← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Grant Cardone’s $22 Billion Mistake & How He’s Fixing It With Bitcoin
00:52:52
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- [00:00]
A
You know, money's no good anymore, right? So it's like money wants to find, you know, Fiat wants to find some place. So I was introduced to Bitcoin in 2012. I remember seeing BTC and Bitcoin. I didn't even know they were related. Since I was 30 years old, I've been converting Fiat to real estate that was, I believe, better than the paper, right? This most recent one is the largest real estate bitcoin deal ever done on planet earth. It's a $235 million trophy, best in class. 366 units in Boca Raton, and we added $100 million of Bitcoin to it. Thing is, you got to find a vehicle to invest in, not 10 vehicles. Young people should not be diversifying. They should be going all in on one thing. All I did was convert something that wasn't mine, Fiat, into something else that was better, which is all I've been doing with Fiat anyway, my whole Life. I own 14,000 apartments that we've over the last 25 years. And I started slowly tinkering with the idea of using some of the cash flow from the real estate to buy bitcoin on a monthly basis. Let's do.
- [01:25]
B
This is Scott Melker, host of the Wolf of Wall Streets podcast, here with Grant Cardone to talk markets. Grant, let's just start with the broad strokes. How are you viewing everything that's happening right now? We've got basically an everything bull market. Seems like everything's at all time highs, no headline matters. It doesn't matter if we're doing tariffs or austerity or Doge, everything's up, dude.
- [01:46]
A
It's just money's not, you know, money's no good anymore, right? So it's like money wants to find, you know, Fiat wants to find some place to go live. And I, I don't understand the stock market. I mean, I, you know, I'm just, I can't make sense of it. I've been, I've been watching this game now for, since I was 20 years old. And I don't understand stocks and the valuation and it's gotten worse over the last 10 years. Like there's so many zombie companies sitting there. It's just financial engineering on steroids, bro. It's like a piece of paper took a piece of Fiat, turned it into another piece of paper, had some bank put their name behind it rather than God in the military. And somehow it goes up more than a piece of paper that's got God on it. Like, I don't get it. So we invest in hard assets, real estate and bitcoin. We put them together, we merge them, and I wait for the printing press to roll again, because I know it will.
- [02:47]
B
So you've been in real estate forever. Obviously you've made a fortune doing so. The bitcoin part's a little bit newer, so maybe we'll talk about a. How you got, as we like to call it in the industry, orange pilled and. And then how you moved so incredibly quickly. I don't even know, actually. I never. I introduced your brother Gary to Saylor, I think, at the bitcoin conference a year, year and a half ago or so. And then I know you guys went and had a meeting, and that was part of the process.
- [03:15]
A
Yeah. So I was introduced to Bitcoin in 20. 2012, maybe 2013. Somewhere around there, I was asked to go to a speaking gig in Las Vegas. And the guy said, look, I can't pay Grant's fee except in bitcoin. And my. The president of the company said, no, no, we don't want bitcoin. We want money. And I heard him, and I'm like, bro, like, I'm in Vegas anyway. One, I'm already there. Two, I like. I like helping people. Like, I'm. The guy's offering me a chance to go, you know, use my gifts, whatever gifts I have, and, And. And maybe inspire a group of people to do better. And the fact that we don't understand the bitcoin shouldn't be. And I didn't. Look, I knew nothing about bitcoin. Probably didn't know how to spell it at the time. And I remember seeing BTC and bitcoin. I didn't even know they were related, so. But I also knew. Show up, say yes. I. I thought I'd flip it. I said, I'll just flip it and get my cash. And I didn't. I never. I never sold it.
- [04:28]
B
Wow.
- [04:29]
A
Just forgot about it. And, you know, it was. I think, to date, it's the best speaking gig I've ever done.
- [04:37]
B
I was a DJ for 20 years before I got into all this. And in 2011 or 12, I can't remember, someone offered to pay me 5,000 bucks in Bitco. I said the exact same thing. No, I want money. So let's just say that that's the biggest miss of an engagement that I ever had in my life, because I didn't take it.
- [04:53]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this was. This was 115 pieces. So you did fine. Yeah. And I still. I still Own that bitcoin today. And then what I did was I started when I saw it do it, start watching this, you know, doing its thing. See, see, my onboarding was owning ownership. It wasn't an education, which is, I've always believed you earn and then you learn, you know, once you earn something, once you earn it, you. You had a score with it. Once you win, then you're. Then you become more curious about how to win again. And that's what happened for me in bitcoin. I didn't read the bitcoin standard. I didn't spend 100 hours on it. I basically had an experience that was positive. Nobody tried to talk me into it. And as I paid attention to its price volatility, I started becoming more and more interested in it. I've owned, you know, four. I own 14, 000 apartments that we've put together over the last 25 years. And I started slowly tinkering with the idea of using some of the cash flow, Scott, from the real estate to buy bitcoin on a monthly basis. And then I started playing with, you know, the calculations of what if I had to converted all that money. I, I've done extremely well in real estate. Lots of cash flow over long periods of time slowly just starts going up, you know, because of inflation. And I looked at, you know, what if I did a little bit, what if I did it all and I started putting it in some of these calculators to show you, hey, if I'd have done, you know, like, I think over the last 12 years, I distributed myself about a million six times 12, whatever that is, a month.
- [06:47]
B
Yeah. We've now do the back calculation for bitcoin, obviously.
- [06:50]
A
Yeah. And I'm like, okay, I'm worth, like, I think, I think it was 4 billion or 6 billion dollars or something without. And, and I wouldn't have done anything.
- [06:57]
B
Doing zero work, you know, no work.
- [07:01]
A
All I did was, all I would have done was convert something that wasn't mine, Fiat, into something else that was better, which is all I've been doing with Fiat anyway, my whole life. Since I was 30 years old, I've been converting Fiat to real estate that was, I believe, better than the paper. Right.
- [07:18]
B
Yeah.
- [07:19]
A
And, and, and that's really what. I was never against bitcoin. I was like, I don't understand a lot of these cryptos. I think I always said, I think the one that wins is bitcoin. I don't really understand them enough. And until I do understand it, I'm not going to promote it to anybody. And now this year, we met with Gary, myself and Michael Sailor met. And I'm like, trying to figure out how to put the real estate, the bitcoin together. And everybody's telling me, oh, put your real estate on the blockchain, and it complicated. I've heard that for three or four years. I wish I'd have never heard that, dude, because I would have done what I'm doing right now four years ago. And this year we put together, we're on our fifth fund where we buy real estate. We have bitcoin. We merge the two together in an organized llc and then we just wait for both of them to do their little thing.
- [08:12]
B
But what I find so unique and intelligent about what you're doing, it's very true to the ethos of bitcoin, which is there's really no financial engineering. You're just converting income that you're making on the properties into. Into bitcoin, which is a hedge against the losses of that very income over time. Right. So you're not doing anything crazy. We have bitcoin treasury companies obviously taking on massive debt, convertible notes, financially engineering their stocks, all the kind of, I'll say, wizardry that you discussed at the beginning. You don't have to do any of that. You just take the money you make and put it into something better.
- [08:46]
A
Yeah, we started out like that, right. I started out taking real estate that was cash flow positive and basically just taking the passive income from the real estate, converting it to a little piece of bitcoin, then a little more and a little more. And then in January, we looked at, we took a. A new asset that we bought. It was 80. They wanted 88 million. I. I got the deal for 72 million. We bought it 30% below replacement costs. And what we did was we just took the difference that I saved between the 72 and the 88 and filled it back up with bitcoin. It's still cash flowed. It's a. I think it was a four or four and a half percent cash flow with the full load together. Now, I would have gotten a little more cash flow if I'd have left the bitcoin out. But big deal. What was the difference between. I mean, I'd rather 4% cash flow with the Bitcoin than a five and a half without it. So we were very conservative. I showed this to Saylor and he says, that's a pussy fund. That's not a fund.
- [09:53]
B
He literally called you a pussy. Right, Gary, that's your brother's. Favorite story is that when he was sitting there and watched Michael Saylor call you a pussy.
- [09:59]
A
And I said, bro, I, you know, I am a pussy. And I got to tell you, I spent half my life chasing it. So I don't even know if that's a bad thing. But we did the first one at 85:15. Our second and third ones were 75:25. Our fourth one was 5050. And our sixth one, I'm sorry, our fifth one is 1/3 debt, 1/3 real estate equity, and one third bitcoin. So this last one, now this is in a period of five months. This most recent one is the largest real estate bitcoin deal ever done on planet Earth. It's $235 million trophy, best in class. 366 units in Boca Raton, $235 million asset, and we added $100 million of Bitcoin to it.
- [10:51]
B
Is that as part of the bid? Like, that you're buying it with bitcoin, or it's a bitcoin going straight into the fund, or both.
- [10:58]
A
We bought the real estate, okay? We put, we bought the real estate, closed it out of bankruptcy, grabbed it out. You need to be under replacement costs or there needs to be some exit story to support the bitcoin, okay? So it's got to be some excess story where you're like, I'm going to get back to replacement costs and I fill it up and I'm still cash flow positive. So we bought this trophy from Blackstone Bankruptcy. Blackstone wanted to buy it, but because they were the debt on the deal, they couldn't. So they, they had to give the marketplace first, right? So we went and grabbed it using a fairly complicated process called a stalking horse in the bankruptcy course courts. And I put 20 million bucks up. I said, I'll buy this property. My price is 235. Anybody that comes in over me has to close in 10 days because I will. So I set the terms and kind of squeeze the marketplace out of the asset, knowing that I was going to add $100 million of Bitcoin. So the property, cash flowed. When we bought it, it cash flowed. I think it was four and three quarters without the bitcoin. And then we added the bitcoin to the organization. So we put it all, we merged it in and took into an LLC as one entity. They're not separate, they're merged. And that. That asset still cash flows at two and a half percent. But I have trophy real estate that I can Exit with a condo development, pick up 100 million. And I got a hundred million dollars of bitcoin sitting on the balance sheet.
- [12:36]
B
Which doesn't average 65 annual return. So if that goes a about a 2% cash flow loss, if it's a long term investment and bitcoin goes up literally at all that, that 2% is a rounding error on a day of price action on bitcoin.
- [12:49]
A
Yeah. And Scott, I figured out how to get an $80 million depreciation the day I buy the asset because we accelerate the depreciation on the 235, we'll pick up about $80 million worth of depreciation, by the way, that still owns this bitcoin. So I figured out how to buy the bitcoin, get the cash flow and get a big tax write off that purchase. All I got to do now is take this public and then I'll get another multiple on the, on the navigation.
- [13:21]
B
Take that specific deal public or a number of these deals.
- [13:24]
A
A series of deals. Yeah, series of deals.
- [13:27]
B
Man, that is brilliant. So for people who are in these funds, what's the general length to maturity? Obviously there's an exit if you take them public. But when you're raising for the funds, what does it look like? Are people expecting a return in 4 years, 5 years, 10 years? I wonder how long with the bitcoin handicapped because we know there'll be bear markets in between and things can happen.
- [13:50]
A
Yeah, well, I'll leave the public thing to, to the next piece because I can, if I pull off the public piece, then you're liquid five days a week.
- [13:58]
B
Right.
- [13:58]
A
But in, in the interim, we don't, we never over leverage anything. I've been buying real estate for 30 years. I've never lost a piece of real estate and I've never lost money on abuse of real estate because the only way to lose them is to pick them bad and to over leverage them. And we, we pick, we're very selective. We have 14,000 units. We're only levered to about 40% across $5 billion of real estate. And it's class A shit. So it's great real estate. In this case, we bought this piece of property for 235. We already have a standing agreement at 300 million with a group that wants to take it and condo it. So I'm sitting on $75 million. I can exit, you know, in the next eight, 18 months. One exit, two exit is I don't bring somebody else to condo it. I condo it myself.
- [14:53]
B
Right.
- [14:54]
A
And sell the sell the 366 units for a million dollars each. Then we pick up 135 million for our investors, flip off the real estate, sell it, pay our capital gains and we own our bitcoin for free. Third option, Third option is cancel both of those other two plans, improve the the property, increase the noi, put, put debt on the asset, return the capital. Remember we got a hundred million dollars of Bitcoin or 235 million dollar asset. Either one of those can move. Okay, like The Bitcoin moves 10%. Dude, I'm picking up like 30% on the value. Just, just wait for the next 12, 15, 18, 24 months. And I have an asset worth 4, 450 million dollars with no debt. I can go take a, let's say I'll have a, I go take a 40, 45 loan out against both assets merged with cash flow, return all the capital to the investors and we still own both assets without selling them.
- [15:59]
B
And I would assume that'll be at a much lower interest rate than we're currently seeing right now.
- [16:03]
A
Yeah, I would wait till then. Yeah. Fourth exit. Fourth exit. Put this together with, I only have 45 assets that I control. Put this together with any of the other ones that we have, Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Pull them together, bring them into an up seat, not a reit and bring them to the marketplace to go public with them. And then people have liquidity five days a week.
- [16:27]
B
Why do you think you haven't seen many people copy your model yet? I've heard rumblings by the way of quite a few REITs and similar sort of.
- [16:38]
A
Yeah, the REITs. There's 190 REITs. There's $4 trillion worth of money sitting in public and private REITs. The REITs can never do this. Their organizational limitations, their rules. There are bylaws. They cannot keep bitcoin or cash on their balance sheet, number one. Number two, I guess you could go de a company have an old shell and which I know a couple guys are trying to do right now and they're gonna, they're gonna basically turn into a treasury. They're going to dispose of all the real estate. They're just going to be a bitcoin treasury. Yeah, we're not ever going to be a bitcoin treasury only. We're going to be a real estate utility driven quality 10x living, providing people with great housing and great locations and great cities. Bitcoin cannot solve every problem in the planet. I was, I was on a, I was on a space yesterday. And they're like, it's going to demonetize everything I said, bro. Like, are you telling me gold, silver, stocks, real estate, like you're telling me every bitcoin is going to become the replacement for every asset class in the world?
- [17:51]
B
Like they believe it's going to be a 400 or 500 trillion dollar asset at that point? I don't think that's happening.
- [17:59]
A
It's just, you know, it's not going away. Like, like the rest of this stuff. I have to have a place to live and, and people still want entertainment and they still want to go to ball games and they still want to drink sodas and you know, I still need a place to live and a car to drive. Maybe, maybe not. But all I'm saying to you is like, if we could merge these two together. Now, most of the people that are investing with me right now, which is very interesting, they're not bitcoiners at all, I'm sure. No. And they've never owned bitcoin. And I'm not, I'm not having to orange peel them or educate them or have them read the bitcoin standard. I've probably onboarded more bitcoiners in the first five months that I've been doing this than most people will in their lifetime that are talking about bitcoin every day. So. So who does this? What, what is the moats for protection? Because I've met with six banks and they had the same concern. Like anybody can do this really. 190 REITs can't do it ever. Never. It'll never be allowed in the REIT industry to control $4 trillion of real estate just in this country. If a hedge fund wanted to do it, I guess they could put a bunch of money together. But I don't care how much money you have, you can't go buy trophy real estate tomorrow. You have to have relationships. You have to build the funnel, you have to have a pipeline you got to be in. You know, if I wanted to go to New York City to buy real estate tomor that, that would take months for me to build those relationships.
- [19:31]
B
Yeah.
- [19:31]
A
Trust, you know. So I think we are just basically.
- [19:35]
B
In a unique position to pull it off that nobody else can really.
- [19:39]
A
Unless. Unless you're going to take a shell, dump the real estate and become a treasury only company. But if you're going to be a real estate and bitcoin company, which I would like to do, like, see, see, to me the goal is to take the pie chart let's say the real estate is the, is in this pie chart and 75% of its real estate and 50 or 25% is Bitcoin. Over the period of four years, when you actually do the math on this, the bitcoin, the orange part of that pie will start to take up 50%, 65%, 75%, 90%. Okay, 95% of the pie chart will be filled with bitcoin. And I'm going to have a sliver of real estate, but the sliver of real estate I'm going to have is going to be tens of billions of dollars of quality trophy real estate that comes with rental growth, great locations, very, very difficult to usurp or to replace or to get rid of. And real estate will be worth, you know, real estate's going to still be worth a lot of money on this planet is my belief.
- [20:48]
B
That said, it's an interesting time for the real estate market, obviously. I mean, we've seen sort of historically high pricing for your average individual to own. Residential real estate rates are obviously high. Not historically high, but high for the environment that most people would be used to. Do you feel like this is a rough time for people to be looking at residential housing, to be buying commercial real estate? Has it become a much more difficult class to invest in?
- [21:15]
A
Yeah, the, the, the single family. You know, I don't think you're going to find a deal in the single family. I wouldn't be buying single family right now. And if you do, if you're trying to sell single family, you know what I'm talking about.
- [21:28]
B
Yeah.
- [21:29]
A
If you're going to sell it, you need to sell it with. Exactly. If you're going to sell it, you need to sell it with owner financing to get a premium. And if you're going to buy it, you should be buying it with owner financing to get a deal. Now, we don't buy single family homes. I'm not. When I talk about real estate, I'm talking about multi family, high quality, great location real estate. You know, 2500 rents in, in major markets. The re that that asset class is getting destroyed right now. And nobody knows about it. I don't know. Nobody's even talking about it. Maybe I know about it because I'm in the space. But the best deals in America right now are in the asset class that I'm talking about. And then there's office and retail. Like, I'm looking at a monster piece of retail right here in Miami. I can't mention the name of it, but if you're in the game, you'd know what it is. And it's, it's, it's. I mean, it's a monster, bro. It's like, location is irreplaceable. It'll be, it would be Wall Street Journal, top page. You know, it's almost indestructible, if not completely indestructible for long periods of time. I mean, you, you do that. We're looking at a hotel next door to that deal I just did in Boca. There would be a five star Mandarin hotel. We would do the hotel and make it a bitcoin hotel, you know, like Hotel California. This be hotel bitcoin.
- [23:01]
B
Well, bitcoin is Hotel California for anybody who's gone down the rabbit hole. You never leave. Right. You're a perfect example. But I think I want to go back to, like, the point you made earlier, which is that you could have kind of passively used all this to put into bitcoin. Your gains would be many multiples, parabolic gains versus what you've made. The thing I find so shocking about bitcoin, and you've clearly seen it, is that it's almost too easy for people to accept it.
- [23:31]
A
Like, what do you mean too easy?
- [23:33]
B
You buy bitcoin and you do nothing else, and you could literally go about your life and you'll probably do better than most people, most things you put your full efforts into.
- [23:41]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think that's hard. I think that's hard for people to believe, you know, unless you've been orange peeled. Right. And I think there's a lot of different shades of being orange peeled. You know, you're probably, you're probably darker orange than I am. And, you know, Trump's probably lightly orange, but just an advocate because he knows he's got a lot of followers there. But his sons are probably much more orange because they're educated. Right. And the more, the more you look at the asset, the more it looks to me like the asset's indestructible.
- [24:18]
B
Yeah. Would you bring up the Trumps? They're a perfect example of this. Right? I mean, real estate magnate empire known for his real estate investments for multiple decades. Where's the bulk of the Trump family's wealth now? Crypto more than real estate?
- [24:35]
A
I mean, I don't know that. I don't know if that's true or not. They own a lot of real estate, man. They own a lot of real estate with very little debt. So I don't know if their bitcoin's caught up with it. But the bitcoin's value could very well catch up with it.
- [24:51]
B
Well, they have financial meme coin, a whole lot of ethereum, their own tokens. So I just meant in aggregate. Okay. You might actually be right. It's. It's widely. You know, people say that it's worth more. It may not be. Maybe I should say. They clearly. They clearly see where the puck is moving and they're skating to it.
- [25:08]
A
Yeah. And. And, you know, this is what Saylor told me in when I met him. You know, the other thing the Trump people have is a. A loyal following. And, I mean, even the people that hate him will invest in him, of course. So they're like, he did a meme coin. Fucking I'll, I'll. I'll buy one. You know. So Saylor told me. He's like, grant, you have such a loyal audience and it's so big, and you haven't let them down. They've been investing with you in real estate. We raised almost $1.7 billion direct from the retail market. Now, when I say retail, I'm talking about real people, not Fidelity or T Row Price. When you say retail to investment banker, they think you went through some, you know, Fidelity or Schwab. No, I'm talking about. I actually took a phone call from Bob that put money in a deal, and I explained it to him. So. So we have this loyal following. And so when we added the bitcoin piece, what. What was crazy, and we didn't know this would happen. The quality of our investor went up, the age went up. Okay? 80% of them owned no bitcoin, and 80% had never invested with me. They knew about me. They knew about my funds. One guy has known me for 15 years and never put. Very, very qualified. He never put any money in any of my real estate. Trust me, like, I'm a son and. Or brother. Maybe a brother's better. And still didn't ever give me any money. The moment I added the bitcoin, he's like, there's 15 million bucks. Like, it was like, Scott, Larry. It was not even an explanation. I said, well, Bob, how much bitcoin do you own? I don't own any. How much real estate you have? None.
- [26:55]
B
That's weird.
- [26:56]
A
Okay.
- [26:57]
B
Surprising, because you'd think it would be like some guy who was a hardcore bitcoiner and was like, yeah, I'm. Now that you're adding bitcoin, I want a piece. But maybe it was that they finally found someone they trusted who was throwing it into an investment that they could wrap their head around.
- [27:09]
A
And yeah, he's just like, look, man, I got good real estate. If, if the, if the bitcoin goes up, I got good real estate and I got a score. And if the bitcoin goes down, you still got good real estate. So it's an easy way to onboard people. I think the bitcoin community needs to understand you. You know, rather than explaining bitcoin to people, just give them a vehicle they can get into.
- [27:32]
B
The best marketing for bitcoin is the price going up. I've said it forever. As much as we hate to admit it, you said it right. You, you got some, you kind of forgot about it. You looked back and realized that you'd made tens of millions of dollars, if not more on that, and all of a sudden became very, very interested in bitcoin. I mean, it makes a ton of sense. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who buy it at the top of the hype cycle and then go down 60, 70%, inevitably it comes back. But we know human behavior and mentality, they sell it off at the bottom.
- [28:02]
A
Right.
- [28:03]
B
How do you prevent that?
- [28:06]
A
Yeah, yeah, people are people. Right. There's a lot of degenerates, you know, in the world. And like, if, if people could just, you know, the real estate's the. You see, the thing about real estate is you can't, you can't sell it easily. And I personally like that. Right. And, and the, I also like it about bitcoin because if I can't find my keys, I can't sell my real estate today. So it takes the emotion out of the process, which I highly recommend, you know.
- [28:43]
B
Yeah, hide it away from yourself.
- [28:46]
A
Exactly. And if I'm, if I'm, I'm trying to pull a number up here for, for you. If, you know, if the real estate is my long term play to protect me, then I'm not in a rush to sell my bitcoin because if it goes down in half, I still have my assets, so I don't have to worry about selling anything. And that's what I think you, what you were saying, the people that do the least here end up with the most.
- [29:12]
B
Yeah. You know, I think Mark Yusko used to joke that the best performing non bitcoin, but generally the best accounts were dead people. Right. At Vanguard or whatever it was. Dead accounts at Vanguard or something like that really shows you that doing nothing generally and letting your money work is the best strategy. Now take that out of fiat and put it into bitcoin and you've multiplied that strategy by many times, right?
- [29:37]
A
Yeah, exactly. I want to see if I can share this with you. I don't know if I can. Presentation or screen. Let me see.
- [29:43]
B
You should be able to.
- [29:46]
A
This is what, this is what I've paid myself since 2013 in real estate. I paid myself because, you know, the IRS knows this, but it's $143 million that would be worth 22 billion today had I just converted it to bitcoin. This is the chart that, that changed me.
- [30:08]
B
It's absolutely absurd. I mean, you can see why Michael Sailor says, never sell your bitcoin.
- [30:13]
A
Yeah.
- [30:14]
B
Let's say that you're.
- [30:15]
A
Hey, I got to tell you, dude, I would rather be worth $22 billion.
- [30:18]
B
Me too. Me too. You know, casually. And listen, we've all. I've, I've found many, like, many creative ways to lose my bitcoin, you know, Voyager creditor and all the creative dumb things I could have ever done with it and didn't realize the risk that I was taking. And at the end of the day, I think what you said is just get it basically out of your hands, buy some and get it to a place where it's really difficult to access and sell it, and you'll probably be okay. I mean, that said, listen, you, as you said, like, you, you talk to millions of followers all the time, both directly and via social media and all these things, and they, they look to you for, you know, financial guidance and ways to make money. How do you now approach when someone comes to you and is like, hey, should I just be in bitcoin? Should I be in real estate? I'm 25. I just got my first, you know, like, extra money on top of my paycheck. What should I be doing with it?
- [31:09]
A
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I would tell that person to like, hey, re. Reinvest in yourself. Get better at something. You know, I mean, I don't know how much money we're talking about. Five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand? A hundred. But I would tell people, number one, most important thing you can invest in is yourself. Because if you don't invest in you, you'll, you'll start looking for six things to invest in. Like, you're never, you know, you're not finding six. Okay? You're not fine. When you're 25 years old, you're not finding six things to invest in. You're going to find one. And the one thing should be you first. And, you know, people could take this advice or leave it or throw it away or whatever. I'm just telling you, like, if. If you're not confident in your ability to know, boom, that's the right road to take. You know, you're going to want to. You're going to want to slow down and then you're going to want to go maybe left, maybe right, maybe back up. You're confused, dude. Like you. Most people have too many oars in the water. You know, I. I am where I am today because I just went. I learned one thing and repeated that one thing, like, over and over. I grinded it out, bro. Like, grind.
- [32:27]
B
Yeah. There's so many distractions now. I mean, listen, I'm almost.
- [32:31]
A
It's always distractions.
- [32:32]
B
Yeah, I agree. I'm not, I'm not making excuses. Listen, I'm almost 50, and I was just gonna say I think it was a little easier when I was in my 20s to choose a path or commit to something than it is now when they see thousands of people, people telling them, you can make a million by next year. Right. The thing is, it seems like there's a much more of a get rich quick mentality now than maybe there was in the past. Maybe that's my. Like, I'm a boomer screaming for the kids to get off my lawn. I don't know. But it feels like we weren't being fed that on a daily basis. When I was in my 20s, everybody just said, go get a job.
- [33:04]
A
Yeah, there was. There wasn't fast ways. I agree with that. There wasn't as many fast ways. It was mow the lawn, you know, hustle a weekend job, you know, it was much slower. Do you think that you'll invest in real estate?
- [33:19]
B
Yeah, go ahead.
- [33:22]
A
You know, I mean, we've got all this technology available to us now. There are more choices and there's more voices. You know, I'm telling people to like, like, I. I would just go back, back to your question. Invest in yourself. Number two. Find a business. You're the business. Everybody's the business. You're a business. Whether you call yourself a business or not, you're the business of being Grant Cardone or Scott Melker or Little Robbie. You. You're the. In the business of being Robbie. Like, like, then you got to add value to the marketplace. And people need to start seeing you as a dependable, you know, consistent, you know, positive, solution oriented person. And people don't see you like that. Money's never coming to you. Opportunity's not coming to you. People. If people aren't stopping you saying, hey, man, what are you on? What do you drink? Why do you act different? Why are you different than your generation? You're of no value to anyone. You're like everybody else. So that's the first two things, you and your business. And then the third thing is you got to find a vehicle to invest in, not 10 vehicles. Young people should not be diversifying. They should be going all in on one thing. And unfortunately, I would not say that one thing for a kid. The bitcoin community is going to hate me for this, but I don't believe the first thing should be bitcoin. For those kids. I think it should be something that provides cash flow. And they convert the cash flow to bitcoin because. Because if the bitcoin blows up, okay, they. They need something to rely on to take care of their bills. Okay, I can't eat bitcoin.
- [35:00]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, there's the whole. Never sell your bitcoin. It's really hard to live if you're never selling your bitcoin. It's the only thing you do.
- [35:08]
A
Exactly.
- [35:09]
B
I know there's creative ways now to earn yield and all these products and.
- [35:13]
A
But that always creative ways to lose it. As you talked about earlier too.
- [35:18]
B
Yeah. So what do you make? Listen, you said you have friends, you know, or people that you've talked to who are interested in liquidating all their real estate, effectively just becoming a bitcoin treasury company. What do you make of the bitcoin treasury company trend? Basically everybody trying to be sailor. It's a gold rush, man, that didn't end well.
- [35:36]
A
It's a gold rush, you know, and so at the end of the day, there needs to be something real there. And if there's not something real there, everybody will wake up one day and say, wait a minute, you know, why am I paying a multiple for the bitcoin? And there's no company behind it. So, you know, it'll be. There'll be a washout. It's greed. It's greed. And, and, and, and you know, people are going to figure out shortcuts, but ain't no shortcut to heaven, bro.
- [36:09]
B
Yeah. It to me like that goes back to the point we made before is that it's just so much easier than anybody accepts. Like, why try to beat it if you can just buy it and just ride it? And it's seems to have always been that way. I share the same concern. I think bitcoin treasury company number 79 that says my convertible debt offering is better. And we can offer you this much better yield at the premium. Those premiums are going to be arbed away right back to the price of bitcoin. And so anyone who's in between there is going to get wrecked.
- [36:39]
A
And it'll probably drag Bitcoin down 1:1 over some long, you know, who knows, maybe a summer or a winter. Summer and a winter or totally agree. You know, it could be a big drag out.
- [36:51]
B
I've been very unpopular for saying that, but my belief, Listen, I don't think nothing hurts bitcoin or kills bitcoin, but if we were going to get a 25% drawdown and all these guys liquidate because they bought the top and are just basically crappy hedge funds, they're going to have to liquidate at 25, which is going to send it to 35, which is going to cause some more selling, which sends it to 45% down. Right. Doesn't kill. It comes right back. But. And the shareholders of all those companies get completely washed.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah. And hey, and that's the way the world works, you know, and tide goes out, leaves a bunch of people, you know, looking kind of stupid. And the guys that can hold on, I'll be able to hold on because I'm not levered.
- [37:32]
B
Yep. I mean, any final thoughts?
- [37:35]
A
The moment you start talking about puts and calls and options, I'm like, I'm checked out.
- [37:40]
B
Yeah, man, I'm telling you, you don't.
- [37:42]
A
Need to do all that complicated for me. I just don't, I don't understand it. Like, that's the problem I've had with, you know, when I sit down and talk to my Michael Saylor, I'm like, michael, you need to understand I'm, I'm the least intelligent person at the table. Okay? Like, that's your problem. I'm like, it is, bro. It's my problem. Right. But I, I don't understand some of these financial. And, and, and so I'm like, I'm just trying to do something. When I met with him in January, he's like, you look, you need to learn this stuff. You know, you need to spend a hundred hours and you need to deep dive on AI and, and you, you, you got it. Like, I'm like, michael, like, I'm just a real estate guy, bro. I'm just a real estate guy trying to add a little bitcoin, bro. Homie.
- [38:28]
B
It's funny when people tell somebody with billions of dollars that they need to do something different. I don't know. Feels like the Rest of us need to do something different to catch up to you guys.
- [38:36]
A
But, but he's right. Like, he's like, you know, he's like, all that stuff you got needs plumbing and roofs and. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. But I mean, people still need a place to live, man. It's not. It's not going to go away that people need a place to live. People are going to still want to travel. So anybody can figure out how to take their real business and that cash flows and continue to add value. Me buying bitcoin does not add value to the world, despite all the rooms on spaces. Okay. I do not see how me buying bitcoin makes governments somehow more honest or, or water. Water cleaner or housing better. But it's cool.
- [39:29]
B
It's certainly making the number go up for you. So what. What's the. Before I let you go, what's the next plan? So obviously you talked about potentially taking these public. Do you have any new sort of offerings in mind that you might experiment with or any. Any fresh ideas?
- [39:43]
A
Yeah, I mean, we're, you know, right now we're just trying to scale this. This portfolio. We have 12 deals that we should be finished with by. Into September, maybe, maybe October, mid October, I'll have a dozen deals. Real estate acquisitions with bitcoin on the, on the platform. I. I'm. We're finishing the raise on our last large deal. We probably won't raise after these 12 are done. The next raise will probably be for the public company. And, you know, so we'd raised money at that point to go expand the portfolio and possibly make some acquisitions because the real estate's on sale right now. I mean, you know, the real estate. This is the best real estate market I've ever been in. And nobody's talking about it.
- [40:37]
B
Even better than 2010, 2000. I mean, you're in Miami because it was, man, the best thing I ever did that started me, honestly, in my adult life was. And it was residential. I just bought a condo in Miami in 2010 and sold it in 2015.
- [40:50]
A
Yeah, but imagine buying 300 at one time.
- [40:53]
B
Yeah, exactly. But is it that bad? Is it as bad as it was back then? When. Because back then, I just remember, you know, these condo buildings with the cranes outside, nothing moving for two years, you know?
- [41:03]
A
Yeah. In 2010, you'd steal one condo. In 2025, you can steal 300 units.
- [41:11]
B
Crazy.
- [41:12]
A
And there's not cranes outside. And you have cash flow day one. And day two, you have a depreciation that is massive that you can't get any other place. And three, you got rent growth for the next 10 years. Rents are going to double in this country.
- [41:26]
B
Is that because nobody can afford to buy?
- [41:29]
A
Yeah, there's no, there's nothing to buy. Yeah, forget, forget they can't afford it. They, the stuff they can afford is okay, it's an eight foot ceiling with old doors, old utilities, there's no intelligence in the house. Old electrical, like, you know, the only thing anybody wants are new homes. In fact, there's a third of the population, they don't even want a home. They want to live in these vertical buildings where they have amenities, swimming pools. Like living in an apartment today is not like it was in the 80s. You live in a resort, dude, it's a resort. This deal that I just did, I mean this, this is as good a real estate as you can buy, period. People can rent there for 4,500 bucks a month. It would cost you, the note would be 11 grand a month to own it. And you live there for 4, 500 bucks. Probably got $250,000 worth of freaking date date palms around you, a 3 million dollar swimming pool, million dollar gym and 50 million dollar views. So that kind of real estate's not going away ever.
- [42:44]
B
Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that that's on the rise. I just had no idea it was that bad. You've piqued my interest. Now I'm like, send me those 12 deals, man.
- [42:54]
A
Dude, if you, if you think 30 or 40% below replacement cost is a good deal. So on 100 million, if you think you're going to get back to replacement cost in the Future, you're making 30 or 40 million on every hundred. Okay, every 25 bucks. Think about it like this. Every $25 in, if you can, if you can get some scale, every $25 is 5,000 bucks in new value. So if I have 14,000 units every time, that's what I have. Now let me do the math here. Times 25:12 divided by every 25 bucks is worth $84 million to our investors. So the rents are going to, if the rents double, that's 84 million goes up 10 times $840 million of new value. While, while bitcoin was slowly starting to increase the value of the, of the portfolio because I added the realest the, the bitcoin to the, to the portfolio. I have the, the bitcoin is exploding it, let's say 20 CAGR. Okay. But I also have my real estate swinging and typically, what happens with rents? Rents go flat, flat, flat, maybe down, and then they spike. They'll spike for two years, flatten out again, maybe even dip a little bit. But you can't build this stuff anymore, you know, it's hard to build, hard to find labor, hard to find a, a desirable location. Glass and steel cost more money if they hit a printing press again. And they will. Yeah, they'll always find a reason to print again. The cost of labor. Labor. You can't even find it, bro. If you could buy it, you can't find it.
- [44:52]
B
What a crazy market. Seems that you have your finger on the pulse of it and people should just skip thinking about all this and invest with you.
- [44:58]
A
Cardonecapital.com man.
- [45:00]
B
Let's go, baby. Yeah, this is paid for by now. I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, it's true, right? You found the formula that, that mixes the two hard assets that people are going to want when they, when they turn the printer back on.
- [45:12]
A
Yeah.
- [45:14]
B
Beautiful.
- [45:15]
A
And you can. We offer our tenants. We offer our tenants. I'm like, hey, look, you're living in a bitcoin property. You can, you can invest in the property or you can pay for the property or you can do both. So our average tenant in that property right now pays 4,500 bucks. They make 500 grand a year and they love the idea that they're living in a bitcoin residents and that they can invest in it. Look, their investments in it could pay for their rent.
- [45:44]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [45:45]
A
Yeah.
- [45:47]
B
What about like, you know, some bitcoin powered mortgages? You see any other interesting products coming? I don't know how much time you have. I just keep talking because that's my name.
- [45:54]
A
Look, I talked to, I talked to the guys at Fanny and Freddie Mac and I said, guys, you should convert the, the, what's it called? Pmi. That pmi, that piece of garbage piece product that ensures the. The basically it's insurance on the mortgage. If you put less than 20% down, I think the average down payment right now is 18% and you still have to buy the PMI because you're 2 points away. That PMI should be bitcoin. Okay, so let's say on a $440,000 loan, somebody will figure this out too. It's not going to be me because I got my hands full.
- [46:34]
B
But you're friends with Pulte, right?
- [46:36]
A
Yeah. So if a guy bought 6, $600 worth of, of if you just added 6, 600 every year to your mortgage divided by 12. What's it, 4, 400 bucks a month? I mean, no, it's not even that no more. Yeah, yes. 500amonth. They're paying for it anyway. Just convert the 500 for the PMI to buying Bitcoin. Which one's going to be worth more money in four years, right?
- [47:04]
B
Or 40 since we're talking about the government.
- [47:06]
A
Yeah, exactly. So now what happened? Because you got a 30 year mortgage. You're absolutely right. Now you don't have four years. It's 30 years. 30 years from now, the PMI, 500 bucks a month would be better insurance. You're talking about a whole new business being. You're talking about being as big as MetLife in no time. And like if I was a kid right now I'd be trying to figure that out. Don't, don't try to figure out this Treasury. Try to figure out how, how to, how to act to get the funding for this new product.
- [47:44]
B
Well, they've said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to start at least counting bitcoin and crypto as a part of your portfolio and count them as assets when you're applying for a mortgage. It's a small thing, but it's a meaningful step in the right direction.
- [47:57]
A
Yeah, it's not a vehicle though. It's not a driver. Right. It's a, it's, it's. Everybody gets excited about it. I'm like, what does that do for you?
- [48:03]
B
Like there's like a hundred guys out there now who can maybe get a mortgage who couldn't before.
- [48:07]
A
Yeah, exactly. And by the way, hey, they don't even count your rent to your, to your ability to pay a mortgage yet. So I think that's down the road a little bit. That's how dated those guys are. But somebody outside of Fannie and Freddie could figure it out and that's who should do it. By the way, you guys, somebody should figure this PMI thing because it's massive. This is a hundred billion dollar idea right here.
- [48:33]
B
Run with it, man. You got people call one of your people, sign a guy, you've got, you know, just. You got a guy. Yeah, that guy's for everything, man. Come on.
- [48:42]
A
Yeah, or how about, how about a real estate mortgage product, right? Like there's a mortgage against the real estate and the bitcoin. And see, real estate's never liquid.
- [48:58]
B
Yeah. Bitcoin gives you that liquidity and the growth collectively.
- [49:02]
A
And the reason the banks will allow your home to be collateral on the, against the debt. Is because they know how to grab it out of the courts. That, that's the only reason that's they know they got the whole process laid out to where the title, the deed, et cetera. They can go grab it, they could put it in foreclosure. They assume you don't want to lose your home. By the way. That's not true. Many people are willing to lose their home. They're like, take it, please. What people won't want to lose, what people won't want to lose is their keys, you know, and so you threaten a guy with hey, I'm going to take your, I'm going to take. Let's say you bought a home for mortgage was 416,000 and you added $14,000 of Bitcoin. So now the loans, 4, 4:30. It doesn't change the payments by hardly.
- [49:58]
B
Anything to 20 bucks a month or something, right?
- [50:01]
A
Yeah. 16,000. Yeah, yeah. It's nothing, right? Yeah, it's, it's nothing. 22 bucks.
- [50:07]
B
Yeah.
- [50:09]
A
And you preload the mortgage with $16,000 of Bitcoin, which would be whatever, I don't know, what's that, an eighth, a tenth?
- [50:17]
B
Yeah. There's some guys I need you to meet. They're called the name People's Reserve. I don't know if you know them. They're actually located in Florida. This guy C.J. and they're doing bit bonds and mortgage and bitcoin back loan product that you love it, you gotta beat them. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna get with you offline.
- [50:33]
A
I mean I got an audience. I got a, I got a big audience of people that wanna like, they're not bitcoiners. My audience is fiat people. Right.
- [50:41]
B
Of course.
- [50:41]
A
I have a large 16 million follower fiats that buy insurance, they buy houses, they, they want to learn real estate, they own businesses, but they're not coming to bitcoin runs. They're not going to listen to all this. That bitcoin is going to solve every problem in the universe and it's the next coming, blah, blah, blah. But somebody needs to talk to them about how they could like I know a couple of those guys that are doing the home equity, you know, give me, give me your, give me your, give me your house, I'll give you some bitcoin or.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, it's kind of a similar, yeah, structurally similar. I don't know which guys.
- [51:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, but you know, you still need distributions. You need somebody to tell the story. Because if you can't tell the story Nobody's signing up.
- [51:30]
B
Yeah. And it's funny because the key, as you keep saying, it's not the bitcoin people. They already get it. It's everybody else. Who? You just.
- [51:38]
A
Everybody else, bro. It's everybody else. It's not the bitcoin people. Most people don't even know anything's going on in bitcoin.
- [51:46]
B
They just. They just see it as a ticker on CNBC or whatever.
- [51:50]
A
Yeah. This is why Sailor says, by the time the banks allow you to invest in it, it'll be a million dollars, and by the time they recommend you to invest in, it'll be 10 million.
- [52:01]
B
Probably right?
- [52:03]
A
Because most of the world doesn't know about it, but you get in these bitcoin rooms, and these people, man, they know a lot about bitcoin.
- [52:10]
B
Yeah. My next call right now is with Rick Edelman. The ria. Talk to him about products to push bitcoin to. I mean, I don't know if you've seen. He's advocating 40% of portfolio in crypto now for aggressive, 10% conservative. And he's like the Michael Jordan of RIAs. This shit's coming. Wow. Yeah, man. This has been amazing. I know you got to go. I got to run, too. We got other meetings. I didn't expect us to bang out almost an entire hour, man, but it's been a pleasure. I'm glad we finally got.
- [52:40]
A
No, I appreciate you, Scott. Appreciate everything you're doing for the community. And thank you for thinking enough of me to have me on your show, man.