Phil (2:50)

So it's interesting you bring up the policy in Washington angle. How much of politics do you think really plays into price action for an asset that has so much liquidity like bitcoin?

Chris Klein (3:02)

I think some people would think it has more than I, than I would. I think that. Let's remember this is the people's currency. It started at the retail play. Institutions are here now. You can see their impact, right? You have the Monday morning blues that sometimes happen when ETFs open. You've got some weird things happening after markets because now there's this 247 market that also has institutional place sitting inside a 9 to 5 market. I think the policy piece here is really become a showdown a little bit between legacy banking and new age crypto. And that was the way whether it was the rewards on the stablecoins, the guardrails around certain assets and how they would be held in financialization and yield, these are all battles that are happening in D.C. and it's because the banks are. I mean you talk about big oil, big pharma, big banking is a huge lobby out there. And that's why people like Elizabeth Warren hate bitcoin and other folks out there. So I think it does have an impact as far as what will happen next for cryptocurrency. But for these headlines and these shifts, I don't think there's a tweet or something like that that's just causing havoc. Everybody said, oh, we nominate A new Fed chair and bitcoin tanks. I don't know if those were completely correlated because actually he's friendly to bitcoin. And what he's going to have to do is lower rates and print more money to get out of this mess. And that's good for bitcoin.

Phil (4:21)

Yeah, I think that makes sense. And blaming one guy for price action on bitcoin, I think, is a bit of a stretch. What do you make of the store of value debate that's been happening with gold and bitcoin? Because my view on it is that

Host (4:37)

gold has pretty much sucked all the

Phil (4:39)

capital out of every other asset in its vicinity. And bitcoin has sort of succumbed to that, but now it's invited a lot of criticism. That's saying, look, bitcoin's not the store value we once thought it was.

Chris Klein (4:51)

Yeah, that's. That's the Peter Schiff guys, right? And the gold bugs. And, you know, there's so many great memes about, like the old guy at the. At the dining room table. How's that bitcoin treating you? And it's like, hey, Boomer, your gold got rugged too, right? And. And you look at what happened with Silver, up to125, down to 76 look like a meme coin chart for a few weeks there. Gold. And I'm a believer in both. I don't think there should be this contentious relationship between them. I think they're both valuable for a diversified approach. Gold became the release valve right now for central banks. Bitcoin is more tied to tech stocks, getting some downward pressure from AI and possible deflation. Software is not as valuable as it once was because we can build it faster, easier, and cheaper. The decoupling day will happen. And even gold and silver, there really is this market. And you know better than I do this market. Everything's behaving somewhat irrationally. They're supposed to be winners, losers, ebbs and flows. And right now, everything's kind of dow stuck at 50 and NASDAQ stuck at this. Gold stuck at 5. It'll go up a little bit, bounce back down. Bitcoin is now flat. Was bitcoin. I talked to a couple of guys at the conference. Was. Is bitcoin the leader of woes to come for other markets? That could be like, so with the fallback we just saw might replicate itself in the coming months in the stock market and other markets and possibly gold as well. But they're harmonious to each other. Having both is a beautiful diversified portfolio. Having gold, gold for Long term hold and store value and having bitcoin as it's more finite. So I think in a, in a, there will be a day in time where people say it's a better store value. Not today. Maybe in five or six years, maybe another halving will have to take place before we really start to see supply shocks. Because you don't see supply shocks in gold, you see it in silver because it's used for manufacturing and in industry. But we'll start seeing this institutional demand create supply shocks in the retail side. And then all of a sudden it'll be like, oh, I can't get my hands on bitcoin fast enough and get enough of it. We're just not there yet.

Phil (6:43)

It could be coming soon. I'm still optimistic about the asset. I own bitcoin. I've owned bitcoin a long time. One thing that people have been saying last couple years is that volatility is decreasing for bitcoin because it's maturing as an asset. But I think in the last couple months that argument has sort of been forgotten because we've seen a lot of volatility and it's pretty much collapsed almost 50%.

Chris Klein (7:09)

Yeah.

Phil (7:09)

What's your take on that?

Chris Klein (7:11)

It's a better bear than before. So 85% drop or 89% drop was the last bear. I mean, I lived through these, these, these gray hairs came from somewhere. I remember I was saying on Yahoo. Finance yesterday that when 2019 started, we had collapsed all the way to $3,000 at 20. Because if you remember, there was the contentious BCH, then the BSV fork, then there was these battles between Roger Ver and these other guys and we just look like idiots. Right. The crypto space and capitulation really started to hit when we hit 6,000 I. That holiday season was not a fun holiday season for most bitcoin guys. But we stayed flat from January through May of 2019. And then a catalyst that still hasn't been completely defined and came out of nowhere. We saw that summer up to almost $14,000. We go from 3 to 14,000, a matter of 90 to 120 days. Bitcoins didn't invent volatility. I think it just exposes it in places that it's not as. As expected, especially 24,7 trading a global currency that's all over the place, has its demands in certain spikes in certain place, sell offs in other places. And there's just a lot of, I think the only one we know that for sure and how much he's Buying is Michael Saylor. But are what central banks are buying what central banks are selling? What like FBI and some of these other groups, they own this stuff? Are they selling it in other, other industries, other company or countries? These are all questions that I have, have no answer at this moment in time. And if I was aggregating as an institution $100 million of Bitcoin, I wouldn't be telling anybody. I'd wait till after I buy it because that's when you can get a more better rate. And this great time right now as an individual I'm doubling my DCA in these moments in time I'll buy less and my DCA at 126, I'll double down and buy more in these levels because I have, I won't lose. I'm a permeable, I just, there's, there's nothing that's going to shake me from Bitcoin being the future of world currency.

Host (9:04)

Real quick, we'll get right back to the interview. This episode is sponsored by Amber Data. In digital asset markets, the gap isn't between people who have data and people who don't. It's between teams that can connect the signal and those that are still working in fragments. Amber Data Intelligence is built as a one stop institutional hub for digital asset market intelligence. It brings together derivatives, defi, stablecoins, spot markets and institutional metrics in a single interface. All on top of enterprise grade data infrastructure with conversational AI and no code analytics. Amber Data Intelligence shortens time to insight and reduces the operational drag that slows decision making. As this market matures, understanding liquidity, positioning and structure is no longer optional. If you want to keep up with how digital asset markets actually work, Amber Data is worth knowing. You can learn more at Amber Data IO. That's Amber Data IO. Now let's get back to the episode.

Phil (10:03)

And I think that's the view of a lot of institutions but that doesn't really get talked about because I saw this chart, I think it was from River Bitcoin and it was showing that in the last I think few months institutions have just continued buying and all the selling pressure is coming from retail. So I think the, the scared money right now is probably in the individual side rather than institutions. But then you know, it's something like blackrock. They're probably not getting shaken out of, of this market. They're, they're not going to be, you know, getting fearful of the sell off.

Chris Klein (10:36)

There's, they're scared and then there's fatigued and I think fatigued is the people that Anthony talked about at the conference that bought it 100 or $200 or even $1,000 and have watched it go up to 100,000. And you know, there's a saying on Wall street is the bulls and bears will fight it out. The pigs get slaughtered. You don't want to get greedy. Like that's a great return. That's 16,000% return in a matter of a decade. Maybe it's time for me, even if they believe maybe they're de levering a little bit and going into something more stable just because they're a little tired of this game, right? Like it's, it does wear on you a little bit. And their older entrance into the space, most institutions, they're only about 24 months into this, right? And even including BlackRock and others, maybe they were dabbling a little bit earlier when they weren't saying anything, but they've gone headfirst into it over the last 24 months. They're going to, I mean I was pretty bullish in my first 24 months because you don't, you don't have any scars yet. You know, you don't have those moments in time like 80% drop, a 60% drop and then a 50% drop. While if you look at it technically those are, that's, that's healthy. But if you're an individual sitting on that, you're like, you know what, Enough's enough. I think I, I've made a good amount of money on bitcoin, I'm going to move on to something else. But as we've seen, we have more entrance into the space with tax season around the corner than most other platforms have right now because people are saying, well, a, it's at a discount, Macy's red tag sale, and B, I'm just going to keep tucking it into my retirement wrapper because I know that I'm going to save thousands today if I use the tax tools. But I could save millions tomorrow when my, when I reach that age of retirement in my long term horizon.

Phil (12:06)

Okay, let's, let me ask you about that for a sec. The tax benefits of, let's say putting it in a retirement fund versus a brokerage account. I think a lot of people don't understand the math on that. Can you explain that?

Chris Klein (12:19)

So there's three places where tax advantage happens in the retirement wrapper. And it doesn't matter which. There's four main types. There's Roth, Roth, Sepsis, Traditionals and Simples. It's all about post Tax or pre tax money? Did I pay taxes on the money and then put it in or did I not pay taxes on the money and then put it in? If you're pre tax, you're going to lower your tax bill the year you put it in. So you're going to lower by 7 to $8,000 whatever you put in as a contribution. If you're post tax, you're not going to get that benefit up front. Both styles will allow you to buy, sell, trade for 20, 30, 40 years, the life of your retirement and never pay capital gains taxes, which is really powerful when you think about if, if you are a trader and say I want, if you, if some people are, I'll sell my Bitcoin at 126 and I'll buy back in at 66. You do that in a brokerage account, you're going to have the delta between the two and you're going to have a tax bill on that cap gains. So that's a huge, that's a, that's a benefit everybody gets. And that's really powerful when a volatile asset class. And then the third, if you're in a Roth, which a lot of wealthy people over time will convert to Roths, even if they don't start as a Roth, pay the taxes over time, you're going to take that money out completely tax free. This is Peter Thiel's play. He tucked his Uber shares, his Facebook shares, all of his investments pre ipo, pre valuation into a Roth ira. And now he's got almost like a six or seven billion dollars Roth ira. And that tool is available for all of us, not just. We don't have to be Peter Thiel to do that. It's not always the asset. You don't have to pick the right asset, but picking the right wrapper can really avoid that tax lag that you can feel and create generational wealth. Let's not forget, well, I have a kid. You're probably going to have one soon, we talked about at dinner. And someday you're going to want to hand something down to him or her and you can give them your IRA in an inherited sense. So that tax benefit can be passed down by generation to generation. That's something that, you know, that avoids that. What did Reagan called the death tax? Others call it the estate tax. But I mean, we pretty much get taxed from the day we're born to the day we die and then some, right?

Phil (14:14)

Yeah. And I think the disconnect and understanding for most people is that why would they put Bitcoin in a retirement account because it's still a risk asset. In the, let's say in the headlines about Bitcoin, you see it more as a long duration asset. Can you explain that disconnect there?

Chris Klein (14:33)

Yeah, I mean I like, I still see it as a risk asset. I like to put my riskiest assets inside my retirement vehicle because I have the longest time horizon. So I'm not thinking of something that I'm doing for six months or, or, or something for a year. I'm thinking of something that I'm going to sit on for decades. And even if I'm right and I say, okay, I got to take a breather, look at that thing. Went to 250,000, I know what Bitcoin's going to do. It's going to drop back down to 150. I'm thinking future speak here and I'm going to, I can make those decisions without having to think, oh man, if I sell right now, that's going to be $185,000 tax bill. I really don't want to pay that right now. So I guess I'll just keep holding. You get a lot more freedom and kind of liberation inside of a retirement to make those decision vehicles, decisions in your investment policy without having to worry about the tax man showing up because you're inside that wrapper. So to me, I like the riskiest assets. I do like some boring assets in there too. But you see, in our world, self directed people are doing real estate, sometimes speculative, more speculative real estate things, venture capital, private equity, private stock lending, other things that you wouldn't normally find in a TD Ameritrade or Fidelity brokerage account.

Phil (15:37)

Yeah, I think that makes sense. Another angle to this is these ETFs. I talk to a lot of retail investors particularly who say, look, I've bought the ETFs because there's efficiencies to that asset. I'm not sure if that's exactly the right way to think about it. I'm not an expert, but I want to ask you, the efficiencies in the etf, those are different than the, let's say the tax advantage or tax efficiencies to a retirement fund, right?

Chris Klein (16:04)

Yes and no. So you can put an ETF in a tax wrapping ira, right? You can do that. And that's what a lot of folks are because it's easy. I go to Fidelity, there's the ibit, click, click, click. I'm done. I'm a purist and bias when it comes to alternatives. If I'm going to buy real estate, I want the house, I don't want the reit. If I'm going to buy gold, I want the bar of the coin. I don't want the etf, paper derivative. I had a guy that worked for me years ago that would always say, if the boat's going down, do you want to grab the life jacket or the life jacket certificate? And those paper derivatives of Bitcoin and those things are great and easy access, but it's paper at the end of the day, you can't distribute it out. You'll have to. When you reach distribution or when you're done with that investment, you got to sell that, I bet share. And now you get dirty dollars or whatever currency is around at that time in the, in our platform, you're getting direct investment into the real thing where you can, when you hit that distribution age, you can say, you know what, I'm going to open up a private wallet. I want you to send my Bitcoin there in distribution. I don't want dollars. That's a really powerful tool. Let's also look at trading hours. You're on Wall street pretty much every day, 9 to 5 east, east coast time. That's the hours, right? Opening bell, closing Bel. We're starting to see that have those ETFs have an impact in the 24 hour, 247 trading because you'll get this build up on Sunday and then the woes on Monday or whenever the market's opening. I prefer to have access 247 because you know, so many opportunities happen in the after hours. You know, after Friday afternoon through the weekend, long weekends like we have often there is so much activity that happens that you can capitalize off of. In fact, I think somewhere around like 70% of our transactions, which we've done close to 7 billion are in after hours, not during traditional stock hours. Because people are taking advantage of those swings that happen in more thinly traded markets.

Phil (17:48)

Do you think that's specific to your platform or that's. Most platforms see that after hours, John?

Chris Klein (17:54)

Well, I don't have access to their data, but I bet, I'm sure because also it's 24 7. Right. So I mean if you don't sleep, which there are guys that don't sleep and just stay up that you can run the Asian markets, see what's happening there. Something may happen, an announcement in China, then you're there for pre opening in Europe and then you're pretty much well positioned for whatever that's going to catalyze into the U.S. markets. And if you're with your, with Bitcoin, those things are moving already. There's no pre market trading, there's no, you know, I actually was a Sunday I went to go get some IBIT in my Fidelity and it was like this won't be available for X number of hours. And it's like, well, I don't know what the price is going to be in X number of hours. So I guess I'll wait.

Phil (18:30)

Well, and that's the dilemma I think most investors face right now. They're constrained by the, the tools they're using and also the structures they're operating with.

Chris Klein (18:40)

What's going to change though? Tokenization, right? I mean tokenized stocks first, then tokenized assets will be a 24 7, 365 world. And in finance, I would say maybe in the next decade, maybe even faster. These things accelerate quickly.

Phil (18:54)

Well, I've heard people talk about in the next year or two, they're faster than me.

Chris Klein (18:58)

I would say, I think you're going to see it. This is going to be one of those, we're building some of those tokenized options in our world and we may have some options out in the next year within this fiscal roadmap. But for, I'm guessing maybe more mainstream where everybody is, whether you're at Robin Hood, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, you're in a tokenized world trading at a tokenized pace and velocity. Just like high velocity trading, algorithmic trading, those things, those were for the big boys first and then they've now been available for the retail guy. So we'll see how that all plays out real quick.

Host (19:31)

We'll get right back to the interview. Just wanted to pop in and say if you like this content, I read a newsletter every single morning called Opening Bell Daily. I cover macro, the stock market, asset

Phil (19:41)

prices, why things are going up, why they're going down.

Host (19:44)

And if you want to get that for free, you can sign up at the link in the description.

Phil (19:49)

Let's get back to the interview. With the recent sell off in Bitcoin, a lot of people are worried, a lot of people are scared. What are the conversations you're having with your clients right now? Like how, how is their mindset for clients that are already bought into bitcoin holding it long term? Like what are they saying?

Chris Klein (20:07)

I like how you call it a sell off now, but you call it a collapse about 10 minutes ago. So I guess I was A little legacy media kicking in on you. I think at the end of the day, people we have in retirement, the long term horizon, these folks, some of these folks have been around for. We have new entrants, we have existing entrants, we have, we have people that have been since the beginning, the early adopters. There's not a panic. It really was relative to the calmness I felt at the conference. The Bitcoin investor week is. There's this permanence and resilience that's happening. The people that are building and innovating have their head down and they're not worried about prices. The people that are thinking about retirement long term and where this will be, they're not getting shocked by headlines. When it bleeds, it leads. And when bitcoin bleeds in particular the legacy media, the yahoos, the this I love how it is called Yahoo and I didn't mean it in the. The double entendo there. But the yahoo is the CNN's, the CNBC. They love to eat it up. All bitcoins back down like this again. But you notice the stories kind of shallow out once it gets to, you know, they don't like to brag about when it hits all time highs either. You get about a 1 news cycle for that you get a week's worth a new cycle when it's. When it's down and bleeding. Because that's just the nature of people like to see things fall instead of see see them rise. I'm not seeing a lot of panic. And also again that bias they're getting their tax contrib. So to them it's just I get to get more bitcoin at a discount as opposed to what it would have cost me in October. It's just a different type of buyer that is thinking long term. It's that long term capital mentality.

Phil (21:35)

What do you think is the main hesitation about investors putting bitcoin into their

Chris Klein (21:41)

retirement account Biggest hesitation is probably some of the misnomers not understanding like we talked about today, the difference between ETFs buying Coinbase strategy stock or buying the real thing. Seems a little bit overwhelming, right? There's still that I got to get a wallet and I got to get a seed and I got it like we handled all those things for them in the custody model. So that's one misnomer. The other big one I always see, maybe not so much with your audience because they understand fractionalization, but a lot of folks are like, well I can't afford bitcoin because I don't have $80,000 or whatever and I think we've just done a bad job as an industry to really hammer home the fractionalization of bitcoin because people everyday folks all the time are like well I guess I missed out on bitcoin. I can't afford a bitcoin. You don't have to buy a bitcoin. And I think do need to do more and more of educating the public that what a satoshi is. And you know we're focused on Z commas and really focusing on the other side of the decimal point when it comes to bitcoin because it's a scarce asset. Those are probably two big ones I'd say the third would probably just be not understanding tax rules either. You know that's something we come out. We you went to, we both went to decent colleges. We didn't go to Berkeley or Stanford. Right. We went to good schools and I didn't learn. I went to business school, I went to international finance, political science, international affairs. Never once was there like a class about retirement tax code. And now with things like what you guys and Pump are doing with Sylvia CFO and I've used my own Claude and and Gemini and and Chad GPT to build out some of like entering my data in to find the best solutions. People really need to take the bull by the horns and say what fits best for me? Am I qualified for a SEP because I own a small business? Do I have non w income w 2 income? Can I do a solo K? These are tools that really help you maximize your tax savings. And a lot of folks just are like oh I just max out my 401k. And that is actually the most simplest thing you can do that will leave you behind over time because you're just putting dollars into generic ABCD funds and you're not really using the power of the retirement wrapper as has come to fruition.

Phil (23:44)

What is bitcoin IRA doing that you think is different or sets you apart from some of the competitors out there?

Chris Klein (23:50)

Real crypto, real people. So if you're going to go look at we already talked about the difference between the ETF and the real thing. But even if you do go over to Fidelity or somewh else and you want to get some bitcoin, it's a sidecar for them. This is an add on. They, they, they avoided it for 10 years and now all of a sudden they couldn't avoid it anymore. So they have the product offering. We have guys and gals that have been doing this for a decade helped thousands of Americans retire and add these tools into their portfolio. And we understand retirement's not one size fits all. We're also not just a bitcoin or Ethereum shop. We have 85 different cryptocurrencies. So if, I mean, I'm not a maxi, I have all of them. But I do love Bitcoin. 65% of our $12 billion book is in bitcoin. So they dabble, but it's not all. It's heavy in the bitcoin space. So having real people, we're always evolving with innovation and features. So whether it's conditional trades, limit orders, stop losses, we've got some really cool stuff coming up to make it easy to choose. Oh, I want AI coins or I want meme coins and I want to rebalance and I want to do these things. And then our next evolution is with tokenization and really taking on the entire retirement sphere of what was retirement to what should be retirement. Because a lot of people just don't get into alternatives because they seem cumbersome. We make them turnkey. So I think those probably the biggest things, we're staying on the cutting edge. We've got great people. I get to come see you and do those types of things. This isn't like, oh, I get invited, like I try to bring good value and yeah, I think that's what makes a big difference is that that service touch and that, that focus on security and keeping the client's nest egg.

Phil (25:22)

Saf I think no, you guys do a great job and I'm a big fan, of course. I have to ask you, what's going on with bitcoin for the rest of the year?

Chris Klein (25:32)

Oh, no, I'm not getting boxed in this time. Not doing it. No, it's, I think we're going to be able to chop it through tax day. I do think there is going to be some kind of catalyst over the summer. Now, will it be a good or a bad catalyst is the question mark because there's some macro stuff happening. Trump administration Republicans definitely don't want anything bad to happen to the economy. From now until election day, people vote with their pocketbooks even if they admit it or not. There could be a really interesting summer, a little hotter summer in volatility and some movements because all it takes is one or two little catalysts and you don't even see them coming. Then, then you know how it goes. The FOMO kicks in, the prices start to run. I would say that we'll, I think we will reach new all time highs this year and it probably will be in the fall or the summer or in the winter.

Phil (26:17)

Wow, that's, let's see.

Chris Klein (26:19)

But that could be 126,752. Like, there's no like Price is right trading there. I'm not throwing a very bold number out because it is, there's so much unknown. This is a really, anybody that says there, I think Anthony said it best in his opening remarks at the conference was anybody that says they're an expert in this space, they're either lying or they're, they're delusional because the world is changing. So the tectonic plates are shifting. Markets aren't acting like they're supposed to. Now you have, you have the predictive markets on top of ETFs, on top of. It's just wild. Your piece the other day about Kalshi and how the Fed is embracing that. Ask me that, that was going to happen. Even 12 months ago, I would have laughed you out of the room. But this is the world that we're living in today.

Phil (26:58)

That was very surprising, I must admit. And it's amazing. You can go on these prediction markets now and bet on the end of day price for bitcoin, which is just a diabolical, I mean, gambling, it's gambling

Chris Klein (27:12)

on top of gambling on top. It's like layering.

Phil (27:14)

Right.

Chris Klein (27:15)

It's wild.

Phil (27:15)

It's gambling inception.

Host (27:17)

Chris, can you tell us more about

Phil (27:19)

what people should know about bitcoin IRA and maybe where they can find more information?

Chris Klein (27:23)

Yeah, so we've been around since 2016, we've got $12 billion in assets under custody. We have 200,000 users. You can reach us in one of two ways. You can go to, I don't know, do we have a bitcoin ira.com opening bell. Opening bell. Okay, Opening bell. Go there. Or you can call the number 877-936-7175 and talk to Real folks. Be sure to mention that you heard us from Opening Bell and from Phil, whether you use the link or you call in because for, we're trying to really incentivize people to do their tax savings early. So if you do your contribution, open your account before March 15, you'll, you can earn up to $2,000 in rewards. If you wait until April 15, you'll get up to $1,000 in rewards. So we're incentivizing you to get it, forget about it and everybody from your community gets a nice piece of Bitcoin ira swag. You saw my vest at the event We've got quarter zips, all kinds of goodies. Everybody gets a piece of swag to wear proudly as a future bitcoiner.

Phil (28:20)

Amazing. Chris, I really appreciate your time. It's a fantastic conversation, and we'll have you back on anytime.

Chris Klein (28:26)

Thanks for having me, buddy.