Navigating the Future of Cryptocurrency

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello. [00:00:00] Speaker B: Welcome to the Money Adjustment. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Kramer, D.C. i am a chiropractor who loves investing and trading. Are you interested in what's moving markets and your money? Great. Me too. Let's get started. So today I have a very special and returning guest, and he's a returning guest for a reason, because I really enjoy talking with him and I learn something new every time that I do. And I actually, in prep for this interview, went through the last interview that we did together just because I was going to follow up with you on some of the things that you're working on. But today in our pre recording, I touched base with you to see what you wanted to chat about. And you brought up all things that I am definitely interested in talking about that are relevant and current. And that includes bitcoin, the cryptocurrency market, new administration coming in and how that's going to affect policy and the industry itself. And recently you brought up. And it's very interesting, and I can't say I'm very well knowledgeable in this area at all, but I think it's. And you tell me what you think of when I say this. Like, this year, AI and GLP1s were the two big things, like the two big narratives that were particularly moving the stock market. And I suspect, and I feel that quantum computing is going to be what we're going to be hearing more and more of coming into next year. And I'm already starting to hear it more. The pundits on television are using that term a lot more. And you had brought up what Google just did. They announced their quantum computer. [00:01:46] Speaker A: Willow. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah, Willow, excellent. Do you want to just jump off that and give me your thoughts? [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I mean, right now. [00:01:56] Speaker C: We'Re in the middle of the, I think the word of 2024. The buzzword has to be AI. It was so relevant and I'm even seeing it now where I was really deep in it from a generative AI perspective and workflows and like, that's what I've been doing consulting in. And now corporations like you see Coca Cola, Skechers and like a handful of other brands just launched some AI advertisements. And they're super, super cringe, like really poorly done because whoever's running their design department is likely not an AI advocate. It's being forced on them. And so they're begrudgingly like, yeah, I'll do it. So there's like, there's this tension a lot of like, with anything you've got your early adopters. And then it starts to hit this, like, mass adoption where you're going to see a majority of people adopting it and then you've got your late adopters. And so right now we're starting to hit the, like, mass adoption where the early adopters. We've already been through it, we've already used it, we already know its functionality, we have our workflows, all that. And so, like, now you're going to see mainstream companies that start to use it and then they get a lot of backlash from the public. That is kind of like they're the late adopters. Like, this is stupid, this is trash. So there's like. It's such a funny thing to watch. You know, it's. Everything's cyclical. Any new technology, anything that comes out, there's a handful of us that dive in headfirst depending on our interests. And same with bitcoin. I was at a bitcoin meeting. This was end of last year. No, it was earlier this year. I was up on the shore and some of these guys were their bored ape yacht club holders. Like the crypto, the nft. Yeah. So, I mean, like, they were in when they were six figures and they like, they got them early, held them and then they've written it back down. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:48] Speaker C: But then. [00:03:48] Speaker A: But on the flip side, they've been. [00:03:50] Speaker C: In bitcoin for a really long time, you know, and they were talking about it when they were in college and. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Like, what is this thing? [00:03:56] Speaker C: Like, this is going to be something. And so, you know, they've been, They've been in the highs and lows, they've bought them, sold, they've got back in. They've. They've done like, they've done all these things. [00:04:05] Speaker A: So, like. Yeah, hopefully I'm not on too much of a tangent, but, like, when you think of the markets, you do want to pay attention to what people are. [00:04:15] Speaker C: Doing, like the grassroots people there. [00:04:19] Speaker A: Because generally there's. [00:04:21] Speaker C: There's these groups of people that get together, they talk about things and they. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Know things that are important to society. [00:04:28] Speaker C: Like at the kind of the grassroots. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Underground and ultimately like music, like companies, like startups. It was in a garage. It was. We saw him play at this coffee. [00:04:41] Speaker C: Shop when he was like, Jack Johnson. Nobody knew who Jack Johnson was. [00:04:45] Speaker A: And then all of a sudden they're mainstream and you can't talk to them. And you're lucky. You had. You got to witness and you kind of have that feeling of like something. [00:04:54] Speaker C: Special is going to happen here. [00:04:55] Speaker A: You want to pay attention to those, when you think of the stock market, it's all speculation. Now when you get into hedge funds, you've got analysts and you've got like, I mean people build massive, massive funds off of technical analysis and all kinds of analysis that are stress testing the market. They're looking at thousands of different scenarios and what are all of the factors that would contribute to this making me money or losing me money. But in the end of the day, you got to live with your decisions, right? Like you've got to get in. You cannot stay on the sidelines. [00:05:33] Speaker C: You've got to get in. [00:05:34] Speaker A: You do have to have a strategy and then you got to take what the market gives you. And in the end, nobody's smart or stupid. You may have more information, done more research, but in the end, the guy that has money is the guy that everybody says is smart. The guy that doesn't have money is the guy that everybody says he's an idiot. So if you make a ton of money in the market, oh, you're some smart guy. If you lose a ton of money in the market, it's like, oh, you're an idiot. What it really comes down to is how big are your balls in the market and how like, do you believe what you believe and is your timing good? Which is. [00:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I gotta, I have to stop you because I have like so many things. There were so many jumping points in what you just said. [00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:20] Speaker B: And we kind of, we kind of veered a little bit because one of the things you said. No, no, it's. I love, I'm like, I could just listen to you go on and on and on. And we will, we're going to get more into it. I want to break it up a little bit though, because I want to make sure I get these two things because one is before I hit the record button, you said something. I was like, oh, I definitely want to get his thoughts on this. And that was the quantum computing and how Google's new computer could disrupt, because I had not heard that before, could disrupt cryptocurrency. The cryptic coding for like, like devolve that whole. What makes cryptocurrency valuable in that end to end encryption, right? [00:07:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:07:03] Speaker C: Like cryptography. So like basically that's what miners are going after is to figure out all of this. And once they CR that it goes into the blockchain, right. Like they've mined this block and they get the reward. [00:07:16] Speaker A: But because of the layers of cryptography, like that's what makes it hard to. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Achieve and what makes miners valuable. [00:07:23] Speaker A: And so like when you saw Willow. [00:07:26] Speaker C: Launch this chip, the super chip, they're. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Like, this can compute in decitillion years or whatever the term is. You know, it's like longer than the. [00:07:35] Speaker C: World has the universe has existed. It can do in five minutes. It can, it can compute in five minutes what we couldn't do before in xyz. [00:07:44] Speaker A: And so like the Flash crash that happened, you saw, it was within. The announcement was like super quick. Percentage 10, 20% crashes in crypto. And some recovered really quick, but some didn't. I mean, some are still recovering. And that was a result of people's fear that, wait a second, if this can crack and if this can compute so fast, then the blockchain is kind of becoming like, is it irrelevant? Is Bitcoin irrelevant? [00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that blows my mind. And this is oddly enough, something that popped into my head. And I'm going to love your take on this. I thought of the Singularity by Ray Kurzweil, that how we're entering into this unification, in a sense. And when I think of quantum computing disrupting end to end encrypt, my mind goes to then what's the point of any kind of secrecy between any human individual once we know the artificial intelligence has already kind of figured it all out and we are just now, I don't even know what we are pawns in a larger game. [00:08:54] Speaker A: I mean, in a sense, when you think of it, we always have been. Any privately held entity controls all of our data. Like, you know, the. [00:09:04] Speaker C: I mean there's software out there. [00:09:05] Speaker A: I have spoken to some very successful entrepreneurs that are in finance and they have information on us that's unbelievable. [00:09:13] Speaker C: Like the net worth of every individual and high net worth individuals to get into philanthropy, like, what's their aptitude and appetite for giving? [00:09:23] Speaker A: And like there's so many different tools out there and instruments to really put people in a box to market new products to them, which is you think of social media and all those things. [00:09:34] Speaker C: And that was the whole thing is like if you don't know what the product is, it's you. [00:09:39] Speaker A: Like. And so when they're like, oh, this is so cool, this is free. And it's like it's not. It's taking your attention and they're mining that data and they're going to turn it into products for ads and it's just this machine. And so when I think of quantum computing and you think of AI and then you think of blockchain and these things, ultimately it comes down to I think a digital currency and so like China is way ahead of us with the R and B. [00:10:03] Speaker C: The digital R and B, they've been. [00:10:04] Speaker A: Using it for a while now. America's way behind in this race. But there's definitely a reality, reality check around are lagging in this space from. [00:10:14] Speaker C: A, like you think a political perspective. [00:10:16] Speaker A: But when I think of. So the first thing is how much power is required to power a quantum chip. And that's where you have. That's where you get into the technicals, which I'm not qualified to talk about. But the power right now that we have isn't suffice to do the computations. [00:10:36] Speaker C: To say crack Bitcoin. [00:10:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:39] Speaker C: Like it needs some scale of magnitude. [00:10:41] Speaker A: To achieve from a power, electrical power, electrification perspective where it's like the computational output, the capability is there, but the. [00:10:53] Speaker B: Power goes to data centers. When you say that, I think of like the surge in because we need more power. The data center industry, like these buildings that they're their building to generate and store and store data, but also generate like you said, am by no means like I, I'm barely knowledgeable in terms of what the energy requirements would be outside of recognizing that all of this computational processing requires power and energy. And the more that we do it, I don't know. Do. Does anybody argue that the better we get at it, the more efficient the energy consumption gets there? There has to be some level of that involved. [00:11:36] Speaker A: I'd say yes, but so going back to Ray Kurzweil and Singularity is like, yes, I think from an efficiency perspective. [00:11:43] Speaker C: Things become more efficient, but we don't. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Work like that as humans. So any time that something becomes more efficient or better, we like to max out the cartridges. So we don't generally say, it's like if somebody were to get solar panels and you say, hey, this could lower your electric bill. Well, a lot of people can afford their electricity. What they want to do is run their pump for their pool in the summertime and not pay extra. So if you could just keep my bill the same and let me use more power, I'd love you. And so when you think of how we are as humans, every time there's a decrease in requirements or say an increase in efficiency, we also multiply our usage because we're like, oh, I can use 10 times more and it costs me the same. So our general framework in life is around cost, not around efficiency or output. It's. I just, I don't want to pay more, but I want to do more. I want to use more, I want to travel more. [00:12:45] Speaker B: You just made me think of, like, when we used to store, convert our CDs into MP3s and then store all that data and all of the technology we went and all of the energy consumption. Like, I think of, like, I spent days, if not weeks, converting, like, CDs into digital media so that at some point in the future I can listen to it. All of that time, all of that energy I put into doing that work doesn't even matter now because it all turned into a streaming subscription model. And again, to your point, like, used to really have to think about how much data am I using? Because this costs money and that costs money. And so the way we used to deal with in the past is we would just delete photos and we would delete things from our phone, and we would manage our data by deleting and get rid of, getting rid of information. But now I think of even something like this podcast is being uploaded, streamed, recorded. Your site is being recorded, my side being recorded, audio, the video, all levels of it, and then it's integrated, and then afterwards it's going to be computed. And I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the level of data that's being consumed and used. And the only reason I'm able to kind of keep going is because, for better or worse, like, maybe I'll be doing in a podcast in, like, two years, being like, don't do this. When you do a podcast, you're going to go broke because it costs all this money. And there's all these variables that I didn't think of. But right now, I just think about it. It's like, I have a monthly subscription fee that I have to do for, like, the podcasting service and then the editing aspect of it and the various aspects that are involved in podcasting. But that is so far, so, like, so leaps and bounds ahead of where we were even, like five years ago or six years ago. And to your point, this level of acceleration, this exponential acceleration into a future, again, kind of going back to the. This wasn't. It wasn't going to be a podcast about singularity, but I have a feeling this word is going to come up a lot. And what we're talking about, just because when you think of the relative nature of the speed of acceleration, of how we're using it, and how quickly things are being adopted, the singularity is one of the concepts out there that more broadly encapsulates what's happening. [00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And like, so the appetite is big. And Peter Diamandez, I mean they wrote him and I think it's Stephen Kotler. [00:15:06] Speaker C: They've written multiple books together, Bold Abundance. [00:15:09] Speaker A: But their last ones was the future. [00:15:11] Speaker C: Is faster than you think. And I think that was four years ago. And he talks about convergence, which is very aligned with the singularity. And I mean Singularity University. That's, that's Peter Diamandis. [00:15:22] Speaker A: So but when you think of all the things that are happening, it's like bitcoin, the power consumption to mine, bitcoin is so massive. And then you think of AI that. [00:15:35] Speaker C: They'Re turning to nuclear power because the. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Energy required for the data centers is so massive. And then you think of quantum computing. [00:15:47] Speaker C: One of my buddies was a, was a quantum mathematician. And so we were talking about like information dissemination. So like if you were sending information wirelessly, like quantum mathematics would allow that to be destroyed. That if it was captured it would, it would destroy the information so it couldn't be deciphered in quantum, in a quantum world. [00:16:11] Speaker A: So there's so many like brilliant people that are working on all these different things that it's converging. So then, so then the question is not what is AI? The question isn't what is quantum computing. The question isn't what Bitcoin or investing? The question is what is quantum AI? Cryptonomics. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Quantum AI Cryptonomics. [00:16:35] Speaker A: Ask that question and you've got like God, I'm sorry to say it to the. Not, you know, to the faith driven community. [00:16:42] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, listen, someone's. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I asked Chat GPT yesterday. Not yesterday, last week. Just, just thinking about theology and theory because that's the background I came from. And I said, hey, GPT, just could you as a pastor just frame this? I'd like you to say a prayer for me really quick just for this, this, this and this just to see. And I was doing the audible version and it goes, in Jesus name, we humbly come to you. And I was like, whoa. And it's not real yet, dude. My mind doesn't perceive the difference. If I heard that on a speakerphone in the room next door, I would be like, I'm sorry. Like, you know, so like I'm not in the faith, but I just, what I'm. What's happening is something much bigger. But, but going back to how we started was you've got to be in the small rooms to get this information right. You're not going to see it on the wire because once it hits the wire, most people have already made their money. Now you're going in and you're sucking fumes. [00:17:51] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:52] Speaker A: But they've already eaten up the tank. And when you start to see bank and bank capital and venture capital or. Right, like private equity or any of these investment funds, when you see those guys show up, the risk, it's already been de risked. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Right. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Because so like bitcoin or any of these, like Everybody you know, BlackRock or anybody that's getting in, it's already been de risked. When they do the spot etf, it's already been de risked. It's already been proven there is validity to this concept. Now, they figured out a thousand different ways to make money. [00:18:31] Speaker C: Up, down, sideways, forwards, backwards and around you. [00:18:34] Speaker A: You're just hoping, like I hope it goes up. They make money either way. They make money on the deal flow. They make money everywhere. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Man, you always get my heart racing because I'm like, this is exactly why I have you on. Because this is stuff I really want to process with somebody. [00:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:49] Speaker B: So I want to bring it back to like just a simple retail investor and somebody that doesn't have some of the insight that you and I have. And you have in particular, because I see you as someone that's more in the trenches with these people. Like you're saying I'm a little bit removed from that. I'm more like just watching CNBC and more like an average retail investor just seeing what's happening on the outside. But as someone who has witnessed the bitcoin cycle, which is now we are in the fourth cycle, right. Started 2008. Every four years as a cycle cycle, 2012, 2016, 2020, now 2024, there's a good chance that we've just seen the first wave of enthusiasm and now the second wave is coming. That is traditional. With two cycles, there's usually two years on the bull run. There's two years of crypto winter, there's two years of the bull run. That is how each cycle has played out. That is how market participants in the crypto cycle are viewing it. The ones that are experienced because they've seen the cycle play out multiple times. So, you know, that's already kind of baked into the psychology when you talk about the de risk. I think it's going to get interesting now because what we always see is we have these two years of a bull run and then it usually drops back down to the previous cycle high. So going off that same logistics, now we're at 100k, maybe we'll hit 121k, maybe we'll get to some predictions, they're like 250k, et cetera. And then if we hit that level, there is. If it follows traditional paths, like you might be riding a 250k Bitcoin back down to like 69,000. Like, that is in the realm of possibility based on history. But that's not going to happen for a while. And in the meantime, you want to capitalize on the run that's currently happening. Now, to your point when you said it's kind of like you have to be in it, it reminds me of if you're not in it, you're short. And if you're short, you're on the. You probably are on the wrong side because it's running right now. So there is that risk of just not being engaged and not being involved. And you're not going to outpace the returns that other people are seeing because they're participating in this larger macro cycle of what's happening with cryptocurrency and bitcoin in particular. [00:20:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, Go ahead. [00:20:57] Speaker B: No, go ahead. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, so a few thoughts and then remind me to. [00:21:02] Speaker C: Tell you about BlackBerry, the movie. Really interesting about like, over consumption, etc. [00:21:08] Speaker A: But I think, look, first of all, I'm never interested in how much anybody makes. I don't give a damn, right? I don't look at when anybody got in, when they got out. I've got to make sure that I'm comfortable with what's happening Now. I'm a technical analyst, so I'll look at the charts for bitcoin. And I had a buddy who was in, and he was heavy in it. I mean, he was up over a million, which was like, I think that's great, like, good for you. And the market turned, right? There was a correction, and so it dipped down to $13,000. And like before it got to 13, it was at like 21 and it went to 19. And so he called me and he's like, yo, what's happening? So I had to find out what was your average price and how much. How many satoshis do you own? Like, how much BTC do you actually own? And then I'll be able to predict for you, like, what's your risk unit? How much does $1 affect your bottom line? And then you've got to know, how much are you willing to lose? Because support, I told him, I said supports right around, I think it was 13,000 or 12,800. I said, hey, this can go to this line. And it's okay. And he was like, I cannot do that. I said then sell your position. And then he didn't. He wrote it down to like 14 and then sold and then it went lower but then it recovered. So like, anyways, like what I'm trying to say is I wasn't trading bitcoin. I can just read charts. I don't, but there's a lot of charts that I look at. I can predict the move pretty, you know, for the most part, just like any analyst can. But I don't trade hardly anything. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:54] Speaker A: I don't give a damn and I don't care what everybody else is doing. [00:22:58] Speaker B: I'm with you. I'm with you. I, I think the absolute dollar amount is, is, is less relevant, especially in the context that we're talking about it. I look from anywhere from zero to a billion. So it's like if you're getting started out, it's just percentages. And if you're playing the market, some people aren't playing that. A lot of people still aren't playing that market. [00:23:16] Speaker A: At one point I put $100 in Bitcoin and it's up 380%. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I started dollar cost averaging like $4 a day just cause I'm like, oh, a cup of coffee. I'll do the cup of coffee strategy. [00:23:27] Speaker A: That's fun. [00:23:27] Speaker B: And just dollar cost average in a different. So, so my, like, okay, so my personal, my personal strategy For Bitcoin since 2020, I've allocated across four different portfolios and I small percentages because I don't want to care about the volatility. And I have it to your point, I have a, I have a risk tolerance for that. I can lose all of it. Like that's my, I put in enough knowing because it's a highly speculative asset. I put enough in that I could lose all of it and it's not going to break me, but if I get something on it, that'll be nice. I'm of the belief too. It's like it doesn't matter how much you make on any single trade, whether it's stock, bitcoin, real estate, it doesn't matter because once you take, once you profit, you have to do, do something with that profit. And there's no guarantee that the next risk you take is going to be the same success as your last risk. So you're always, if you're investing in trading, you're always having to risk capital. It's a risk management game. It's a game of risk. And so whether you Win or lose on one, it's like you still have to just keep playing the game. So it's just one game, so you're just continuing playing the cycle. So real quick, because I want to kind of finish my train of thought on this picture of the four year cycles. [00:24:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:41] Speaker B: Because, okay, bitcoin leads the cycle. So it's like people don't care about crypto during the winter time. And all the crypto opponents feel vindicated, saying, I told you it was all bs and now we're in crypto winner. And it's like, oh, that's going to zero. Look at all those suckers. And they're thrilled because they didn't get any of the money on the way up. And then they're just happy to see it go down. And then they feel vindicated until the run happens again. And now we're at another run, we're up at over 100. We broke 100k and now it's come back in. But it's, it's stabilizing at that 100k level. I mean, arguably it could, it could, it could consolidate around this level for a short period of time. But if you look at bitcoin relative to the whole cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin is the leader. And then typically what happens is once people say, oh crap, bitcoin went, now what's the next thing? And then they inevitably go to Ethereum, which is the largest of its market cap of the alternative crypto assets. And then Solana. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Solana and XRP and Tether. But Tether doesn't really matter because it's supposed to just to be a stable coin. So then it goes and trickles into that market. And this is where I'm getting at is then the next wave, and you brought it up, is the NFTs, the non fungible tokens, the NFTs. So what happens is, and I think about crypto punks and now I think really, because the last cycle the crypto punks were breaking the 100k mark. So cryptopunks were already there because I don't know how many there are. I don't know if you know, off top of your head. I don't think there's very many. I mean, it's like talk about limited supply. I think there's like 20 or 30. It's like less than 100 for crypto punks. Do your due diligence. That's how I visualize it in my head. But I know it's a very Small amount. So these crypto punks are like the next wave. And it's so fascinating to see because people are like, why would you pay, let's say $150,000 for just a pixelated picture? And they're not, it's. They're old now, so they're really pixelated. It looks like an old video game from like the 80s or something. And these crypto punks start to then take off. And so if they were at 150k now we're probably looking at. And I have, I'm not in this market. I don't. I actually am in this market because on the last cycle I bought some NFTs just to see how the market works. And I still have those, but those like went and crashed. And I like, I haven' really looked at them since until recently. And that's how I kind of know something might be changing because I, the retail investor am now looking at my NFT portfolio again, which is almost like a sign. Like part of me is like, okay, get ready because the top is coming. Because now I'm starting to pay attention to it. So then we move into the NFTs and then the NFT start to get a boost. So it's like this wave that happens. So bitcoin runs, then starts to level off, then alt season starts, Ethereum starts to take, then it trickles down to all of these other altcoins. And the altcoins, depending on which ones you're playing, you could see aggressive return, like insane returns on them. These mean coins. I know Pepe is like starting to. You start to see Pepe showing up on X and it's like just things that the general population that are still trying to wrap their minds around bitcoin and then you just start seeing this green frog is like somehow relevant in some way. So this is this next wave of almost. We're not quite yet at euphoria in my opinion because like I said, I think it's a two year cycle. So I think 2024 is the first wave of the run then. But through 2025 bans without a Black Swan event, we should see a higher price for bitcoin by the end of next year, at which time and now I'm starting to see two people are front running. They used to front run November, December going into the next year, and now it started as early as in October of last year actually. Shoot. I have to think about this because I think last year in October, bitcoin broke above 20,000 again and ran to 30,000, 40,000. Then kind of started the year off in that level. And so even as I'm saying this out loud and I get confused sometimes. So I can only. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's important. It's really important for anybody that's watching. [00:28:59] Speaker C: I would recommend in future podcasts to have a monitor or screen share with any charts that you're referencing because it's too easy to generalize if you don't know specific timeframes. [00:29:10] Speaker B: Right. [00:29:10] Speaker C: Because technical analysis is timeframes. And if you don't, if you don't reference the exact timeframes, generalizing in the market is really dangerous for people that don't know. [00:29:21] Speaker B: I agree 100%. My generalization is because this will probably be an audio one. I've been just doing these more as audio because I don't have to worry about the visuals as much as. And then I use the visuals for promotion. So then I understood create the little links. Not links, but the clips, tips that I can share and you can do. [00:29:39] Speaker A: Whatever the hell you want. [00:29:40] Speaker B: I'm just saying, like, And I agree with you 100. I trade technically. So I love the technicals. I look at that and I could, I could almost care less about the fundamentals. I like the fundamentals just as long as they back up. That's what I'm seeing with the technicals. And I think fundamental traders are the reverse of that. Like, they, they look at the fundamentals and are pleased if the technicals help validate what they're seeing fundamentally. And you're absolutely right. I'm. I'm giving a very broad stroke because I'm giving like the forest view of kind of what's happening. So without further price speculation, we're kind of through this first wave and I was going back and like you said, I really wish I did have some charts to pull up and maybe the next time you and I do one of these, we'll just be like doing those charts because we're both into it. [00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:27] Speaker B: But if you look at the peak of like the last cycle, like, I recently got into XRP because my friend was to ask me about it. So I did some research on it and I got interested and then I took a small position in it. And honestly, my last episode I recorded was just me doing an analysis of xrp. And as soon as I post shared and did everything, it spiked from like A$50 to 250. So what I'm saying is I moved the market. No, not at all. Not at all. But that's how tight it was. Close. [00:30:57] Speaker A: You're a whale, bro. [00:30:58] Speaker B: You're a whale on trend with anything. And it was like as soon as I hit the post button it was like that was the day it's just shot right up. [00:31:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:07] Speaker B: My point in saying that was I, it got me to think, okay, when was the last time XRP saw a move like this? And it was in December of. And like you said, damn, I wish I had the chart because it was the last time it spiked. It had its. If you look at, it's two years. [00:31:21] Speaker C: It's like two years ago. [00:31:22] Speaker B: It's like two years ago. But, but if you look at most of these, especially the altcoins, they, the charts look like this. They'll spike up. Up, they'll correct and then they have like this massive second wave. It's like a super spike. And then after that super spike, that's, that's the crash. And then it just like trades sideways through crypto winner at very low levels. And then you, until you see it again. So if you look at even technically speaking, you could pull up any, almost any crypto chart and you will see this pattern where you'll see this double wave spike and then it flattens out and then a higher double wave spike, typically higher. I wonder this time because every time it's got its own little nuance. Like the last spike we saw was during COVID and Covid was like this anomaly, this pandemic event was an anomaly in the market that when you go back and do traditional market analysis, you have to justify what happened in those couple years because talk about black swan events, it was just something almost unprecedented in the ways that it affected the market and the policies that evolved around that and the money that was flooding the market at that time. So you wonder, okay, without that variable, are we going to see those same kind of spikes this time around? We are. Now I'll use XRP as the example because that's the one I did the analysis on. XRP has just broken out of its all time high recently. It is now into what technically speaking people would call like the blue sky where there's no sellers above that level that are going to force that price down. Because people, anybody who's holding a position is profitable, which usually makes someone less likely to sell and especially when they think, oh crap, there's going to be another double pump on this. But, but I'm bringing this up because there could be and likely in my opinion will be a correction before we see the next wave up. So it's. This just drives Me nuts about the whole space. And this is why I do not trade cryptocurrency. Like I said, I have more like a small position somewhere that I don't think about. And this is the reason for it is because if you're trying to time this stuff, like that spike happened in hours and then was done and then it, then now it's been consolidating and then there was the flash crash. So what we're talking about, these moves you have to make to get in and out are split second moves. And you have to be at your computer at the right time to. I heard Josh Brown say this recently and I loved it. He's like, I'm not sitting around nursing tick ticker symbols because that's what a day trader or a scalper or somebody. You're sitting around and you're nursing a symbol. Like you're, you're watching and you're like, okay, up, down, up, down, okay, what pattern am I seeing? And then, okay, and, and so I have, I am now in a position where I'm like, I don't think I want to do that. Especially in the cryptocurrency market because, because of the volatility of how quickly those, those spikes can change, the moves are not like in the stock market. Those kind of moves are. A big move is like 5% is a big move in the stock market. In the crypto market, it's like 50%, 60%. Like you could put your money in one day and be cut in half or more the next day and you could still be right, like the following day, it's going to all like correct back up and it's like a 50 to 100% move in the other direction. So that level of volatility in terms of, in an individual deciding what their risk tolerance level is. And I like the term that you use, I don't use it very often, but I've been thinking about it because you use it and you reminded me because you use it again today. Is your risk unit. [00:34:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:59] Speaker B: Like your risk unit. Unit. [00:35:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:35:01] Speaker B: So I like that. So a dollar risk unit has to have an equated, like I would just think risk reward ratio. So if your dollar risk, you have a dollar risk unit, you want a reward probably of $2 to $4. [00:35:14] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So generally it's 2 to 1. I would never take a trade that's like 1 to 1. Like a 50. 50. [00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:23] Speaker C: Like you're, and you can take like a half hour loss or, or you can, you can trail your Stop out and take profits up. You know, once you hit a certain, certain amount, like depends on everybody's tolerance for risk. [00:35:34] Speaker A: But I'll go back to one of. [00:35:36] Speaker C: My favorite books is Market Wizards. There's a, there's a handful of different variations of it, but the guys interviewing top hedge fund managers that have like won a ton of money, lost a ton of money, won a ton of money, lost a ton of money, you know, and that, and they're all different strategies. And the thing that's true is you. [00:35:53] Speaker A: Trade on rules, but you don't trade on rules forever because the market changes, the conditions change. And if you live by your rules, you're going to die by your rules. [00:36:04] Speaker C: When the market changes, like, what's happening? [00:36:06] Speaker A: And so like even Warren Buffett, if you, if you read his letters to. [00:36:10] Speaker C: Shareholders or if you read the book. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Buffett's way is there were times where he changed his strategy and his principles because things were different. Like, and he would say, like, oh. [00:36:21] Speaker C: Well, it's the same, you know, it's value investing and this and that. [00:36:24] Speaker A: And it's like he started with Benji, with Ben Graham's strategy, with the cigar butts. It's like you find these stocks that they've got one puff left in them, you get it at a discount, take it and then you ditch it. And that was how he started. But then he evolved from there and he would never do that. His remark is how, what's your ideal length for holding a stock? Forever? Eternity. I never want to sell a stock. And so like, he's very interesting. And so, so the one thing that you don't do for me, like, I don't go to the market to make money. The people that go to make money also go there to give it back because it's not a one way street. There's no way you just make money all the time unless you're not there to make money. You're there to follow through on your strategy. If you have a strategy and it is a winning strategy, a majority of the time you'll have money left at the end. If you don't, you're going to lose everything on your shirt and everybody else's shirt because you are trying to make money and it's not where you go to make money. And so when you look at cryptos, people have taken their lack of understanding, lack of education, lack of strategy and their greed and they've turned it into a X formula, an opportunity to lose money. So everybody that I talk to that's 20 or 30 or 40. And they're like, I'm in crypto. I'm like, you probably got like eight to $10,000 parked in three different altcoins and they go up and you're like, I'm crushing it. And you don't take profits because you don't have a strategy. You're trying to make money and get rich. You're like, well, if it's up this much, imagine it'll go up even higher. And the same thing as last week, everything went up 80 to 100%. It was climactic. And technicals, if something's going climactic, it will come back. It will come back. It's not a long term gain concept. It's a quick run and people take profits. But what happens is so many people get in at the top and they get trapped. And so now they're in for the ride. So where you're seeing this continued like it's coming back. It's like, yeah, because so many people got in at the all time highs in altcoins and it's, they're praying two years later, they're like, oh my God, I'm going to get back to break even. So when you see these things go climactic and all these other retail investors are getting in, it's new to them. The early adopters are gone, it's hitting the mainstream. And so they're all jumping in and they're riding it up and it goes climactic. Well, it's going to turn around because everybody that was trapped two years ago is taking their money off the table. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Right? That's right. [00:39:13] Speaker A: They're like, I'm done with this. And then it turns around and they're like, I'm so glad I'm out. Well then what happens? They say, well, this is kind of a support area. I might want to get back in just a little bit. And so that's where the consolidation happens is ultimately a lot of new people were getting in when it was going climactic. And so it has to consolidate to build a base around some level of support. And so you're looking for areas of support. Even when it went climactic like, like there was a resting place, it's proving true, it's right around there that it's consolidating. And you're going to see likely you'll see this go bananas because it's crypto. But if it follows the traditional market because there's so many more people getting in now, there's a lot more liquidity that It's. I think you're going to see a longer, more controlled growth opportunity because just to your point. Yeah, it's fun the first time time, like going out and doing something you shouldn't do. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:20] Speaker A: You do it again, it's a little less fun. By the third to fifth time you've got a problem. [00:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [00:40:30] Speaker A: So. Right. So the market, the way that I think of crypto and altcoins and these things is it's no different than ETFs or anything that you're going to trade in the market market. Only the volatility is higher because the greed index is higher. So if you go to any of the, any of the tracking sites, it'll show you the candles, but it also show you the volatility, it'll show you the volume, but also show you the greed index because crypto is very greed driven. And so you'll see like how many days in a row has this been in the green? It strings them together and so you're like, volatility is high, the greed index is high. It's like the greatest recipe for a lot of people to lose everything. And so but the funny thing is that's not new. Everybody lost everything in the market in 2008. Everybody lost everything in the market. So nothing's new. It's just we've accelerated our ability to lose it all. If I'm going to lose it, I want to lose it fast. [00:41:30] Speaker B: That is, there's a lot of truth to that sentiment and the market giveth and the market taketh away. Yeah, for sure. Man. I love talking to you. I feel like, I almost feel like I'm hesitant to say it only just because of time management issues, but I could see you and I doing like a regular check in. Because you are. Yeah, because you are. You said you're going to start actively trading again next year, right? Or no? [00:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I'm in crypto right now actively, but I'm hold like I don't jump in and out. I buy and I hold. And so I'm riding through some of the ups and downs and seeing massive gains, gains, not taking any profits. I'm just watching the trends. Right. So I'm actively. I have a position in the market. So what I've done, and I'm happy to share this is I actually broke my next year up like the NDA season. So I've broken my year into certain months that are off season, that are preseason. [00:42:32] Speaker C: So I'm in the off season right now technically. So it's only buy and hold. [00:42:36] Speaker A: And then once I get into so that's November through the end of January, February through April is my preseason where I'm starting to swing trade. So I'll get in and out of some plays that are a week to two weeks to a month. And then once the regular season hits from May through August, then I will be actively day trading. And then when I get into the postseason, which is September, I'm only day trading. So I only have one month that I really want to focus this and be in the market where it's high stress. I'm focused on actively matching up and getting in and getting out. Whether that's scalping or that's just day. [00:43:17] Speaker C: Trading in and out, really quick return trips. [00:43:19] Speaker A: And then in October I'm off the everything. Nobody can talk to me. I'm doing nothing. I'm not taking anything, I'm not looking at anything. And then the off season starts again in November where I could look at the core trades and say, hey, is there anything that I need to adjust from the last year that I bought for buy and hold for long term that I wasn't touching? How are they performing and do I. [00:43:39] Speaker C: Want to add to the position or do I want to add to the portfolio? [00:43:43] Speaker A: And so like the misconception in anything we do in life is that I'm on all the time. Anybody that's on all the time is not on all the time, but they stay on and they perform terribly. And so a lot of people that do well in the market give back their gains in the later part of the year because they, they try to stay aggressive and get their money, get even more, you know. So if you've got an aggressive goal and it's let's say you want to make half a million or a million in the market, depending on your account size or let's down. So you want to make $10,000 and you're at $7,000 going into the, into the home stretch where you're going to over trade because there's no commissions to the broker. So now you can trade as much as you want. So you're going to over trade trying to force a play that doesn't exist exist and you're going to end up with negative $3,000 at the end of the year. You're going to have a loss because you went in trying to make money. You don't go to the market to make money. You give what it takes you based on your strategy and if it doesn't do it doesn't yield what you thought, guess what? In the law of averages, over 10 years, you'll probably have averaged 10k a. [00:44:49] Speaker C: Year if you want. [00:44:50] Speaker A: But if you try to get it every year on the money, you're going to force things that aren't there. And then you'll have years where it's 15,000 by November. And then you're like, well, I don't care. And so you take your foot off the gas and you start to lose money and then you end up with less. I should have just quit while I was ahead. [00:45:06] Speaker B: Well, I love it. Oh, go ahead. [00:45:08] Speaker A: No, so that's so. So my year, fitness wise, trading wise, even projects for renovation or contracts or my commitments, I just follow an NBA season and I don't think about anything because. Because I don't want to care if there's a season for it. I know when I'm performing. I don't care if people want to play basketball year round. I don't. I don't care if there's leagues where you could. I don't care. I don't care. I don't want to play all the time. And when I play, I want to be the best in the world at what I do. And that's all I want to do. [00:45:45] Speaker B: Right? No, I love that it actually helps me because I give it like the structure of what you're describing and the seasonality of it. Because. Because I like to day trade, I like to swing trade. Sometimes I like to scalp. My broader strategies are swing trading, but ultimately I'm a buy and hold guy. Like, my long portfolios are the ones where I'm actually building wealth. It's. The trading stuff is actually killing me. To your point, like, I had one bad. I had like three or four good trades and I had one bad trade that basically brought wipe me back to neutral on my trading account. So like me analyzing this year, I have like three accounts that I'm kind of using as my barometer, my metrics. And I have one that's professionally managed to see how the people who are professionally managing money, how they're growing the account. I have one that I manage myself, and it's more about allocation strategy. And then I have another one that I'm day trading out of. Like my. My professionally managed account is probably up about 15%, which is like. It is what it is. It's like safe money, I guess. But it's when the rest of the market is up like 60, 70, 80, 100%. Some stocks themselves are up 400%. That's a different thing. Right. So the one I do myself, that allocate myself, this was a good year because the market was up. It's easier to make money when the market's up. And if you're trading a certain type of strategy like I have, this is a year that you do well. I'm up 65 in the one that I'm managing myself. [00:47:09] Speaker C: Amazing. [00:47:10] Speaker B: Now I have my trading account that I like to play in, and that one is. Honestly, I don't know. One of them is down and they're. I'm basically neutral. Part of the trading account thing, though, is I do take money out when I'm profitable. So it's like, those don't really grow because I'm just trying to keep my base level in to be able to trade with margin, which is also. I don't recommend. Recommend. I don't recommend. You can't do these things unless you already have some kind of aptitude with which this podcast is not necessarily teaching you that aptitude. I think what I like to do and if I'm. And if I'm contributing anything to the conversation is more this broader view of where your particular strategies may or may not fit in. So I like to discuss things with you. Like. Like even me going to an audio format is like, for someone who wants to just put this on at the end of the night and just like, wind down and just have two people relatively having a conversation. We're not like, hyping bitcoin up or cryptocurrency, and we're. We're definitely not telling people to jump into the market kind of coming full circle. We're just talking about things that are currently relevant and bitcoin and cryptocurrency and quantum computing and. What was that term you use? AI Quantum what? AI Quantum something. [00:48:22] Speaker C: Quantum Cryptonomics. [00:48:23] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:48:24] Speaker B: Yeah, cryptonomics. AI Quantum Cryptonomic. I love that because I'm like, yeah, that really, like, catch all of the buzz in one word. So that's why we're having a conversation around these things. And I think in the future we will definitely have more conversations like this because this is why I have you on. I get charged up. Like, after I'm done talking, I get charged up. And I think hopefully we can add some value to the listeners in. In terms of thinking about an overall what kind of trends are happening and how they want to position themselves in moving into the upcoming. That being said, I want to give you something that I'm seeing in the charts which Again, I wish I had just the charts I could pull up so people can visually see what I'm seeing. But if they are prone to looking at charts, they can go look at a chart and they will I think be able to find this, what I'm talking about. And then I'm going to ask you what your broader narrative is or what your themes you're thinking about going into the new year. So you talked about strategy, which is the seasonality of, of it. And the next thing that you'll, you'll, that will kind of wrap it up on is like a prediction, the forecast for 2025. One thing I'm observing in the charts is the, the ARC names. So like Cathy woods has her actively managed ETF and Ark is the, the major portfolio like the large fund, the most recognizable. And ARC names, these were the names that were the high flyers in 2020 and 2021. Names like square and Teladoc and Zoom and Docusign and some other ones. I'm trying to think like Roblox Unity. These names that are like high growth companies but not profitable. They saw a very steep sell off in mid, I think 2022 and they've just been consolidating and only this recent year have they woken up, up and now they are touching. I mean if you I this is where I wish you had the charts to see this. What you'll see on the charts is like 2020 and 2021. They spike up like this and then they come crashing down well below. A lot of these were IPOs and so you'll see they're way, way below their IPO price. And now they are retouching exactly where the drop off was. And you're going to see this in like a ton of names. So like the names that I just mentioned, like Square again is a good example. And Square is actually getting some broader media attention now and a lot of like CNBC pundits are throwing the name Square around again. And so just like if you remember in 2020 there was like Square and PayPal, it was all about fintech. And those names were just like a straight up rocket ship in those years. And people couldn't believe what was happening there. And then they fell off the cliff and now we are approaching levels. So in terms of numbers, I'll use Square as the example. Square is like touching that $100 level. And I think it got up to its highest was like 300 bucks. So when it dropped off, once it dropped below a hundred, that's when it really Went into its own winter. It's winter with this whole group of stocks and I think it got as low as like 50 or 60 bucks and then was kind of trading in the 60 to 80 range, which is what it was trading at before, which was kind of normal and only recently broke out out to now from 80 to $100. And now it's consolidating between like the upper 90s $100 level. But I again, this is barring any Black Swan event I am starting to look at. So my portfolio, my longer term portfolio is tech heavy and it's got the magnificent seven in there. And I bought the Dip in Tesla mid year and I bought the dip in Apple when they were both down and out middle of the year. And those have like been like really paid off well for me, Palantir is another one. And actually at one point Palantir was my largest position. And Paler is one of those names too that kind of fall into this category. But it's unique in that it's actually profitable. What's that? It's actually profitable and it's all like kind of breaking itself from the other themes. So my broader prediction, or just what I'm seeing in the charts, which I'm not hearing a lot of people talk about, I am, but not as this broader themed concept where I think the resurgence in the ARC names is a strong possibility for the early part of the year. That and quantum computing. So like there's IonQ or something and then there's QBT and there's a couple names in there that are specifically quantum computing companies. So those are like two broader themes. I think that we may see some further upside in the earlier parts of the year, Year later, half of the 2025, barring a black Swan event or recession. [00:53:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, go for it. [00:53:10] Speaker A: I don't follow, I don't follow the news. [00:53:13] Speaker C: Like, I'm not in news, as I mentioned, I'm more in the grassroots side of things and like what's happening in small circles and crypto meetups. Like you have to be around these people to know what, what, what is what. Like if you're, if you're, if you're trusting media outlet to talk about crypto, they're likely not on the front lines. They're catching this way downstream, which is a very different message. It's been translated for institutional investors. Right. And so like a lot of people get hosed on that stuff. So I'd rather be close to the fire in that sense. [00:53:44] Speaker A: When you talk about IPOs and prices. [00:53:46] Speaker C: Like those are high volatility. I think you have to ask is like, is part of your strategy trading an ipo? There's no charts, there's no historical data. So a lot of people won't trade ip. [00:53:57] Speaker B: I'm one of those people. [00:53:58] Speaker C: Yeah. And yeah, so like I think you have to ask that question. The other question is, you know, when you look at these stocks that were devalued, are they a sound business, are they a good business? And if they are, that's really the Warren Buffett strategy. Now, maybe not the long term buy and hold, but when you look at. [00:54:14] Speaker A: Companies, their philosophy was it's better to. [00:54:17] Speaker C: Buy a good business at a fair price than a bad business at a good price. [00:54:21] Speaker A: And so when you start to talk about going down the list from Bitcoin. [00:54:25] Speaker C: To Ethereum to Solana to Tether to XRP to whatever you want to go all the way down to, you know, bonk. [00:54:31] Speaker A: Like when you look at these, well, I mean that's like meme coins, altcoins. But when you look at these, you have to ask what is the community. [00:54:40] Speaker C: Around it saying about this product? [00:54:42] Speaker A: Because if they're bought in and they're, and they're convicted by trust that it will work. It's like people are resilient, especially when. [00:54:51] Speaker C: It comes to advocacy. [00:54:53] Speaker A: Less about like it's a good product. Some good products don't have die hard fans. [00:54:58] Speaker C: Some average products have really die hard fans. [00:55:01] Speaker A: Trust those people because they will fight for it and it, and it will at some point it has validity. And so like I just think it's. [00:55:10] Speaker C: Important to think about like what's your strategy? And similar to like trading earnings, you. [00:55:15] Speaker A: Know, some people will go in on. [00:55:17] Speaker C: Netflix before earnings because they always beat earnings. [00:55:19] Speaker A: And so, so it's like I'm going to put a large position for earnings and then close it at the open, you know, and it's like close my eyes and pray. You got to know what your batting. [00:55:27] Speaker C: Average, what's your appetite for risk? [00:55:29] Speaker A: And so like I can day trade, I have the capital, I'm skilled at it. I can do technical analysis, I can do trend analysis, I can look at. [00:55:38] Speaker C: The overall trends, look at that sector. [00:55:40] Speaker A: When you talk about a Cathie Wood or any of these major hedge funds, they're probably a very small percentage of their portfolio is in and out. I would say say they're very long term strategies. They are not looking to buy Tesla and offload it in a week. Yeah, yeah, they're like no the numbers say three to five years. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, real quick on that. Because in 2020, Cathie Wood was heavily promoting like my strategy is a five year strategy. Like all of these I know are like, are looking out for five years now that was in 2020. This, we're entering 2025 next year. I feel like her feet are going to be on the fire in terms of if you had that bold of prediction, this is what's going to come out. That's a digression. What I want to hear from you actually is because you brought it up, you're in the trenches like you say. When I think of that, I think like where I get a lot of my crypto knowledge is actually on X and things like that. So I'll first start and see what, what the communities are talking about actually on social media. And there's a few people that I follow in the space that I'm like, I trust them, I know they're in the space. I like what they have to say. They do it in an entertaining way. And then I'll go do my own research and then see what some like more professional people are saying about it and think about it in those terms. Like I said, I don't actively trade crypto, so I'm less engaged in that way other than just kind of having a general knowledge of it through different channels now. But for you, what are you getting? What little tidbit would you give for that person out there listening that you have a little bit of insight in? Because you are in those, some of those inner circles and you are having those conversations. For you specifically, you gave a broad strategy of this is my swing trading season. This is my day trading season. This is my off season on season. The seasonality, the broader picture of it, which I love. Now let's get a little bit more specific if you don't mind and like talk about like maybe one or two things that you're like, wow, I'm really kind of looking at this and thinking, yeah, this is something I want to get into into. [00:57:45] Speaker A: I mean I think that Meme coins are really important. [00:57:48] Speaker C: When you look at get Ethereum and the DAPPS that were built, a lot. [00:57:52] Speaker A: Of what's being built. [00:57:54] Speaker B: Explain what a DAP is real quick. [00:57:55] Speaker C: A decentralized, A decentralized application, right? So runs on blockchain or smart contracts. [00:58:02] Speaker A: And like it run. It looks just like an app. There's not, I mean like I would. [00:58:06] Speaker C: Say that it's, it's grown and it's. [00:58:09] Speaker A: Developed Solana, Solana is like the biggest. [00:58:12] Speaker C: Competitor because of lower gas fees and different things. So if you wanted to build some type of application or NFT market or. [00:58:18] Speaker A: Anything like that, Solana is like, there's. [00:58:20] Speaker C: A lot of advocates that would prefer Solana over Ethereum. Now Ethereum has made changes to like where they fork and do different things with their software. [00:58:28] Speaker A: So it's changing the dynamics. They're trying to be competitive but they lost a lot of ground because their. [00:58:34] Speaker C: Gas fees were so high to mint coins or to swap coins, coins where. [00:58:38] Speaker A: Solana was way less. So a lot of people, when you think of retail traders or retail investors or retail collectors, they're all going for the cheapest possible. [00:58:47] Speaker C: Like I want to have the lowest transaction fees. [00:58:51] Speaker A: So very similar to how there were broker fees back in the day for. [00:58:55] Speaker C: Trading the stock market. It was hard for anybody to break. [00:58:58] Speaker A: In if you were a prop trader or anything like that because your fees are so expensive and you're paying one way every time like to buy and sell. And so when you think of what the NFT marketplace is right now and these and the blockchain with Ethereum, with Solana, Bitcoin, the blockchain for bitcoin wasn't. [00:59:16] Speaker C: Developed to build apps on it. It's very challenging. [00:59:19] Speaker A: It's not. That's why there are not very many. [00:59:22] Speaker C: Apps built on blockchain. [00:59:23] Speaker A: And so it's very interesting where Ethereum's value prop is in that you can. [00:59:28] Speaker C: Build applications on the blockchain. [00:59:30] Speaker A: But Solana came in and I think they got a lot of, a lot of momentum. Momentum, but they got a lot of die hard converts that now the meme coins, a lot of the meme coins that are launched are launched on Solana. So that's a huge thing because the, the volume that's being traded is going to Solana's blockchain. Now whoever the broker is or the platform, whether that's Coinbase or Uniswap or any of that, like that's irrelevant to me. But when you think of where the volume is, is at a lot of that volume is on the Solana block blockchain, which tells me it's not that they're going to be competitive with Ethereum or with Blockchain. What it tells me is that the products that come out of the Solana blockchain are going to have tremendous value. So where a lot of people, when you look at Coinbase as a brand, as a company, it went public, tremendous value. I think Cathie Wood, they put a big stake In Bitcoin, right? [01:00:27] Speaker C: Or sorry. [01:00:28] Speaker B: And coin. [01:00:29] Speaker C: Both. [01:00:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So when you look at, when you look at Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana, look at those as gatekeepers to where value is going to come out of on the back end. So, yes, you can make money on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana if you invest and hold. And I think that's sound, that's prudent. But what you have to ask is, what's the back end? How many good products are going to come out of that product? Apple is a great brand, but it creates great products that create value in an ecosystem. And so when you start to think of the meme community is massive. There are, there's so much liquidity in meme coins. So when you think of those, how are those meme coins going to interact and which one ultimately creates an ecosystem that then creates products in that meme coin ecosystem, that meme coin is going to be as valuable as Bitcoin. And so we're. [01:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, man. [01:01:30] Speaker A: Like, in a sense, you know what I'm saying? Because of the volume of the Bitcoin, of the meme coins that are available. [01:01:36] Speaker B: So drop a name, drop a name. Give me a meme. [01:01:39] Speaker A: I mean, you could say Pepe, you can say Bonk, you can say, okay, dog with hat. Like, these are silly little meme coins. [01:01:46] Speaker B: But the liquidity community of these meme coins, do you see utility value or is there any utility value? [01:01:54] Speaker A: They're, they're using them for surveys that they're doing. They'll get coins distributed to them or they'll put them in some kind of application and you could use that as a currency for the community. So it's underdeveloped. And so the same thing, like when you look at NFTs, NFT didn't. It solved a problem that didn't exist. So it's only a. Like when they came out and I originally saw NFTs, I was like, this won't last. And it's not because people don't value the nft, it's because it's not solving a problem. It's a vitamin, not a painkiller. And we don't like vitamins. So when you're, you know, from an angel investor perspective, you ask, like, what. [01:02:34] Speaker C: Problem are you solving? Are you a vitamin or a painkiller? If you're a vitamin, I'm not investing. [01:02:37] Speaker A: Because it's very unlikely that people will work with your product. Now if you're solving, you know, it's like, I have to do taxes that's a problem invested into it. You know, invest in QuickBooks. Invest in something. It's like you gotta do it. If it's like, hey, you can, I don't know, like, count your money for free. Like, I don't care, I don't care. I don't need that. So the same thing when. So just to answer your question, I think what NFTs fail to do Meme Coins will solve that problem. It's a currency that people want to hold gold. It has a cool factor to it and you can flip them around, but it doesn't. It's not supposed to have a utility where an nft, what they promised was that it would have utility, but nobody wants a utility. They want a coin. I don't need it for anything. I just want money. [01:03:32] Speaker B: It's almost like the utility is more work for the individual. Especially when you think of like onboarding process for like an NFT or all of this stuff, it's like there is work. It's. Yeah, I'm with you on that. And there's like. I'm hearing a lot of gamification. I mean, it is gamified. I say that and I say it flippantly, but I think people who, especially younger people, the ones that I talk to, recognize it as that they don't look at it as a negative thing. It's like they grew up as gamers. Understanding things in terms of gaming and leveling up just from a philosophical standpoint isn't a terrible view to have, especially in the digital age in terms terms of like developing and things of that nature. [01:04:15] Speaker C: I gotta show you this app. Yeah, go ahead. [01:04:17] Speaker B: Sure. No, no, go. That was it. [01:04:19] Speaker C: I gotta. I gotta find this app. Maybe I don't have it on this phone. No, I should. It's trading memes. [01:04:29] Speaker A: Moonshot. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Moonshot. [01:04:31] Speaker A: So moonshot. You can go there and you can see what are the top performing memes. Fart coin. Go, Luigi. Luigi's the guy that just killed the CEO. There's a meme coin. Yep. [01:04:44] Speaker B: That blows my mind. That just blows my mind because that's like this week's news and there's a meme coin. It's trading. It has relative value relative in that people are willing to speculate on what this. But what the. What the f is. [01:04:58] Speaker A: But this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. If you're not in it, right. There's a whole world that exists right now of liquidity. [01:05:06] Speaker B: Sure. [01:05:06] Speaker A: Of 15 to 30 year olds that are bananas about this shit. And that's how they communicate like that, that's like where the news would circulate in the past. Now it's a meme coin. [01:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah. This week I was listening to Jim Cramer on Squawk on the street and he was talking about how. Who the hell wants to hear him talk about Caterpillar? He's like all of these kids, all of these younger investors, it's all crypto, crypto, crypto. They don't want to hear me say like the Dow and this. They don't want to hear me talk about industrial stocks and things of that nature. And then you hear the massive transfer of wealth that's going to happen just from generation, from one generation to the next. [01:05:46] Speaker C: Guess where it's all going? [01:05:47] Speaker B: Exit. Yeah. All that money is coming into the people that you're talking about who are. [01:05:52] Speaker A: Straight to dog with hat. [01:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh my gosh. [01:05:57] Speaker A: Well, so I so like my prediction. My prediction is that the blockchains continue to increase in value, but because of the liquidity and volume that's going through that specific chain. You know, Ethereum's Ethereum, their whole thing is like they are the most. [01:06:13] Speaker C: We're the best for, for Dapps. Right. [01:06:16] Speaker A: And that's true. [01:06:17] Speaker C: And they have the biggest ecosystem. [01:06:18] Speaker A: But Solana is, they're massive with the meme coins because it's so cheap to mint into swap and all that stuff. And, and so you have to think what do people want? They want cheap, they want fast and they want it to be cool. That's it. Right. Like, I mean Tesla is. How many people invested in Tesla because it was cheap, it was fast and it was cool, not because they actually want to save humanity. If I ask 10 out of 10 people, what is Tesla's mission statement? 10 out of 10 people probably can't tell coming right. Is to accelerate the world's transition to renewable energy. People are like, what? Yeah, I don't even know. I just, I just know cybertruck. So. [01:07:00] Speaker B: Right. [01:07:00] Speaker A: You know, full, full autonomous driving. What is it? Full fad or whatever. So yeah. So I, I just, as you go through this, like my prediction, don't sleep on meme coins and don't shy away from them because of their. Because volatility. Think about them like a long term buy and hold strategy on a handful of these because the community is so strong around them and the generation that's coming up, they live and die by these. By means. [01:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I think there's a lot of insight in there, especially for older people. I almost. This is just top of my head. And it doesn't, it's just, this is total generalizations. But like, boomers are just out of the game. Like, they're not going to wrap their mind. Like, my father in law is crypto. It's all bs. They're not even. They don't care. It's not their problem. Gen x is like 5050 maybe because I'm in that generation. I have people that get it. And then I talk to people that don't, like, are kind of. [01:08:04] Speaker C: It's toe in the water. [01:08:05] Speaker A: It's toe in the water. [01:08:06] Speaker B: In the water. But then you talk to like a millennial or Gen Z, and then it's like, dude, this is the game. This is the game. [01:08:13] Speaker A: No, you gotta be up. [01:08:14] Speaker B: The puck is going. [01:08:16] Speaker A: But I'm already, I'm a millennial, like, and I'm at the tail end of the millennium, right? [01:08:20] Speaker C: Like, hey, like, I made the cut. [01:08:22] Speaker A: But even us, it's like the kids that are coming up with Gen Y or whatever, Gen Z, like, they're, they're so much faster. Like, I don't look at this every day. I mean, I'm up on it, on the market, you know, for trends and like my, what I have, where, what I'm. What my positions are. But I mean these guys live in this all day 24 7. And they. [01:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah, my son is 10 years old and he's on Fortnite and all the different gaming and the streaming, like, I've just watch him. [01:08:52] Speaker A: Yo, I'm on Fortnite too, dog. [01:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I, I kind of want to get on it. [01:08:56] Speaker A: Yo, I drop in, my son carries me. [01:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah, plays on Fortnite. He did a post. Yeah, he does like an hour Fortnite. I was like, what's your user hand handle, man? I don't know. [01:09:05] Speaker A: I know. I was like, what's his handle? Let's find him. [01:09:08] Speaker B: Bringing this up because I was playing Roblox with my son when he was like 6, 7 years old. I know it's a little early because I think it's nine plus. So like parents out there, don't, don't hold me. You know, don't, don't hold this against me. And in fact, I feel like it accelerated his learning because he was playing games, like tight, those tycoon games and where he, he's learning about how to like grow a business and he's calculating numbers and he's having to learn to read fast, fast and process quickly. But the reason I'm bringing it up because you said they live in it. And it's like he is in this world where he, like he gets an allowance from me and it's like it actually took me a while to figure out how to get my son money because there weren't traditional institutions that were allowing for transactions with younger, like, how do you give a 10 year old, how do you transfer money to a 10 year old? And like Chase, as far as the bigger institutions, because I used to bank with bank of America and then they didn't really have a product that could easily have me get money to my son. And so I wound up going with Chase because they simplified that process for me. So now I digitally transfer money to my son and when he spends that money, it's like the Gary Vee thing. He's spending his money on skins and whatever's going to give him some kind of flex in the game four Fortnite and that's how he's growing up. So eventually that's going to transition into like, that's where I even see cryptocurrencies and a lot of what you're talking about in these communities, those points in those games, that's where the transfer of. [01:10:38] Speaker A: Value is going to exactly, exactly where everyone was like, oh, NFTs are going to be the next thing in gaming. And I was like, that's not the problem that people want to solve. They don't, they don't want an NFT. [01:10:49] Speaker C: Collection that they could show. Like, here's my Fortnite skins. [01:10:52] Speaker A: Outside of Fortnite, it has no value. In Fortnite, when you drop in, if you got an OG skin, it's like, yo, I just saw a guy from season one. Like, yo, you can't get that. That skin's like, oh my gosh. Like only like three people have that skin. Like, oh my God. So the value's in the game. So. But you don't need an NFT in a game. You already have it. It doesn't solve any additional problems. So. But the currency absolutely does where you can gift Viva bucks to this guy. So technically Fortnite already has its own digital currency. It's just not on chain. So if they wanted to robust would. [01:11:30] Speaker B: Be the digital currency. But. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. [01:11:32] Speaker A: Right, so when you sit. So this is exactly what I'm saying. [01:11:35] Speaker B: Currency. [01:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah, this is exactly what I'm saying. If, if Fortnite were to take V bucks and throw it onto a Solana chain and all of the sudden, all of the sudden, sudden. So they're, they've done partnerships with Marvel with Lego with all these, they're building the, the metaverse as we know it better than anybody in the world. So imagine if they launch. [01:11:59] Speaker B: I think we'll come back into favor at some point for sure. Not now. [01:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah, Nope. Yeah, nope. There's going to be a convergence. So if, so if they launch their own blockchain, how many users do they have right next now and say, hey, all of your V bucks of the. [01:12:16] Speaker B: Fortnite, like as the Fortnite example, they'll have a built in base. [01:12:20] Speaker A: They have a built in base, built in partnerships, built in lockers, but also vbucks. All right, Imagine, imagine. Yeah, so I'm just saying is like what if you have a thousand vbucks and that automatically converted to coins, like on chain coins, and then started to be used in external applications outside. [01:12:42] Speaker B: Okay, so now I'm going to even take it and take what you're saying, which I love because it's, we're getting into like the, the, the juice of the direction things are headed because I think people have a hard time, myself included, of making the connection from this cryptocurrency world to the real world. So now you and I are building a case for where these applications are going to become increasingly more relevant and then at some point be integrated. Like Bitcoin is still only recently integrated in the sense that it's been st through the spot etf. So like these next wave of coins, the ones that maybe will have value beyond what's happening today. Right now I forget how many millions there are and of, of the millions, 99 of them are probably crap. But that 1% that could break out and then serve some kind of purpose. Like you're really building a strong case for that now with relative to the nft and you're like, okay, the nft, like what is problem is that solving this is where I see the next stage in the sense of they're already talking about like Kevin O'Leary is talking about using NFTs for watches, so they're pairing real world assets with its digital equivalent. So they're unifying that contract. [01:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's old. [01:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I know that's old news. It's old news, but it's only starting to resurge again after a couple of years of being dormant. That kind of news. [01:14:09] Speaker A: But it should have died altogether together because it doesn't solve any real world problem. Nobody has that problem. [01:14:15] Speaker B: What about like, so, like, like the real estate use case. So Grant Cardone just launched the first. He says it's the first I've seen other people do some version of this, but it's a Bitcoin real estate combination transaction, so. [01:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's not NFTs. That's smart contract. [01:14:31] Speaker B: That's different NFTs. Yeah, I know that's not enough. Yeah, I know I'm not, not educated enough to articulate this quite how I would like. But in terms of a broader stroke and the generalization of just nft, non fungible token just being like I see currency as the river, the water flowing through the circle of life. The river flows, the water circulates. That's like Bitcoin and ethereum and the different coins that are out there. This is the circulation of things happening and the NFT is the right rock in the water. It is that solid digital, non movable, like non fungible. Just kind of means like it doesn't. [01:15:17] Speaker A: It'S not, it's not. [01:15:18] Speaker B: You don't see it that way. [01:15:20] Speaker A: No, not at all. Because it doesn't. Because everything has to solve a problem. So if you try to create something that doesn't exist, people will move on. They're like, okay, that's. I don't have that problem though. You're trying to sell me on the value of something that doesn't state. [01:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, okay, here's the, here's the real estate example. I own a house. My house has a title, that title. If I was going to sell my house, I would go through escrow. The seller would have, it would take months. It would be at least the quickest I could turn around. A sale on a house is probably weeks versus months, but that would be really like every. All the ducks would have to line up in a row escrow. There's this period of like a lot of middlemen, title holders, brokers, lawyers, et cetera. The buyer, seller, agents, all of these people involved versus an nft, a digital claim that's associated with the real asset, my house. That if I wanted to sell you my house, I would, could skip all of that other part of it and just go to proof of ownership is the nft. And then I'm done. It's like, it's like me handing you to the keys to the house. You say you want to buy it. I say, oh, you like this house? You want to buy it? I'm ready to sell. Sell it. Here's the digital keys to the house. Go take it. And now. [01:16:37] Speaker A: But you wouldn't do that through an nft. You can just create a smart contract on chain. [01:16:41] Speaker C: That's not An NFT and a smart contract, once it's executed, it has variables that have to happen as soon as it's executed. Like it cuts out the middleman. So if it's like as soon as I execute this contract, disperse funds to XYZ's account. So once that happens I can't change it. [01:16:57] Speaker A: And that's on chain. And so you follow that smart contract. [01:17:00] Speaker C: You can see proof of ownership. [01:17:02] Speaker A: So if I have a D2A house, I could turn that into a smart contract on chain and I could have it execute whatever. [01:17:09] Speaker C: Like if this is sold, then this happens. [01:17:11] Speaker A: I don't need an NFT for that. An NFT is something that you can have multiples of one NFT. You can have a collection of NFTs that's. [01:17:21] Speaker C: It's like I could do a picture. [01:17:23] Speaker A: Of my house and say this is an NFT, but I could do 10. [01:17:26] Speaker C: Of that, I could do 100 of it. [01:17:28] Speaker A: And now it's not an original. It's not an original, but it's an nft, it's a collection. So. But it doesn't, it doesn't do what you're wanting it to do. That's a collectible. That's what NFT focuses were. [01:17:43] Speaker B: Yeah. My friend, he's an attorney for high net worth individuals and specifically in this arena. And I'm looking forward, I'm going to have, I'm going to be interviewing him soon. But he works with like major sports teams. Teams and so like you said, collectibles. In the past we would go to a concert and we would hold our paper ticket and then we put it in like a shoebox or something and it's like, yeah, this is my memory of I went to this concert and here's the ticket that I had for it. But now they do like NFT tickets. [01:18:10] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. That's like two years old and that part is old. [01:18:14] Speaker B: I know that part is old, but I still don't think it was the adoption. Isn't there like bitcoin is kind of old news. Bitcoin's been around since 2008, but it's like fresh and exciting again because things are happening around it. So now it's getting mainstream attention and Right. We're talking about. And it's relevant. Is there, there, there is within the realm of possibility that non fungible tokens will have some type of possible utility. I appreciate what you're saying. [01:18:39] Speaker A: Like not on this planet. [01:18:41] Speaker B: Why don't. [01:18:41] Speaker A: There's no reason for it. Nobody's going to a concert and wants to like, you know, no one's going to a concert anymore and wants to have a, wants to have a memorable thing. It's like everything, everything is trash. Everything is trash. Like, everything is so. It turns over so fast. It's like instant story. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Snapchat. I'm on TikTok. Let me, let me cast this and it's over, it's done. There's no use for it doesn't matter. Like, we don't even do selfies to post them anymore. It's just all real time. It's all like done and gone. [01:19:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm with you on that. That's a whole nother, Honestly, that is a whole nother conversation. And then we're getting philosophic because that answers a whole bunch of like existential, like that becomes like an existential crisis. Man, I always love having you on. I always know we're going to go longer than expected. So this time I was like, you know, let's do like a 30 minute talk. We're an hour and a half and I'm thinking, max, an hour. An hour and a half in long form is awesome. Definitely going to be talking to. Yeah, me too, man. I'm going to be talking more with you about this kind of stuff and it'll be interesting to see where we go because I think these, they're clearly ongoing conversations. We're, we are still in the infancy of what is happening. People say, oh man, bitcoin went from a dollar to a hundred thousand dollars. I missed the boat. But if you think in terms of the longer thesis on bitcoin, which is the reserve currency, it still has a long way to catch up to gold. Not reserve currency, reserve. And it's not even store value. It's whatever spec, whatever you think of gold. Bitcoin is like that digital equivalent that is seems to be the strongest running narrative. And that's the one where it's says bitcoin can catch up to the market cap of gold. Which means bitcoin has a lot of room to run from here. The first cycle I went through, I heard that statement. It's like, oh man, you know, bitcoin went from a dollar to $60,000. How am I still early? How am I still early? And it's like you're still early because if your target is a million plus, then okay, you're going to wish you bought more bitcoin when bitcoin's a million dollars now, when I say a million dollars. We're talking decades out from now. I'm not talking about this cycle or next cycle or who knows what cycle it's going to happen, happen. But the people who are holding on and holding onto that narrative are banking on that happening. And that's why they tell people you're still early, you're still early. Yeah, it's run up thousands and thousands of percent, but we're still early in this game relative to those variables that I'm talking about. So you and I, we will, we'll have this, we will continue this conversation. I always appreciate you spending time with me and Bondica if you're in hungry and do you want any final thoughts before we close it out? [01:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean just going back to. [01:21:31] Speaker C: Trading, I mean this is an investment show, right. So for retail traders, anybody who's listening to this, I think what will be beneficial is over the next few conversations that we have is to talk about a little bit of strategy, a little bit of time frames, a little bit of like when we talk about prop trading or day trading and to set, you may talk about that on the other shows but happy to talk about some of, of like the technical side of trading and if we want to look at some charts and stuff like that, like I'm also open to it. I do think though that this is very relative. When you think of tokens, you think of crypto, you think of blockchain, you think of these big companies. There's a shift from ETFs and the traditional market in a sense and a generational shift to our digital native children and teens that are very meme driven and have a different appetite where they're growing up with tap to pay. We grew up with paper bills and a transition to cards. And so like their, their understanding of currency is not tang, it's non tangible but it doesn't mean it's NFTs. I think it's tokens, it's tokenization that solves a problem when they get into the mainstream use cases. And so the, the final thing I'll say is make a note of this. I think in the next three years you're gonna see one major player make a jump like a Starbucks or a. [01:22:53] Speaker A: Coca Cola or an Apple that's very. [01:22:57] Speaker C: Much, you know, launched Apple pay. [01:22:58] Speaker B: Microsoft that recently turned down Bitcoin on their balance sheet. [01:23:02] Speaker C: They are dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs. [01:23:04] Speaker A: But I, but I think that one of them will make a, make a change that has a user base that's. [01:23:09] Speaker C: On a recurring revenue or A preloaded card cost concept with an application in. [01:23:14] Speaker A: A broad reach globally that will flip. [01:23:16] Speaker C: Their currency into a digital currency where. [01:23:18] Speaker A: You can use it to pay for. [01:23:21] Speaker C: Other items and they're going to take a piece of the transaction fee and of liquidity. [01:23:25] Speaker A: So that will be a turning point. [01:23:27] Speaker C: For society and an adoption rate for, for tokenization that solves a real world. [01:23:34] Speaker A: Problem for people that already use their put their money in that company company's account and has Starbucks Stars coins v. Bucks. Any of that that's we're already conditioned for it. [01:23:46] Speaker C: It's just not realized. [01:23:47] Speaker A: And so just pay attention to that because there's gonna be and look at any company that has their own storage for your money and an application for that money in a broad reach like Starbucks that could potentially innovate and flip your money into a digital currency that. [01:24:06] Speaker C: Has application outside side of their ecosystem. [01:24:10] Speaker A: For broader reach for them and liquidity. [01:24:12] Speaker C: Options as well as for you to. [01:24:14] Speaker A: Have a broader, a stronger buy in to their brand where it may be. [01:24:17] Speaker C: Waning and that will increase their ETF price in the market. So just something to think about that. [01:24:24] Speaker B: And I was, I was taking notes. [01:24:25] Speaker C: So there you go. [01:24:26] Speaker B: I hope for our listeners that you got some value from this episode because I certainly did. I took notes. I'm always learning something when I have these calls with Ando and I love having him on and I hope you enjoy these as well. And we will catch you on the next episode of the Money Adjustment. [01:24:45] Speaker C: Thanks. Bye. [01:24:48] Speaker B: Thank you for watching this episode of the Money Adjustment. If you want more like comment and subscribe, you can follow me on X at Mark Cramer until the next episode. Stay healthy and wealthy.