Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Bitcoin is the first thing that we finally have the technology to engineer money. We've never made money. Now where people get confused is they think, oh, well, currency is money. Well, currency is not money. Currency is just a political issued debt instrument that's good for a current, like a river, like electricity. It's great. I made some money because I painted that barn. I need to quickly get this food, pay this electricity, pay this gas, put gas in my car. That's it. But what do you do with the excess energy that you put into an economy by painting that barn? You need to be able to store that somehow in a battery. Well, if you have a battery that leaks, that's not money. Because the definition of money is store of value. So if it leaks, it's a currency. So everything that people think are monies are currencies. Until we had bitcoin. Bitcoin is now proof of money.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Hello, 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.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: I spun up 12 words for you and I threw over some bitcoin on it. And I'm going to give you on this podcast those 12 words so I can show you how amazing this technology works and how important it is to have those 12 words. It's going.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: It's going now. I just hit start. Did you have. You didn't have anything recorded on your end, did you? I don't know. Oh, did it not go, I'm going to kill myself, man. Like, not literally, but it's like when.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: You have the phone and you think you're recording and then that was so good.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: And I'm not gonna have a damn thing.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Now that I know we'll do an advance, I'll do something that'll be fun for the audience too, where I send you 12 words. Because I'll have you pop in 12 words on your phone just to show how quick bitcoin moves and how it's all about the words.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Oh, that would be amazing. That's a good idea. That would be really cool.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: I'm Gonna give you 12 words to write, and I just want you to type the word return. Type the word return. Type the word. Just down a column. Okay. And the audience can hear these words too. So they're gonna get to verify this. If they're watching this, they can download Blue Wallet. When you're listening to this, you can literally Import these words and you will see the transaction. You'll know the exact time, the exact block. I sent this bitcoin to these 12 words. And you're going to see if Mark ends up moving these 12 words or leaves them for you. Maybe the first listener to this will grab the bitcoin that's in this 12 word wallet. Because remember, whoever has the 12 words has the bitcoin, you see? So right now, I'm the only one that has the 12 words. I'm the only one. But right now, by me giving you 12 words, now we both have the bitcoin. And because cryptography supersedes legality, we both have it. Okay, ready? Here's the first word. Carbon. C, A, R, B, O, N. So.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Now I forgot what I was even gonna say. I was like, I wanna make sure I hit record. So I get what I was gonna say. And then I forgot what I was gonna say. Yes. So I'll bring. I'll bring the audience up to speed. It's my guest today, Terence Michael. I had a great conversation with him. I think it was exactly seven days ago today.
Yeah, so we had a great conversation on the topic of self custody, which Terence Michael is an expert. It was a.
I think we found solutions to world peace and making sure that everybody was financially secure. But I forgot to record it, so. And I don't remember what we said. So none of that information is going to be out.
But Terrence was gracious enough to come back and do this again with me. And it was actually good because so like to bring people up to speed here, I got the Trezor. And actually when I first had you on, which was seven days ago now, it wasn't opened. I opened it on that episode so that that dramatic effect is gone. So I. So here's the actual treasure. I have it in my hand. And I got the bitcoin one, so you can get one for. That's all cryptocurrency or whatever they allow. And then you could get one that's specifically for bitcoin, which is the one I got. And I was appreciative of what Terrence had advised me, which he is going to do again for everybody's benefit here. But it did help me as I was going through the process, because as I mentioned on the last episode, one that no one saw, that I keep referring to, I had been interested in bitcoin for a long time, mostly as an observer up until 2020. And then in 2020, I decided to take a small position on coinbase and that position got larger. And then I do what I imagine a lot of people do is I sold too soon.
I saved a little bit because I was like, this is a long term play. I just trimmed more than I wish I trimmed. But here we are 2025, and after having conversations with Darkside 2030 and Joe Kalassari having those conversations, I was like, I think I need to do self custody. So actually understand what it is that I'm investing in. And this was. Well, last week was now the first week that I ventured into that I got the Trezor. I had not set it up yet. I went through this advisory process with Terrence, which we're going to go through today, and we are going to get to it. And I'm going to have to break up my long monologue here. But I, since that time, did put a little bit of bitcoin onto my Trezor wallet. So now I have self custody, some bitcoin. The other interesting thing for me personally was that questions arose because having not talked to Terence the first time, I didn't even know what questions I would have. And then talking to him, I was more comfortable actually going through the process of doing self custody. And now I have even qu. I have now fresh questions. Because when you do things for the first time, that's when the real questions start to happen. So without further ado, let me bring the guest of honor here, Terrence Michael. So, Terrence, first off, say hello to everybody.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Hello. Yeah, let's. Let's have a self custody episode. I think it's helpful for everybody, and I think everyone should learn it. And I love that you have dove in and jumped into it. But like, everyone, everyone has questions because as simple as it is, it's. It's new and it's, you know, just like learning how to use your iPhone or learn how to drive. At first it's like, wow, what am I doing?
So, yeah, let's go through it. We. I love talking self custody.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: I was glad you said that last time. Cause I'm like, I'm gonna have him talk it again. I'm gonna want you to just present it to me as if I was doing it the first time. But before we do that, I did this with you last time. I asked you last time, had you groked yourself?
And your answer was no. Because every time I asked somebody that, they're like, they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I recently had on Weisberger and I asked him if he groked himself.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Great guy.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: He's like, yeah, I did. He's awesome. And he did some to start talking something about Pokemon or something. And I guess he was thinking about it in just a general AI kind of way. So anyways, I always have a fun response when I do these with people. So I want to do this again for Terence and I actually upped it because it will update. So the last one I did for you, this is a new one. Now I think the theme is the same because if you're authentic in the same person you are, which you are, you're going to get a similar response. But this is, this is what we have for Terence. Michael Proof of Money at Proof of Money on X. So Proof of Money, a bitcoin evangelist with a knack for real estate champions self custody and sees bitcoin as a shield against financial theft, preaching its virtues with meme fueled fervor.
Proof of Money's diving deep into bitcoin's fixed supply, debating quantum risks and rallying crypto fans for tacos and talks.
The X community praises Roof of Money for their insightful Bitcoin content, with the humble bitcoiner or humble bitcoiner calling the work brilliant and Bach and Hodl lauding their book as the best and easiest on bitcoin.
So this, that was actually good. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive into that too for one second. But before I do that, this is a tweet that they have highlighted for you. Terr.
Bitcoin is the biggest no brainer.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Self explanatory, I guess on that one.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think clearly bitcoin takes learning, but it's a no brainer in that if people don't understand it at first but just want to look at it and view it only as an asset at first, to me it's much, much more than an asset. And this is where people get wrong and where they don't go deep enough with bitcoin. But if you just want to view it as an asset, math is a no brainer. You can't argue with math. And if you want to look at it mathematically, it performs better than any asset in history, any other asset on the planet, the fastest growing ETFs, over 200 public institutions, every nation state. And just look at a graph. We have an 86% CAGR over the last 10 years. That's compound annual growth rate, which means that even when we've had these 70 and 80% drawdowns on average, every year is still 86%. Not 86% over 10 years. 80%. 86% each year of the last 10 years.
So you can't ignore that. And that's why I say it's a no brainer. I guess it takes a brain to realize that certain numbers are higher than others. So that's what I mean by no brainer.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Your book. Because that was, I thought, a cool comment that somebody made that it was one of the best ones. In terms of understanding bitcoin in general, I'm guessing. Do you want to briefly touch on that?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Sure. You know, there's a lot of bitcoin books, I mean, still pales in comparison to how many tradfi and legacy finance, you know, economics and trading books and whatnot we have. There's still a few, but within the community it seems like there's a lot. And for the most part, it doesn't really matter which book you pick up. We all are explaining the principles and the fundamentals and the main attributes of bitcoin, but we all have different ways of doing it.
And the bitcoin community is still so small that the majority of those books either read a little bit too much like a textbook or are coming from people who aren't writers. And that's a big deal. Like, you want the reading experience to be enjoyable, you need things to resonate, and you want to be able to understand it. So all I would say is, and I don't think my book is necessarily better than any other book, but I am a writer first. This is what I do. I write. I've written lots of books, write for Hollywood. I produce 20 movies, 30 TV shows. It's like, this is what I do. I know how to message and tell stories and craft narratives. And so that's what I wanted to do with my book. And I've titled it Proof of Money. Because for me, the main thesis is that bitcoin is finally proof. We've been searching our entire lives and it's finally proof. Here it is, that we have money. We have never throughout history, ever had money. We have had substitutes. We've had surrogates. We've had whatever we could pick up and find, from tobacco to feathers, to hides, to shells, to salt, to stones, to beads and whatever we can pick up.
Gold being the best. For 5,000 years, we humans have said, well, this will be money. Because we're looking for the hardest thing for people to make, to fake or take. And when you have to work hard for your money, then it becomes somewhat fair. And gold. You can't just make it. Alchemists have tried, but, you know, you have to dig it up. Bitcoin has perfected that. Bitcoin is the first thing that we finally have the technology to engineer money. We've never made money. Now where people get confused is they think, oh, well, currency is money. Well, currency is not money. Currency is just a political issued debt instrument that's good for a current, like a river, like electricity. It's great.
I made some money because I painted that barn. I need to quickly get this food, pay this electricity, pay this gas, put gas in my car. That's it. But what do you do with the excess energy that you put into an economy by painting that barn? You need to be able to store that somehow in a battery. Well, if you have a battery that leaks, that's not money. Because the definition of money is store of value. So if it leaks, it's a currency. So everything that people think are monies are currencies.
Until we had bitcoin. Bitcoin is now proof of money. We have cryptographically made money because it will contain your energy finitely into the future so that you can save and you can live in a need based economy rather than a desire based economy that distorts the way you show up in the world because you're doing more jobs, you're chasing things that you don't want to do. And people are migrating to wherever the action is and the narratives are taken away from what they should be. Like you, who you're a doctor. And it's like, well, what if you suddenly have to go sell real estate or be a day trader? Because that's where all the money's flowing, you know, and bitcoin allows us to show up as who we want to be because it can do what it's supposed to do. It's money. That was a very long answer.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: No, but I, man, I love it. I love those long answers because they make for great clips. There's always like real gems in there. Your being a writer is exemplary in the way that you speak. I can tell you take. You just took me on a little visual journey there. It's profound. It really is profound. And I, and I was thinking for this episode, I'm like, well, this will be good because we're going to keep it on the level of self custody, which can be just technical and not overly complicated. And we are definitely going to get to that because that's why I have you on. But it's hard not to get into these deeper conversations and start looking at some of the macro phenomena that's happening. And it brings it to why self custody is relevant. Thinking about this, as you were speaking, saying what you were saying, it's this frustration with despite even doing the right things, and maybe you're investing in equities, or let's take the classic one now, which just makes a lot of sense for most people, is the idea of a house being the main asset that people have. But even as your home values go up, hopefully they're going up. Most home values go up. You're barely keeping pace with inflation and you're measuring the value of your home by a denominator that's infinite.
So to me, the idea that bitcoin is a finite asset, there's only 21 million that are going to be created. And that's where we get into this perfect math phenomenon. You can follow the trajectory in mathematical terms of why we can only get to 21, why it's going to happen over a certain period of time, why there's this protocol built around it, why there is now this time tested ecosystem built around it. So there is something real here. So like when I hear bitcoin and I when you talk to, it's a weird term, I don't love it because I feel like this term, but like a normie, when you talk to a normie and they're just like, yeah, but what is it? And then I go, well, it's decentralized. And as soon as you say decentralized, it's like, already they're lost. They're like, none of this means anything to me. But the deeper the rabbit hole you go down, you see that what I just described, that there is this ecosystem, there is an opportunity here where through self custody, through taking ownership of your own money, I hear this and I'm starting to internalize it more and more. I can't even say that I fully embraced it. Is that here's your exit strategy. This is your exit strategy off of all of the problems that Terence and I just illuminated here. And so, Terrence, what is your introduction to self custody for the new person?
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Well, if you don't mind, I think I can dovetail a lot of what you just said into self custody and it might help people understand bitcoin a little bit better. So unfortunately, on one hand, bitcoin is tradable and has a price.
And so people think that is all bitcoin is. And so when they think that that's all it is, it's really hard to Grasp. It's like, well, where's the company? Who's the CEO? Where's the cash flow? What do they do?
Who's backing it? Right? Because those are the questions we have to ask with investable assets in the traditional world. And we have to invest in the traditional world because there is no savings we can't save. We just talked about this earlier. Our battery leaks, our energy leaks. There's nothing to contain it. So if we want to hurdle the rate of inflation, hurdle the rate that new money comes into the supply, we have to take risks with all these investments. So that's why we ask these questions. Where's the cash flow? Who's the company? Blah, blah, blah.
If people would step back, forget about bitcoin the asset for a second.
Because bitcoin ultimately is a protocol, and a lot of people haven't seen new protocols in a long time. So if they think of writing, writing is a protocol. Everyone in the world, they own writing. It's a communication and coordination language. We can express value by writing and by speaking.
That's a protocol.
It's just out there in the wild. Everyone owns it. Fire, gravity, the Internet, all of these things are largely decentralized and democratized. They're available for everyone. They can build on top of it. You can build on the formula of the wheel and make a race car wheel or a stone to churn butter. You can. With fire, you can harness it and make rockets and firepower and the military.
But it also, you know, heats homes and keeps people safe. Bitcoin, the protocol has simply decentralized and democratized value.
The Internet, decentralized and democratized information, right? Because it dematerialized books and music and documents and photos and everything that we do has migrated into the digital world. As the digital world evolves, but the Internet left out value. We have never had that. We have a credit and debit system where you have to trust a company to say, mark, you have this much money, but they can stop you, confiscate you, deplatform you. You know, PayPal has, you know, if you own a gun store, PayPal has gotten rid of you. If you have a marijuana store, they've got, if you're in the adult business, whatever it's like.
So value has been left out.
Bitcoin, the protocol, has given that value to everyone. So that anyone, anywhere in the world, no matter who they are, race, class, sex, gender, geography, it makes no difference. It sees no lines in sand because like a calculator, it can't even know who you are.
It allows you to transfer your value again, that wealth storage that because you've provided to an economy in the past, you provided that value. And now you have that authentication token, you have that receipt and say, I want to use this 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
Bitcoin allows you to do that at any point in time because your money's not expiring. All of our political currencies expire. If I don't spend it today, it's going to be that much more tomorrow and that much more in two years and that much more in 10 years.
So Bitcoin allows you, anybody to transfer that value to anyone, including your future self, which I will argue is the most important utility and aspect of Bitcoin without the need for a third party, without having to trust a third party, because Bitcoin distributes the trust over hundreds of thousands of people.
So now this is where it dovetails into self custody.
Fire is out there, but you bring it into your home. You want to own the fire so that you can use the fire. You want to own the ability to write, so you don't have to hire someone to write or tell someone to write or dictate or whatever. You want to be able to write, you want to be able to use the Internet. Yes, you log on, but for the most part, and most parts of the world, it really is free for anyone to just access.
But you want to bring that into your home.
That is sort of a good analogy for self custody. And so when you're talking about your wealth, when you're talking about your money, which is everything, that is your life force, the representation of your life force is money. If you go do anything that gets translated to you in money. Because we're not in a barter system. At the end of the day, you're not going to say, I can hunt and you can build houses, so let me trade, because now you have that double coincidence of wants trying to find someone who has an equal trade for you. And if you need someone to bake a cake for your daughter, and you can't find someone who bakes a cake who wants what you do because you make knives, you're stuck.
So that's what money has always solved.
We've just never had it perfectly until we've had Bitcoin. This is the whole idea of why you want to self custody, because you want to have access to that when you need it and as long as you want it. And having to trust anybody else is just the same as the fiat system. If you're going to trust a bank, if you're going to trust a brokerage, then you don't have sovereignty over what you have. They can take it, they can rehypothecate it, they can do all kinds of fancy stuff that we see that happens in traditional banking. And if you don't want people to get fancy with your money, and you want to know that it's your money whenever you want it, that is the big idea. That is the killer app of Bitcoin. The killer app is self custody.
Not everyone has to do it, but they are. They don't have the utility of it. They have a sticker of a gun on their window rather than the actual gun. And the sticker of the gun will work for some people because it keeps people out of their house. Hey, I have a gun. Don't bother me. It's like, okay, that kind of works. But man, if someone does come into your house, you're going to wish you had the actual utility of the gun, right? You want to have your wife, not a picture of your wife.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. Wow. Yeah, you. You spark questions. And you also. I think I have to stop myself from doing this because I want to go into macro of it because what you're describing, even that, that almost. It almost sounds like a mad Maxian scenario every time I hear this. This version of the story where it's like you need to hold on to something. I don't know how it plays into the algorithm to use the word gun, but just if you have that thing that you're worried about using sometime in the future, that just happens to be a strong anchor for like, it's a strong emotional charge for people to get them to pay attention.
Sometimes I find myself like, if we're in the Mad Max scenario, then why will any of it matter?
Why will any of it matter?
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Okay, well, first of all, I don't think anyone should be holding in self custody because of a Mad Max situation. I am not a prepper. People are going to want bullets if we're ever in a Mad Max situation. To me, the whole self custody thing is just. It's good for the network, it's good for you if you have to flee depending where you live and you're not in a privileged jurisdiction. There's an authoritarian regime or you're disenfranchised. You want to be able to move in the middle of the night, move with your, your money, your wealth. You can memorize 12 words in your head. You can escape abuse, you can escape Torture.
There's also no friction. You're able to port your money without confiscation, without surveillance, without censorship. And so if you believe in freedom and if you believe in permissionlessness of your past energy, that's the idea of self custody. And when you self custody, you become yet another vote in the network for what you believe in, which starts to add to consensus when you run a node that's getting a little too detailed. But my point is Bitcoin is not insurance. And I know that some people in traditional finance call that insurance, and I see why, because they still view it as an asset, as part of their portfolio. But I would argue that Bitcoin is the upgrade. It's not insurance, it's the upgrade. And here's what I mean.
When PDF software came out, we don't keep our fax machine in the closet just in case PDF software goes out like, or vice versa. Right. It's not. That's not insurance. Right. Same when the iPhone came out. The iPhone came out. I got rid of the dial and the rotary phone. I don't keep that in the closet saying, well, if my iPhone goes out, I want to keep this for insurance.
So it really is the upgrade. We've migrated to something that's better, that's more efficient, and it's finality of settlement. A lot of people don't realize that, you know, when you're on Venmo or PayPal or even a wire, there's no finality of settlement for days, sometimes weeks. It's just a credit system. Like you're going into a bar and you're saying, hey, put that on my tab. But this is finality. So when we had gold and gold was money, before the telegraph came along, we had finality at the same time as physicality. Meaning I'm going to walk over on my donkey to your house, Mark, and I'm going to give you, you know, some gold and you give me what I need for that and I'm going to go back on my donkey. And it happens the same time because I'm carrying it and I'm coming to you. But once we got the telegraph and these communication systems and suddenly we could send a communication halfway across the world within seconds. And we'd say, well, I'm to going to pay two bars of gold for that. Well, now it's going to take two months and security, all this friction and money to get the gold over there. So we started this credit system and of course when you have that kind of credit system and this happens in the banks literally every second. That's when malfeasance surfaces and malicious actors come on board, and that's when they're rehypothecated and take advantage of your money. And this is why we see banks fail.
So I don't think it's a Mad Max situation. That to me is more of a currency thing. I'm just talking money, meaning all the excess money that you don't need for a long time, you got to put it somewhere and you can't keep it in your savings account. So are you going to put it in a house and now have to become a landlord? Are you going to put it in a piece of artwork and have to become an art curator? What are you going to put it in? Or become a day trader with stocks? I don't want to do all that because I want to show up with my skills, and so I get to peacefully just put it in Bitcoin. Because now there's a savings technology. We engineered a perfect pristine savings technology. We've never had a savings technology.
We've had something that leaks. And so we have to take risks to hurdle that leak. And it's like, you know, inflation and the money coming in is like this river going down and where this salmon swimming upstream. And so, yeah, salmon might swim six miles an hour, but if the stream's coming down at eight miles an hour, well, we're losing two miles an hour. It's like we think we're going in somewhere, but we're not. And so some salmon never make it up to the top. And that's kind of where unfortunately, a lot of people are, because it's a vector. And for the 1% and the people that are at the top of the funnel when money pours in, because they're tied to the government or they're the head of corporations, and these corporations buy or the government buys their stock, they get to ride in line with inflation, they get to benefit the cantillion effect, they get to benefit from all the money up there. But most of the world, the wage earners, the people that can't afford assets or don't have the privilege to get into them because they're not accredited investors, they're not qualified investors, they don't have the amount for a deposit on a house.
They are stuck there with the wages. So the prices of things are going up while the prices of assets are going up even higher. And so they can never get that. And that's why the youngest generations right now, they can't afford a House till they're maybe 40 or 50, which is crazy to think about.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I, yeah, where we landed reminds me of my kids because I have three kids, one in every generation and I think about them in terms of what is it going to be like for them to buy a house. M Gen X. It felt it was challenging enough for me, but I was fortunate to be able to do it. And it came with its own challenge and I get.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: And, and it was tougher than your parents, your parents got a house easier that way.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. My.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: You got it easier than the next generation and so on.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: My father in law, they love to tell the story how they, they bought their first house for like $30,000 and then it appreciated in values like almost double within a couple years. And then they were able to get into the house that they're currently in now and it's just like this incredible story.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Put that on a line against the money supply and it's identical. Yeah, the house. Right. Because the, the house, the value of the house has not gone up, the value of the dollar has gone down. And so that's all, that's all that's happening. And so it's great if you can own a house because you can remain in line.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Every time I hear somebody talk about, oh, house is a bad investment, you should definitely sell your house or it shouldn't be your primary. Like I feel like, oh, they just want to get my money. Like I, like I, it's not that simple. But then I think to myself, because of what you just said, like I'm starting to have that realization. I'm like, I'm not growing here. The real value isn't there because the dollar is being depreciated. So in terms of purchasing power, if my house double doubles in a year, but inflation goes double, not in a year, but in whatever time period it doubles and inflation doubles. I didn't do anything and I had all the headaches and all of the responsibility and all the outpayment. It's not like you ever really own your house because you still pay taxes, you still pay for all the services that come into your home. So there's still a lot of expenses.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Ownership in a home is just rebranded.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Yes. So, so let me tie it back in because I love that you called me out on the insurance thing because I think people's minds do go there and I think you had a response ready because it's the, not the first time you've heard that or seen people think about it in that way.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: And yeah, it's an upgrade.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: It's an upgrade. And you brought up like it's not the Mad Max scenario, which I think people sometimes when you hear about, oh, you got a story, because you never know you're going to be in this dire situation, things are going to happen. Yeah, it's not necessarily the Mad Max scenario in that regard, but it my understanding, my little like epiphany moment was the network aspect of it. What gives you confidence is that you're in a peer to peer network, peer reviewed. I think this is why I appreciate a lot of this so much and am able to draw into it is what I do professionally is peer review for work comp cases. So I'm evaluating medical records and I'm just navigating disputes between medical providers. So it's not about one person being smarter than the other, it's about what are the laws and what's the interpretation. And that's like I can get into medicine and I'm a chiropractor, but I understand, I work with medical doctors, I work in the healthcare system. And so I understand a lot of how the sausage gets made, which I'm not going to get into all of that. Yeah, it's the peer to peer evaluation. I do peer to peer. So I understand the value of having a peer to peer network. And then when I think about money and this is, that's the aspect of decentralization which is so compelling is that it's not a hierarchy of somebody dictating or demanding of you or telling you what you should and should not do. It's actually growing up from a parent because a parent could be that to a child. So it's not necessarily a terrible thing. But we find ourselves in these power situations where it's like when you grow up, you don't want the authority to tell you as a grown person who's had enough life experience to appreciate what is and what is of not of true value to always be pressuring you. So in a sense, kind of like the positive aspect of self custody is what they say, self sovereignty, self custody. You get to control how it's distributed it and what you're talking about is really a future thing. I'm only now starting to catch a vision of what the future that bitcoiners see, but it is a compelling future where you're not transferring through third party, but you're transferring individual to individual and you can trust the transaction because it's peer reviewed by the whole community.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, Another way to think about self custody Outside of the Mad Max thing, is that we live in a world where legality is the top functioning governor. It's like, what does the law say?
No one wants to go to prison or whatever.
So this can mean different things to different people. But with Bitcoin, cryptography supersedes legality.
Now, you can think about that how you want, but if the definition of owning something and if you look it up, it is that no one can take it from you. That's what ownership means.
You really don't own anything.
Anyone can come in and break into your house, they can take your gold in many parts of the world, they'll take your house, they'll take your wife, whatever, depending where you live.
And the government, of course, if you're not paying your rent, but it has been rebranded as property taxes in the county that you live in, Bitcoin, no one can take it from you. And if they kill you, they absolutely can't take it from you. They need your words. They need your password to get your bitcoin. And so it's a beautiful thing to think about. And again, I'm not implying that this is for bad actors, but bitcoin is for good people, for bad people, it really is for anyone.
But if something bad happens, the law isn't necessarily always on the right side of the moral compass. Depending what the situation is, is. It's up to you. It's up to you. It's a bare asset. If you have your keys, you have your bitcoin. Now, the law might say you owe this person or give this to that person. Okay. That you have to reconcile because you do live in meatspace, but you also have your bitcoin.
So it's something to think about, right? Like, I'm not implying anything but that there's use cases based on that.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, wow. You know what just just came to my mind so vividly? Did you read Atlas Shrugged? Are you. Have you read Atlas Shrugged?
[00:33:50] Speaker A: I'm very familiar with it, but I didn't read it.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: So, I mean, I do love.
No problem.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: No, no, no, no problem. So, like, I'm gonna preface this with a spoiler alert because.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think I probably already know the spoil, but go ahead in.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: The end, which is great. But if you haven't read it, not you personally, but like, the broader you. The general audience, if you haven't read Atlas Shrugged yet, I don't know if you will.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: It's a.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: It's a thousand plus pages, and you really have to be in a certain place to want to dig through that in today's day and age. But what was evoked in me is the way that book ends is. And this is. I haven't read it in 10 or 20 years, but the visual of it was so strong in my mind that it's. You really just awoke that imagery in my head. And it's. It's the main character, John Galt, who is that entrepreneurial businessman. Yeah, Galt's Gulch, like Darkseid. I mean, that's like he's basing his Persona around that. And so it's like this man is strapped to a machine that of his own creation. He created the machine and he's being strapped to it by people who want to take something from him, and they don't know how to use the machine to do it.
And so, like, that's the profound moment in that book where you have. That's the visceral essence of self sovereignty. It speaks exactly what you're talking about. It's something that if they kill you, they kill it so it can't be taken through death.
And like you said, it doesn't mean be a bad actor. I like that term you use. You have to live in the meat space. We're still meat. So, like, you still have to be in a real world where there are laws and there are rules. So it's not evading that reality.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: But it's creating a network of people who have a appreciation and a certain shared perspective and a certain agreement and a certain understanding and a certain trust among members of the community.
And you don't have to change anything about who you are, other than you want to exchange in means that the community understands.
Yeah, that's what gives anything true value.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: So, yeah, so many people know who Hal Finney is, even if they aren't deep into bitcoin. He received the first 10 Bitcoin from Satoshi himself. And many will argue that he is part of the team who, quote, unquote, is Satoshi. He's there from the very beginning.
So he passed and he also cryogenically froze his head.
He is of the belief that the technology will advance someday where his head can be put onto another body. So his head is frozen somewhere up in Northern California.
So let me ask, ask you this, and this is somewhat rhetorical.
He understands Bitcoin and cryptography just about as well as anybody.
What if he memorized his seed phrase? What if he memorized his words?
And okay, so people think he died and his bitcoin is gone. Yeah. So what happens when he comes back and his head's put on and he's memorized his words and now he has his bitcoin? His bitcoin is still with him. And this, you know, as sci fi as that is, this is the big idea of self custody. And as far as passing through generations and whatnot and passing on to your kids, like, even if something happens to you, as long as you can get that seed phrase to them, those seed words, that's it. That's everything. And no bank, no government, nobody, no central bank can stop you, because they can't stop words.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I bet. I love that. I consider myself a writer and a storyteller. My own version, I do utilization review professionally. But it's writing. It's one of the things I love about it. Somehow I got to evolve from just having my knowledge as a doctor and being able to use that in a writing capacity, which for me is a dream job. Yeah, that's a dream job for me. So. But I. I'm like, how personal do I want to get here? Because.
Because I. A couple things came to mind, and I'm. I. And you're the. You're the person to talk these things through with. One is. Is using the Hal Finney analogy. You're not the first person to mention him. And I remember watching a documentary knowing that he was the actual. He received bitcoin from Satoshi. So that's his, like, entry into the. Let's. Let's just call it.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: And his neighbor just blocks away from him. Yeah, his neighbor, just who lived blocks away from him, was named Satoshi Nakamoto. Just a little tidbit for you.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Like I said, you never continue on so much depth. There's so much you can't. You're always learning something. So, like, I think about passing my. My bitcoin to my heirs, my children, to. Because that's like when you're saving money into the future. You're not assuming, though you brought it up, the severed head analogy, where, man, there's a chance, my. Somehow my brain, that one place where I can keep that seed phrase. Like, that's the last thing I'm going to remember. So, like, that came to mind. So I think about, like, passing my wealth to the next generation, but I also think about how I actually came into my wealth. And this is the part that becomes personal.
Hopefully this will be good for whoever views this. Fortunately, my audience isn't that big right now, so maybe I can be a little bit more vulnerable because people aren't going to see it anyways. But I inherited my money. Like I was month to month like most people are. I always tried to put money aside. I did everything that I thought I was supposed to do. I got my doctorate, I opened up a practice, I managed practices. I did what I was supposed to do professionally to earn a living and be able to buy a house and do all of these things.
And I never felt wealth.
Maybe I'll just say it that way because people can relate to the struggle. But until you feel wealth, you don't know.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: If you don't own your time, you're not wealthy.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: My parents were middle class.
You know, my mom was a nurse's aide. My father worked various different jobs. And so it was never like I didn't know, even though I was an only child. And my parents always did the most they could for me, which was always great. So I didn't, I'm not putting in a way that I wasn't. Didn't have blessings, but I had that. What I feel like is a reality for a lot of Americans. So I have a recurring dream since my parents passed. So like when my mom passed, my father was still alive, but when my mom passed, I felt like all of the blood left my body. I don't know if anybody's lost a parent or if you have your parents or not, but when my mother. What's that?
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no, not yet. Fortunately.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Yeah, fortunately, yeah, yeah.
When my mom passed, it was like all the blood drained from my body and I just felt lifeless. Lifeless.
And then I used that because when I thought of the money that all of a sudden I went from month to month to all of the money that parents had saved over time through annuities, through various different assets, they had little bit they were able to accumulate some wealth that they could pass down because that's part of this is like that legacy component of it.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: So I had this feeling of like all of a sudden all of that blood was replaced with money. And all of a sudden I just, I had a whole new set of problems and I anticipated this. So I knew my mom was coming towards her end of life. And so years prior to started to like get, try to get as many things in order as I could. They had multiple accounts, I was always on the phone with people and I started that years in advance. And I'm an only child, I'm an only child, so I didn't have the complexities of having siblings to even have to manage that with. And my in laws seeing what I went through with my parents to access the money. So it's not like, oh, your parents left you a ton of money and then the next day your bank account is full of money. It's like an institution. And I'm losing money left and right because I'm paying lawyers, I'm paying attorneys. I'm. I'm dealing with numbers I'm not used to dealing with in my day to day life.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Bitcoin solves all that.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Yes. Well, so I'll get to the part.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Sorry, keep going.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's a long way to build up to what your story evoked, which is the nightmare that I have now is that, like I get this recurring dream where my parents are still alive.
And then they come to me and they say, where's the, where's the money? Do you have our money? And I'm like, oh, my God, I bought. I bought bitcoin. I invested in this. I put the money all over bitcoin.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: You still have there.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: That was good, right? So that maybe my mom will be happy about that part of it.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: But I only thought of it because I was like, wow, that kind of gives my dream even a higher. It even, even illuminates more of it for me. Because then I think to myself, Hal Finney severed his head. To be able to do that. Like, I'm sure maybe if my mom had that available to her, both the will to want to do it and the means to be able to do it, she might have severed her own head so that she didn't lose that money. So then I think to myself, as an heir, or as a future heir, like me passing it down to the next generation, what happens? This is so. I went so off track, but you're the writer and you kind of went a sci fi route with it. And I'm like, wow, there's like a book here.
What happens to that person then they come back and they want their money back. Yeah, you're right. If you use bitcoin as the example. So like, play that out. If, like play that out with bitcoin.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Well, in your scenario, I mean, bitcoin removes all of those third parties, all of those brokerages and institutions and lawyers and everything that you needed. Because if your parents had bitcoin, well, you would literally just have an address. That's it. You would have their 12 words. There it is. And because it's a bearer asset, whoever has the words has the bitcoin. And so if your parents pass, but they give you the words before they pass, well, it doesn't matter that they have them. They're dead. Dead. Now you have them. So you have the bitcoin and you can move that into other sets of 12 words, as many sets of 12 words as you want, meaning just another wallet, Another. Another set of wallets. But yeah, let's say your mom did come back and it was contentious with you and she came back. Now she has the 12 words in her head, but you also have the 12 words in your head, but presumably you would have moved it potentially to something else or into a multi signature setup where you have three sets of 12 words.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Words.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: @ that point, it just becomes a mother son thing because it's like, well, mom, if you really want your money back, by the way, you know, you can always send her back the fiat value, right? It's probably quadrupled or 10x by the time she comes back, right where you say, oh, mom, you know, here's your million dollars back, but now you've got 9 million because it's growing in bitcoin terms.
But that is why it's important to have best practices with self custody, because whoever has those words has the bitcoin. So if your mom died with those words, words, you took those words after she died and you kept them in those words. If she comes back, you own the bitcoin, but so does she. And the person who first moves it out of that wallet will own that bitcoin next, because it'll be in that next wallet with that new set of 12 words. For instance, I have a. I mean, I don't want to jump out of order, but like, no, no. At the beginning when you were talking, you might have saw me looking down. I spun up 12 words for you and I threw over some bitcoin on it. And I'm going to give you on this podcast those 12 words so I can show you how amazing this technology works and how important it is to have those 12 words.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: So I just wanted to capture some footage of me opening my Trezor wallet. I already unwrapped it and I started to open it and then I thought, well, it might be cool to do some unboxing. I am not an unboxing YouTube expert here, obviously, but I'm gonna do my best to just kind of show you what's going on. So it says it might make sense just to get some in case it catches on.
Satoshi Nakamoto.
So apparently he said that. And so I'm going to get some. I do feel like bitcoin is catching on. And I already have some, but I have have some stored in a custodial account. And my goal is to actually start to self custody. So I've been doing podcast episodes with experts in the bitcoin complex space and they have convinced me or inspired me to self custody as the actual true way to use Bitcoin or to fully appreciate the technology of bitcoin. I already unwrapped this, which is why it's a little bubbly here. But so I'm going to do it again. You just peel this back. There's this little piece on the bottom here that you have to take off that it shows whether it's been tampered with or not. So that piece is clean. That's actually where I decided I'm like, oh, I should do a little bit of an unboxing and show what's going on here. So there's this little, there's this little get started, I don't know what you'd call it, like little case here. And we'll open that up and there's some items here that you can go through.
There's a get started, some fun stickers, and then we have the wallet backup and recovery seed and there's a couple of those. There's a seed phrase that you randomly generate. Based on my last conversation with Terence, I'm going to do one more episode with Terence. This video is probably going to be part of that episode. The first thing I'm going to have to do, it looks like in the get started is you're going to download some software from the website. There's the seal check the security seal is intact before removing. Then we got the Trezor suite is what you download and install. And then we have connect the Trezor with USB cable and set up the Trezor suite. So that's what I'm going to do and then we'll see if I have that part recorded as well. But I wanted to give people a little bit of taste of my, my experience into self custody. There's a saying and it goes, not your keys, not your bitcoin. So the bitcoin that I currently have is in a custodial account and I don't have the keys for it. It's the custodians that have the keys. So in theory it's not my bitcoin. I have been appreciating some of the upside with regards to just investing in it, but I'd like to actually start using the technology and I am so starting to believe that we are still in the early phases, despite the fact that the asset has risen over thousands of percent in just 16 years. So it is the best performing asset in the last 15 years. And I see that being the case for the foreseeable future based on the information that I've gathered thus far. So thank you for following me on this journey and I'll give you updates as they occur.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: All Bitcoin lives on Bitcoin's time chain, otherwise known as the blockchain. It doesn't move, it sits there. And so it's important when you own bitcoin and want to transfer bitcoin from you to someone else, that you know how to do that. And the only way to do that, because there is no VIP access, there is no backdoor, there's no administrative permissions for anyone. Whether you're a company, a country, a corporation, or just a person, everyone has to interact with bitcoin the same. This is what helps make bitcoin egalitarian and fair for the world. And the way this works is that everyone has a private key and a public key.
It's a pair, and they're tied together. They're tied with DNA, a private and a public key. And the way these are tied together are by either 128 ones and zeros or 256 ones and zeros. Zeros, literally 1, 0, 0, 0 1, 0, 1, 1, whatever. And there's all kinds of combinations, and no two combinations will ever be the same.
So before 2014, it was very difficult, but many OGs had to do this. They would just write down these 128 ones and zeros or those 256 ones and zeros. That is the Bitcoin. Because bitcoin is code, it's obviously not a coin. It literally is just those ones and zero, zeros. So after 2014, we had a Bitcoin improvement proposal, BIP39, which made this so easy. And these are the seed words, the seed phrase that we always talk about. And that's where you can convert those ones and zeros into 12 simple words or 24 simple words. And these all come from one list of 2048 words.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Words.
[00:51:04] Speaker A: That list of 2048 words. And some people will. In the other room, I have a poster of all 2048 worlds.
That's all the bitcoin in the world. It's all right there.
So the idea with self custody is to first build a wallet so that you can store your bitcoin and you want to have your public key and Your private key, because that's all these words are. These words. Again, build your private key. From your private key, you build your public.
And similar to an email, your public key is just like your public address. That's what you're going to use to build your receive addresses. Send me Bitcoin. And when you want to send it, because you are the only person sending it, you're the only person that should be sending it, you have to use your private key. And that's just like using your password online and whatnot. But rather than just six or seven random letters, you have 12 whole words or 24 whole words. So that's the whole idea with self custody.
So any device, and there's all kinds of devices. I know, Mark, you have this trezor. There's a ledger.
These are like ledgers. There's bitbox, there's cold card, there's all kinds. It mostly doesn't matter what manufacturer you use all of these devices, they basically do the same things. And they do two main things. And the first thing they do is that they will spin up these 12 or 24 words for for you in a way that uses the best randomness, the best entropy.
They will spin through those 2048 words and pick the 12 words for you. Now, some OGs want to pick their own. They will flip quarters, they will roll dice, some even will look at lava lamps. They'll try to find true entropy. The point is, no one should be coming up with their own words because there's a favorite poem or a favorite song that they have. Because humans are just terrible. We have these biases. And your words could be figured out once people start to learn enough fact about you. If you're choosing words based on your personal situation.
So that's the first thing. These cheap little devices, they're all under 100 bucks. It doesn't matter which. And they're all just little USB devices. It doesn't matter what it is. You punch in your 12 words or your 24 words, there's your bitcoin, there's all your wallets, all your receive addresses, all your transactions, everything. Your entire history of interacting with all the wallets that you made from those 12 words, and you can make unlimited amount of wallets. I think it's technically about 4.7 billion wallets. But if you were making wallets all day long and did nothing else, you'll never reach that. So again, and I'm going to keep Highlighting this, your 12 words is your Bitcoin. Your 12 words makes your master Seed word, your master seed word, makes your private key and your public key, the private key you keep private. You never show that to anyone. All kinds of social engineering attacks. Coinbase, Gemini, even the own manufacturer I get emails from, fake emails from Trezor, from Ledger. Hey, punch in your words here. There's been a security breach or, hey, we're upgrading. No, no one needs your words. You're the only one that needs your words. And as long as your device is working because your device holds those words, it made those words. You don't need to have your list. Your list is just if all else falls apart or your device falls apart. So you take those words, you stamp those words and steal. You can these things that you can pay 20 bucks on Amazon, like designers, jewelry designers on Etsy, use these for stuff. You know, name tags and stuff. You get a little stamping kit. This is like 20 bucks. It has every letter in the Alphabet. You stamp them on here with a hammer. You put it somewhere so it's fireproof.
Where you hide it and how you hide it, that's completely up to you. But I would say that your words should never be at the same location as your device.
You know, I prefer to jump on an airplane or have to go somewhere very, very far to even get those words.
But remember, whoever has the words has your Bitcoin. So if you don't hide this properly or somehow code it so you know what the words are. But in your own way, if someone finds this, like, oh, I'm gonna go over to your Aunt Edna's barn, and under the tractor seat, I was messing around with her tractor, and I found this. Well, I know what 12 words are. Maybe not everyone does, but I do. I'm gonna be like, hey, this is some Bitcoin. So I'm just gonna go buy some device, punch it in, and I have everything you have. Now, there's ways to get around that, which I'll get to in a second, but that's the power of the 12 words and why the 12 words are so important.
Once you've made your device, remember, that's your random generator. You get your words.
After that, the device has a secure element. All these devices have secure elements that keep and prevent those 12 words from ever touching or going into the Internet. All they do is that when you want to send your Bitcoin, you have to use your private key. Remember, to receive it, you only need the public key. Hey, send me some bitcoin. Great. Here's my public address, just like your email. I don't care if everyone has my email. You can send me whatever emails you want. That's not going to hurt me. But I don't want you to have my private password that allows you to send emails for me. Just like you don't want anyone to have your private key that'll send your bitcoin out of your wallet. So this keeps the private key private. The private key just signs a digital signature proving that you have the word words to allow that bitcoin to go to another address, whether it's your own address, whether it's to an exchange address or to another person. Bitcoin doesn't know the difference. Bitcoin only sees addresses and it's transferring, it's reassigning the value from address to address to address on this big brick wall of 21 million bricks, all cemented, all there. The bricks don't move, we just reassign the value. Bitcoin doesn't really move. That's one of the big ideas.
But it's also why these private and public keys are so important, so that you can reassign that value.
So if you want to be, if you want to have self custody, you need to have a device to give you full entropy to get those 12 or 24 words. And then you need to have this device when you want to send. Also to generate public addresses. It's a good idea that every time you say, hey, send me bitcoin, you generate a new address. Just like a woman who might have 20 purses, all those purses are owned by her.
But by having $10 in this purse, $20 in this purse, $30 in this purse. If one person opens a purse and I'm going, Jennifer has 30 bucks, I'm only going to see those 30 bucks. I'm not going to see the money in all her other wallets. And this is because bitcoin is transparent. It's auditable. Everyone can see on the blockchain. So Mark, if you give me an address and you say, hey, send me some bitcoin, and that's an address where you already sent a million dollars to, and you send me the same address and I say, okay, I'll send you some bitcoin, I send it. Well, I can just copy your address, put it on the blockchain, I can see every single transaction, all the bitcoin that you have that's gone in and out from that one address.
But if you use your key, your public key to generate the public address, it'll generate a new one every time. And you send that to me, I won't see anything. In fact, I will be the first transaction when I send you Bitcoin.
So that's why these devices are cool. As cheap and small as they are, they generate those keys for your public and your private keys. They keep your private keys safe, and they generate the public keys for your public addresses. The additional benefit of these is that if a bad actor finds this sitting on your desk and they're like, oh, this is a device. I know exactly what this is. I'm going to move Mark's Bitcoin. Well, I'm going to plug this device in. Well, the device itself, just as a hardware device, has its own little pin. So I'm going to have to guess your pin, Mark. And if I can't guess your pin, well, depending on the manufacturer, they all operate differently. The Trezor keeps delaying. Like, if I miss it, like five times, six times, seven times, pretty soon it's going to say, you have to wait four hours for the next pin.
Now you have to wait seven days for the next pin. Like, well, by then I'm going to leave. I don't want to expose myself standing around at your house or a ledger. After three attempts, it just erases. It goes. It factory resets, gone. So now what's a bad actor going to do after three attempts at this? You, the owner of this, you don't care if this erases because you're going to go back to your 12 words. I got my 12 words. I buy a new device, I plug them in, there it is. There's everything. Every transaction, every wallet, all of it.
So now you can see the power of those 12 words. Because just to give you certain scenarios, I don't think this is a good idea because you could fall and hit your head. But some people don't write them down. They put them here and they memorize them. And some people then throw away the device. Now, there's no device now. They're not written down. They're only in my head. Well, if you want to walk around all day and memorize them all day, and people can. Right. Can you remember, you know, the four members of your favorite band? Great, we'll pick three bands. And what are the names of Those members? There's 12 words. It's not that hard. Now, if you're being abused and you have to leave, you know, some third world country or whatever, Whatever. Like, yeah, you know, and we have stories of women in Afghanistan escaping these authoritarian regimes by memorizing 12 words, crossing borders Buying a device, plugging them in, and there's their wealth.
But if you don't live in that kind of, you know, scenario, you don't need that. So you want to hang onto your device and remember, you can clone them. Once I put the 12 words in here, I can put the 12 words in here, I can put the 12 words in another one and in another one, in another one, I can have clones all over the place. So if I'm one worried about just losing one or someone steals one, well, I know I have one. So it's like, oh, I'm not really worried. And in a way that's safer than just having your 12 words. Because remember, if someone picks up this and they find your 12 words, they've got your Bitcoin.
Now there's a thing called the additional word, called a passphrase. You can add a 13th word that you don't put on here. And that 13th word is not part of that list I talked about. That comes from you. And that can be the longest sentence you can come up with. It can be a whole book. The syntax matters. Capitals, weird characters, spaces, whatever it is. If you can memorize something simple, simple for you.
You know, it was your second grade crush and the street that you lived on, whatever that no one else is going to figure out then. Now if someone picks this up and they punch in these 12 words and they're so excited, whatever device they punch these 12 words in will recognize that that wallet has a 13th word and say, what's the 13th word?
Well, so now you're safe. So that is one solution that I personally would highly, highly recommend. If you only have a set of 12 words, or 24 words, if you're using only one. Because whoever finds this, this has it. Unless you are just so positive that you can secure this in a way that no one can find, wise, you could toss this.
That sounds risky because that's your backup. But I mean, if you have 15 of these floating around, you know, every couple of years, check them, buy new ones, upgrade them. You just have to be in front of hardware rot.
So there's all kinds of ways to think about how to store those words and people get ridiculously creative. You can do it, you know, however you want. And I know that's not for this, this podcast, but this is why I teach and promote multi signature wallets where you have three sets of keys. Because when you have three sets of keys, you can separate these jurisdictionally geographically and you only need any two keys to sign. But this way if anyone finds any one key, if I find your 12 words mark, I'm like, oh, I'm so excited. I go punching in. I'll quickly see on chain. Oh, this is part of a multi signature setup. I need another key. Damn it. Where am I going to find the other key if the other key is in Australia? Even if I know it's in Australia and you tell me, great, now I'm going to jump on a plane and go through security and all this stuff. If you have a multi signature, you can even put 12 words in a bank.
I personally have a set of 12 words in a, in a regular bank and be like, what if there's a bad employee? What if the termite company doing there, who does open up all these security deposit boxes sees it?
They can't do bupkis because it's part of a multi secret signature. I don't have any significant amount of bitcoin on anything but multi signature wallets. And I have a lot of multi signature wallets and they're separated so far because I've personally added back the friction that Satoshi took away for us because many people in the world don't want that, that friction. But I've added it back to where I do have to jump on airplanes and I do have to go to great distances to access certain amounts of bitcoin, but certain amounts of bitcoin, you know, it's never going to be sold. It's going to be passed on through generations, you know, and that's why it's like I don't want to be selling a big lot, a big parking lot in the middle of Manhattan. I know the value that that is and how much it'll grow.
So that's kind of the big idea, if any. If you think I skipped anything or you want to dig into anything, let me know. There's. There's so many variables to what I said. I'm just trying to, to speak high level.
[01:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that was good. I have some recency bias because I've actually heard now I've heard you do this twice. That's the upshot of having recorded twice. And so I remember, remember the first time I had a lot more. I think I was jumping in maybe a little bit more on the last one. But this time around, what you said was clear to me. This came to mind and is, is the device itself, the Trezor, when you were describing it made me think, oh, it's like a random word generator. It's so that I don't have to Think about those words every single time. Because when I think about that sounds daunting. I think a lot of what kept me out of bitcoin, the actual protocol for a long time was what it seemed like a daunting things to do, to like or write down all the numbers, remember all the passphrases, like those kind of things. If you check, if you think psychologically. And there's still an aspect of that. I don't want to confuse this because I'm still learning it myself. There's still an aspect of it where you do want to remember the 12 words. All of that stuff is still of value. But what the device itself actually does is that random generation part. It's recording the zeros, or not necessarily the zeros and ones, but the 12 words which are associated with binary code, the zeros and ones. So I was thinking as a writer, writer, you know, the bridging of numbers and words for money.
[01:05:02] Speaker A: 100.
[01:05:03] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, it's. There's so many things you can invest your money in. And I interviewed a lot of different people where I could put my money or think about how I manage my money. But there's something about the bitcoin ecosystem that really is a problem solver in terms of the things with regards to money that I imagine keep most people up at night.
So when you have you simplify that process down to get your 12 words, understand the private and public key, have some sense of how a network works, the device itself simplifies the process for you. I heard you say this on a spaces and now it's really resonating with me because you're like, you know, I used to trade stocks. I used to do that. I still trade and I like to do that as well. But there's something satia about having the bitcoin as an investment and having that like, I don't have to worry about. You know, I've heard this about bitcoin too before. I don't have to worry about a CEO mismanaging funds, or I don't have to worry about just the latest headline. You have to worry about headlines to a certain extent if you're just looking at the price aspect of it. But if you're appreciating what the technology is, you can sleep through all of the headlines because you're like, I know what the actual price protocol is. And as long as I have my 12 words and I'm in a community with other people that understand how the protocol works, then you have an infrastructure the size of that infrastructure gets interesting because that's where we get into the debates. But I appreciate you enlightening me and the audience on self custody.
[01:06:36] Speaker A: Do you want to try something fun live?
[01:06:38] Speaker B: You want to do it? Let's try it. All right, let's try it. This will be interesting if we can.
[01:06:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, go to your, the app section on your. No, no, no, I'm gonna do something. Well, you can do that later if you want, but. Okay, yeah, just open up your phone, your cell phone.
[01:06:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:06:54] Speaker A: And go to the app section of your phone. I'm not sure if you're OS or Android, but it doesn't matter. And download a wallet called Blue Wallet. B L U E Wallet. By the way, there's hundreds of these wallets. They're all the same, they're all open source, but this is equivalent to your Trezor, but on your phone.
[01:07:10] Speaker B: What if I already have a wall wallet? I have. I already have a couple wallets, actually.
[01:07:15] Speaker A: Oh, yeah? What. Which, Which I use.
[01:07:18] Speaker B: Hood has their crypto wallet.
Coinbase has a crypto wallet.
[01:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So none of.
Okay, well, Coinbase Wall. Do you use the app Wallet or the wallet?
[01:07:29] Speaker B: The wallet. The wallet.
There's.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: Okay, well, you could.
[01:07:32] Speaker B: There. There is an app here, actually. Well, you want a wallet.
So if you don't remember, if you.
[01:07:39] Speaker A: Don'T have your 12 words, it's not your wallet. And this is again, what's important.
[01:07:44] Speaker B: Like cash app has it too. It's not the words, but it has a wallet that I can receive.
[01:07:49] Speaker A: Bitcoin, but that. Right, so that's custodial. That's not you. So again, this is what's important about what I just went through. If you don't have your 12 words, it's not your bitcoin. You're back to the fiat system. They're just telling you.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: Right.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: This is a big idea.
[01:08:04] Speaker B: But this is why if you want.
[01:08:05] Speaker A: A duck and wallet. Yeah. We can go to Aqua or Trust or whatever. Blue is just simple. And so I was just going to have you get.
[01:08:10] Speaker B: This was the only weird one that I have that I got a while back and I'll just throw it out there. Is the metamask.
[01:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah. No, so metamask you don't want. Because that's not bitcoin only. That is crypto. That is the biggest crypto wallet out there. And it's, it's. And there's a lot of scams tied to that.
[01:08:27] Speaker B: So what about strike?
[01:08:29] Speaker A: Strike is great.
[01:08:30] Speaker B: That's the best with you.
[01:08:31] Speaker A: It's okay. Strike is one of the best ways to buy bitcoin. It's an exchange, but it's custodial. You don't have your 12 words. Remember, if you don't have 12 words, you don't have your bitcoin.
[01:08:41] Speaker B: This is all custodial.
[01:08:42] Speaker A: Right. Which is fine for buying. I have to buy my groceries at the grocery store, but I don't leave them in the cart. I bring the food home.
If you don't have the 12 words, your food is still at the grocery store. So it's strike. Strike is amazing. One of the best places to buy bitcoin, but it's still at the grocery store. If it's sitting on strike now, that's okay. I. You. When you were talking at the very, very beginning of this podcast, or the other one, if you're splitting these up, I went to strike while you were talking, and I sent bitcoin over to these words that I'm going to give to you right now. But you have to download Blue Wallet and I'm going to show you. I'm going to. I'm just going to show you the power of these 12 words.
[01:09:16] Speaker B: Just thinking. Because it's like one more app. But you're right, these are all custodial. But what makes Blue Wallet not custodial? Let's do that.
[01:09:23] Speaker A: Well, it's. It's the same as Trezor, it's the same as Ledger, it's the same as bitbox Foundation, Cold Card. It's just. It's one of these devices, but on your phone.
And it's one of the best ones because it's open source.
[01:09:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:09:36] Speaker A: It's completely open source. It's not a company like Sparrow. You've heard of Sparrow?
[01:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm going to. This is kind of a little off topic here. Not really. This is why it's so fascinating. Again, there's so many places you can go with this. There's not just the bitcoin ecosystem protocol, but there's companies and a lot of new commercial finance that is evolving around this. Because I think to myself, I'm downloading another wallet. I have already.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: They're all just cars on the freeway, though, right? The protocol is the bitcoin freeway. Nothing can change that. Anyone can make a car and say, this is easier to drive. And so I'm just picking a car. Right?
[01:10:13] Speaker B: I don't even. I'm not saying it in a negative way either. I'm saying, like, wow, there's. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:20] Speaker A: No, I know. And that's Why? I said there's. There's hundreds of these wallets. I'm just trying to. By the way, you're going to fall in love with Blue Wallet. Blue Wallet is like, the easiest treasure you can think of, but right there on your. Your phone.
[01:10:31] Speaker B: Okay. I was going to download the Trezor app, but it only had three stars. And I was like, I can't download a three star app.
[01:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah, you don't need the Trezor app.
[01:10:39] Speaker B: All right, so.
[01:10:40] Speaker A: So Blue Wallet. Yeah, it'll take. It'll take two seconds. Yeah, it's like. Because there's nothing to it.
[01:10:45] Speaker B: It's got four stars and 778 reviews for anyone that's interested in that kind of stuff.
[01:10:51] Speaker A: So that's. Okay. So it says Add Wallet, but it gives you lots of options. Right, right.
[01:10:57] Speaker B: It just says this is what it. I'll just show you what it shows me.
[01:11:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. So click. Yes. Sorry. On that page, click Add Wallet.
It's okay.
[01:11:06] Speaker B: Okay, so there's Bitcoin or multisig.
[01:11:09] Speaker A: Okay, so you're going to click Bitcoin right now.
[01:11:13] Speaker B: My first wallet.
[01:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's just giving you a name. You can change that name later.
[01:11:18] Speaker B: It doesn't matter. I'm putting this out there partly for the viewer because I'm just like, this is what I'm expecting. Experiencing as I'm seeing it. So sorry. That kind of. Yeah, gotcha. All right, so. And I can just make up any name I want.
[01:11:30] Speaker A: Yes, but you can. For what we're doing. You also could just keep it as my first wallet.
[01:11:34] Speaker B: It's okay.
[01:11:35] Speaker A: It doesn't matter.
[01:11:35] Speaker B: Let's just do it that way. Gotcha. So I'll just create. I didn't even change anything. So we're. Now we're just click, click, clicking. All right, So I have 12 words here.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: No, so you. That's why you keep jumping ahead. I didn't want you to create a wallet. It's okay. You can go back. It's okay. Just. Just click the plus. Just click the Add Wallet again.
So remember, you click Bitcoin because you can have. Here's the thing. With any of these. You remember how I said you can have as many as you want? Right. Now click the plus button up there. You're going to slide it over and click Add Wallet. We're going to do it again.
[01:12:06] Speaker B: I'm on.
Yeah, I'm on the side. That's okay.
[01:12:09] Speaker A: We'll use. We'll use that. Okay, so see that?
[01:12:12] Speaker B: Okay, I'm going To click import wallet. Let's just do that.
[01:12:15] Speaker A: All right, now, same as any of these devices would do. Anytime you're importing a wallet, if you lose a device, you have to buy a new device, you have to get your backup and your 12 words and important device. This phone is just showing you in a really easy way. And this is why it's open source, it's partially educational. I'm going to give you 12 words to write, and I just want you to type the word return. Type the word return. Type the word just down a column, okay? And the audience can hear these words too. So they're going to get to verify this. If they're watching this, they can download bluewallet. When you're listening to this, you can literally import these words and you will see the transaction. You'll know the exact time, the exact block. I sent this bitcoin to these 12 words. And you're going to see if Mark ends up moving these 12 words or leaves them for you, maybe the first listener to this will grab the bitcoin that's in this 12 word wallet. Because remember, whoever has the 12 words has the bitcoin, you see? So right now, I'm the only one that has the 12 words. I'm the only one. But right now, by me giving you 12 words, now we both have the bitcoin. And because cryptography supersedes legality, we both have it. Okay, ready? Here's the first. First word. Carbon.
C, A, R, B, O, N. Do.
[01:13:23] Speaker B: I just click space or return?
[01:13:25] Speaker A: I would just. You probably could click space. Yeah. What's cool about this wallet, it says, hey, type it in as best you can and we'll figure it out. But I usually just type the word return. Type the word return.
[01:13:34] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, that was okay. Okay, got it. Carbon is the first word.
[01:13:38] Speaker A: Yep. Word number two. Purpose. Ready word number three.
[01:13:42] Speaker B: Draw. Okay.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: Number four. Episode.
[01:13:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:13:46] Speaker A: Number five, A word you'll be able to spell Virus. Next word. Spice. Next word. Decrease. Number eight is tribe. Number nine. In other words, you can spell lab. Number 10. Flower. Number 11 is course, as in you're learning a course. And the last word is stone.
[01:14:03] Speaker B: Okay, should I repeat them back to you to make sure we're on the same page?
[01:14:06] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah.
[01:14:08] Speaker B: So we have car. Carbon. Purpose. Draw. Episode. Virus, Spice, Decrease. Tribe. Lab. Flower.
Coarse and stone.
[01:14:21] Speaker A: So right now you also have whatever bitcoin is in that wallet or wallets. You have all the transactions just as much as I do, because you now have the 12 words.
Now go ahead and click Import on that app? Yeah. Oh, yeah, Go ahead and show the screen if you want or whatever.
[01:14:37] Speaker B: That's all right. Now I just clicked import. I was showing it to make sure I was.
[01:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you can show what you have after that.
[01:14:45] Speaker B: I know it seems to be coming out reverse right on your end. It looks backwards on my end.
[01:14:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. There it's. No, it looks good. Okay, so it is successfully imported. So click. Okay.
And now you can see what I sent you. I sent you 10,000 sats, 1 BTC. Do you see that? There it is. And you can see it. It's an hour ago. You can see the transaction now look at the wallet up there where it says the amount and bt. Btc. If you click the btc, it'll convert to SATS for you. And if you click it again, it'll convert to USD for you. It's a really cool wallet. You just keep clicking it.
[01:15:18] Speaker B: So this is the sats.
[01:15:19] Speaker A: There it is. 10,000 sats. Remember, there's a hundred million satoshis in one bitcoin. 100 million sats. So 10,000 sats right now is about 11 bucks. But click it again, it'll tell you what the USD price is. Click the SATS button.
[01:15:34] Speaker B: There we go.
[01:15:35] Speaker A: That's the exchange price. Look, it's gone up since I sent to you.
So now, Rich, if people are listening to this, the first person that puts those 12 words in any device or any app that they download, Aqua Trust Blue Wallet, which I highly recommend, they will also have the bitcoin. Now, all of us have the bitcoin. Now let's say you wanted to send this. Remember how you just created an. Well, we don't have to go there, but you can easily now send it out of there. I can send it out of there. So the first person to send it out of this wallet into their own own wallet will have the bitcoin.
Do you see? That's the power of self custody.
And this is why. Yeah, so now you might want to just leave it.
[01:16:18] Speaker B: No, I go to send that. I get your. I'm swiping it. Should I do it or not?
[01:16:22] Speaker A: If you click send, it's going to ask for a deposit address, right? So you could go over to your trezor, get a deposit address and send it. Now if you want to do something.
[01:16:30] Speaker B: Fun, I would do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:16:33] Speaker A: Now if you want to do something, you also could send it to a custodial exchange. You have deposit addresses on a custodial exchange. And for Small amounts, it doesn't matter. But for a large amount, if this was, you know, $11 million, you probably.
[01:16:44] Speaker B: Here's where the Trezor comes in, because I can send it to my Trezor and that's where the self custody is happening versus if I tried to do it the other ways that I kept saying in the beginning, oh, I have my Coinbase wallet or I have my hood wallet. And you're like, yeah, you have all those. But those are custodial.
[01:16:58] Speaker A: But this is self custody too. Like, remember how you just accidentally created a wallet at first on this wallet? Like if you swipe on your blue wallet, you have two wallets. You could send this to your wallet. I don't have the 12 words for that first wallet that you made. Only you do.
[01:17:10] Speaker B: Right. I don't know if I finished the process on that. That's. So then click Receive.
[01:17:15] Speaker A: You can, if you wanted to send it over there, I would suggest it's a small amount. Leave it and see if one of your audience members takes it.
[01:17:22] Speaker B: I would love to see that. And then we can go validate afterwards.
[01:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. But now, since you don't care about that first little wallet, of course, since you don't care about that first little wallet you made, go ahead and click. Click on it. I'll show you something cool.
Even though it says 0 BTC, click it.
Okay, now click the top. The three dots in the top, right?
You know, which most people know is, you know, settings. Now scroll down to export backup. The big blue button. Don't show us. But Those are the 12 words. Well, you can. If you don't care, you can delete this wallet.
[01:17:53] Speaker B: Never share the information below.
[01:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that, by the way. So Those are your 12 words for that wallet. And there's your QR code. So if you wanted to ever send any bitcoin to this one wallet. And by the way, these are your 12 words. This is open source. No company has these words. Bluewallet is a powerful wallet and you can do multi sig. You can do. I would argue it's almost as good as Trezor. The difference is that it is technically on your phone. And so you don't want to keep your words here in this piece of software. But you know, it is fairly safe for educational purposes and for small amounts. I might. I keep thousands of dollars on this because this is how I give birth to birthday gifts all the time. I give people 12 words and there's 200 bucks on it, 500 bucks on it. This is how I give gifts because it teaches them. Because they're like, what? What are these 12 words? I'm like, that's bitcoin. They're like, what? I'm like, download this thing. Punch them in. There it is.
And if they don't move it, I'll contact them in six months and say, Hey, I gave you those 12 words. That means I have the 12 words. So I'm looking at it. I have your bitcoin, by the way. I'm going to just take it back unless you move it. They're like, what? This encourages them to create their own 12 words wallet and move it over. Send, receive, boom.
[01:18:58] Speaker B: I was just thinking about, because I've been trying to educate my daughter, who's my eldest, on bitcoin, and I sent that video that puncher shared within spaces of 21.
I forget it's 21 bitties or something. And he did this great video of just how he invests small amounts into bitcoin and how they've grown. And he's investing and he's trying to encourage young people to do it. And I forwarded that to my dog daughter because I was like, this is just a good video to see the value of doing this. And then I still was thinking, like, this is not enough to get maybe my daughter to download an app or, you know, and I don't necessarily want her to do it the way that I did it through custodial accounts. I'd want her to have the full experience. So when you say share the 12 words, I'm like, I send her money. You invite people into the ecosystem by just sending them some money or allowing them to feel what the ecosystem feels.
[01:19:55] Speaker A: Feels like when people see how bitcoin works, they're. They're more inclined to. To use it, you know, I mean, so look, I'm just gonna quickly spin through here. Look at. Look at my blue wallet. Like, look how many I have. And with all these amounts on them. Now, any of these wallets that still have amounts on them, these are ones where I've given people. Like, here, here's a friend of mine. Okay, now it's about 300. Look, showing $393. I paid him $150. We went to dinner, and I owed him $150. He still has a. Moved it.
And I told him, I said, if you don't move it, I. I now have it. I can click this and I can send it out of there and send it back to myself. Now I'm just keeping it there for him because He's a good friend, but it's like, it's his money. So guess what? Someday I can just re gift it if he doesn't care about it. I'm like, well. And so it's like, because, you know, I live on a bitcoin standard, so this is how I pay people. And I mean, I have all kinds of these. Whether it's like a birthday, it's the best Secret Santa gift. You know how many Secret Santa gifts I've given that were 50 bucks and are now, like, in the couple hundred hundreds?
[01:20:55] Speaker B: I love.
[01:20:55] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[01:20:56] Speaker B: I love that.
[01:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:20:57] Speaker B: I love the way that you explain that. I have a feeling I am going to. I love that I get to watch these and edit these again for people who are watching for my kids, I'm kind of making this for my kids. They can see dad and how he talked to different people about money and how he was thinking about money when he was of a certain age. And this. The whole ease of what you just did, I think was fantastic, because that was like, I feel like you broke the seal on me. You broke the cherry on the exchange change of bitcoin. Because the one time I tried to actually. You hear these stories. I'm so filled with emotion because you hear these stories, like, dark was like, oh, I couldn't believe it the first time I bought it and someone sent money over to me, and that was like this game changer experience that you could do a transfer like that. And. And then I tried to do it one time with my friend through the Cash app, and it's, again, not the same thing because it's custodial, but I'm like, hey, let's just see how. Let's just send money back and forth, which is still not the same experience.
And so now the seamlessness of that and the fact that it's floating in the air. There's literally value floating in the air.
[01:22:02] Speaker A: Well, do you notice I gave you 12? And do you notice I gave you 12 words? I just gave you words. I didn't do anything technical. And now you have the bitcoin. How cool is that?
[01:22:13] Speaker B: That's super cool. And there's real value. There's real value there. People don't have to. They don't have to take your word for it. They don't have to take my. My word for it. Like you said, I love that it's there. Whoever's watching this opportunity to win free money.
[01:22:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:22:30] Speaker B: So that was awesome, Terence. Thank you so much. And I'm glad we took the extra Time to actually get through the technicalities of it. And I'll be playing, playing around with this now. And what you've really illustrated for me, and hopefully the people in the audience is actual use cases.
People don't use a bitcoin to actually exchange value. And Terence illustrated very distinctly that you can. And we did, and he does, and I will. So, Terrence, any final words for our audience?
[01:23:00] Speaker A: No, I'll just say you made me think of something. I speak to the USC bitcoin club every now and then. I helped form that club over there. And last time I gave a talk on self custody similar to what we just went through. I started off the lecture, I just wrote 12 words on the chalkboard and I just. They were there for a whole hour while we talked and we went through everything and they were downloading wallets. And at the very end, I told everyone, I said, There's 200 bucks of Bitcoin on that. And you should have seen them because now they. We just went through the whole lesson. They were all, you know, punching in the words.
And I said, raise your hand the first person that has it. And you know, some kid in the back was like. And we checked and he had the, he had the bitcoin. And so.
But the, the race was not to just get the 12 words and get it. The race was then to create a second wallet to move it, because once you get it, they all have it. You see, remember, whoever has the words has the bitcoin. So this really teaches you the self custody of 12 words. Like if you don't have 12 words that no one else has and meaning no security camera, you know, Alexa and them haven't listened. If you don't have those 12 words, someone else is going to get it. A bad engineer, someone at iphoto icloud. You need to secure those words like your life depends on it.
[01:24:08] Speaker B: It's amazing. I just thought of like a poker table and it's like we all had the ante and the money, the winnings is in the center there, but it's nobody's winnings until the person actually takes their hand out and then puts it into their wallet. So the fact that you can throw it out there, the pot is there, people can grab at it. Now any human being can do something devious and grab at it when it isn't theirs. And you deal with consequences in the meat world, but in the practicality of things. Yeah, that's amazing. That was really amazing because I already went in somewhat knowledgeable and somewhat like Already open and willing to learn more about it. And you just, like, solidified it for me because it's always one of those things. Once you experience it and you see it, you can't unsee it. You cannot, like, you can not understand anything. We. You could ignore everything about this episode, but once you have that experience, you cannot shake that from somebody.
[01:25:07] Speaker A: So I like Michael Saylor's quote. Yeah, for sure. I like Michael Saylor's quote. He said, if you can remember 12 words, you become the mother. Money.
[01:25:16] Speaker B: Oh, man.
Golden. Golden. Can we leave? Should we leave our audience with that?
[01:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:25:23] Speaker B: Become the money.
[01:25:25] Speaker A: Become the money.
[01:25:27] Speaker B: Become the money. Terrence, such a pleasure. I always have a pleasure when you're on. At some point, maybe we'll do some macro stuff too, and. Or when I have questions as they arise. That was incredible. Thank you so much for coming on again. And audience, please take away something from this, because if you're not taking away something, then the problem is on your end. Terrence. Definitely delayed delivered today. So, yeah, I'm gonna say goodbye to everybody. I'll do a brief goodbye with you as well at the end and see you next time on the Money Adjustment. Self custody. That's the way to go.
Thank you for watching this episode of the Money Adjustment. If you want more like comment and subscribe, you can follow me on X Mark Kramer until the next episode. Stay healthy and wealthy.
It's happened once before. It happened once before. I have the most trouble, I think, when I do the back to back and I just in the future, I can't do the back to back.
[01:26:25] Speaker A: I screwed it up. I came in too early. No, it was definitely in the green room.
[01:26:29] Speaker B: That was so freaking awesome. Part of me that's so annoyed right now is like, oh, I'm gonna listen to this again. Because there was a lot of good stuff, stuff going on there. And now I'm gonna have to be like, you know, I'm gonna have to.
Are you okay? Like, to set something up again so we could.
[01:26:48] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[01:26:49] Speaker B: Magic all over.
[01:26:51] Speaker A: We'll do it again.
[01:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, man. I, I, I apologize. Because.
[01:26:56] Speaker A: And you can even get set up on yours and we can go through it. Oh. So I will tell you this because Trezor has this thing that I hate, but when you start up, start off and go in this, and it's not easy to see when you go through the screens of the options, you'll just follow the instructions. Don't do their default wallet. Click the little button that says legacy wallet.
[01:27:14] Speaker B: Okay. That's good.
[01:27:16] Speaker A: Their new default wallet. They're trying to get you to do 20 words. Not even 24 or 12, but 20, which is not good because then you can't just pick up any of the other devices and punch it in. You want something that's universal on all of them.
[01:27:28] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[01:27:29] Speaker A: I've done this with so many clients. They call me and they're like, like, oh, I have the 20 words and we set up 12 and then we move it.
[01:27:35] Speaker B: Do you take on clients to help them, like onboard them onto the actual self custody process? Kind of like what you did with me?
[01:27:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I work with. There's 40 of us at the place called the Bitcoin Advisor. And this is what we do. We onboard people into multi signature wallets. We act as key agents where we'll hold one of all three keys which helps their inheritance and their states. And we do that for high net worth individuals, corporate corporations, companies.
[01:27:59] Speaker B: I'm thinking to myself, if you hold the key, then we just have one.
[01:28:03] Speaker A: We can't do anything.
You have to have two.
[01:28:07] Speaker B: Multi sig comes in.
[01:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's super simple. All it is is everything I just said. But it's three keys and it takes any two to send or spend. That's it. Just like a checking account. Right. Like three lines. But two of the partners have to sign.
So you can hold those two keys, you can separate those two keys, whatever. But. But by us holding one, you can lose one, you could die. You know, your wife can't find out where you are, but because you gave her one, in fact, you can keep one in the bank because the bank can't do anything with one.
So that's why I love multi signature. Like I literally keep one in a bank. What's a bad bank employee going to do? Nothing but see then one with a key agent and then I hold one and I'm sovereign because I only need two. I can go to the bank too. I can log on to Unchained to Swan two. It's the few. That's why I am such a big proponent of multi sig because it solves everything. It really does.
[01:28:57] Speaker B: That is crazy. It's not like I'm a YouTube influencer, but I send these videos to my friends who are just great thinking about doing this kind of stuff. So that's why I love having you guys on because I'm like, this is, you know, everybody wins on this. Thanks again, man. Terence, I appreciate you. Next time we're going to get it and yeah, I'll see you soon on space. I'll see you on X.
