#119 Morgen Rochard - Planning Your Financial Future with Bitcoin - Ben Wehrman Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You wouldn't have a game if you didn't have rules.

(00:02):
You can't play baseball if you don't have rules of baseball.
You can't play basketball if you don't have rules of basketball.
These games don't exist, right?
So in any part, in every aspect of society, having rules actually helps us have the freedom
to do what it is that we want to do.
And so it's the same thing with the money, right?
If we're just willy-nilly printing money and we have the freedom to print and do whatever
we want, right, we have absolute chaos.

(00:23):
But when we have responsibility with our money, because our money is sound and our money is
going to provide for us for many, many generations, right? We have rules around how we store our money
and what we do with our money and how we're going to save and spend and where we're going to put it.
And what we're thinking about is in terms of what we need now versus what we need later,
right? All of a sudden, we have all this freedom that opens us up to actually having the life that
we want to have. Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming by for another episode of the Ben Wormin

(00:48):
podcast. I appreciate you being here. Today, we have Morgan Richard, who is a financial planner
at Origin Wealth Advisors, a Bitcoin consultant at Money Owners, and author of Personal Finance
Quick Start Guide. Did I get all those pieces correctly? I know there's so many things that
you're doing. It's hard to keep track of them all. You got them all. Thank you.
Thanks so much for being here, Morgan. I really appreciate you coming.

(01:09):
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Ben. I'm happy to be here.
So you are a Bitcoin financial advisor, which is a very rare breed out there these days. I haven't
talked to a ton of financial advisors, but I know that you are certainly a black sheep among that
profession. So why don't you tell me a little bit about your backstory, how you got into the

(01:31):
financial world in general, maybe just your education, your career, and how Bitcoin ended
up coming into that? Yeah, sure. So like every good financial advisor, I started my studies in
medicine. So I thought I wanted to be a doctor. And it turns out that I'm a little bit of a
germaphobe, um, must be the Jewish side of me. And so like I was, uh, volunteered at a hospital.

(01:54):
They asked me to change bed sheets and I was like, I could not, I can't, I can't do this.
I quit after one day. Um, and then I proceeded to change what I was doing with my life. I started
taking economics classes and thinking about other things. Um, I thought it would be like really cool
to trade commodities. Um, and, um, but I never actually ended up getting into that. Um, I ended

(02:15):
up getting a job actually as a coffee girl on the floor of the American Stock Exchange back when that
existed. And I literally did that I got men coffee, while they were yelling in pits, and they
promoted me thank God. And then I was one of the people yelling in a pit. It's not really good for
my character. I'll be honest, I'm not really a yellow and screamer. And I also freeze sometimes

(02:37):
when people ask me to do math on the fly. Like I feel like I can normally do math when I'm under
pressure, all of a sudden, it's like, I don't know, two plus two, it's probably eight, you know,
so obviously, you can't do that when you're screaming in a pit, and you have to like, get it
right on the spot. So I wanted to move into something also, that was kind of more my personality,
where I can actually help people. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to get into medicine to

(02:57):
begin one of those because I wanted to help people. And so when you're just, you know,
kind of pushing paper around and making markets and providing liquidity, that to me didn't feel
that meaningful. Not to say that other people don't find meaning in it. And I'm not trying to
offend anyone in any way. Just for me personally, it wasn't, it wasn't my calling. And so I ended up
taking a job in wealth management, working for a very large private wealth team at Merrill Lynch.

(03:20):
And I really liked what I was doing. I just didn't necessarily like where I was doing it or who I was
doing it for. And I didn't know that there was kind of a other world out there in all honesty.
And so I ended up switching to a different team and we moved to UBS. And at that point I was like,
okay, all of these places are just the same, I guess, like, maybe this isn't the right place for
me. And then in order to start my business is kind of silly and stupid, which is why I know,

(03:45):
like God has sort of led me in the right direction, because nobody makes this kind of business
decision. I heard from a friend of mine who I didn't think was all that competent, that he was
starting his own business providing financial advice. And I was like, you're good. Okay, like,
if you're gonna do that, certainly I can do that. And so at 28, I basically started my own business.
um and yeah 11 years later here we are so uh but along the way like i have always been a libertarian

(04:11):
and interested in sound money um was a goal bug for many years until i actually learned about
bitcoin and when i first learned about bitcoin um was it was very exciting but i couldn't figure
out a way to like buy it without getting myself into some sort of seedy corner situation in new
york and i didn't feel that comfortable with mount gox with like my traditional financial background
So I just didn't think about it and left it alone.

(04:33):
And then when I met my now husband, Pierre Richard, I he brought it up on our first date, of course, because why wouldn't he?
And I was like, oh, yeah, I remember about that thing, you know.
Tell us about the dating profile. Yeah, that's what I need to hear.
So Pierre was living in San Antonio at the time and I was living in New York and I wasn't having much luck dating.

(04:54):
And I had put on my dating profile a quote from Rothbard.
I don't exactly remember the quote, but it said Marie Rothbard on my profile.
and he was curious if there was anyone nationally who um knew anything about any of his favorite
economists so he typed Rothbard into like the search function and he found just me uh amazing
and probably still the only like has there ever been another woman to put that in there I don't

(05:17):
think so honestly I don't think so so yeah so again meant to be um you know I feel like a lot
of the things when I look back on life, I was like, you know, there's definitely God's hand
in everything because there's no way I could have ended up where I am today just by my own accord.
So thankfully, that's the way that it went. And so, yeah, I wouldn't say, though, I wouldn't call

(05:38):
myself a Bitcoin maximalist when I first learned about it. I thought it was interesting. I thought
it's something that could become something. But I actually tend to be like more pragmatic in general
about things and like to kind of wait and see what's going to happen. I'm not as visionary as
my husband is like my husband right off the bat saw it as like this is the future you know I'm not
that kind of person it takes me like more time you know I'm the kind of person that like dips your

(06:00):
toe into the pool to see if it's cold or not you know and then I'm like okay I'll go into my ankles
you know I'm like that and so it took me actually several years it took me three years to really be
where I am like sort of more I guess with a high conviction on Bitcoin so from like 2013 to 2016
I was sort of I was interested in it. I like, you know, I understood it. But I didn't like fully grasp, I guess it took me it really took me a full three years. And so I think that people when they often see our story specifically, they're like, Oh, you know, you just have to get yourself, you know, a wife, you tell her on her first date, like about Bitcoin, and then she's orange pilled, and then it's all gonna work out for you, you know. And that's not really that like, that's not the truth. The reality is, is that like, for some people, yeah, it clicks immediately. And then, you know, all of a sudden, they're Bitcoin maxi. For other people, it could take

(06:46):
long period of time before they're, you know, they have that kind of same conviction. And so
I guess, to all those out there who are searching for a loved one who's into Bitcoin, like be patient,
I guess is my advice. And I do have to just ask that because you are part of a true Bitcoin family
and you guys is that Rothbard in the dating profile story is absolutely hilarious. My question

(07:08):
would be to you, like, why are there not more women out there? They're really these are like
hardcore libertarian types. I mean, everyone knows that, you know, whether it's PC or not to say
there's just more men that are kind of into this. So how, how come there aren't more women? And how
can we get more of them on board with this mindset? Yeah, so I and I don't, again, not trying to
offend people, but I do think it's more in women's nature to be compassionate. And that it's a

(07:32):
challenge, actually, for men to be compassionate. And because of that, men actually need to do more
work to be compassionate. And so in some regards, right, like women are blessed, because they have
that in their nature, and they can care for others, and they can see beyond themselves. And
just by nature, we're a little less self-centered. That's not like a blanket statement, right? I know
plenty of women that are super self-centered. I know lots of men that are really compassionate

(07:52):
and care about others, right? In general, though, right, when you take a group of women, they're
more likely to be more compassionate and less, you know, less self-centered about what they're
doing versus men. And so I think from that standpoint, right, if you look at women as women
or people who generally are givers and want to help and all the things and right and and get
something out of that compassion right um then from that standpoint from a political standpoint

(08:15):
it's like okay then from there you have to decipher the difference between what it actually
means to be compassionate like truly compassionate and how you can help folks rather than on the
surface level of what's compassion right because on the surface level yeah we want to help everybody
i want everyone to have everything that they need all the time right i would love for you know people
to have clean water and good food to eat and everyone everything's like equal right so not

(08:39):
equal is maybe not the right word but equitable right um but how to actually do that is a layer
deeper and you know and taking the time to actually think about the next layer requires some sort of
interest in actually wanting to deal with that rather than kind of some more surface level
problems uh like on the day-to-day versus the deeper level that might women might get into in
their own lives and careers and so forth so that's what i think why it's a little bit easier for men

(09:03):
to gravitate more towards these like anarcho-capitalist type political views is because
like just by nature they're not as like inclined to be as helpful right off the bat.
Moral of the story, put more Austrian economists in your bio and you will find a top quality
man out there for all the ladies listening.
I mean, Pierre Richard is just a stud.

(09:24):
Everyone in Bitcoin knows him.
I got to meet him when I was in Austin.
I didn't get to meet you, but I went to all the Austin meetups I could and he was always
around just chatting with people and just the coolest guy. Oh, thank you. Yeah, he's the best,
obviously. So let's look at the current, we love to use this word fiat as sort of the encapsulation
of the current financial system where you've got the banking and the money printers and just these

(09:50):
trillions of dollars being thrown around everywhere. How do you explain, like when you're going through
the orange pilling process to a client or a friend or a family member how do you explain to them what
this fiat financial paradigm really is how it works sort of to lay the foundation for where we're
working right now in the current modern world yeah i guess like in regards to orange billing

(10:14):
i always like to start and see where the person actually is because some people are just kind of
closed off to it and you can't have this kind of discussion right and so if that's the case then
And there's kind of no point. And I don't even bother, honestly, when people are inquisitive and curious and want to learn right at that point, like you have an open door.
And I think that it's a lesson really in general for people, whether you be in the Bitcoin world or not, to just be open to ideas that other people have.

(10:41):
Even if you know in your heart that they're totally wrong, right?
Like we can always find some sort of common ground, I think, with others.
And it often like it leads us to being very divided in general and makes it a lot more difficult to have these conversations.
So like, imagine that you're like on two different peaks of a mountain, right? Like you're on peak in the east side and somebody else is on peak on the west side, right? Like at some point, there's a valley that you both connect to, right? It may be really, really far away. And it may not be that interesting in the valley. And it may not be all that important, really, right? But at the end of the day, the valley does connect these two mountains, right? And so I think that if like, if we have that part in our mind, then you can always find some kind of common ground with people.

(11:20):
and it might not necessarily be the fiat story
that right off the bat that Bitcoiners like to say,
you know, about like what the government is doing
to our money and how like there all this corruption and people are messing with it and you want to be outside the system right I think a lot of these things they might be fringe views for the average person Whereas you know just talking about like somebody going to the grocery store and what
they're experiencing, like that might be a good entry point depending on who you're talking to.

(11:44):
So I think like the number one thing that I always tell people is that you have to understand who
you're talking to, understand whether or not they're even open to hearing your ideas, and then
also just see where they're coming from. Because if you understand where they're coming from, then
you have some sort of entry point into talking about what Bitcoin is, because the reality is
that money touches almost everything in our lives, right? And so there's always some sort of entry

(12:05):
point where you can find some kind of common ground where money has probably been manipulated
in some way in something that is important to somebody else. And from there, you can actually
have the discussion. Yeah. And speaking of those entry points where people have something that
resonates with them, I feel like pretty much everyone is feeling the effects of inflation,

(12:26):
even if they don't really understand what it is or the underground mechanics that are causing
everything to get more expensive. So how do you explain inflation to people that are just starting
to wake up and ask these correct questions? Yeah, definitely. I think that's a great question.
So one of the things that I found really interesting in my practice, which is sort of
kind of a side note to your question, then I'll get to like the inflation question itself,

(12:47):
was that all of a sudden we started seeing asset prices creeping up and all of a sudden everything
started looking really rosy like financial pictures for people that in the past we were like
oh i'm not really sure or like you're gonna have to retire around 65 you know based on what we were
doing all of a sudden like the numbers would drop from 65 to like 63 and then 60 and then 59 and
you're like oh wow you know they're really doing well they're saving quite a lot uh we saw a lot

(13:12):
of this happened like um in the road basically and then obviously like when covid like markets
crashed um like that wasn't the case and then markets recovered really really quickly because
we started printing money and asset prices had inflation again um but then when we got consumer
price inflation which came after that right all of a sudden all the numbers started to take back
up again and i remember this being like sort of really deeply being ingrained in my mind of like

(13:35):
okay when things start to get really really rosy in financial pictures like we actually really need
to fully assess what's going on in the client's picture and not just look at these numbers head
on. Like we need to really go back and reassess like what savings rates were, where they're
spending money and so forth, what categories can potentially be affected and taking more of a deep
dive so that we're not necessarily giving the rosy picture so quickly off the bat, right? Because if

(13:56):
you have to flip from the rosy to the less rosy, right, people obviously get upset. And so that I
think is sort of like, in my mind, really set the stage though, like consumer price inflation is
something that people feel very, very quickly, right? When all of a sudden you used to go to the
grocery store and spend $100. And now that for the same basket of groceries, you're spending $200.
Or if you're paying attention to prices, and your milk used to cost $5. And now it costs $7.50,

(14:19):
right? These are things that people notice. And that are undeniable, right? Like when when
Bitcoiners say like, Oh, the government's messing with your money, and they're printing money,
and they're doing this, this and that. But if you don't necessarily see it other than like your 401k
is going up, you know, there's a very big difference between asset price inflation,
where people are excited and consumer price inflation where people are really feeling the

(14:39):
pain. And so I feel like right now, specifically, just given everything that's going on, right,
I think people had a lot of high expectations about Trump being able to lower inflation. But
realistically, I think that, you know, there's a lot of things that are good that he is doing,
right. And I'm not discounting any of that. But the reality is that he's really not going to be
able to lower consumer prices back to where they were prior to, to all of this happening, right,

(15:04):
he maybe he can kind of stifle the growth of inflation, but we're never going to have deflation,
right, where all of a sudden your eggs are going to cost like $5 like they used to, right. And so
like, we're now living in this new normal where people need to be aware of like, okay,
there are direct effects to like fiat intervention that are going to really impact what happens to me
and my family and what goes on my table and what I'm able to afford and what I'm able to do for my

(15:28):
children and so forth, right. Because there's a trickle effect, right. If all of a sudden,
people's grocery budgets explode and they're spending twice as much on groceries, like maybe
now they're not sending their kids to basketball practice anymore, right? Maybe now they're not
able to send their kids to a school that they otherwise would have chosen. Maybe they don't go
on a vacation anymore, right? Like, or maybe they just rack up tons of debt because they don't know

(15:49):
what else to do. And they're not really good at their, like, you know, managing their finances.
So there's a lot of just different effects that happen to people as a result of fiat inflation.
and that are really easy to pinpoint depending on who the person is and what you actually know about them.
And I'm glad you brought up the Trump thing because you can just see that every time the metronome of left and right just flips back and forth,

(16:13):
they're always pointing at, oh, the inflation is so bad because the bad man is there.
We're going to fix it. We're going to bring down your inflation.
And then it doesn't happen.
And it just, you know, it may be the best that you can get is it slows down and how much worse it's getting.
Yeah, for sure.
And because they always use percentage numbers, they don't actually use like actual numbers for things.

(16:34):
So like I love when people use the weight example because they'll be like, OK, if I weigh 200 pounds, right, I don't weigh 200 pounds, but imagine there's a person that weighs 200 pounds, right?
OK, so if I gain 50 pounds, right now, 250 pounds, and then I tell you that growth has slowed, right?
that still means I'm going from 250 and working my way to 300. That doesn't mean that I've all

(16:56):
of a sudden lost weight. I'm back down to 200. Right. And so I feel like that like puts it into
perspective for people when they're hearing things like, oh, well, inflation's at 8%, but now it's
back down to 4%. It's like, okay, before it was growing at 8%, and now it's only growing at 4%,
but it's still growing. Right. And so the reality is, is that things are still going to be more
expensive, depending on your basket of goods. And so for some people, yeah, it might only be 4%,

(17:18):
But for other people, depending on what they're actually spending money on, the things that people most want to spend money on in general are like because of the way that they do CPI in the basket of goods.
They're not weighted in the in in the way that people actually can get any value out of.
And so like you might end up having a personal inflation rate of 30 percent, depending on what you're spending money on, whereas somebody else might have a much lower inflation rate, depending on what their basket of goods looks like.

(17:41):
And so that part of it is also really important.
Like, for instance, like people in the Bitcoin community, I think, are hit pretty hard.
Right. Meat prices went up quite a lot.
If you're only eating meat and you're living in the Bitcoin community and like all of a sudden your grocery bill didn't probably like more than doubled.
Right. And so it looks very different depending on like what people are spending their money on.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought multiple points there that really highlight how inflation just lowers people's quality of life in so many areas.

(18:08):
It sort of forces you or a lot of people, unless you're crazy like us Bitcoiners and you will only eat meat, you're just going to keep eating it, even if it's more expensive.
It forces you to change your basket of goods to lower quality things and have a lower quality life.
You get a worse place to live.
You eat worse food.
You decide not to have kids.

(18:29):
You lower everything around you because it just gets harder to afford it.
But it happens so slowly for most people.
It currently happens slowly.
It could take off any time here, I think.
But even though we haven't hit that true hyperinflation yet, it's still just grinding lower and lower.
And this is why we see this sort of frog in the boiling water situation where you can just look around and just tell that you can even just sense that people's mental health is declining every year.

(19:00):
It's just people seem like they're struggling more and more.
They're getting less and less quality inputs.
Their health is deteriorating.
And it's all really just comes down to fiat money.
Would you agree that that pretty much is the root of the problem here?
Yeah, I think so, honestly.
And then, I mean, the other problem with it is that if the government is printing money, the government is basically deciding, OK, what we're spending money on is more important than what you are choosing to spend money on.

(19:23):
Right. Like that's what the government is saying in and of itself.
And so people need to internalize that.
That's really hard for I think it's a lot easier of a sell now that like a lot of people just lost trust in the system after many, many years of being lied to and then ultimately ending with this inflationary bubble.
Right. And so I think it's a lot easier of a sell to tell people this.
But ultimately, that that is what the government is saying.
They are saying, we know what's better for you and the country. And in order to do that, we think that you should just have higher prices at the grocery store because we know where the allocation of capital should be. And the reality is that we're all human beings, right? We all make mistakes. We're all fallible. And we don't actually know where money should be allocated, especially over a large group of people, right? The United States has many, many different groups of people doing many different groups, doing many different types of things all over the country. States in the north don't do what states in the south do. States in the east don't know what they're doing.

(20:12):
story do the states in the West do whatever's going on in Alaska. I have no idea. You know,
I haven't been there since I was 15. So you know what I mean? Like, we're all in this together. And
yet, like, we're, we're this big mishmash of, of ideas and, and lifestyles and so forth. And so
for the government to be able to, quote unquote, centrally plan that, I mean, and even to have the
hubris to think that they can centrally plan that is just beyond me. It's hard enough, even for like,

(20:35):
just a small family to be able to decide where to best allocate their capital level, let alone on
the level of multiple, multiple families and so forth, and millions of people. And so, and I think
that, you know, when we think about that as just families in general, right, what ends up happening
is that we end up having to change on our side, where we would otherwise think would be a best
allocation of capital. And like you said, yeah, people are making much poorer decisions as a

(20:58):
result of that. And it's really affecting the next generation, like either, we've got people with
mental health crises with children, right, where the children are now being affected by parents
having mental health crises and so forth. And that's being passed down. And the kids have anxiety,
the kids have depression, the kids have all sorts of issues. Lots of kids are on medication as a
result of this, or vice versa. Parents are just not having kids because they can't afford to have

(21:19):
them. Right. And so like the next generation is really, really vulnerable. And like, it pains me,
right? I mean, I'm a mom of three kids, like, thank God, we're not affected by this, right?
We live in kind of a bubble, like a Bitcoin bubble. But the more that like something like
Bitcoin can permeate the system where people see that they can opt out from this and that they have
another way, right? The more that we can get back to making like really good nuclear family decisions.

(21:44):
I love that. There are a bunch of pieces there I want to touch on later, especially just the family
component and how Bitcoin insulates you from a lot of this stuff. That's definitely important. But
I'd love to bring in just the Austrian economic side, because you were talking about how
central planning and the hubris of the government to say, oh, we're going to plan all of this and
we're going to have these banks that decide what the price of money is, what the inflation is,

(22:07):
what the cost of everything is. And we go through, or at least I don't know if you did, I went through
the traditional government schooling system and was taught that central banking is good for us
because we need them to take care of us and have the guardrails so prevent the booms and busts.
And 2% inflation is a perfect number because we said so.

(22:27):
Yeah, yeah. I heard all that too, don't worry. And I even went to private school.
Yeah. So where does the Austrian School of Economics come in? You definitely have a much deeper understanding of this school of thought than I do. And I'd love to just hear how you present that as the solution and what the big ideas are from these big Austrian economists like Rothbard, you know, like, you know, Mises and all these other big names we've heard in the Bitcoin circles. How do they present the solution to this through Austrian economics? And what is it?

(22:58):
Yeah so I actually I love this question because I not sure actually if the solution is really the solution I think we going to get to see if it is a solution So a lot of the solution that Austrian economists tend to propose is an insurance solution
And so it's not the way that we see insurance today, right?

(23:19):
When we look at insurance, I think of it as a giant scam, especially health insurance, where I'm just like, it's very corrupt, right?
And there's a lot of issues.
Just the business model of it.
Like you're supposed to pay these people a bunch of money every month and like they get to decide if your health event is worth it or not.
And they usually say, no, you know, here's this, you know, little fine print, like in our 300 page novel of like all the things that don't count.

(23:44):
It's just like, what?
Yeah, totally.
So I guess because we kind of have that backdrop of insurance, when I read the Austrian economists who say basically that in a private society where you basically don't have government or you have limited government that's basically just protecting the people and providing a court system for people to actually adjudicate any kind of issues that come up.
Right. And so like these things obviously are very important. But then outside of that system would be basically a system of insurance to basically through those adjudications and through legislation, not legislation, but through basically people suing each other, that insurance companies would then step in and help with some of the costs of what would happen as a result.

(24:22):
And so people will basically, instead of paying tax dollars, would end up paying like probably pretty large premiums to insurance companies.
But the idea would be that there would be a net benefit to society because there would be less going to insurance companies.
Insurance companies actually wouldn't be central planning, right?
They would only be basically taking that capital and then managing that risk based on the needs of the population rather than it being like the insurance company is now deciding, okay, there's a new law.

(24:45):
And now we've created a new entity and now we're going to fund that new entity.
And then that entity is going to have, you know, like the USAID style, whatever they're going to do with this, you know, corrupt money.
And so I think that like it could obviously devolve into that depending on how the society is set up and so forth and what the insurance companies actually do with the money or so forth.
There probably be in this, you know, utopian anarcho capitalist society.

(25:06):
There would be like certain insurance companies would probably be known for bad practices versus others.
And the idea would be that the free market would basically determine what insurance companies stay in business versus which ones wouldn't. And so I think it would be a different system relative to what we see today, but I don't know necessarily if it would be a perfect system either.
um and so but but that is often what is brought up i do think that there's a lot of issues with

(25:29):
the insurance system as it currently stands and that there's a lot that could be fixed but there's
also like i think when we think about bitcoiners we often want to throw out all the bath water but
like you also don't want to throw the baby out you know and like bitcoiners just want to take
everything out of the bath and some of this stuff is actually good um and so i think like in in a new
bitcoin world right we have to be sort of more discerning about okay what parts of the financial

(25:50):
system and the government and so forth are actually good things that need to continue and be sustained
versus what are like the parts that are totally just rotten, corrupt and broken and that need to
be removed? That's a very interesting answer. I would have had a very different one. And I've
never really even thought about that insurance side, like how that would change things.

(26:11):
The place that I would start when I talk to people is just like the sound money angle,
because that's very big in these Austrian circles.
And I can't remember, I should notice,
was it Mises or someone else who had talked about
the sly roundabout way that we must, you know,
find a sound form of money that can't be printed, basically.

(26:31):
And to me, everyone in the libertarian
and anarcho-capitalist and Austrian economic school
all pretty much agree we need to get rid of the Federal Reserve
and have a sound form of money.
And a lot of, you can see by age, basically,
If they're over 40 or 50 years old, they usually say gold.
And if they're under that age, they say Bitcoin.
And so we have Bitcoin and gold as these two options for sound money.

(26:55):
They would essentially come in and disrupt the system that really just comes down to the central banking and the money printers.
So how would you take that sort of angle?
How does inserting a form of money that cannot be printed into this equation, how does that affect all of those, the inflation and the other aspects we talked about?
yeah so i mean if you have a sound money right it's and you can't print it then you can't all

(27:18):
of a sudden have these pet projects um that you can put money towards because you have a limited
supply of money and so like the government in and of itself would have to be more choosy about what
they did and didn't send like basically fund and if they have to be more choosy right then at that
point either they continue to fund pet projects that are ridiculous and useless and they run out
of money right or they take some sort of um fiduciary aspect to this money because it is the

(27:43):
money of the government, the government money is the money of the American people, right? It's not
really their money. And so they should have more of an attitude about it the way I would say we
have an attitude about like how we help our clients with their money is that we have fiduciary
standard, and we act in the best interest of the client, right? And in this case, the government
would have to act in the best interest of the American people, because the American people is

(28:04):
the client. And so I think it would change how, how government actors acted for sure. I mean,
there's no way otherwise they would just the government itself will go bankrupt at which case
i think that that's like the the that's the utopia i'm talking about utopia quote unquote
that i'm talking about the libertarian scenario is like there's no more government what happens
next um and so under with sound money right that's when the um the insurance there would be like the

(28:29):
rise of insurance is is kind of what the austrian economists have talked about is that after the
government basically goes bankrupt as a result of not actually being able to properly manage their
money. This is what replaces it. Interesting. Yeah. And it's, it's gonna be fascinating to see
how this turns out. Because I think you and I both agree that Bitcoin is common, whether people
want it to or not, because it's time has come, you know, people are realizing that fiat money is

(28:54):
a problem. We have a solution there. And I do love to give people the backdrop of gold. And you
mentioned that you used to be a gold bug. I wouldn't say I was ever really a gold bug. But
gold education was what really brought me into Bitcoin. And I've told this story on a podcast
before where, you know, I spent a few years in crypto, like most idiots do from 2017 to 2020.

(29:17):
And I stumbled across Mike Maloney's YouTube channel, who's a well known gold bug out there.
And he basically helped me figure out that the problem is the fiat currency.
And so that helped me bridge the gap of finally understanding, okay, Bitcoin really is the thing
we need to focus all these crypto tokens are not going to actually fix any problems.

(29:37):
We have to focus on Bitcoin here.
Totally.
So how do you talk to people about gold and Bitcoin as these two, like the sort of the
historical best sound money and the future of sound money and how people decide which
of those two would be best to put their portfolio?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I have some clients that have gold, but the reality is, is that most of my clients
were Bitcoin only.
We don't have gold.

(29:57):
I actually don't think of gold really the way I used to because Bitcoin, I think, is
just such a like far superior replacement to it that it just doesn't seem even a question in my
mind why you would want to hold gold over Bitcoin for sure, or even why you would want to allocate
side by side, right? If you're allocating side by side, what you're doing is you're basically
choosing to not put money in Bitcoin to have some money in gold. And generally people are doing that

(30:22):
because they're not all in, right? They're like, okay, just in case this Bitcoin thing doesn't work
out, I want to at least have this other store of value gold. There are a lot of issues though with
gold, right? Like gold is not divisible the way that Bitcoin is, right? Bitcoin is highly divisible.
Gold, what has happened, right? And the result of why we're even in the state that we're in with
fiat currency is because they stored all the gold in one place because it's really inconvenient to

(30:43):
move around. And then they just started borrowing against it, right? And there are even gold bugs
out there that say that that is their strategy. They have gold, they store it in a central location.
They don't know whether or not they actually have the gold there, right? They would have to like
basically melt all the gold bars to actually check whether or not each single gold bar that they owned
was actual gold rather than, you know, some nickel or something else in the middle and just paint it,

(31:06):
right, or had gold coating on it. And so, right, there's a lot of issues with like, I guess,
verifying whether or not the currency you have there is actually the currency, right? And then
borrowing against it because it's too annoying to move and actually you can't pay for anything
in gold, which is the opposite of Bitcoin, right? The Bitcoin is something that, you know,
ultimately is usable. It's not just a store of value, right? It's also a unit of account and a

(31:27):
medium of exchange. And so while you can say currently that Bitcoin, you know, it's not
widely accepted and it's not something that, you know, I can really use. Yeah, that's all fair.
And that's true right now. That's not necessarily true though, you know, five or 10 years from now,
and certainly not going to be the case in 30 years from now. So, you know, and somebody can

(31:49):
call me in 30 years if they if I'm wrong and I'm happy to say okay I'm sorry I got the timing wrong
um you know so but like gold it's already proven that it doesn't work because like we would
otherwise still be on the gold standard but in 1971 we went off because it's so easy to go off
right and so even these centrally housed gold places where people like you and me can go and
store gold or whatever we have no way of knowing if they're rehypothecating or what they're doing

(32:12):
or if they have the gold um and so people are often saying that about okay I if I store my
Bitcoin on an exchange, right? We, we tell people not to do that, right? Take control of your keys,
hold your own keys, not your keys, not your Bitcoin, right? We have all these tropes and
memes and things because these things are true. If you're not sitting on the gold in your house,
which is wildly inconvenient, then how do you know if you didn't have it? And it's the same

(32:33):
thing with Bitcoin, right? We would never recommend that somebody store it on an exchange.
Or if they're going to store some on an exchange, have it be just a materially on like an
unmaterial amount relative to your net worth and everything else that you have going on because you
you're like ready to move it or trade it or whatever so i just think that these are just
tried and true uh principles if you look back in time that it can't be the future um and if people

(32:54):
are willing to have that conversation and they would see that it was true right and that kind
of goes back to what we were talking about earlier which is is somebody's mind open to having this
discussion or not because if they're not then whatever they're going to be stay in their gold
lane yeah it's quite interesting to look at the history of gold because it did so well for
thousands of years but it just had those those weaknesses or the vulnerabilities that finally

(33:15):
caught up to it and it really just came down to like you said the exchange to the storage
piece where you know it is it's just a you know big hunky metal rock at the end of the day and it
becomes difficult to verify it and use it for money and you know buy things with it if you have
to carry the stuff around it's annoying and bitcoin comes in and it i know some bitcoiners

(33:38):
hate that you know this this phrasing is used but digital gold and the bitcoiners was like oh it's
so much more than that has all these different things but i like the digital gold framing
because i think gold is really awesome and there's a reason why it works so well for so long but
uh bitcoin just upgrades it in a way and it takes those weaknesses and it makes it better
and i'm curious if you also are you a fan of the digital gold phrasing when you're helping people

(34:03):
understand why bitcoin is like gold but even more awesome yeah definitely i think again it goes back
to like who I'm talking to and what would resonate with them, right? Because ultimately,
everyone should own Bitcoin, right? What percentage that they own Bitcoin is going to be very,
you know, independent and relative to their personal situation, their needs, their objectives,
their time horizon, right? Like what their family looks like, all the things, right? So,

(34:25):
but at the end of the day, right, everyone can own $5 worth of Bitcoin, right? It's really easy to go
and buy you know a minimal amount or or whatever it is and hold it in some sort of even on a on a wallet right even on a hot wallet on your phone you can hold your ten dollars so I think like you know when we starting there it like okay how do we get people off zero What the tagline that going to resonate with them What the what the narrative that going

(34:47):
to best help them be where they need to be? And I agree with you, right? For many years, there
wasn't any alternative, right? Gold was the way and people obviously use silver as well as you know,
medium exchange, because it's cheaper and you know, like easier to trade around and so forth.
So like, you know, gold had its silver and so forth. But it doesn't necessarily mean that just because something's around for a long time, right? A history doesn't necessarily mean that it has a future. And so right, there has to be other reasons why that that future sustains. And it's really obvious to me that Bitcoin's future is much brighter than gold's.

(35:20):
and one of the things that you talked about there you brought up a couple times this idea of
diversification and you know i i'm curious to hear how your thoughts on diversification which
is the most classic you know number one rule of personal finance is oh you you need to be
diversified you need to have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of this

(35:41):
and it's funny we hear that in a lot of different places i on this podcast i go into the diet realm
to like food and they say the same thing oh you have a little bit of everything in moderation
And this is kind of just this traditional advice is given out, but it doesn't really seem to be the best option.
How has Bitcoin changed your thoughts on diversification when you're talking to clients?
Yeah, I just love that question.

(36:03):
So if you had asked me five years ago, I would have given you a different answer.
I would have probably still been in diversification camp.
I don't see Bitcoin as an investment.
So I think that's like the place to start.
So to me, Bitcoin is holding money.
So if you're holding money, then it's not actually part of an asset allocation. What it is is a currency allocation. So this sort of turns things on their head, right? Because like the average financial advisor, myself included, when we get an investment portfolio, yes, it does make sense to have a diversified investment portfolio.

(36:36):
Okay, there's a lot of risks that go into both holding stocks and bonds or alternative investments or whatever it is. And in order to diversify away those risks and make sure that you don't lose everything that you have, right, you need to, to spread the risk. Essentially, that's what diversification is.
that said right before you even make investments you have currency right you either have fiat or

(36:58):
you have a choice of bitcoin or i guess if you wanted to put it into some sort of terrible other
currency that's your choice i wouldn't even call those currencies but i guess you know some people
like to do things like that and that's you know their own thing um so okay so fiat or bitcoin
right now you're deciding okay how much fiat do i need to have how much bitcoin do i need to have
And how much investment do I also want to have? Right. It's a very different conversation.

(37:23):
I think that this is very going to be very difficult for regulators to understand because we're not quite there yet because they still see Bitcoin as an investment, even though it's been deemed as a commodity by both the SEC and then also by the CFTC.
So like it's we're in this weird place where it's called a commodity. It's not a commodity. It is a currency. Right.
And we're like from an asset allocation standpoint, it's above the asset allocation, right?

(37:46):
Like I have people who come in who before we were even doing anything in Bitcoin, we were deciding how much cash, how much investment, right?
And so when we're thinking about that, then it's like, okay, how much cash do I want to hold?
How much long-term cash do I need and how much short-term cash do I need?
And then from there, do I actually need to have a bucket of investments?
And so for a lot of, for most people, right, they're just going to need to have long-term cash and short-term cash.

(38:07):
For some people, they're going to have maybe much more long term cash and not very much short term cash.
Right. And maybe they want something else in the middle because they just want to feel diversified.
Right. Or they have some midterm goals that don't necessarily align with long term cash and short term cash, in which case we might be able to build some sort of portfolio in the middle.
That's kind of how I'm thinking about it now.

(38:28):
And so I don't know if that necessarily answers your question about what the perfect portfolio is.
But for most people, it's going to be emergency reserve in fiat and then Bitcoin basically for the rest.
And then they can decide whether or not from there they actually want to make investments.
Yeah, definitely.
And I would say another classic phrase that we love to use and you use as well is that you just need to get off zero Bitcoin.

(38:51):
And this sort of, as you talked about earlier in your story, how you're the type of person that just needs to get your feet wet and very gradually go into this thing.
And I think that most people are the same.
Most people are not crazy people like me who just go all in on Bitcoin like crazy once you finally get it.
And a lot of Bitcoiners do that.
We're very famous for doing things such as selling our chairs so you can buy more Bitcoin and selling your house so you can buy more Bitcoin.

(39:14):
These are all the memes that we love because it's just all about getting more and more Bitcoin, more Bitcoin.
But for the people who are just getting started, talk about why it's so important to get off zero Bitcoin.
And like you said, even just buy $5, $10, some small fraction just to get started.
How does that mentally change someone?
How does it financially shift them in a direction toward having a better form of money?

(39:38):
Yeah, definitely.
So I'll give you an example.
I think that that best represents.
In 2020, so my business started in 2014.
I started talking to people about Bitcoin in 2016.
I spent from 2016, I was just sort of waiting for people to have questions about it because
it was the regulatory environment was very unclear about what I could and couldn't say.
So I didn't feel comfortable soliciting it as an, as like an investment quote unquote,

(40:01):
right.
It just was, it was kind of a no go with my compliance department that I have.
And so, but if somebody came and had questions, then all of a sudden it was unsolicited, right.
And I can say whatever I wanted.
And so, and people did start to have questions in 2016, they had questions in 2017 with the
run-up, they had more questions.
And in 2018, I got a lot of questions because they were like, well, it went up and went down.

(40:21):
Like, should I be buying this thing?
Like what's going on?
Some people were saying, should I own gold?
whenever anyone started bringing up gold i'd be like well you've heard about this thing called
bitcoin and so from i would say from 2017 through 2019 i was fielding a lot of questions and i was
trying to get people involved um and ultimately trying to do it in a way where if they brought up
anything tangential where i would just be like oh you know you're bringing about this thing like

(40:45):
let's talk about bitcoin you know and so and it worked like we got a lot of clients involved
in 2020 though at at one point when i was like we we were i was not able to basically get everybody
involved we just had a blanket statement of okay if we can't get people to buy their own bitcoin
this year we give them a one to three percent allocation to gbtc just based on net worth risk
tolerance all the things um like and looking at their specific situation and people with very low

(41:09):
risk tolerances putting them at one percent and people with higher risk tolerances putting them
in three percent which now looking back on it you know it's like obviously i should have taken
larger positions but at the time right being conservative because i'm a financial planner
we had a lot of people get very excited though in 2020 um the timing actually worked out like we
hit it before like the run-up that ended up happening people were excited and then all of

(41:30):
a sudden these people who had these had no interest at all were all of a sudden asking about buying
bitcoin outright right they weren't caring about adding to gbtc they wanted to know how they could
own bitcoin um and so we had a lot of clients at that point where we got them set up a multi-sig
and harvard waltz and like getting them into like they opened up accounts on exchanges and we walked
them through how to move in. We walked them through test transactions, right? There was a lot

(41:51):
of things that were able to occur just because they had that, you know, thousand dollar position
in their account or whatever it is. Right. And so I guess that's why I'm saying is like, I've seen
it work firsthand that if people get involved, that it's a reason why we call it number go up
technology, right? People get very excited when the number goes up, right? And then all of a sudden
they get a lot more interested. I think the stakes are a lot higher now, right? Because of where

(42:13):
Bitcoin's prices and where we are and so forth that like, it feels a lot more urgent to get people
involved because it still feels early and it doesn't feel like it's exploded yet. And so for
people like me who take three years to like get their head around things, like maybe they don't
have three years, maybe you have to somehow accelerate it into six months or whatever it is.
But getting people involved does work. And of all my clients, I only had one client say,

(42:34):
I don't want this, sell this out of my portfolio. So I mean, that's really saying something that
people, they want the alternative, right? I kind of like to compare, I don't know if you're
religious or not um but i i'm a believer in our creator and i it's the same thing i hear when
people read the holy books right they are just starving for the information whether they like
it whether they even know it or not um you give somebody one verse and all of a sudden they're

(42:58):
like i want to hear more like what is this you know even if they don't care at all all of a
sudden it's like we're starving for it and i feel like bitcoin is the same thing like people don't
know that they need it or want it but all of a sudden when they get a little bit of it they're
like they need to know more they want to be more involved yeah once you get that taste of it just
it taps into something deep in your soul that that you you need this thing this it it work it goes

(43:21):
along with nature and what we're like meant to do and how we're meant to live our lives and there's a
super awesome movie and book i haven't actually watched or read them yet but thank god for bitcoin
i'm sure you've heard of that and that is uh just an awesome project that really helps all these
folks who are on that side of things like understand like bitcoin is the money that god
would want us to have you know it goes along with all that um i'd love to talk about strategies for

(43:48):
getting started and i know that there are people listening right now that i'm sure have heard me
ranting and raving about bitcoin for a long time but now they get to hear a smart person talk about
it they might be ready for it so what are your thoughts on let's just start with this actually
when someone says okay i'm ready i'm convinced bitcoin let's do it how do i get started what do

(44:11):
you tell them as the next steps for buying it storing it and sort of the quick start guide that
you give them yeah definitely so we typically send um people to an exchange like river just because
bitcoin only um right swan would be another choice um it depends on what state they're in obviously
or like i have clients in new york in which case it's just a no-go and they have to go to coinbase
and that's just the way that it is, right?

(44:33):
We typically do try to send them to a Bitcoin-only exchange,
not because we don't think that they're going to go and buy Bitcoin, right?
But just because, like, the interface is much easier to use
and there's only one option of what you're purchasing, right?
And not that there's, like, trust, but there's just a level,
there's a little more level of trust of, like, okay,
for as long as my Bitcoin, like, my fiat and my Bitcoin are going to be here,
like, it's probably going to be fine until I actually take self-custody.

(44:56):
From there, then we talk about, like, custody solutions.
So for some people, right, it's single Sega is going to be just fine.
Depends on how much they have and how comfortable they are with storing both the seed plate and the hardware wallet.
And we also discuss which hardware wallets and what would be appropriate, right, because there's a wide variety of them.
And some are more user friendly and some are less, but they're air gapped, like the cold card and so forth.

(45:17):
And so I would say for most people starting out, cold card is probably not the way to go.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you don't change how you hold things in the future.
But maybe if you're just starting out and you're not technologically savvy, that's not the right place to start.
you're more likely to lose your Bitcoin than you are. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like we're
always trying to plan for all like the, you know, the, the offshoot things like a wrench attack or
something like that. And it's like for the average person who's just going to go buy like $20,000

(45:40):
worth of Bitcoin, right? Like, I mean, at the end of the day, it's more important that they figure
out a way to store it where they feel comfortable and confident. And then from there, learn about all
the other options rather than going right off the bat with like, you know, the most complicated
storage that they can come up with. So we're just gently guiding people in the direction where it
makes sense for them personally to feel comfortable and confident.

(46:00):
Because at the end of the day, right, if you don't feel confident in how you're storing
Bitcoin, you're much more likely to actually sell it, not because you don't believe in
it, but just because you're like, well, I'm going to lose it anyway.
So I might as well keep it on an exchange or sell it or do whatever it is I'm going to
do.
From there, it's like, okay, then we direct either multi-sig or there's other options like on-ramp where people can have a multi-institutional, depending on how much money they have.

(46:21):
I would say for most people, though, we're probably trying to get them into single-sig and multi-sig just to start, depending on how much it is.
And then once we get into these higher numbers of hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, then we start talking.
If they really are feeling uncomfortable with holding that in their home or wherever they're storing it, then we really need to start discussing about what other options are available for somebody like that.
um so i hope that gives you kind of an overview of where we're yeah could you elaborate just

(46:45):
slightly more on like the single stick and multi-stick what does that mean for people
wondering like how it actually works um yeah so for people who like basically i would say single
stick is like the easiest thing to do right like i think that people often think like okay well um
it's you know there's a single point of failure right so obviously like maybe i don't necessarily

(47:05):
want to store everything here or store everything eternally here um but for most people that's going
be the easiest thing is you get one hardware wallet, right? You buy an exchange, and you move
it to that hardware wallet. For some people, they're also going to run their node, right? If
they have a cold card and so forth, right? That's a little bit more advanced. But for the average
person, right? If you get a Trezor, and you go buy Bitcoin, and you move it onto your single sig,
then all you have to do is worry about finding a good storage place for your hardware wallet and

(47:29):
finding a good storage place for your seed plate. And we always recommend that people store the seed
plate in metal if they can. We've had some other interesting seed plate discussions where people
didn't want to do the metal because they didn't they didn't think that it was as secure as let's
say like other ideas that they have come up with so i think you could also be creative in how you
store your seed as long as you're not like putting it on the cloud you know we don't tell people to

(47:53):
do that obviously but it doesn't necessarily have to be metal if you've found some other interesting
way of storing it i would say for most people it's just going to be the hardware wallet and
the seed plate and we typically tell we always tell people with single say that you store them
separately right because if you store that seed plate with the hardware wallet right then if it's
found then everything's done um whereas if you're storing them separately at least there's like some

(48:15):
steps that somebody has to take if they find the seed plate to actually get your bitcoin um and with
the hardware wallet right they have to have the pin and so forth and usually people do engrave
their pin on their seed um seed cards so that they don't forget it so there's like a lot of reasons
why you wouldn't want to store those things together for a lot of people though finding two
places is very difficult. And so we often hear of people storing these things together, or they're

(48:36):
not sure how often they have to check them. And then they store them in even worse spot because
they're like, okay, well, I was told I have to check this thing quarterly. So I might as well
just keep it in my desk drawer because I have to keep checking it. And we're like, no, no, no. I
like, just put it away, you know? So, um, so yeah. So, and then like finding a trusted person,
if you want to store it in a separate location, but it's at your friend's house, can I actually

(48:57):
store my seed with them? Right. There's all these things that come up when people start storing
stuff so i think that like the future of this is actually how to help people store this in a way
that that makes people feel secure because ultimately single sig is the easiest right
from there though if single sig for a reason is not working for somebody that's when we step it up
to multi-sig and you know the thing that's nice about multi-sig obviously is that if you lose one

(49:17):
hardware wallet or something malfunctions right you still have the two others where you can still
make a transaction you don't lose your bitcoin whereas if you accidentally throw your hardware
wallet in the trash can then you don't want to be like going through the staten island dump with
your little metal detector trying to find it yeah and just as an example for anyone that wants to go
learn more about multi-sig i know that in austin their unchained capital is a big one yeah um and

(49:40):
plenty of other options out there too casa i know is another one but these are basically ways to just
add you know extra points of failure like you said and that's essentially what it comes down
to is single sig you just have one address one wallet where it's fully yours and multi-sig it
sort of expands the your your network so you need to in order for someone to steal your bitcoin they

(50:02):
would need to get multiple addresses from multiple locations so it just makes it more difficult
um and everyone has a different you know place where they want to fall on that spectrum of
convenience versus security so that's one of the cool things about bitcoin you can really just
make it as secure as you want to i know people that just you know have it just on a piece of

(50:22):
paper somewhere and they just have like a difficult puzzle that only they would know how to solve
or some people just memorize it.
And we hear examples of people who are escaping bad authoritarian regimes
in third world countries who they learn about Bitcoin,
they save their money in Bitcoin smartly,
and they escape and they cross the border.

(50:43):
And in the past, people would be completely robbed at the border
and they would lose all their money
and they would have to start at zero wherever they go.
But with Bitcoin, they don't need to have anything.
They don't even need to have a piece of paper.
They can just memorize 12 words in their head
and then when they go to the next place it's safer they can then recover that bitcoin and
you're good to go yeah so i would insist on the recover part afterwards because you never know

(51:06):
what could happen to your head and then you actually lose your bitcoin so i hear people
say all the time oh just memorize and then i won't have to worry about storing any of these
things and it's like okay that's fine right now when you're 35 but you know when you're 75 are
you like repeating the words every single day like have you lost your marbles a little bit you know
yeah i personally would never do that but i guess there's some situations you know i mean i have

(51:28):
like permanent brain damage probably from having kids wake me up every single night for the last
seven years so it's like you know that alone would be the reason not to have that stored in my head
and then you can then upgrade once they're old enough you can have each of your three kids
memorize four words and then you have a child multi-sig going on yeah i would say though the

(51:48):
thing to insist with multi-sig right is that you can use these institutions right you can use
something like unchained capital to help you but also you can set it up on your own where you
actually have all three keys and you only need two or three to sign but just don't store them
together i mean it seems like the obvious thing to say to people and everyone says yeah yeah yeah
i know and then you know we talked to somebody and they're like yeah i have it together because
i couldn't figure out another place to store it and so it's like there's no point if you're just

(52:12):
gonna do that just do single sig do you see what i mean right there's no point in having this
elaborate setup if at the end of the day you're just going to store it the same way you store
single sig so i think like people need to just consider things like that of like their own
personal abilities and what they're actually going to do rather than what influencers like
me tell you to do on the internet not that i'm actually an influencer nobody cares what i say

(52:33):
let's be honest you're good you're a good influence i think anyone that has good influence
can still be called influencer but you're the good kind so let's talk about the actual
buying amounts and we we hear in bitcoin a lot about lump sum versus dollar cost averaging and
for for listeners that's basically lump sum is like if you're just going to yolo all of your

(52:56):
your cash into it or dollar cost averaging which dca for short is when you set up a basically a
an interval either it could be a daily buy a weekly buy or a monthly buy of just a little bit over time How do you introduce these two options and which ones do you think would be best for which types of people for buying Bitcoin

(53:16):
Yeah, so I think it really depends on how you get money.
So, right, if you're earning money on a regular basis, you haven't received any kind of inheritance,
you didn't get any kind of accident where you got some kind of payout, right?
You didn't get some sort of lump sum bonus.
If you're just earning money and you're saving, you know, 10 to 20% of your income, then DCA obviously is the right way to go because you as you get income, right, you shouldn't just accumulate fiat over time, you should just go and buy the Bitcoin when you get paid, and then use whatever's left over to pay your bills, feed your family and do everything else that you're doing.

(53:47):
um it's like it's kind of traditional finance 101 is like pay yourself first quote unquote
and i don't mean it into insurance policies like sometimes they often use it i really mean it as
like save your money before you go and do anything else um for a lot of people that's just simply not
what they do right they get the money in they go and pay all the things that they're supposed to
pay and then whatever's left over that's what they decide that they're going to save and so i would

(54:11):
say before you're even thinking about dca versus lump sum the first thing you actually have to do
is just evaluate how much income do I have going out? How much do I like how much do I have coming
in? How much expenses do I have going out? What's the bottom line? And can I consistently decide to
allocate to that? Because if you can, then DCA is the best way to go because you just set up a draft,
right? And then every month you invest $1,000 or save $1,000, excuse me, into Bitcoin and and you

(54:35):
just move on with your life and it's done and then you move on and do the rest of your expenses
and pay whatever you need to pay. If you're finding that you're not able to save consistently
over time, then you're going to end up in these situations where you when you do have the cash,
you have to make decisions of, okay, do I want to invest it now? Or do I want to like save this for
later? What am I thinking? Or what am I doing? And I would say even in that situation, when you find

(54:58):
that you have excess cash, you should save at that point in time, don't wait, don't try to time the
market, don't do any of these things. I see people make more mistakes from trying to time the market
than they do from just putting it into Bitcoin and waiting. And it's the same thing I would say
with lump sum versus DCA if you do get an inheritance.
Typically what I recommend is that at least 50% of it

(55:18):
goes into Bitcoin right away of whatever it is
that we were going to save in Bitcoin.
Just because like timing the market just doesn't work.
And especially the more volatile an asset is,
the more studies there are on people actually messing up
and ending up with less.
And so I think it's counterintuitive because you think,
okay, well, Bitcoin bounces around so much.
So surely I should be able to time some down part.

(55:41):
But what ends up happening is that Bitcoin starts to creep up and people are like, oh, no, I didn't. I mean, I might miss it.
You know, and then you just immediately buy the top and then, you know, dips 10 percent right after.
And I'm not saying this because, like, I don't do this. Right. I have done this. Right.
If I just would have waited two days that I would have gotten much more Bitcoin. Right.
And so I still think even with data of people ending up better off trying to time is that you don't know the future and you might end up worse off.

(56:06):
And so just buy from depending on how large, though, of let's say a lump sum, depending on how large a bonus might be or how large an inheritance might be or payout or whatever it is that you get.
Like from there, you can decide basically, do I like put 50 percent in right away?
Do I put 100 percent in right away?
Like 75 percent.
Right. Some of these decisions are just based on like how much it is worth, like not really necessarily where the Bitcoin price is, but really like do I even know how much of that capital I have to allocate?

(56:33):
yeah i would say when i'm telling people what i i think they should do on this my my advice has
changed over time just the more crazy the world gets and the more it just seems like all these
major catalysts are so close like they're always it's like that meme of the truck getting so close
to that post over and over it's like we're so close to things is really blowing up i i've sort

(56:58):
of shifted toward you know like if you have a decent stack of cash to invest like i would
definitely at least put a big chunk of it in right away because even if it and just make sure that
you have a long time horizon because like you said things can happen and there can be a big dip at
any time we've seen we see dips happen all the time just make sure that you you know that won't

(57:22):
wreck you and don't use leverage and if you're looking for at least i don't know how long would
say four years is sort of your starting horizon where people like should just completely pretend
it doesn't exist for four years and I think at this point I would say I'd feel very confident
that any four-year period after you know buying now you're going to be up it's going to be very

(57:43):
high likelihood would you agree with that yeah I mean I tend to use longer periods I mean we like
to think of 10 years really as kind of a more longer term period of time and so like any any
cash basically that somebody doesn't need for 10 years just such an easy sell like okay surely
10 years later right no matter where we buy today you're going to be better off um and so i think

(58:03):
that like right you some somehow when we get into some of these like lower lower time horizon numbers
of like okay well i was going to use some of this money to go buy a house in one to two years or
whatever it is right or even in four years but you're not necessarily sure right you could still
be on the cusp depending on when you when you put the money in right you could actually have a flat
market where you put into Bitcoin, it did all sorts of things in the middle, and then you ended up at

(58:24):
the same price. So I guess like, in some ways, it's still a store of value, but not necessarily
something that you're making more off of than you're going to go put into a house. So I think
there's some of these discussions where you just have to decide, like based on what you're looking
to do and your time horizon, right, what makes the most sense. But in general, yeah, I agree with you.
If you've got cash, and you've got a long time horizon, I don't see why you would have it sit in
fiat, unless of course, like you were on the opposite spectrum, where you just didn't carry

(58:49):
any fiat and you weren't worried about any kind of emergency reserve, right? And for some reason,
you ended up with some lump sum. At that point, I would actually evaluate what kind of emergency
fund makes sense for you and your family. Because like, ultimately, what I've seen happen to people,
and people don't like to talk about this, right? People like to talk about the success stories of
how they have zero fiat, and now they're a trillionaire or whatever it is, right?

(59:10):
They don't like to talk about the fact that they had zero emergency reserve, and they actually had
go sell their Bitcoin to pay a large tax bill to go buy a new boiler to go fix the transmission on
their car right I hear a lot of those stories in my own practice because right like I see the nitty
gritty of what's going on but you don't hear about those stories on the internet because no one tells
you like the dumb mistake that they made and why they have you know only three Bitcoin instead of

(59:34):
five you know or whatever it is right so nobody likes to admit these things and so I think like
first principles of finance yeah these make sense of like okay have some sort of fiat reserves so
that when things come up and they will come up right and they don't necessarily come up every
single year that you don't actually have to go sell your bitcoin to go fix whatever it is that
that actually happened and you know i hope that that won't happen to people obviously that's just

(59:57):
not the case like you can't expect that nothing like they're gonna have no uncertainty in your
life um like that just not reality and i think what we always like we need to live on realities terms And that applies also to future price predictions I often see this with Bitcoiners of like well it inevitable Bitcoin is going to be you know a million dollars a coin So I don have to worry
about all the stuff that you're talking about. And it's going to take over the fiat system. And

(01:00:20):
we're not going to have the IRS anymore. And, you know, estate planning laws aren't going to matter
anymore and all this stuff. And it's like, okay, but all this stuff actually matters today, right?
We need to live in the reality of today, we could still have all these lofty, you know, examples of
what's going to happen in the future and be excited about the future. Right.
And have hope. But, um, and,
and hopefully we do all live in that world in 10, 15, 20 years,

(01:00:41):
whatever it is. Right. But in the meantime, right,
you still need to plan for today because things can happen today and you want to
be prepared.
Yeah. It's a balance because you don't want to sink yourself with, you know,
by being just too focused on the future.
And I sometimes find myself pulled in that direction of myself.
If I just think so far in the future where I have to stop myself, like Ben,

(01:01:01):
You got to relax. We still live in this system that sucks. You have to play these games sometimes.
And it's, you know, it's good to have a balance because it's I'm definitely much more hopeful for the future because I do see a much better future when we're on that sound money standard.
And I think that this is a also a good tool for helping people understand why, you know, buying Bitcoin is literally good for your mental health.

(01:01:26):
Do you ever talk about that with people in your practice at all?
I mean, we see this so common.
Yeah, just to add one more thing before I talk about mental health.
So to put this into perspective to people, what people are doing in Bitcoin, imagine you get married and you have a child, okay?
And the child is three months old.
They've just rolled over.
And all you talk about with your wife is who they're going to get married to and what it's going to be like when they're married with their own kids, right?

(01:01:51):
Like that's what it is when we're projecting out this amazing future that we don't know anything about.
But like, instead of enjoying the moment of my son just rolled over, I'm now talking about what he's going to be doing when he's 28, and going to be married to somebody random, you know what I mean? Like, it just doesn't make sense. And so I think when we talk about these kinds of examples, right, all of a sudden, it puts into perspective, yeah, that's crazy. Like, of course, I wouldn't be thinking about that, right? Because why would I? But like, we all and I'm guilty of this, too, right? Like, what it would be like living in this Bitcoin world. Like, you know, the reality is that, yeah, it's gonna hopefully be a much better life than it is today.

(01:02:24):
And I have great hopes for my kids that like, when they have kids that their kids won't have complete garbage toys from China, you know, that will have nicely made things that don't break all the time. And that I won't have to replace things like my toaster every 10 years, you know, like, I, of course, I think about those things, too. But like, also, you know, we need to live in reality, obviously. And reality is not so bad either, right? Like where we live today, it could have been a lot worse, we could be living, you know, 1000 years ago, where, you know, people just died because there was a plague.

(01:02:50):
right like things are like if we put into perspective of like the difference between
what things were back then versus where they are now versus where they will be right i think that
like the ultimately why we're here is to make the best of what of our current situation right and
we were placed in a specific time in a specific place with a specific family right to make the
best of today and to make the world a better place and i think like to answer your question

(01:03:11):
about mental health and yeah then kind of all that stuff melts away right if you know that you're
here for a purpose and you're supposed to be here in this time in this place doing whatever it is
that you're doing right and making the most of your life here and trying to make the world a
better place in whatever way you can. Right. And Bitcoiners are really idealistic. Right. We're all
doing this because we want the world to be a better place. We're not doing this because we
just want to have yachts. You know, I mean, I think that there are some people obviously that

(01:03:34):
are doing that, but most people I would say like are very ideological. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely
more of a crypto thing. And most Bitcoiners I know are very ideological. They want a better future.
They want to like, you know, have the nuclear family and have all the, you know, have like a more meaningful and intentional life.
And so and you can have that today without living in a Bitcoin world.

(01:03:54):
And when you're thinking about how you're living your life, like a lot of that can just melt away.
You don't need to have that anxiety about everything if you're just doing what you're supposed to be doing right now.
100%.
And we see this so many times just when we go to meetups and conferences with a bunch of Bitcoiners.
They really do fit that mold of people that are really excited about the future and passionate about building the future and having lots of babies and doing all these long term things.

(01:04:21):
Because we, you know, when you look at the people who are pessimistic about the future and sort of these fiat NPCs, as we call them, they're just kind of walking around and they're just depressed and unhappy and have no hope for the future for all the reasons that we've talked about.
you know they're it's just becoming harder to live for so many people so when you find bitcoin

(01:04:44):
it it sends you in all sorts of more positive directions and it gets you into more rabbit holes
that are not just cope you know it's actual real solutions are being built here that are going to
fix this and we know that there are going to be quite turbulent times between now and then like
there's never been a perfectly smooth monetary transition before it you know it could get ugly

(01:05:07):
but we're holding the thing that's going to get us through it.
Would you agree?
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, I think just sound money alone
and also caring about the next generation,
one of the issues that we're having right now
is that we have terrible money
and a lot of politicians that don't have children, right?
So like not only is the money just terrible

(01:05:27):
and as a result, like there's just downstream of that,
just complete depravity and corruption
and terrible things happening, right?
And then like these people aren't having children also,
because it doesn't seem that important to even care about the next generation.
Cause why bother if like the climate is, you know,
if temperatures are rising to a million degrees, you know,
I don't believe the stuff, but I'm just saying like the narratives out there is

(01:05:47):
that the earth is going to be on fire and in an hour, um,
the money is worthless, right? Everyone's on drugs. Uh,
we don't know what genders we are, right? Like we're in this world where it's
like, why bother? Why do anything for the next generation?
So we might as well just print lots of money and just do whatever we're doing
right now today. And then, you know, who cares? Whereas like, if we've got right sound money,

(01:06:09):
where we can think more in the future about like planning, and how we're going to be, you know,
raising families, and how we can think about society in general, right now, all of a sudden,
the next generation matters. And what we do today has an effect on the next generation,
instead of just kicking the can down a row, because you know, why not? And who cares about
the next people? Because I'm not even gonna have kids anyways. So somebody else's kids will deal
with whatever I'm doing today. The mentality is very different. And so yeah, of course,

(01:06:33):
It's going to be like, I think at the end of the day, right, it just comes back to freedom
versus responsibility.
So often when people think of freedom, they think I want to do whatever I want to do.
And I want to do it now.
And that's not actually freedom, right?
If we think about all sorts of things in our lives, these things have rules and responsibilities
that are that actually give you freedom.
So for instance, like when you're driving on a road, if anyone had the freedom to go

(01:06:56):
anywhere at any time on any road without any road signs or traffic rules or so forth, right?
No one would actually be able to get anywhere because everyone would be crisscrossing and cutting each other off and trying to get somewhere or just be a big traffic jam or worse many accidents right And so having rules on the road enable us to have the freedom to get where we want to go
right? Same thing with like, you play baseball or basketball, right? You wouldn't have a game if

(01:07:18):
you didn't have rules. You can't play baseball if you don't have rules of baseball. You can't play
basketball if you don't have rules of basketball. These games don't exist, right? So in any part,
in every aspect of society. Having rules actually helps us have the freedom to do what it is that we
want to do. And so it's the same thing with the money, right? If we're just willy-nilly printing
money and we have the freedom to print and do whatever we want, right? We have absolute chaos.

(01:07:40):
But when we have responsibility with our money, because our money is sound and our money is going
to provide for us for many, many generations, right? We have rules around how we store our
money and what we do with our money and how we're going to save and spend and where we're going to
put it and what we're thinking about is in terms of what we need now versus what we need later,
right all of a sudden we have all this freedom that opens us up to actually having the life that
we want to have one of the pieces you mentioned there that is one of my last questions i have

(01:08:05):
circled here i'd love to ask you is regarding how different people have different mindsets regarding
you know the future and how how important you you make it that you leave a good future for
next generations and i think this has become a hot topic of talking about how like the baby boomers

(01:08:25):
and the millennials and the gen z all sort of fit into this puzzle and i assume you're a millennial
i'm a millennial and we i think it's become more within the uh overton window to say you know what
the baby boomers kind of screwed us here like this it seems like their generation kind of

(01:08:46):
didn't really give us a better hand than they had.
So I'm curious what your thoughts are on this.
I know it's a little bit of a spicy topic, but to settle it,
I mean, how would you break down the hands that have been dealt to each generation
from baby boomer to millennials to Gen Z to Gen Alpha?
Because I think that this is important for those young people out there

(01:09:06):
to understand that if you're struggling right now, it's not your fault completely.
Not to say that you don't have any responsibility for yourself,
But, you know, to be fair, like you've been given a worse hand.
Would you agree with that?
And how would you break that all down?
I think people are going to hate my response, but I'm going to tell you it anyways.
And feel free to send me hate mail because I stand by this.

(01:09:27):
So you like getting back to what we were saying, right?
Every single person was put where they need to be.
That's that's my belief.
And I know that to be true because that's just the way that it is.
Right.
We are born to do a certain thing in a certain time in a certain body with a certain family,
with a certain circumstances.
Right.
And we can keep going out and out to all the layers on this, but you are exactly where you need to be.

(01:09:47):
If you were given a worse hand than the generation before you and the generation before that, that's because you were the one to fix it, not because you should have been in a better situation, right?
And if you were in a situation where you were supposed to make it worse and you did, then you did your job, right?
I think that that's ultimately like, yes, we have free will.
And yes, like we can make decisions about what we do, right?

(01:10:08):
So it's actually what we do with that hand, like you were saying with responsibility, right?
If you were dealt a bad hand, fine.
There are plenty of people that have been dealt bad hands and they do great things, right?
If you were dealt a good hand, there are plenty of people that have been dealt good hands and actually completely mess it up and make all sorts of bad decisions, even though they have the platter right in front of them.
And the only thing that they had to do was pick up the fork, right?

(01:10:29):
But instead, what do they do?
They hit the platter, right?
And so like, I just think that like, we have so much choice in how we handle our circumstances, that we can spend our lives feeling badly about the situation that we're in, and what happened before us, or we can choose to make lemonade with lemons, right? I tell this to my kids all the time, when they have issues, I'm like, okay, well, we can sulk here in the corner about how it's not fair. And, you know, like, how you wish you had this when somebody else has that and how like, you know, all these things, or we can be very grateful for all the gifts that we have.

(01:11:01):
been blessed with. And it really does come down to like acknowledging that I think that's really
hard for people. It's so easy to spot the thing that's wrong. And it's so hard to acknowledge all
the things that are right and what we can do with the things that are right, rather than focusing in
on what's wrong. I love that answer. That's amazing. And such a great way to end this, I think, is just

(01:11:23):
that this mindset that to not get down on yourself for the situation is happening, because I know for
a lot of people out there, it's hard. And a lot of people listening to this will be in a tough space.
Even a lot of us Bitcoiners, you know, we're, we're stacking SaaS, but we still have to deal
with the fiat world, you know, just because Bitcoiners have this knowledge of what the
future is going to be like, doesn't mean it's, it's not difficult for everybody. So

(01:11:45):
very good message of hope there and appreciate you sharing it. So Morgan, where can people go
to find more of your work and order your book and get all this good stuff that you're working on?
Yeah, for sure. So you can find me on Twitter. I'm at Morgan with an E Roshard.
um e instead of an a um my husband and i have a podcast it's called bitcoin for advisors we try to
get them out monthly but i'll be honest we usually get like seven to eight out per year so we're

(01:12:09):
doing our best um with that but it's just it's similar to this where we just chit chat and we
talk about bitcoin um i'm will be speaking um at bitcoin 2025 so if anyone wants to check me out
there um pierre and i are doing a fireside chat there we'd love to see people um if you need
financial planning, feel free to come to originwa.com. That's my financial planning firm. And

(01:12:30):
then if you just need some consulting, it's moneyowners.com. My book's on Amazon. I'm working
on another book. It's really slow going. I regret announcing that I was doing a book like while I
was pregnant with my third because I really thought I really had it in my mind because I wrote my
first book while I was pregnant with my second. I was like, I jammed that out in three months.
It's a lot harder to jam out a book when you already have two kids. I just sort of had in my

(01:12:53):
mind of like, I write stuff when I'm pregnant, I'm totally prolific. And yeah, no, I've been very
humbled by that. So I'm still working on that book, but I'm about halfway through. It's specifically
about Bitcoin personal finance, though, my other book is more of a general overview about personal
finance. The Bitcoin section is very small, because my publisher made me make it small. And
also, I think that Bitcoiners, when they read it, they can sort of elaborate on how the traditional

(01:13:18):
financial concepts would apply to them specifically when they're holding Bitcoin. So maybe you don't
need to spend too much time in the investments chapter, but spend some time in other places in
that book because all that stuff is still relevant. Excellent. Well, I will be sure to put all those
links in the show notes for people to check out. I'm looking forward to that book and I'll see you
in Las Vegas because this is my first year I'll also be speaking. So I'm very much looking forward

(01:13:39):
to it. It's going to be a fun time with lots of cool Bitcoiners and anyone out there looking to
go meet some cool people, come. It's going to be super cool. That's a great place to go
just get deeper into the Bitcoin rabbit hole no matter where you are. So highly recommend it.
Morgan Richard, I appreciate you so much for coming to join me today. Thank you so much for
talking with me. And I look forward to sharing this with my audience. Thanks, Ben. It was great

(01:14:00):
having me on. Thank you.

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#119 Morgen Rochard - Planning Your Financial Future with Bitcoin

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#119 Morgen Rochard - Planning Your Financial Future with Bitcoin