, you know, he's given me insights and connecting me with people to do. We're now looking, we've got staking on our platform so people can earn up to 8% interest on their assets on bitcoin. Well, bitcoin's proof of work, so proof of stake, we've got Ethereum, Solana, Dot and Cardano. So far we are working on yield strategies for Bitcoin, but they're going to be that. It's not staking. It's a different way of doing that. But yeah, there's great yield to be made in those. And he's pushed us there and he's always asking for new coins or, or new concepts. And we listen to all of our clients in that regard. If you, I always say if you don't listen to your employees and you don't listen to your clients, you live in an echo chamber and you really don't evolve as a business.
- [24:20]
B
Yeah, I'm a little scarred on staking because I was caught in Celsius. I was caught. I was caught in anchor and I was caught in Gemini.
- [24:26]
A
Earn.
- [24:26]
B
Oh. So I went 0 for 3.
- [24:29]
A
It was a rough time.
- [24:30]
B
Anchor, I'll never get back.
- [24:31]
A
But that wasn't really staking. Staking, no, all of them, all of them were. So there was staking somewhere somebody was staking an asset. That. That's true. Stake teeth basically is what most of it was, but really was happening with so much rehypothecation. So these just layers upon layers upon layers. The new era of staking that's come out now, what we've launched has, has attestations to composition, has it's. It's built the right way and, and that you will be able to call BS. If like with ours, your wallet, your IRA wallet stays. If you have 10 ETH and you stake the eth, it stays inside that same wallet. It's not moving around or anything like that, which I think is really powerful. Huge in the new lending tools and new yield tools that are out there. Same thing. And all of this is coming together around this ecosystem of stablecoins, which I was just on a podcast this morning that is backed and built by real world asset tokenization. So if you haven't caught up to just bitcoin and Ethereum so far, you're about to get. Your mind's about to get blown with what's being built out there.
- [25:29]
B
I can't wait.
- [25:30]
A
With RWA combined with AI, there's an epicenter, there's a crossroads. We're doing the simplest across words of AI and crypto right now, where we are compensating our AI agents with crypto, not bitcoin, because what's a robot going to do with bitcoin? But we created a coin and so they have KPIs just like anybody would have. And if they hit their KPIs, they get rewarded. And I learned this from an AI developer is that you have to just like in a human, if you tell them if you don't do this, you're going to lose your job. With robots, you say, if you don't hit these marks, I'm going to unplug you. And it actually works. It actually helps them understand the cause and effect of what they need to be doing. And then you put them against each other. So we have them competing against each other because we call all of our clients on their birthday and their anniversary of their account, which is that's about a half a million six hundred thousand phone calls a year. Hard to do. And I would need a room of people. Like we need a building of people to do that efficiently. So we went the AI route for those calls and it's crazy how good they are because we'll get like a five star review that says Michelle was amazing. And I'm like, Michelle's a robot. It's wild. But, but, but to get them to be really good after a few months, I'm like, oh, I want them to get better at this. So we started competing and that crossroads of crypto and AI was okay, let's compensate them and that so that they see that value. And I think that's scratching the surface of some of the things I'm hearing being done out there. Just who I met in the lobby. Your green room is like full. I fe. I usually feel like a pretty smart dude and I felt like one of the dumbest guys in the room. And that's my favorite place to be. Same is is because if you can make friends like that, then you can do some amazing things with this.
- [27:00]
B
Yeah, those are the rooms I try to be in. But the AI stuff is nuts. I came across last night scrolling a channel that does AI debates that.
- [27:06]
A
Right?
- [27:06]
B
Crazy.
- [27:07]
A
So I had X space a week ago and one of the questions that they give us, the questions that are going to be coming was which is a bigger bubble, AI or rwa. So I, of course I thought it'd be funny. I went because I have a very intimate relationship with my. One of the things I always recommend doing, if you use it a lot, ask it to give you your greatest strengths and weaknesses and it will actually give you some really valuable feedback. That's people are using it like Google. That's not how you're supposed to use it. You're really supposed to be. You feed it enough intellectual from you and it can make your intellectual better. Yeah, but it's not a Google search. I mean, I get it and I have used it for that, like give me the top five of this or helps with booking hotels and flights and things like that. But. But really where you get it is when it starts to understand you and your strengths and it fills in those weaknesses and makes you better. So. But I asked him, I was like, hey, this a funny question. Is AI or RWA a bigger bubble? And AI told me AI all day. So it AI itself, the robots itself are saying there's a bubble in this that's happening. And you can kind of see it in the market space Tech. The tech run this year is pretty much Nvidia like it's. It's pretty much that and any else, anything else, AI. But what's coming out now is the, the dividends are not coming back as strong as people expected. So they're looking people fear and greed. Right. So people are looking for where can I get stronger yields? I. And you'll see some aberrations just like we saw. Well, again, you might not have been around, but the 90s tech bubble was a huge thing. Same concept was happening. Everybody had a website, pets.com, everybody had a website. And then you find where the real value's at over time. And AI is going to go through that bubble. RWA is going to go through that bubble. Crypto has gone through several of those bubbles. I remember when STOs and IEOs were the big thing or even NFTs. They'll have their day in the, in the sunshine at some point, maybe too early. And also there's just, I mean there's just. It's a space where you're going to get the Yeezys. They're going to rug pull you right.
- [28:51]
B
NFT Metaverse was a crazy bubble.
- [28:53]
A
That one was wild too.
- [28:54]
B
Nuts.
- [28:54]
A
Celsius was a rough one for a lot of people. I'm sorry, they actually, you did get paid back.
- [28:58]
B
Yeah, they just sent their third payout last week. So I only lost 20%.
- [29:02]
A
That's not terrible.
- [29:03]
B
Which isn't bad. That's not terrible compared to like I think FTX might have paid out too.
- [29:07]
A
They paid out actually more really like some people actually made back. And that's because they price. They fix the price. The lawyers fixed the price at the moment when the fraud happened. So I think bitcoin was at whatever dollar amount. So now you weren't getting back your bitcoin, you were getting back dollars to replace the bitcoin or eth that you had lost in the, in the fraud. If so if you're, if you're really an Investor, you're like, okay, I made whole on what I lost technically. But if I was still had that bitcoin and was selling it today, most people would have definitely down. Right. I'm definitely down from that. So. But that's like the Madoff. I mean Madoff didn't, they didn't pay back everybody that what happened with Madoff. So while I don't applaud what happened and I think that that's, that was a blemish on our record as crypto guys because we all pay for it. Right. Just like you, what you do for a living. If somebody goes out there and puts a bunch of bad information online, it hurts all of us. Right. Same too with crypto. If one bad actor hurts all the good actors that are out there as well.
- [29:58]
B
Yeah. I'm sure you lost a lot of clients around that time, right.
- [30:01]
A
Because there were some, you know, there's a resiliency to long term hodlers in retirement. What I actually noticed was the waves of my family's interaction with me. So in 17, it was, oh my God, you're a genius. I can't believe you got it. First was like, are you crazy? Then it was like, holy crap, you're a genius. And then when it fell off and we went for the first winner, they were like, are you okay? And then of course in 21:20 and they were like, oh my God, you're a genius again. And then after fcx, I remember I called, I got an aunt from a call from a great aunt. She's like, you're not behind this, are you? And I was like, no, great auntie, this is not. I have nothing to do with this. We, we do this solely. But that's the, that happens because it's only 3% and people aren't literate on it yet. So they just. We live in this 24. We're just joking. Is it 24 hour news cycle? Is it a 60 minute news cycle?
- [30:41]
B
Nowadays, I think it's down to the minutes.
- [30:43]
A
It really is.
- [30:43]
B
You go on Twitter, I mean, it's.
- [30:45]
A
Literally we're getting fed so much new stuff constantly, it's almost hard to keep up. Only the big viral ones, like the Coldplay thing are the ones that hold on for even 92 hours. Oh yeah, it's over with crypto.
- [30:55]
B
Twitter is an interesting space.
- [30:57]
A
Oh yes.
- [30:57]
B
It gets toxic.
- [30:58]
A
It is. And I always try to encourage that. Today I was on a podcast and I said, we need to stop. I told, I called everybody out on the panel, said, stop calling people Normies. If we want to mainstream adopt this and we want to go from 3% to 30% involvement, how would you feel if you walked on the playground and, or anywhere and somebody's like, oh, it's a normal. Let's. Let's use better vernacular. And everybody on the panel actually agreed. They're like, that's a good call. And. But it's also the armies, you know, xrp. I was, I just did David Rodriguez's podcast and I said something that wasn't actually wrong, but they think it's wrong about the supply of xrp because that's. I've been around long enough. I was before XRP was called xrp. Everyone's calling it Ripple. Yeah. So I'm a little og and I understand how the chains work and the expansion and the burning of coins and the, and everything. It's been an interesting ride on. But new, new people coming into xrp, they get this vin. Like they, they become like, vindicated and they're, they're part of the XRP army. And I was, I was on my flight here with my wife and she's. We're sitting at the, at the hotel or the airport in Phoenix. She goes, what's wrong? And I was like, oh, I pulled a wreck at Ralph. I'm reading the comments on the Internet and. Which you should never do.
- [32:02]
B
Never.
- [32:02]
A
You should never do. And. But they. The XRP army just came after me. 252. This guy's an idiot. This guy's dumb. And it's like, guys, I've done this 1500 times. I'm actually helping you because I put it in a retirement account. I hold a lot of it myself personally. And we have probably over 50 to $100 million of XRP in retirement. So I'm part of your team here. The infighting is the worst thing. The talking toxicity of it. So I always try to encourage even your audience. Like, I know it's easy to. But let's be, let's just be bigger people and, and make a better ecosystem. Because at the end of the day, this is the democratization of money. This is going to change all of our lives and those that aren't even involved yet. And it's xrp, it's ltc, it's Cardano. All of them have value to themselves. I know we all kind of like to pick our. You know, this is my team or this is my, my island. But I love them all. I mean, we have 80 plus on our, our platform. I own all 80.
- [32:51]
B
Wow.
- [32:51]
A
Yeah. Well, because I'm also a beta tester. So when a new one comes out, I have to buy it and swap and do everything. Yep, exactly.
- [32:57]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fan of like the top 10, but there's some really good ones at the top hundred too.
- [33:01]
A
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- [33:01]
B
Sleepers. Yeah. Some of these coins have.
- [33:03]
A
Big fan of Link. What's going on with Link right now? I think that's pretty cool.
- [33:06]
B
Yeah. What are they doing?
- [33:07]
A
Well, Link is if. At the end of the day, if you're going to think about the infrastructure conduit of real world asset tokenization, Link is going to be involved in most of that because all these assets are getting. Are getting built on different chains. Right. And at some point those chains have to interconnect and communicate. And that's literally what Chainlink is all about. Plus they've got some, the US government and several other large governments around the world that are big fans of it. So those are some points that I like. But you know, I even got some Pepe coin. You never know. You never really know. We actually did a promo way back in 2019, I think, where we gave a hundred thousand Sheba to every new account holder. And so. But it was a hundred thousand sheba which go to. I think it's the fourth or fifth, but everybody's still holding it because if Sheba goes to a penny, that's a huge chunk of money for them. And so they love the promo. Speaking of promotions, I know you're going to be sharing the Link. It's Bitcoin. Ira.com DigitalSocialHour and thank you for having me. I've been wanting to be on your show for a while. I'm a big fan of yours.
- [34:04]
B
Thank you.
- [34:05]
A
So I went to my board and I got approved a special for your audience. They can use that link or with. One of the things I love about our platform is real crypto, real people. So you actually can call. There's a phone number I know you may not want to call because there's a phobia.
- [34:19]
B
I'm a texter.
- [34:19]
A
Yeah, you're text, but you can text to.
- [34:21]
B
Oh, you could text.
- [34:21]
A
Yeah, you can text.
- [34:22]
B
You should have said that.
- [34:23]
A
8 7. I memorized the number. 877-936-7175 and you can talk to a real expert about retirement and crypto. It is. This is not a one size fits all. Some people have old 4 1ks from jobs. They left. I always joke that's like leaving your old hoodie, your favorite hoodie, your ex girlfriend's house. You need to bring that with you. You can roll that over, you can transfer from existing ones, or you can contribute for the year. And from now until the end of the month, our Summer of Freedom program for your audience is up to $1,000 in cashback rewards for how much you put into your account. So definitely use it. Not just because it's great for taxes and all those other things, but we're rewarding you for our Summer Freedom program.
- [35:02]
B
Thanks, man. Any. Anything else you want to close off with here?
- [35:05]
A
No, just thanks for having me and keep an eye out. There's, I think by from now until Christmas, I think there's going to be some really interesting price action that only gets me half excited. What's being developed there is this just so much brain power that's happening that I'm on these spaces and I'm meeting these people and I'm in these rooms and I'm like, you guys are literally going to change the world. And they're going to do it faster than anything else we've ever seen before. So just hold on and get ready because I think it's going to be an amazing next few years.
- [35:34]
B
Hold on. We're going home, guys. All right, well, thanks for coming. We'll link the site below. See you guys next time. Peace. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.