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THE Bitcoin Podcast
HOW TO STACK MORE BITCOIN | Will Reeves & Guy Swann (Saving in Bitcoin Ep. 4)
00:59:26
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- [00:00]
Guy Swan
You must not work hard for something that somebody else can make an infinite amount of for free at no cost and no contribution. If you are working hard for something, do it for something that is hard to make. That is the point of money. That is the point of society. It is antithetical to cooperation and basic common sense to work for something, it just means you're working for them.
- [00:27]
Will Reeves
It's these little tools that really meet you where you are today and allows you to ultimately grow into what I believe is an inevitable realization that Bitcoin is not a speculative investment on the side of my fiat operations. Bitcoin is the basis of my operations and everything else is speculative.
- [00:50]
Guy Swan
If they can print trillions of it for free, you're just working for them. So stop working for them and use a money that has the same rules for everybody. And trust me, on a long enough timeline, that will pay off like you could not believe.
- [01:10]
Walker
Welcome to Saving in Bitcoin. Your financial freedom blueprint on the Bitcoin podcast powered by Fold. The best place to buy, earn and save in bitcoin. I'm your host, Walker, and in this six episode limited series, I'm talking to some of the best minds in Bitcoin to walk you through the basics of why our money is broken, how Bitcoin fixes it, and how you can use Bitcoin as your personal financial freedom blueprint. Let's get started. Greetings and salutations. I am joined today by Will Reeves, the CEO of Fold, and Guy Swan, the host of Bitcoin Audible, the man who has read more about Bitcoin than anyone you know, and a Fold power user who seems to have optimized his stat. Sat stacking. Excuse me. Like no one else. Will Guy, welcome. Thanks for joining.
- [02:09]
Will Reeves
Great to be here, Walker.
- [02:10]
Guy Swan
Hell yeah, man. Same.
- [02:12]
Walker
This is quite a sweet thing to have both of you together. The CEO and probably folds ultimate power user, because I think we're at this point right now, you know, bitcoin continues to rip up in fiat terms. It seems a little bit scary for people maybe. And I think like taking a step back, a lot of people, especially maybe non boomers, are kind of frustrated with the current financial system. They feel like they can't get ahead and they really. How do you plan for your future if you feel like you're just treading water in the present? Right. So where I want to start is just like going back to basics for people who feel kind of stuck. Why should they consider bitcoin when it seems so expensive and still so out of reach. Why is this something they need to be looking at right now?
- [02:56]
Will Reeves
Do we.
- [02:57]
Guy Swan
You want me to go?
- [02:58]
Walker
Maybe. Maybe. Guy, if you want. Yeah, Kick us off. I should have looked better.
- [03:01]
Guy Swan
All right, so the reason you should be looking at it is because you're getting screwed, and you don't know it. Like, why. Why are the prices of eggs going up? Why is it the same house that you've been saving for, for five years at $250,000 is now $400,000? Like, why is it that, you know, stocks and equities, that despite the fact that they're not even more. Any more profitable, like, the huge corporations just keep getting bigger and they have access to debt? That makes no sense. You pay 22% interest on the simplest of debt, and they pay half a percent, and they borrow it from a central bank, like, directly. Like, you don't understand that there's a limited amount of resources, and that means that literally your cost of using up those resources is 22% and theirs is half a percent. That's psychotic. Like, that is you're literally getting screwed. And. And what is happening is that they are doing it with an accounting trick. Imagine you have a small society with 10 people, and nine people do all the work, that one of them gets the water, one of them builds a car, one of them builds the houses, one of them gets the food, et cetera. Everybody's doing their job. And what you need is, you need an accounting system that says, okay, I put a car into this system. So, you know, how much food, how long did it take you to make all this food? So how much food can I get back out? And the point is to make sure that everybody's contributing so that everybody is literally making the society wealthier at the same time. And we can trade. We can work together. I use your food, you use my car. Like, that is the point of society. Now imagine there's a 10th guy that's just screwing with the accounting system and buying up everybody's stuff. He just says, I have a bunch more points. I get your car, I have a bunch more points. I get your food. I have a bunch more points. I get your house. Now he has the house, he has the food, he has the car, he has the space, he has the water, he has everything. And we're working twice as hard. And now when we want to buy it back from him, we're not going to buy it back from him at the exact same price that he paid. He's going to bid it up because he wanted it, he wants the house. He doesn't want to live out on the street. So now the house is twice as expensive and the guy who built the house can't buy the house. How does that make any sense? That 10 person is just fraud. It is just corruption. And believe it or not, I know this sounds crazy to a lot of people who don't understand the structure, but that is literally how our money works and we are getting screwed to the. When you talk to your granddad, he says, I used to buy a Big Mac for a nickel. Like, the reason that is is because the monetary system has been screwing all of us. Think about it. If he tried to save a nickel, which might have been a significant, it would have, it would have at least been a hamburger. Imagine he tried to plan from that point to be like, okay, I need to save, you know, 100,000 nickels in order to eat for this span of time. How many, how many hamburgers would he get now? He worked his whole, he worked his whole life trying to, like the time was just completely stolen from him. You must not work hard for something that somebody else can make an infinite amount of for free at no cost and no contribution. If you are working hard for something, do it for something that is hard to make. That is the point of money, that is the point of society. It is an antithetical to cooperation and business. Basic common sense to work for something. It just means you're working for them. If they can print trillions of it for free, you're just working for them. Stop working for them and use a money that has the same rules for everybody. And trust me, on a long enough timeline, that will pay off like you could not believe. That's my case.
- [07:09]
Walker
Amen. Well said, Will. Is there anything you want to add on top of that?
- [07:13]
Will Reeves
I mean, this is why Guy is the most listened to man in Bitcoin right here. I think he, he speaks the truth. And you know, the way I, I think about it reminds me what kind of what Guy was saying, reminds me a little bit about this. This one quote, I forget which, it's from a book or a speech, but basically is these two fish are swimming along in the ocean and then they come and meet a, an older fish. And the older fish says, you know, morning boys, how's the, how's the water today? And the two young fish continue to swim on and they look at each other and say, what the hell is the water? What is he talking about? And it's, it's interesting that money plays this role that is just absolutely ubiquitous. We are entrenched in it. It is. It touches every surface of what we do. And it's often those things that are so ubiquitous that we know the least about, because we don't. We don't see them. We don't see it as part of the environment acting on us. We just see it as part of the environment that can't be changed or has always been there. And, you know, we. We are. We're operating in a moment now that, you know, 50% of people have essentially given up on meeting and achieving their financial goals for saving. They have more credit card debt than money for emergency savings. They have a position where 25% of groceries and food delivery is now happening on buy now, pay later. There's something very seriously wrong. In addition to all the stuff the guy was talking about in terms of housing prices, food prices, and all of this, and these two fish that are swimming along are looking around and seeing all this stuff, and it causes a lot of anxiety, but they don't see the water. And I think a lot of what bitcoin and education needs to be about and can be about is seeing the water, because that helps you understand all these other factors that we can easily point out that everyone under. That everyone would agree with us on a lot of these points, but because they can't see the water, we can't get to the solution.
- [09:22]
Walker
I think that's just a great way of framing it from both of you, because that's the thing. It is. Money is not something that we're taught in school, right? Money, like what is money is not a question that most of us asked until maybe we started going down the bitcoin or Austrian economics rabbit hole. And even then, it's a question that, you know, you continue to struggle with because it's a difficult one, right? And so when people are trying to wrap their heads around bitcoin and they hear all this stuff in the media about, oh, well, it's, you know, depending on what year you're looking at or what publication you were reading, you might have heard that it was a speculative bubble over and over again. You might have heard that it was dead. You might have heard that it was rat poison squared from your favorite Berkshire Hathaway, you know, leader. You may have heard any number of things that kind of muddied the waters, you know, so you're trying to figure out what water is. But these waters are very muddied right now. And so I think what helps is to. To bring it back to Basics a little bit. And I'm curious, you know, for, for you guy, do you view bitcoin as an investment or is this something that is just savings? And is there even a difference between investment and savings in terms of how you think about it or how people should think about it? Stop earning dirty fiat rewards stack sats on everyday spending with the 2% bitcoin rewards credit card bifold unlimited Bitcoin back on a platform purpose built for savings. Head to the link in the show notes to get started. Buy Bitcoin, earn bitcoin, get paid in bitcoin, make fold your personal finance hub for spending dollars and stacking sats.
- [10:59]
Guy Swan
Savings is an investment in your future and it would be stupid for me to put anything else in that investment other than the hardest asset I can find that is valuable for everybody. Like the end. Unequivocally. It, it's beyond stupid. Especially in this day and age when technology is making it easier to make everything at an unprecedented pace where I don't even know, you know, I think my house is going to be worth some amount. But you know, with literally large scale 3D printers, maybe it only takes a week to build a house in five years. I don't even know, you know. So I don't see anything as reliably scarce except something that is provably scarce. And the only thing that's provably scarce is Bitcoin. So for investing in my future, the last thing I want is fiat because I know it's going to lose 10% a year. I just know because that's just. This is what the monetary trend does. Like sure, Netflix and technology and like stuff you can't eat will get cheaper, but everything else is just going to get more expensive. Um, so yes, it is an investment in savings is an investment in my future. And it would be absolutely stupid of me to think of or weigh how much savings I have in anything other than bitcoin. And from my perspective, so it's just my money. Like, it's just my money I get. You know, a lot of people think like, oh, I have a lot in Bitcoin and oh, it's, it's fluctuating because they're their totem or they're, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you're on the ocean or you're on the ground, right? And when you're on the ocean and you know, you're in the waves, it feels like things are crazy and you're on the ground, you look at the waves and you're like, wow, it's really crazy out there. But the ground is your point of reference for what the movement is. And everybody in society thinks that they're on the ground looking at the ocean when bitcoin is doing this, but they're actually on the ocean looking at the ground. So the ground looks like it's going crazy. But Bitcoin is 21 million. It's not moving at all. What you're doing is you're watching the fiat market fluctuations of what it's worth. So when they're like, oh my God, it's only worth 90,000, oh my God, it's worth 105,000. And it's like doing this number, all I am thinking is how much bitcoin is it costing me today to do this versus how much bitcoin is it going to cost me tomorrow to do this? So when I get, when bitcoin goes down to 90,000, I'm like, oh my God, let me get that invoice. Let me, let me, let me get paid like right now. Because this is more bitcoin. And I'm standing on the ground looking at the waves and realizing though, here's a trough, I'm getting lucky. And so it is all about the frame of reference. Bitcoin is my frame of reference. And I do not. When somebody tells me, don't you want to sell it? Right now? It's high. And I'm like, sell it for what? Sell it for what? Sell it for something that is literally going to lose 10% this year. They're, they're gonna print like in, in 2035. The debt is going to be, the US debt is going to be between 70 and 80 trillion dollars. It is. And that seems crazy, but it would have seemed crazy when it was 16 trillion in 2015 for it to be 38 trillion. It's 38 trillion. It doubles every 10 years. All the way back to 1975, it doubles. We started at 900 billion, we're at 36 trillion. It's going to be twice that in 2035. The only time that it didn't double, it tripled twice. So it might be 100 trillion, we don't know, but it's going to be somewhere up there. The hell if I want a portion of that pie that's bleeding, just unbelievably bleeding. And a 10 year Spanish is not even a super long time frame to be planning on. If you're not planning for 10 years in the future, your 20 years in the future is gonna Suck, like, think about what you want to hold today that will be worth Something in five to 10 years and cannot be screwed with that somebody cannot manipulate. Bitcoin is my ground. So what it costs me in bitcoin or what I am getting in bitcoin is what concerns me. Most people are nervous when they're holding too much bitcoin. I am nervous when I'm holding too much fiat. If I ever have like a lot of dollars in my account and bitcoin is doing something, I'm like, oh God, I could get locked out of this account. I could. I could, you know, run into some fee or a limit so that I can't get back into bitcoin for another week. Like, I get literally nervous if there is a lot of dollars in a bank account somewhere. And I am finally. I finally feel like I can sleep easy if it's all back into bitcoin in my multi. Sick. So that's just. That's just how I see it now. And I think on the other side, it just seems crazy to see it the other way. It's like, why would I care what something is measured in something? This is going to be 2 trillion more of them this year at least.
- [16:01]
Walker
Like, which is just mind blowing.
- [16:02]
Guy Swan
How useful is. That's the most useless measure ever.
- [16:07]
Walker
Yeah, and I love that analogy of people not realizing that they're actually on the boat in the water. You know, they're in the volatile part of things, looking at the stable thing, but you don't realize it. And you know, Will, I'm curious too, just from your perspective, because you've literally built a company around this thing that most people still perceive as volatile, Bitcoin. Again, they're looking at it through the wrong frame of reference. You built an entire company around this, though, presumably because you agree with Guy that this is actually the only frame of reference that matters. Can. Can you talk about that a little bit? And like, did you build. Like, did you build fold? Was this solving a problem for you? Like, what was the actual impetus behind that? Where you said this is a company that needs to exist and these are services that people need. Were they ones that you yourself were lacking? Or how did that actually come about?
- [16:59]
Will Reeves
Yeah, I think. Well, f. First off, we are absolutely killing it on the aquatic bitcoin metaphors on this rip. But yeah, it certainly came from direct personal experience. I came out of graduating of college directly into the 2008 financial crisis. I saw what it did to families that had both been living beyond their means and seeing what Devastation that can bring in both psychological economic ways. And I also saw a continued march towards a really nihilistic future future where the actual problem wasn't even. We were. The problem was so bad. It wasn't just about where do I put my money to save. The problem was people didn't even have money to save at all. They, they were living at, at, at the edge. And so our end goal was to bring bitcoin as the key and foundational part of, of your savings. And but we said, hey, the first thing we need to solve is this issue that most people cannot even build savings. It's not like they even have a choice of saying, hey, guy, makes a ton of sense. I'm going to put my $10,000 in savings I have, I'm going to put that in Bitcoin because I get what guys, they don't even have that they so fold initially started, hey, we need to go upstream on this problem. Let's help you build savings passively. We're going to put that into Bitcoin and it's going to happen in the background and it's going to steadily build a position for you so that you can look back over a year, two years, three years, and see the power and fold in the, in the ui. We try to do that. We try to show how much your rewards have appreciated what's that meant for your realized value? And we really are building for the, for the people that you know. And you take someone in 2019, this person who has worked really hard, built up a strong savings position of 10,000 fiat dollars. They hear Guy or another podcaster or some other educational say, Bitcoin is the way and they make the decision, a big decision for someone who, that, for someone who has built and worked to build a position that, that large where they say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this into bitcoin. Fast forward today that person has $270,000 or so of, of bit of value of dollar fiat value that they have from 10,000 to 270,000. The guy who says, hey, I'm gonna keep my $10,000 in fiat and has $8,600 and the, which is really 8,000.
- [19:38]
Guy Swan
Which is really, yeah, officially 8,600.
- [19:42]
Will Reeves
Yes, exactly right. Depending on what, what, what, what you're believing in here. And I think this gets to the point of, really an interesting point of how to look at what Guy's framing was that Bitcoin is the barometer for value. It is the measuring stick for how we measure value. In this world because it is the most scarce asset, the soundest asset available. It is the only one that vantage point to see the fluctuation in other and other assets and in other savings vehicles. And so when they look at, hey, my, you know, my doll, if I saved in dollars and I'm at $8,000, you know, that's not great. It's, it's not going up. That's, that's not good. That doesn't make me safer and more sound. But the real question to ask is, why is Bitcoin $270,000 of fiat? Why is it worth that much? And that goes to show you what that 10th guy is, that guy talked about earlier, how much he has poisoned the underlying money, the vehicle that has been used and relied on by these people who put in their hours, put in their work, build their savings position. That's how much it's been inflated. It's not that it's dropped, what, 20%? It has inflated these other assets by 27,000, 27x. And that shows you the magnitude of how manipulated the system is we're working on. And you look at it also, it's like there was the pandemic in between where this thing went on, rapid acceleration. And when you think about, hey, bitcoin is a speculative investment. Well, bitcoin actually doesn't change. Whether there's a global pandemic or a meltdown in some country or a war, it doesn't change at all. But your Fiat changes in a very big way. And are there going to be more of these in the future? Yes. Will there be more? One another, another one in six months? Yes. To me, the most speculative you can get is by putting the fruits of your labor, your savings, into a vehicle that is so exposed not only to the world events coming in, but also the very fallible minds of, of them, of the people controlling the money printers. That is the ultimate form of speculation. And Bitcoin's increase at 27x to $10,000 to $270,000 in value, that's reflective of bitcoin doing nothing else but just being bitcoin. It's the rest of the world that has, that has actually driven that shift. And that's a hard thing. It's flipping the world upside down. And it is that ability of seeing that water that I think fold has always tried to really focus on and recognize that, hey, convincing that person to put their 10,000 in fiat into 10,000 bitcoin, that's huge. But what about if we start at A much smaller level. What if you woke up every day and could reliably increase your, your position in bitcoin by just opening the app? What if you could reliably increase your bitcoin wealth by doing the everyday fiat spending you already do, or you do roundups or hey, may, maybe now you're ready to actually convert some of your paycheck or start a dca. Fold really has been built to be a step ladder that allows you to go from point A to point B, where guys to, to the land, to land versus being on the rocky fiat ship. And Fold provides these little tools that really meet you where you are today and allows you to ultimately grow into what I believe is an inevitable realization that bitcoin is not a speculative investment on the side of my fiat operations. Bitcoin is the basis of my operations and everything else is speculative. And Fold tries to make that journey possible and meet people where they are at today. Because knowing that that guy who put in that work, years of work to save $10,000, that is not a light decision to throw into bitcoin. We may understand it at a conceptual level, but the amount of work and life that went into developing that, it's a very hard thing to make that, that mental shift to shift where you're putting your money. It's jumping from one water tank into the other and you don't, it's, it's. You don't know what the oxygen levels are in the other. So it's, it's. Fold is meant to be there on with you on that journey and provide value and help you with tools along the way.
- [24:23]
Walker
You know, I love that and I, I think that's one of the things that's really, it's kind of scary for people at first. If you have worked in this fiat rat race and been able to accumulate a small amount or a large amount of fiat savings to go in and think, oh, I need to lump sum this all into bitcoin, right? As you're starting to learn about bitcoin, that's a scary thing that most, the vast majority of people aren't going to do. I know I didn't do it when I started learning about bitcoin. Do I wish I had? Sure, absolutely. I also didn't have a lot of savings that time because this system isn't built to. The fiat system is not built to help you save or to encourage you to save. It's built to encourage you to spend and consume and do it above your means and keep chasing that hamster. Wheel and guy. One of the things I always loved your bitcoin audible was yours and Peter McCormack's. What Bitcoin did were my two go to shows as I was starting my journey down the bitcoin rabbit hole. And I'm so grateful for those. And I remember always hearing for multiple years you would talk about other ways that you would stack beyond just buying bitcoin, about how to basically get the most, let's say economic juice out of your fiat spending that you needed to do by using things like Fold. And you would talk about all the kind of different ways that you would go through this. I'm wondering if you can kind of maybe go through some of that, like how, how do you actually do it? Because again, people may think, okay, bitcoin's complicated enough. Now you're telling me there's all these other hoops I need to jump through to try and get more bitcoin, like make this less scary for people, I guess.
- [25:59]
Guy Swan
Okay. Okay. It really is not like I, like I've gotten my fold without making this a commercial for Fold has really kind of made this really easy because things that I had spread across multiple apps I mostly just do in Fold now though I still use the bitcoin company and Bit Refill and Strike from time to time. Mostly just because of like lightning integration. Bit Refill has a huge collection of gift cards and that sort of stuff. So just like as an example, because I do not, this does not include an active stack. So this would not include roundups or auto auto buys or anything like that. This is literally just rewards from using the debit card that it's like what, 0.5% to 1.5% depending on like where you're spending it or like what's, you know, the promotion for the period. And because of, you know, bitcoin's fluctuating and like continuous like long time growth in price, these are my rewards right now. So that's $9,139, which you know was yesterday was $8,900, but it's 9 million SATs. And if you, if you look, if you see at the top how much I did, you've earned 30 million since I joined fold. That's 0.3 bitcoin. Just using the full car because I've been doing it for a really, really long time. And then specifically anything that I can use with a gift card, like Amazon has not charged a debit card, a credit card card, a debit card or credit card of mine for like however, whenever it is that fold added Amazon, literally since that day, Amazon has not seen one of my actual bank cards. I have done everything with gift cards because that's anywhere between 2 to 3% and that's. God, it stacks so fast. And it is not a difficult habit to get to like basically build into your process to the point that my wife gets annoyed when I do little things like that. And I'm like, I gotta change a thing or make her use some more secure peer to peer app instead of messages, you know, and she's like, oh my God, fine. But this, she's just, she'll literally, I'll. She'll be sitting in the other room or whatever and she'll be like, oh God, can you get a gift card $50? Like, and I'm like, okay, yeah. And I just like shoot it to her over messages. So like it's, it is literally not that hard. And you know, if you're, if you're able to do that with some of the services, you can get like a average 1.5 to 2% back. I do everything on my business through this. I pay the only contractor I have that doesn't take bitcoin. I pay them through fold. And you know, I put, because I'm on a bitcoin standard, I put the bitcoin in the fold, shift it over to the card and then and push. And that just basically gets rid of my, gets rid of my fee. And then because there's like almost no spread on fold, and then I basically get sats back for the purchase. That would be roughly the spread, which just means that I just kind of stack that away into like a little savings account that I don't really think about and just like passively works. And so much so that I started, I've been working on, been working on a development project for two years and I pulled $15,000 worth. I mean at the time, which now it would have been like 30, but $15,000 worth of just, just sats stacked just like this, like, no, not thinking about it, just making sure that the fold card was my main thing. I pulled it out to start PEAR Drive to start the development project that we were doing, like, you know, like just having like passive savings. Like that is absolutely huge. And I really think this goes into a whole different discussion about like medium of exchange and like where we are in the era of bitcoin. But I think the whole thing, like the focus of what we're even doing is wrong. And what we should be focusing on is how how do we get people to earn small amounts or passively earn bitcoin? Because that's what we need everybody doing, because that's the path to medium of exchange, in my opinion, is how do we make bitcoin available to receive, not to spend. And, and again, that's a whole different discussion. And maybe we can get into that if that's relevant to this topic. But, yeah, that's why fold just makes it easy. But some other really fun little habits I had is I would go out and if there was something that I was like, oh, I'm going to buy this little thing, because I just get like, that fiat, that fiat, like, urge to buy this stupid little gadget or this, you know, this sandwich that I don't really need, and I can just go home and get the food that I make that I have that's like, a lot cheaper. And if I ever did that and, or I was thinking of doing that and then I didn't, I would literally go on strike and I would just pay for it by paying myself over lightning. And that would be like a little savings trick, would be like, I'm going to go get a coffee at Starbucks. No, I'm not. And then I would pay myself six bucks in bitcoin over lightning to just not buy that coffee. And then it would just sit there and then I would just keep doing that over and over and over again and I stack, oh, thousands of dollars. I had so many bad habits, but it's also a great, like, habit. It rewards me, you know, like, I get to go back and be like, this is what it was worth to try to make my habits better about how I spend stuff.
- [31:46]
Walker
I think that's such a powerful thing. It's like, because again, this fiat world is not set up for you to build those constructive habits around saving for the future. It's built to build decent or it's built to make you have destructive habits that cause you to basically prioritize the instant right now gratification versus a little bit of delayed gratification, which will ultimately allow you to have more gratification in the future. But you just take what you can get right now because, you know, in, in the end, we're all dead, as, you know, as, as Keane said. And, and so I think that that's really powerful to be able to have these kind of little tricks because people think about this as, like, oh, if I'm going to get into, like, I'm. If I'm getting into bitcoin, like, that's. That's a big commitment, and I've got to. It's. It's scary and it's. There's a lot that I need to do and I need to really think about this. It's like. Or you just need to build little habits that slowly allow you to accumulate a little bit. I think it's. Once people accumulate a little bit and they start seeing the value of that in fiat terms go up and up and up with volatility, they start to say, huh, okay, well, I'd like to have more of my wealth in this. I'd like to build wealth with this, because I actually can. And I'm curious Will too, maybe you can talk about. I mean, beyond some of these tips and tricks that that guy has said, are there some other things that you either, you know, you guys try to encourage or that you've seen people doing, like, creative ways, Other things with the product that you're like, this is a great, easy way for people to stack sats, you know, every day, like, without thinking about it, essentially.
- [33:23]
Will Reeves
Yeah. I think, you know, since we started Fold has, our customers have earned over $70 million in Bitcoin rewards. Whoa. That has been there. There are many, like Guy who have been able to accumulate a third of a bitcoin for not really changing anything about what they do. And that is completely on the table and available to, To, To. To everyone. It's truly something. If, you know, you are not ready to say, I'm at the point of putting all my savings or making it a major regular investment that I. That I have. There are these tools that will reward your future self. And I think the best thing that I see and what Fold has really been trying to work on this last year is that one of our main core customer sets is families. And we know that the number one best thing that will continue you going down the rabbit hole and learning more about bitcoin is just getting some skin in the game. And Fold is very good about that. You can literally just open up the app, hit a daily spin and get a couple sets, or you can maybe turn up roundups or earn when you go shop at Amazon and you start to, you know, increase your position. But just getting skin in the game is the number one. The number two thing is how well it can gel in with the. The. The family environment or at least your household environment. So that means, you know, bitcoin is not necessarily a, for many of our customers, not a single player game. They are working with their spouses on how to figure out what is Our tolerance here. What is our fiat buffer? Well, how much is going to go into bitcoin? How fast do we go? Do we lump sum? Do we dca? How can we maximize this? You know, the households are split up. Typically somebody is, you know, controlling the purse strings for, you know, buying the groceries or getting the gifts for a birthday or. And someone else is. There is maybe, you know, mainly focus on bringing in money into the household. And so fold really tries to create an environment that can sit within a house that can empower the whole home to adopt a bitcoin standard. And it's not just going to be one person who has their, you know, is doing their, you know, their own thing. And everyone else is really nervous about it because they have no visibility into it. They're not involved. They don't understand the tools that they're working with. This is about sharing this as a responsibility in the household together to stack bitcoin and everyone can play their role. We have. One of my favorite things is how much, you know, this, this, the. When you open up the app, everyone, every day will get a daily spin. And at first this was really just like a growth thing. Hey, the bitcoin faucets have largely gone away in, in the past, you were able to go on a bitcoin faucet and pull off five bitcoin from a. From a website to your wallet. Those unfortunately don't exist anymore. And so Fold is really taken up where those left off.
- [36:27]
Guy Swan
I did that once.
- [36:28]
Will Reeves
Yes. Well, man, it's. I would say consider it as. I'd say that amount, that accomplishment as much as you doing stacking 30 million sats on your Amazon purchases. You know, the, the stack, the daily wheel. One of the most popular users of that is the children in the families of bitcoin families. It is something that they can be involved with, do every day, get excited about, kind of contribute into the household. It makes bitcoin a topic of discussion daily. And this reinforces things in a lot of very informal ways. And then you can be direct depositing your paycheck, hey, are we doing 10% into Bitcoin, 90% into fiat, or maybe next month? Let's. Let's ramp that up to 25%, 30%. And so we really give you the tools to follow you and so on your journey and be reflective of what you need, because we're not here to increase the anxiety of you in this transition over to bitcoin transition. Bitcoin should be optimistic, should allow you to ultimately relax. It is the most relaxing investment you could possibly make. Although it's harder for people to see that from the outside to know that you don't have to do a single thing. Just make sure to live below, you know, below your, within your means and take care of any emergency needs. Bitcoin's volatility is going to work in your favor. You don't need to be, you know, yoloing into meme stocks or you know, any coins or you know, your brother in law's Airbnb investment portfolio. You know, you don't need to do any of that. It's very, very low anxiety. And so I think one of the big successes and one that will build on is building that foundation to that recognizes that bitcoin is not a single player game. It is one that is done with those that you love. And it needs to be done in a way that helps educate them along the way, gives them the tools to contribute. And ultimately that creates longer term stackers and stronger families with stronger finances. And so you know, whether you're here to live on a bitcoin standard like Guy Fold can Fold can largely be your one stop shop for that 100% direct deposit into Bitcoin. Everything else you can take care of after that, you have full connectivity into almost all of the financial tools you rely on and need every day. Or are you just getting started and hey, let's, let's start earning rewards on the side and ultimately what we've seen since we started in 2019 is those that start on that one end of the spectrum just get some skin in the game. They rapidly, every few months, every couple years, they move up a couple levels. And I think that's everyone's, that's why one of the most familiar stories that everyone has, regardless of if you're someone on this call or someone just getting started, I wish I got started early. I wish I did more earlier. And that's just not how you know, it's a very small percentage of people that, that had, that did that and pulled that off and were able to do that. It's not something that can be expected of everyone because again people today are already living in a default world of living at the edge, feeling like they don't have enough, they do not understand the means to get ahead. They, they're already under immense anxiety. And the transition into a bitcoin standard, into a bitcoin future should actually be the most relaxing path, the most optimistic path. And Fold tries to embody that with you and make it fun along the way. That you don't need to do it alone. You can do it with your family, you can do it with your friends. And that's ultimately how bitcoin is going to win. It's not just here to be a financial asset to help your economic life. It's here to improve the social fabric of your family and those around you.
- [40:26]
Walker
You know, it's one thing I hear over and over again, more so from, from guys, not this guy, but guys generally is that, you know, oh, I like, I wish my wife or girlfriend was, was in, was into bitcoin, but they're just not. You know, I'm lucky enough where my wife is very much into bitcoin. We were creating content about it together. So I'm, I'm, I'm a bad person to give advice there. But I'm curious, like, is this something, you know, that you see as like this kind of foot in the door technique where people, you know, you can, quote, get your wife interested in bitcoin without her feeling like you're somehow just like doing this thing off on the side. It's like, hey, this is part of our, like our family savings. This is again, this isn't like this crazy, weird, speculative, you know, Internet, you know, nerd money. I mean, it is, but like, you know, on the Internet nerd money side, but like, this isn't something that's weird or out there. This is just a way for us to actually save. Like, is, is that kind of like guy, I'm curious just if you have any advice for people who are feeling that struggle of like, how do I get my wife, girlfriend, whatever, or, or maybe boyfriend, whatever, whatever side of things people are on, how do you get them interested in this? Is this a good way to do that in a less daunting or like exclusionary way? You know what I mean?
- [41:44]
Guy Swan
If there is, if there is some sort of a pushback between how things are seen between two people in a couple, without a doubt if the, the biggest barrier will be, are you investing in some crypto speculative thing that's going to moon and we're going to make a million dollars? Because that sounds scary to a ton of people. Sounds particularly. And it's usually a male thing. Oh, I'm going to do this investment. We're going to make a bajillion dollars and then the, the wife or the, the girlfriend is like, you're crazy. That's ridiculous. We need to actually, we need to protect what we have. Please, Jesus, don't, you know, don't invest our kids, future college funds into this crazy wacko thing that you found on the Internet called Internet points. So yes, fold is a great way to anything that's like low barrier and like low, like basic passive. Anything that is passive. Because you can basically say this is in addition, you know, it's one thing to take. We have worked our butts off and we've saved up $40,000 for our kids college. I'm going to yolo this into bitcoin. That is not, that's not going to go over well. You're going to have an argument and you're also, you're also. You necessarily need an enormous amount of conviction. If there's wild crazy swings and that suddenly becomes $30,000. Because people are going to. If you don't have conviction, if you don't understand, if you're not, if you're still in the water thinking that the, the land is going up and down, you're going to jump out of the ship. You're going to, you're going to get the hell out of there because you're like this is crazy, this is bonkers and this is crucial, this is our savings. But if you, it's a whole different story. If you have like a little passive thing that you're like, let's just put another $5 here. Let's just. Because you're, it's subtle. It's always a low, like, like a low friction thing. You know, decisions about $5 necessarily only need $5 worth of attention and, and you keep doing that and then suddenly you know, your forty thousand dollar college fund only buys thirty thousand dollars worth of college because your college went up by 20%. And that little bit of a stack that you were doing is now worth $15,000 after four years. And you're like, why didn't we the shift to just be like it should all be in there. Like why isn't it all there? But I think it makes sense to like small increment. Like if you're having a problem with a spousal thing and if you're, even if they're still like no, don't you dare put any bit of it. Like there is no reason not to just put a dollar in every once in a while. And even if for some reason this is a fight between you, you should feel responsibility to still protect that person and your family by just putting a couple of dollars in. And then you can, you can, you can surprise them later with how well that has gone. And if it doesn't go well, you only ever lost A dollar every once in a while, you know, like it's a non existent loss with a huge potential benefit down the line. And you are protecting your savings from something that is literally and explicitly to the tune of trillions of units robbing from. You do something to protect yourself from that and it's not that hard. And you can do it at 50 cent dollar amounts very very easily over long periods of time. And I promise you you will thank your, your future self will be like thank you guy from five years ago for making this decision for me. And it, and it gets around all the, the blow ups of you're spending our mortgage on a crazy psycho Internet points.
- [45:43]
Will Reeves
Yeah, I think you as an important part of this conversation because we started this with why it makes sense to adopt Bitcoin as your savings. But there are really two things that can happen that make that actually maybe not the best idea for some people. And that's the two things that we see at Vold are number one, when the education and the, the let's say confidence and, and assure assuredness of that decision do not match the allocation that you have put in there. And that what that leads to is it becomes an extraordinarily emotional thing that's tied up in in very short term volatile swings of Bitcoin. It's a great way to not only end up with less Bitcoin but less dollars as well is being in that trap. And so they're the function of allocating into Bitcoin. Moving to a Bitcoin standard always has to move in relation to the education that you've built to the understanding of the time horizon that you're working on. And if those are wildly out of step, you're going to get, you're going to get into some very dicey situations. The second one which is a little less common but is leverage is when whenever you are introducing leverage where people are taking on debt or unsustainable debt that they can't service to accom to to accumulate more Bitcoin that we've all, we all probably know a lot of friends who got caught up in on the wrong side of that equation. But beyond those two things you know really there it is ultimately the, it is the path of less anxiety you do not have. The manipulation you do not have. It's weird the those that have chosen Bitcoin at least our customers who have chosen fold over this last four years when the world is talking about massive inflation, goods getting more expensive, purchasing power going down c savings going down, debt going up Our customers don't have any of those problems. Our customers have been getting wealthier. The cost of goods have been coming down. The financial and confidence that they feel and thoughts of stability in their future have only gone up. It's. They are living in a fundamentally different reality than their peers that haven't made that decision yet. So as long as you're going in with allocating at the level of, kind of where, where you're at, what makes sense to you, it's important to listen to your gut in this, in this, in this transition. You're. You're gonna be fine. But there are definitely some things to watch out for to make sure you. You navigate it well.
- [48:30]
Guy Swan
Yeah. You know, just on that note, to talk about, like, what it's like on a bitcoin standard versus the fiat standard is, you know, I, I see all of my. I don't even know how, like, some of the close friends that I know haven't really allocated to bitcoin. Like, I feel so bad because, I don't know, like, how are you getting through things? I don't. I don't get how you're actually making it through this stuff because. And Pear Drive, which is a development project that I've just been paying entirely out of savings. I allocated a year's worth. I was like, okay, so I'm going to be set, like, this is how much bitcoin I will need for the year in order to keep this going for another year. And then I will reassess, see where we are, and decide about the next year, because I know I'm in a long. I'm in a project that's going to take me a long freaking time. And so I allocated into a wallet that's dedicated to this, a year's worth of funds. And it's been about a year, and I've still got a year and a half worth of funds in there. Like, I've. Because as I paid out, the value has increased so much that if I'm measuring it in fiat and what I'm paying out to the contractor, like, I've. Or to my developer, I literally have. I have more Runway than I started with, and I've used up the time of the Runway that I allocated for. And so, like, you know, what's the price of what. It doesn't matter. I bought my. I have a year and a half just because I allocated to bitcoin before doing this. And that is. That is a bitcoin standard. The price of everything falls consistently over time on a long Enough timeline. My eggs are cheaper, my houses are cheaper, my. My developers are cheaper. Everything gets cheaper. Which is exactly what should happen. That's what people don't understand. We're so conditioned to think that everything is supposed to get harder and that we have to, we have to run twice as hard just to get the same stuff. The point of society is that things get easier. The point of society is that things get more affordable because they are easier. We should, we should be seeing the exact opposite. With the increase in, the increase in technological efficiency and all of the crazy stuff that we can do. Our grandfathers should be saying, man, I used to pay $5 for a big Mac and we should be saying, ha, it only cost me a nickel. That's actually what should happen. And if our money was not printed to an insane degree, that is what would happen. And. But we have, we're literally in a system that leverages all of our future resources in order. Instead of saving for our future resources, we are in a system of perpetual leverage. And that means that our future has to pay for that leverage. We're literally saying, to get more today, we're going to pay more tomorrow. And then things get harder and things get more expensive. And I'm working two jobs now instead of one job and we have two income earners instead of one income earner. And we're still struggling and our house is smaller and crappier and things are breaking and we're having to go into debt just to fix it. And it's like, well, what the hell happened? It's like, well, we leveraged it. Like, of course, of course. That's what happened 20 years ago. We said, well, we'll just leverage, we'll just go into debt to have more stuff today. This is the. More stuff that costs. Like, it's the value of the house, it's the fact that stuff is breaking and you can't afford it and that you have to have two income earners just to have the same standard of living. That is where it went. This is, this is the future that paid for that and now we're doing it again. So in 10 years, it's just going to get worse.
- [52:17]
Walker
So anyway, and so unless you're stacking bitcoin, and then unless you're stacking bitcoin starts to look a lot better for you and your family, then it gets cheap. Yeah, no, that's. Well, I mean, well said as always, Guy. And you know, we're running up on time here, but maybe. Will, I just want to give you a Chance, if there's anything else you want to. Want to leave folks with, we covered a good amount in a short period of time and I think a lot of actionable stuff. Was there anything else we didn't cover that you wanted to get into or any closing thoughts to leave with?
- [52:49]
Will Reeves
No, I think this is, I think it's such a great series. I think a lot of, a lot of content at least were for when from Fold's perspective. Some of the most valuable discussions are really at this type of level of what are the problems that real people are facing. Let's, let's point out what is actually at the root of them. Then we can get to Bitcoin. And I think this conversation did a good job about threading that needle because ultimately that's how we're going to get the next wave. I truly believe that it's products like Fold Walking and Lock Step, like Bitcoin education, like Bitcoin podcasts, Bitcoin Audible that need to move together to again help this transition, for others to both see it and see the opportunity. And I know what we're looking forward in the next couple months at Fold will be have some very significant new announcements that talk about how we're bringing bitcoin much closer to, I believe, the people that need it most and some really interesting new tools that are going to help accelerate those who are already down the rabbit hole and those who are just, just starting. So I'd say, you know, let me know what you all want to see. I know Guy frequently is in my DMs with his wish list, many of which we've done, a few that I owe him. But Guy, I am going to submit a new feature request for that, one that allows you to instead of opt to buy something, allows you to actually just buy bitcoin instead of that. So you pay yourself for that. Your low time preference.
- [54:31]
Guy Swan
Oh, I love that. All right.
- [54:33]
Will Reeves
So anyone else that has this like I'm an open book on Twitter, you just, you know, let me know. And you know, Fold has always benefited and tried to stay as close to, you know, people as possible because it's really out of their real problems come the solutions that I think will represent the kind of future of what the financial system should be. It should be aligned in your favor there to help you get ahead. The tools you use to interface with your money should be on your team. They should be on your side with mutually aligned incentives. And Fold holds all of our treasure, our own treasury and savings in Bitcoin. I am living entirely on bitcoin. And so it's something that a fiat world that has all these strange things where the tools themselves are extracting from, from your future is a model that needs to go away and I think fold and there's many other companies like it in the space. That said, from the ground up, the team is living on bitcoin, the company is living on bitcoin and we're here to help our customers live on bitcoin. We just want to be transparent and authentic about that and I think that's what leads us to, to the future we want to see.
- [55:46]
Walker
I can't imagine a better note to, to end on than that. Will Guy. Thank you guys so much for your time. I think this is going to be really helpful for folks and you know, if there's one thing I want people to come away with, it's that like getting started with bitcoin doesn't have to be scary. It doesn't have to be this big ordeal. Like you can start just a little bit at a time sat by sat step by step and you'll very quickly, as we've heard, want to accumulate a lot more. But like you got to start somewhere. And you know, the first SAT is the hardest, I guess I would say but thank you.
- [56:16]
Guy Swan
The easiest. I actually tell you the easiest and most interesting way to get started in bitcoin or to earn a couple of sats is get up on Noster like Primal or Adamus or Amethyst or anything like that and then set up like a basic wallet. I guess Primal has one in, in their, their thing. So you can just use Primal if you want and then just say hey, I'm on Nostra. I'm checking this weird bitcoin friendly social network thing out and you will just get zap sets and you know what, ping me, ping me and I will re note it, I will retweet it or whatever on Noster because my sister in law who is not a technical person at all just was like okay, yeah, I'll check this weird thing out that you people in nostrils. And and so she got up there and I retweeted her thing or whatever and she was like these people are crazy. They just gave me money like this is, this is real bitcoin. I got like $40 just for, just for being on this thing. And now she just thinks it's the craziest little thing that she just lurks on and will post on every once in a while. But that was a. She thought that experience was so Neat. And we've talked about it multiple times. That's a really easy way to get in it. And then you start thinking about SATs, and then you get a full card and you're down the rabbit hole in no time. And you, you'd be shocked at not only how easy it is to just like slowly stack over time, but how much fun it is to just think that you're getting something that's going to be worth more and you're not. Fighting this uphill battle of life is always more expensive. It's like, well, no, you know, be a part of a network that you're going to. Your part of it is still going to be its part. You're always going to be this part of the network. You know, if you have a thousand SATs, you're always a thousand out of 21 million. You know, of bitcoin. And if that economy grows, if more people love this, if more people are saving for the future, that's always going to be your piece of it. And so that economy gets bigger and everybody who contributes, everybody gets wealthier together, which is the whole point of all of this. We're supposed to be helping each other, not fighting each other. That's what society is. Why is our money at odds with that? Fix that. And it's easy to start small.
- [58:34]
Walker
So fix the money, fix the world, baby. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate both of your time and looking forward to doing this again soon, I hope, hopefully in person. That'd be nice. But thank you guys. Appreciate it and we'll talk soon.
- [58:50]
Guy Swan
Yeah, man. Appreciate it, man. Later, guys.
- [58:52]
Will Reeves
See you guys.
- [58:59]
Walker
Thank you for watching Saving in Bitcoin, your financial freedom blueprint on the Bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin is a return to savings, real savings built on sound money. Make fold your personal finance hub and take control of your financial freedom. Buy, earn and save in bitcoin all in one place.