Traditional finance is here with Reid Bolinger | Bitcoin is Dead - Bitcoin Is Dead

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:18):
So everyone listening .
Welcome back to the Bitcoin isDead podcast.
I'm sitting here with Tom thetaxman Jones and Reed Bollinger
from Fisher Wealth Management,one of the local wealth
management places here inAlamance County, graham right.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
We're in Burlington on.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Church Street.
I can never tell if I'm inGraham or Burlington.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Unless it's downtown, graham, I might as well be in
Burlington, right?
I don't know where the line is,graham, I might as well be in
Burlington because I don't knowwhere the line is.
But welcome, thank you forcoming on to the show.
From our standpoint, we'retalking to Alamance County,
orange County, central NorthCarolina businesses without
really any concern for what thebusiness is.

(00:59):
But in your case, you come froma financial background with a
financial firm.
So I'm not a financialbackground with a financial firm
.
So, right, I'm not a financialadvisor.
Nothing on here should beconsidered financial advice for
anybody listening.
Correct, it's purely forentertainment, right, and or
common sense.
But what I, when I came to you,I thought I can learn from the

(01:23):
traditional side and see, do Iunderstand how the traditional
side works.
Is what I'm hearing in theBitcoin community, a reflection
of how finance actually works inthe real world.
So I thought let me reach outto a financial firm, see what's
going on.
So your business, slightlydifferent than what we typically
interview, but well within therealm of hey, we're in Alamance,
we're community-based.

(01:43):
Yeah, we've been here for 1981,right?
Yep, 81?
Yep, I'm thinking about correctme if I'm wrong.
I read about $300 million undermanagement.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Give or take, they've grown a lot since then.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
The fishers have grown.
They're over a billion now Abillion.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, that's pretty strong, strong yeah, that is a
lot.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, I guess my information might have been from
around 2023.
Yeah, it was um.
Yeah, they uh, probably by theend of 2023 they crossed a
billion.
Oh wow, so I'm even older thanthat yeah, probably 2021 or 2020
pre-covid yeah, it's, it's.
Uh, yeah, that that's probablysome.
You know that information wasdefinitely old, so tell us a
little about.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
How did you end up at Fisher, what does Fisher do,
and how does Fisher contributeto the community outside of just
running a business?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, so thank you for having me Appreciate the
invitation.
And again, my name is ReedBollinger.
I'm a certified financialplanner with Fisher Wealth
Management here in Burlington.
So I'll start with.
I became a financial advisor in1997.

(02:56):
Went to work for a companycalled Dean Witter who later
became Morgan Stanley inGreensboro, and after working
there for about three years Igot an opportunity to come to
work for a little bank calledFirst Union that was in Graham
over by the Tasty.
Bakery.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Great donuts.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh golly, I love the Tasty Bakery.
So I went to work for FirstUnion, which later became Wells
Fargo, which later becameWachovia, which later became
Wells Fargo, which later becameWachovia and later became Wells
Fargo, and so I stayed there for21 years and three years ago
decided to go independent andwent to work for Fisher Wealth

(03:40):
Management, went to work forRick Fisher and Willie Fisher
here in Burlington.
Wealth Management went to workfor Rick Fisher and Willie
Fisher here in Burlington andyou know, I guess my digital
assets crypto journey started.
You know when clients wouldcome into the bank you know
several years ago and ask mequestions about it, and I'll be
completely honest with you Iknew a little bit about it, but

(04:02):
I certainly didn't know what Iknow now.
Honest with you, I knew alittle bit about it, but I
certainly didn't know what Iknow now.
And so you know you couldalways, as you all know, there
weren't any financial productsseven, eight years ago that you
could sell to people.

(04:24):
There weren't.
Bitcoin products came out Ithink it was 2017 or something,
so we probably weren't going tosell something like that anyway.
So people would come in and askme questions from time to time
and, and you know, I got to thepoint where we would.
We would ask you people to askquestions a lot, and I just

(04:47):
didn't know a lot of answersabout it.
I felt like I could explainmutual funds and stocks and
bonds and explain a lot ofthings, but, especially as
Bitcoin became more and moreexpensive, people became more
and more interested and so Idecided in 2021 to kind of learn
more about it.

(05:08):
And there's a guy named RickEdelman I don't know if you guys
are familiar with him, but hewas Barron's number one
financial advisor three times inhis career in the whole country
and he ended up selling hispractice and he started a
business and he educatesfinancial professionals on
things like digital assets andcryptocurrencies, and so I

(05:31):
decided to take some trainingfrom him and became interested
in the space and the subject,and since then I've gone through
a lot of continuing ed with himand gone to a couple of
conferences um in in austinright after the convergence
conference, um and uh, so that'swhere I've gotten a lot of my

(05:52):
knowledge, um, and it's been.
It's been very interesting, doyou?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
find that?
Do you find that there's moreor less?
There's more, there's more orless firms getting involved with
Bitcoin, at least from aneducation standpoint, than there
was a year or two ago.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
So I would say that there are probably more advisors
interested now than there werea few years ago.
But I would also say I know alot of advisors and most
advisors probably don'trecommend or solicit the ETFs.
They're relatively new.
Bitcoin isn't, but the ETFs arerelatively new and so it's just

(06:33):
not quite a part of mostadvisors' businesses yet.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
When you first began to get questions about
cryptocurrency, was it an oldercrowd, younger crowd, middle age
?
What age bracket?

Speaker 2 (06:50):
I would say and and tom.
I don't remember right off thetop of my head how old they were
, but I would just say roughlymost of them were middle-aged
folks yeah and maybe someyounger folks.
I certainly didn't get a lot ofquestions from our retirees.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
And I think people would hear about it in the news
and see how well it was doing.
And you know we're in theinvestment business and people
want to make money and that'skind of our job, and so it was
just that flow of you know,people were like oh, I have a
neighbor that's doing well inBitcoin.
Tell me about Bitcoin, so Iwant to get on the bandwagon?

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, exactly Because I know in my tax practice
younger people are more inclinedto be looking at the Bitcoin.
Of course the elderly people,which will make sense because
they're older and they don'twant to take a lot of risks.
They're not going to be outthere trying to speculate
because they're coming to theend of their career and again,
it just wouldn't make any sensethere.

(07:52):
And that 35, 40-ish, 45 kind ofin between, it's kind of like
oh, maybe you know, let me get alittle bit more.
But I've also found out theindividuals got more of a tech
background, the whole technology, and I guess you could say it
has a lot to do with their levelof comfort dealing with the

(08:15):
technology.
The more comfortable they arewith the technology, the more
inclined they want to find outabout the whole Bitcoin, the
crypto, and they want to know,you know, hey, just what is this
?
What direction?
Is it something that would begood for me?
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
I mean, I don't know about you, but I know very few
people that are invested that Iwouldn't consider tech savvy in
Bitcoin.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
That's part of the reason why we started the
podcast was because I recognizedmy background is a blue collar
background.
I had no exposure to computersin any real sense prior to 2005,
when I joined the Marine Corpsand the Marine Corps threw me
into a technical field and Igrew from there and what I

(09:05):
recognized was over the past twoor three years, as I've become
further and further, bothmentally and financially,
invested in Bitcoin, was thatthe people around me could not
bridge the gap that I was ableto bridge because of my prior
exposure to technology.
To give an example, when Iworked at a company called Heuer

(09:28):
Packard Enterprise, we werehappy at the time with speeds of
one gigabyte a second, internetor local connectivity, so from
computer to computer you couldtransfer one gig file in one
second.
Under perfect circumstances itdoesn't actually work out that

(09:48):
way, but, for the sake ofargument, by the time I left HPE
, I was talking to companies whowere demanding 10 gigabyte a
second.
By the time I left the next job, they were upset about less
than 50 gigs per second ofthroughput and at some point I
asked myself what is fast enough?
And what I realized was itwon't ever be fast enough

(10:13):
because the competition willalways go just a little bit
further to try to beat you out,even if it's just on a product
information page.
So I watched technology evolvein a very measurable way from my
time in the Marine Corps, mytime at HPE and then on through
other jobs.
Whereas my friends, theirexposure to technology is my
computer is fast, my computer isslow.

(10:35):
Normally when my computer isslow it means that my computer
is old and I need to buy a newone.
There's so many nuances inbetween they don't understand.
And when you start talkingabout Bitcoin and the technical
complexities behind it and whythose matter, is my computer
fast or is my computer slow?
Because they just haven'tcrossed that bridge, they

(10:55):
haven't walked that walk, andit's completely understandable.
If a plumber wants to talk tome about plumbing, I've only got
a certain range of knowledge.
I can't bridge the gaps that hecan bridge in his head very
quickly.
So when we started the podcast,it became how do I get people
who aren't going to be exposedto Bitcoin until it's
potentially too late to talkabout Bitcoin in a way that

(11:17):
makes sense?
And what we figured out was goto businesses that are adjacent
Bitcoin adjacent even if theydon't know it your electricians,
your plumbers, financialmanagement, things like that,
but also just anyone interested,anybody willing to talk,
because if they own a business,they have employees, those
employees have families, theyhave families.

(11:38):
It's going to trickle down Ifwe come and talk to the business
owner and say you don't have tounderstand everything.
But no, this is the truth of it.
It's not what you hear on thenews, it's not what you hear
about in bar talk.
This is the truth and I willtell everybody.
I may not be accurate witheverything I say, I may get a
technicality wrong.

(11:59):
It's a deep field, but Ipromise you, when I told you I
thought for sure it was thetruth.
So I'm going to give out honestinformation to people that come
request it.
But I also want to be on theother side of the fence.
I want to hear about what youdo, because I don't know
everything and I didn't knowanything about Bitcoin five
years ago.
So I want to talk to othercompanies and figure out like

(12:19):
hey, what do you do?
Like talking to the guy fromMevin Electric.
Mevin Electric started as asmall company, probably a one or
two man operation, and now theyhave a building, they have a
couple of employees, a couple ofvans.
Somebody had to have the guts,though, to go out and do that.
How did you do it?
What did you do?
Are you interested in keepingBitcoin as a treasury asset to

(12:40):
hedge against inflation or toexpand, kind of?
If you got cash in the bank,you can only do so much with
that cash in terms of how I canallocate it in a way that makes
sense over the short term.
If I want to put cash into,like a 401k or a Roth IRA or
what have you, that makes senseover the long term.
But when I'm a company and Ineed to increase my cashflow or

(13:03):
my holdings over the next threeyears and a Roth IRA, isn't it?
It just it's not it's notenough time.
When, when you look at Bitcoin,what it can do for businesses
like MicroStrategy I'm sureyou've seen MicroStrategy,
michael Saylor yeah, what it cando for businesses over the
longterm is is great, but whatit can do for your company over

(13:23):
the short term is amazing,michael.
I mean, micro strategy was acompany Some people had heard of
five years ago Now.
Anybody who watches the newshas at least heard the name.
So, yeah, we want to bringbusinesses in.
We want to talk about.
We want to bring the people whoaren't going to hear about
Bitcoin to Bitcoin and viceversa.
Yeah, that's kind of where westand.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
You know it's interesting when I was at this
conference, we had a conferencecall with Michael Saylor.
He was actually in Hungary, ohwow, and that was interesting.
He's got a great story andanytime I have the opportunity
to hear him talk, I'm alwaysinterested in listening.
But you know, from ourperspective as financial
planners, I would say that theguys in our office don't

(14:08):
allocate towards Bitcoin, andpart of that is because, as
financial planners and I'm goingto speak for myself, not for
them I use strategies that areusually managed by other people,
and I'll pick a strategy basedon someone's risk level we were
talking about.
You know, bitcoin's not anappropriate investment or

(14:29):
suitable investment for for someof our elderly clients, and so,
as an exercise and I was justcurious, I'd never done this I
looked at my book of businessbefore I came over here, and 2%
of my book of business isconsidered aggressive, and so 2%
of the people in my book areconsidered aggressive and, by
the way, I have an account thereat the firm and I consider

(14:50):
myself an aggressive investor,and so I probably represent some
of that percentage.
So, you know, as a rule, wejust haven't allocated yet, for
a couple of reasons One is riskTwo we have other people
managing the portfolio, as wekind of match up people with the

(15:13):
appropriate portfolio, and soyou know I can't change my
strategy to manage people'smoney based on whether or not I
think they should buy Bitcoin ornot.
I happen to like it.
I think there's a future in it.
I would also tell people andthis is just my opinion if

(15:37):
you're looking at your overallportfolio, an allocation of 1%
to 2%, if it goes to zero whichI don't think, any of us think
that's going to happen but if itwent to zero, if you had one or
two percent of your money andsomething like that, it's not
going to kill you, right?
So, um, but, um.
So those are those are some ofthe reasons I happen to believe

(15:58):
in it.
I'm interested in the subjectum, you know, because I think
there's a future, and I'm justas interested in blockchain
technology.
But, you know, from a businessstandpoint, it may show up in
some of the portfolios and wejust don't know it.
I mean, the managers have a lotof leeway.
They can manage the moneyhowever they want to, but I

(16:20):
would say that it doesn't showup on a level where, when we're
reporting back to clients, hereare the top 50 holdings in your
account.
I've never seen any.
And, of course, the ETFs arerelatively new, but I haven't
seen any of the ETFs or anything.
Digital assets, the miners Ihaven't seen any of that show up
.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
There's a lot about the traditional financial world
that I am absolutely in the darkabout.
I have general broad strokeopinions about the traditional
financial side, but is itinaccurate or accurate to say
that a company like BlackRockand a company like Fisher Wealth
Management are, at their core,a similar type of company, just

(17:01):
different in size and maybe inlines of business, where
BlackRock might have 10 lines ofbusiness and Fisher Wealth
Management has five, forinstance?
Are they similar?

Speaker 2 (17:11):
So I would say they're not similar and I think
of BlackRock as an asset manager.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Okay, you know, they're managing portfolios of
investments and that's separateor different than what Fisher
does.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
We're a financial planning firm.
So somebody comes into ouroffice and they say we're
interested in retiring.
Can you kind of give us an ideaof how much money we need to
save, what our retirement maylook like?
What's our tax situation goingto look like in retirement?
How can we best plan for thefuture?

(17:43):
How can we best plan for ourchildren?
How can we best plan for ourchildren's future?
Those are the things that we do.
We don't manage portfolios ofinvestments.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
So you're developing, or rather your firm is
developing a long-term plan forthe individual person married
couple.
What have you Then you take inconsideration okay, I want to be
able to have enough money tosend my children to such and
such school.
I want to be able to haveenough money to send my children
to such and such school.
Right, I want to be able toretire at 50, 55, right?
Uh, hopefully 45 there.

(18:11):
Uh, have my house paid offthings of that nature there?
So it sounds like, then, alsothat you also is going to have,
I guess, life insuranceabsolutely part of your plan in
your strategy there.
And then you're going to meetwith them on a yearly basis and
say, ok, you know, this is whathappened.
We need to continue to do this,or we need to kind of modify

(18:35):
the direction.
You've been conservative, youmight want to be a little bit
more aggressive there.
And then, of course, thingstake place health issues, what
have you?
Inability to work, covid,things can really change that
whole strategy there.
But again, you're looking at anindividual long-term goal, and

(18:59):
long-term plans is to get themthere.
That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Okay.
So, if I came to you and said Iwant to work on retirement, I'm
38.
Okay, and I want to work onretirement, would you be
advising me and I'm going tothrow just generic things out
there but would you be advisingme to buy things like ETFs Not
necessarily Bitcoin ETFs, butETFs and then helping me go
through the process?
Right?
Would you tell me, hey, youneed to go to BlackRock and

(19:27):
BlackRock's going to just buyBlackRock's bundle of ETFs, or
however they bundle assets, andI would just go off and do that,
do you?
I guess my question is when Icome to you, you're going to
advise me to buy certain assetsto reach my goals.
Right, do you help me buy thoseassets?
Yes, so I don't go to aseparate entity to buy those

(19:47):
assets.
I go through you.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
You could but typically people do that.
99% of the people would gothrough us to do that.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
So when it's time to check my returns or my status, I
go to your website or I go to aprogram that you've given me to
evaluate what I've got going on.
So it's all one portal throughyou guys, that's right, that's
good, yeah, that's good yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
How do you handle someone whose idea strategy is
going to be completely oppositeof what it needs to be?
Reed, I want to go to Las Vegas.
Danville just opened, so I'mgoing over there and take my
future in my hands here, Whereasyou're saying no, no, no, no,

(20:30):
you need to do this, this, this.
How do you handle situationslike that?
And I'm thinking you probablyran into somebody that's been
that extreme from one end to theother.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
So that does happen.
I would say it doesn't happenas much as you probably think.
Most of the people that we dealwith are savers.
Why would you go to thebuilding?

Speaker 1 (20:50):
if you weren't, you just wouldn't think about
stopping by.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Right, you bring up an interesting point.
We deal with savers, but atsome point everybody passes on,
gets their angel wings and thenwe get to deal with their kids.
Passes on, gets their angelwings, and then we get to deal
with their kids, you know, andso that's a whole nother
ballgame sometimes, you know.
So there are cases where peopleyou know want to do things with
their money that we may notagree with, and you know, at the

(21:15):
end of the day it's their money.
We're just there to help.
I'm never gonna.
I mean it happens and you justgive them the best advice
possible.
I remind them that I've beendoing this since 97.
We've been through some goodtimes and bad times.
I've seen all kinds ofdifferent transactions, you know
, been involved, you know, at abrokerage firm, seen

(21:38):
transactions at a bank, seen allkinds of different thingsped a
lot of people through theirretirement, and so you know, we
can only try so hard.
People are going to do with itwhatever they want.
If they need their money, we'regoing to give it to them.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's kind of like the refund money yeah, Sometimes
you're going to take it pay offbills Yep.
Sometimes you're going, hey,Danville just opened, so here I
come yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
And you know I mean, at the end of the day, we can't
tell them what to do with theirmoney.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
We're just going to give them advice, you know Do
you see the people you deal with, your clients, being more
disciplined with their money orless disciplined from when you
first started.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
So the people that I deal with now, I would say, are
pretty disciplined and they'resavers and they're interested in
planning for certain financialobjectives mostly it's
retirement and so I would sayyou know, for the most part the
people that I deal with, amajority of the people that I

(22:49):
deal with, are close toretirement or already retired,
and so you know it's.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
They've gone through the pitfalls of it's here today,
it's gone tonight, so they'renot going to be too crazy.
And I noticed on my end on thetax preparation the younger
crowd, the 30-ish, they're lessinclined to put aside money for

(23:17):
whatever Once they get therefund money.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Maybe a week, maybe two weeks, it's gone and you
know, tom, that's a shame,because those are the people
that have the time on their side.
Right, they have the mostopportunity to make money and it
doesn't matter.
This is not a podcast aboutinvestments.
You have time on your side, andthat's something that a lot of

(23:41):
us don't have At 55, I don'thave the same time frame.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Oh no, oh no, as a 30-year-old, you know.
And unfortunately, you know,people at 30 may not be
interested in thinking aboutretirement.
You know, that's what I noticedthe children now is really very
difficult to have thatconversation.

(24:05):
It's like, well, I don't wantto hear that, I'm not going to
worry about that, I'm going tolive and let live right now.
And it's very sad because somany people's situation
financially is due to the factthey're uneducated about money.
Yep, and they're undisciplinedabout money, right.
The song I sing constantly iseducate yourselfated about money

(24:26):
.
Yep, and they're undisciplinedabout money, right.
The song I sing constantly iseducate yourself about your
money.
Don't be a dummy with yourmoney.
Look around you and my 30-ish,31, 32-year-old daughter lives
with me and again, it's a song Ising to her constantly.
You know, look, you're spending$40, $50 on makeup, cosmetic,

(24:49):
what have you?
And two weeks later you're outthere spending another $40, $50
there.
So again, I see individuals notbeing disciplined with their
money and not having the abilityto say no.
My grandson I mentioned he'sspending the summer with me.
That's one of the things I'mworking with.
When you go into the store, haveyour list If it's four or five,

(25:13):
six things, and then look, youknow, just don't go in and grab
something.
But so many people don't have alist when they go to the
grocery store.
So many people go in there ohthat looks good, it's on sale.
It's not on your list, let'ssee.
And also, when you get to thecash register, you want to have
a pretty good idea as to whatthis is going to cost you,

(25:33):
because you don't want to bestanding in front of the cashier
and say wait a minute, takethat back, wait a minute.
Who put that in there?
Because again, you're not beingsmart and you're not being
disciplined with your money andyou don't have the ability to
say no yeah, budgeting is hardthing to do oh god, and you're
right I mean, where do you learnbudgeting?

Speaker 2 (25:53):
where do you learn how to plan?
Um, it's not taught in schools,or maybe it is now.
It certainly wasn't when I wascoming around.
No, no, so um so and and youknow we had this conversation
before we started Everybodyneeds some advice, whether they
get it from us or whether theyget it from someone.
One of the things that I likedabout coming to work for Rick

(26:14):
and Willie is we're there tohelp the community and so,
regardless of minimums, we'rethere to help people.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
And there's something to be said about being like
trying to be a part of thecommunity, actively engaging
with the community, because atthe end of the day, if you tell
me something that's false, youscam me.
What have you?
There's a face associated withthe actions that occurred or the
advice I received, and I canthen return to that same person,

(26:43):
or at least the same business,and say there's ramifications
for this scammy treatment yougave me.
But when you're in a communityand you say, hey, we're here,
here's our name, here's our sign, and you're in something like
money, you're putting a lot ofweight on your reputation.
And your reputation only existsfor most businesses within
their community.

(27:05):
Somebody like Wendy's I have noproblem with Wendy's
specifically, but somebody likeWendy's if they lost the Mebane
location, they would not care inthe long term.
If Fisher Wealth Management allof a sudden had a bad name in
the community of Mebane orGraham or Haw River or
Burlington, that would matter awhole lot, right, everybody
would be upset about that.

(27:25):
And you mentioned that thisisn't really being taught in
schools.
Regarding budgeting, I've beenkind of dabbling of this theory
about church.
Where else in society do youroutinely go?
Where somebody says you betterbe good.
You better not act wrong.

(27:47):
You better love your neighbor.
You better not, you know, covetyour neighbor's wife or covet
your neighbor's wife.
You better not do these thingsbecause there's ramifications.
Meanwhile you walk out into theregular world and the only thing
you really see is you need moremoney, your car's not nice
enough.
You know this, that and theother.
You don't get reminded anywhereelse that I'm aware of in

(28:11):
American culture on a routinebasis.
To be good, once you're over 18, once you're out of your
parents' control Financially,we're absent.
That same thing.
There's no entity where, aspart of the culture that you are
reminded to be frugal with yourmoney, that you're reminded
that tomorrow's coming and todayis leaving and that you should.
I think hearing you two talkabout it for some reason

(28:33):
connected that back to churchwith me.
It's a similar premise.
There's no once you're over 18,21,.
What have you?
There's no authority onmorality or finances that you
then subscribe to.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Right, unless you go to church or official wealth
management.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, it's an interesting idea that you've got
.
I mean, I've never reallythought of it that way, but I
agree with you.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
And one of the things of course, as we all know with
the technology, is the wholesocial media there and again.
That's why I encounter again,especially with the younger
generation, where I saw such andsuch on Facebook.
When the stimulus money cameout in 2020, 21, we was getting
random calls hey, when am Igoing to get my next stimulus

(29:22):
money?
I don't know.
Well, such and such posted onFacebook that there's another
$400, there's another $1,200.
I don't know, I don't knowanything about it.
So you've got this social media, tiktok, facebook.
What have you there?
That is putting thisinformation out there from Joe
Blow.

(29:42):
And, of course, people are verygullible.
So when they hear there's afree ticket here to go get a
Wendy meal or more stimulusmoney, they don't even question
it.
They're like, okay, yeah.
And the thing also that I seewith the different social media
they have no problem puttingtheir name, social security

(30:04):
number, their date of birth, andthey don't realize what they
have done is open up a door fortheir theft to be stolen.
And of course, you probably runinto it, reed dealing with
people whose credit has gonedownhill for whatever reason
divorce, death, what have youand they don't realize that your
credit is like your health.
It's an investment and once youbegin to go down that road of

(30:27):
bad health, bad credit, you gotto work to reestablish it.
And time is not always on yourside yeah, time is a.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Time is a thing that you don't understand at all.
Like I mean us in this room, Imean the general person.
It's no concept of time, andwhat I mean by that is a dollar
today does not equal a dollartomorrow, or it might equal a
dollar tomorrow, but inflationmay adjust the value of that
dollar.
Your investment may adjust thevalue that you have invested

(31:01):
with that dollar.
There's so many factors when itcomes to time and money that
most people never, ever connectthe dots on, and I think to a
certain degree, that's somewhaton purpose, and I think to a
certain degree, that's somewhaton purpose that there's an
intentional absence ofinformation like this being
pushed, because if peopleunderstood I think Henry Ford

(31:22):
said something similar to thisIf you actually understood how
money worked, there'd be a riotin the streets, and Bitcoin is
only opening the door for me tounderstand more about the
financial world.
Say, four years ago, you couldhave asked me anything you
wanted to about finances and ifyou boiled it down to it to its

(31:43):
core, my core response, my coreresponse would be well, get more
money.
You know, just that's theanswer.
If you can't retire, we'll makemore money.
Go get more money, go work formore money.
I didn't understand things likeinvesting.
I didn't understand inflation.
I didn't understand all thesefactors that contribute to what
might be considered a healthy oran unhealthy amount of savings

(32:05):
in retirement.
But when I got into Bitcoin,all of a sudden that whole
perspective began to change andit became just about time, just
about amassing assets, becauseonce I understood how Bitcoin
functioned and I then looked atthe dollar, I thought the dollar
functions almost exactlyopposite of all the best ideals

(32:29):
about Bitcoin.
So if I invest in the dollar,my time horizon is going to
change.
When I want to utilize thosefunds is going to change,
because I know if I wait tillI'm 65, 85, however long I live,
to either pass that money on oruse it, the value of that money
is not going to be the same asthe value when I originally
acquired it.

(32:49):
Now, investment could give memore money, but on a dollar to
dollar basis it might be lessdependent upon inflation.
Where Bitcoin is the opposite,the longer I wait, presumably
the almost programmatically thebetter it becomes.
For instance, we just wentthrough the Bitcoin halving and
I know you said you've got somebackground in blockchain.
Well, the halving reduces myrewards by 50% when I mine

(33:12):
Bitcoin, and that hurts in theshort term, but in the long term
, I know that the supplybecoming less is good when
demand increases or maintainsand demand is increasing or
maintaining, as we are seeingwith people like BlackRock, but
also there's other firms thatare becoming involved, other
asset managers and things ofthat nature, firms that are

(33:33):
becoming involved, other assetmanagers and things of that
nature.
What I would like to see,though, is not Fisher Wealth
Management say hey, we're goingto start selling Bitcoin or
something of that nature, but anod hey, we can talk about
Bitcoin now that we're seeing itadopted by nation states or by
these larger institutions, notas a marketable product for, say

(33:54):
, somebody that's at retirementor after retirement, but to now
say let's talk to the 25 to 35to 45-year-olds with this other
bit of information, even if itwas just educational, because
most people won't come to mebecause I'm just a guy in a hat
but, fisher Wealth Management, Iwant to be clear.
I'm not saying that I'm askingyou to do this.

(34:15):
I'm saying it would be great tosee somebody like Fisher come
out and say we're going to learnabout Bitcoin and we want you
to learn about it with us andthen follow the appropriate
resources to learn about it,because, at the end of the day,
the 25, 35, 45-year-olds aregoing to be in your seat or be
in your office in 20 years andif it's me, I don't even want to
talk Like stocks.

(34:40):
I don't like them.
There's too much uncertainty.
I don't know how they do, butthey do really well they do.
They do In dollar termsabsolutely Well.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
It goes back to what we mentioned earlier about being
educated.
Right Again, I'm going backdown the road with my grandson.
Uh, he's a big dollar generalfan, so and the song that I sing
to him look, since you like todo spend money there.
And he you know everybody withthe younger generation got the
cash out.

(35:09):
I said go ahead and buy you 10%or 20% of Dollar Journal stock
there.
And he had no idea as to how tolook for the price online.
So I showed him how to pull upthe price and a couple of days
ago it was I don't know$220-some there.
And that's when it occurred tome that this younger generation,

(35:30):
even when they get into college, younger generation, even when
they get into college, they'renot really being taught the
whole concept about if you'regoing to spend your money at
Food, lion or Duke Energy orwhat have you, you would want to
share that to get some of yourmoney back, but they don't see
that.
And the big thing that they donot understand is to pay your
bills on time.
Why are you going to pay halfof your cell phone bill and it's

(35:53):
still going to be there nextweek?
And then you have added anothertwo, three, four percent to
your fee.
So instead of $100 a month nowyou got $103, $104.
So the concept of beingeducated about money is not
being taught and you got a lotof parents that don't teach that

(36:15):
.
Um, and again, I'm veryfortunate where, uh, I grew up,
my parents?
They came up during thedepression, so they're very,
very much in tune.
No, no, no, no, you know that'sthat's, that's too much.
No, we're not going to getthere.
And you see so many of thesekids now and you probably again
go back to the grocery storebecause that's the family
gathering there, unless they'regoing to a rec game.

(36:35):
And the child wants this andthe parents is like, well, what
do you want tonight?
And I'm like, wait a minute,they're not paying for the
groceries there, but I know partof that is to feed them, so
they'd be happy and go to bedand everything there.
It's short term.
Yeah, it is, it's short term.
And they're not teaching themthe concept again of saying no

(36:56):
and what's in your budget?

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, so I know you said you came with a few things
that you were bringing fromFisher that you wanted to talk
about.
One of them was tax and estateplanning, a few things.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
So we've kind of talked about asset management.
We don't manage portfolios ofBitcoin, or we're not.
We're not allocating to theETFs.
The managers and some of theportfolios may have some
exposure there.
It would be almost impossibleto figure out.
You know across the firm howmuch that is.
It'd be a very probably mostlikely a small percent.
But if people did want to comeinto our office and talk, I

(37:32):
would probably be one of thepeople they would talk to and,
and like I said before, I thinka small allocation to Bitcoin is
probably okay for a moreaggressive or growth-oriented
investor.
It's certainly not suitable fora retiree or somebody that's
more conservative.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
This is on Social Security.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
No, I mean you know you got to be able and you know
one thing about it is we've allseen it, you and I.
On one of our firstconversations we talked about
the fact that you know themarket has hours 930 to 4, right
, bitcoin's hours are 24 hours aday, seven days a week.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, you can trade on Christmas.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Right and you could go to bed.
You can trade on Christmas,right and you could go to bed,
you told me.
You said you can go to bed onenight, wake up the next morning
and be down 15%.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Easily.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
We're down 10% this week, yeah, so it's got to be
the right thing for the rightperson.
So the other thing, two otherthings, that some information
that I brought you know it's notjust about growing your money
that I brought you know, it'snot just about growing your
money.
You know, when you, when youcome into a firm like ours, you
know, one of the things we'regoing to make sure that we do is

(38:38):
title your account correctly.
If Tom wants to make sure thathis assets pass to his daughter,
he adds his daughter on hisaccount as a beneficiary.
And it's hard to do that whenyou have a, when you have a
wallet, a digital wallet, um,and so, um, so the estate
planning part of digital assetscan get a little crazy.

(39:01):
You know, um, and, and you knowwe've, we've talked, uh, I think
I think, on one of yourpodcasts, and I can't remember
which one it was um, so, andI've, I've personally asked
these questions, because I'mmarried, I have a wife and if I
die, I want all my assets to goto her.
Um, that's traditionally how itworks, and I'm not just saying

(39:21):
that because she's going tolisten to this.
You know, it's actually time.
I promise you it's written downon a will you know, and I can
take it to the bank, that'sright.
Um, but, but in the case ofdigital assets, it's hard to
name a beneficiary, and so whatdo you do?
I mean, if you download theminto a cold wallet, do you leave

(39:42):
the key for someone, anexecutor, to handle for you?
I mean, that's certainlysomething that people need to
consider titling the assets andmaking sure that they pass to
the appropriate person.
I have to think, from afinancial planning standpoint,
that if you know, for ourlisteners that are listening,

(40:04):
that owns, you know, bitcoin orsome digital assets, it's
something that they shouldconsider, you know, planning for
.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
I recently learned about a project and I don't know
much about it yet, but it'ssomething I want to look into
where you basically record abunch of digital information it
could be any digital informationyou want to be pictures will
Bitcoin wallet, it could be anydigital content Facebook, your
Facebook account, something likethat and you check in, you

(40:34):
submit the information that youwant to have passed on to a
relative or a friend or whoeverafter death.
You then submit to check-insperiodically where if you don't
check in March 1st of 2025, thenprogrammatically this
information will be released tothe address you specified.
That may not work financiallyin the eyes of things like the

(41:02):
IRS or in the financial world orthe traditional financial world
, but in theory I could put aBitcoin wallet on there and say
look, if I don't come back by2025, march 1st, send my wife a
copy, or send whoever a copy ofmy Bitcoin passphrase with
instructions on how to access it.
No third party will or anythingnecessarily required.
If people don't like say no oneknows that I have it, for

(41:24):
instance, then I wouldn'tnecessarily need to transfer it
through a will or through anyother process to somebody like
my wife.
Just here's the password.
Good luck.
I'm out, yeah, whereas if Ihave a substantial amount and I
need to transfer it down throughwill, I don't know exactly how
you would do it outside of justgiving someone the password, but
then you have to trust theperson that you give the
password to.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
And that's where I thought it would be interesting
for us to just talk about it,because it's going to happen to
all of us and for for peoplethat own digital assets.
How do you do that?
And I think the key is you justplan for it.
Your planning for it may lookdifferent from mine, it may look
different from Tom's Absolutely, and so I've heard, I read an

(42:04):
article recently about howEthereum, using smart contracts,
would do similar to what youjust said.
If, the if and then if and thenstatements, if, if something
happens, then this happensAbsolutely.
You know that that may be theanswer.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
It may be, it takes a lot of complexity out, Right
Cause you're out.
You only have to answer asingle question Yep, did you
check in?
And, in the case of my example,did you check in on March 1st?
If the answer is no, I'm surethere's some safeguards in there
in case you oversleep on March1st or something.
But if the answer is no, thenthis is sent to a place, and the

(42:43):
same would be for Ethereum.
Programmatically, you can builda system inside of another
existing system that says whenthis occurs or doesn't occur,
whichever, this other action isgoing to take place.
I actually think it makes it alittle simpler than traditional
markets, because the transfer ofownership is immediate and
basically concrete.
Whoever has a password ownsthat Bitcoin.
Maybe not legally, butstructurally realistically, they

(43:08):
own that Bitcoin.
And then the other side is iteliminates the requirements for
complexities and things likewills.
I don't need to say if, thenthis, that I can just say if, if
and this or if and that.
If I'm gone and my wife is stillhere, then she gets that,

(43:28):
whereas a will might say if I'mgone, then these assets go to
this person.
These assets go to this person.
This person doesn't getanything.
And if this person does XYZ,everybody's removed.
You know, like some weirdness,and you always hear about these
legal battles in terms of whensomebody dies, what happens to
their assets.
That's kind of why I like or atleast one of the reasons why I

(43:48):
like Bitcoin is because Iunderstand it.
It makes it very easy for me tokind of mentally work through
these things.
I hope I'm not anywhere near apoint where I need to worry
about it, but I do need to startlong-term thinking and planning
ahead.
In that regard, it needs to beon my radar, something I put
together.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Do you do that in part of your plan?
Hey, you need to look at ifyou're going to go down the
route here of some kind ofdigital currency.
You do have safety vials inplace.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
If somebody approached me and told me that
they had digital assets, I woulddefinitely have this
conversation with them, but youknow, my journey has been pretty
short.
I just started this process, orjourney a few years ago, and
most of the people that I dealwith are retirees, and they're

(44:43):
they're.
You know they're not allocating.
So, but I think over timethat'll change.
People come in and and you know, the interesting thing is,
there are probably people thatwe work with that have some um
allocation to Bitcoin orEthereum or or some digital
asset that we just don't knowabout.
Um, you know, we don't knowwhat.

(45:03):
We don't know about everybody'smoney, you know, we might think
we do, but we don't.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
You know about some of their money, right At minimum
.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Right, and there are people that probably don't even
know that I have, you know, gonethrough the certificate program
, through the digital assets,through Rick Edelman's program,
and I just I'm interested in it.
But I would say majority of myclients are probably, you know,

(45:32):
at a point where they're justit's just not an appropriate
investment.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Well, tell them to make sure they answer the
question on the tax return.
Yep, well, it's been out maybetwo, three years, but of course
this year, big bold letters.
Yep, did you or did you notengage in any type of
cryptocurrency exchangebartering?
It's pretty much an IRSstatement that is like a blanket

(45:56):
.
It's going to catch everythingand anything there, and one of
the things a lot of times peoplefail to realize is the wording
on a tax return can be a federalcharge, because at the very
bottom when you sign it whetheryou sign it your signature or
you sign it electronically underperjury- there and you know

(46:16):
that was something that uh ishitting a lot of people now from
the spillover from covid forthe ppp money, the sba money,
the economic disaster money,because if they had paid
attention, every time they uhopened another, they hit the
initial yes, I understand like awheel.

(46:39):
So of course, that's somethingthat people want to be aware of,
which goes back to the wholething of risk.
There's risk involved ineverything that you do and of
course, you want to be educatedon the risk, because you don't
want to be driving in the darkwith no headlights.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
How do you, how does Fisher approach?
Well, not Fisher.
How do you approach the concept, the?

Speaker 2 (47:06):
thought the mechanisms of inflation in terms
of how you advise people toinvest.
So you know the best what Iwould tell you.
One of the best ways to beatinflation would be have an
allocation towards stocks.
Over time, we can talk aboutsmall company stocks, we can
talk about large company stocks,but over time, over a long

(47:28):
period of time, you're going toget that 8% to 10% return off.
Stocks's certainly beatinflation over a long period of
time, and so inflation isimportant.
We're seeing a lot of inflationnow.
It's starting to come down.
For years it hasn't been anissue, but it is something that

(47:48):
erodes the dollar, as we weretalking about earlier and it's
something that people should beconcerned about.
Why does it exist?
Concerned about why does itexist?
Well, I just think it'sprobably part of, you know, part
of things become more expensive, um, you know, over time.
I mean, I think that's justpart of, uh, part of capitalism,
um the capital.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
But technology drives down the price of goods and
services right to, relativelyspeaking.
If you, if inflation didn'texist, everything should get
cheaper.
Because we get better atmanufacturing it.
We get, you know.
We find better sources ofmaterial, we find better capital
markets for financing, we findbetter labor markets for

(48:26):
employees, like if if capitalismworked in a pure bubble.
But because it doesn't work ina pure bubble, something
introduces inflation.
I know what introducesinflation.
I think we all do right, theFederal Reserve introduces
inflation mathematically.
The question I've always had iswhy?
Why does that need to occur inorder for an economy to function

(48:48):
properly?
Because if my money, that thevalue of my money, did not
fluctuate, if a dollar alwaysrepresented, if we went back to,
because if my money, that thevalue of my money, did not
fluctuate, if a dollar alwaysrepresented where you know
whatever, like if we went backto, say, pre 1932, and you and
you have $1 represents $1, $1 ofvalue in the system, I don't
know why we'd had to change theway that value goes over time or

(49:10):
the, the the denomination ofthat value over time.
One candy bar in 1930 was,let's say, a dime.
Why does one candy bar now costa dollar to two dollars.
What caused that to occur?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
and the only thing I can think of that, and the only
real answer I've gotten fromanybody, is because well, right
now in, it's a spillover fromCOVID, I think in 2021, 40% of
the money in circulation cameabout since COVID.

(49:46):
So what you've got is thatbasic economic model that never
changed the more supply of moneythat's out there.
If, when the supply goes up ofmoney and the demand stays the
same, the only thing that canhappen is price goes up but why
does supply, why does the supplyof money need?

Speaker 1 (50:04):
why is two percent a target?
Why don't you just, why can'twe turn off the money printer
just just like you?
Like you turn off a leakyfaucet, turn off the money
printer, the.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Federal Reserve decided, in their unlimited
knowledge, that 2% is what itshould be to have a true
economic growth Going back tothe 2020,.
What took place is, of course,during the Trump administration.
The sky's falling.
Get the money out there.
$1,200, $600, ppp money.

(50:35):
The sky's falling.
Twelve hundred dollars, sixhundred dollars, ppp money.
And I was like, wait a minute,this money is not real money.
It's not coming from beingproductive.
It's coming from the FederalReserve, and so you think about
it, trey.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
People are waking up the next morning looking at
their phone.
I just got twelve hundreddollars.
But that's a, that's a shortterm cause of inflation.
Yeah, yeah, but but they, theyinstitutionally believe that two
percent is is the it's supposedto work so, but why?

Speaker 3 (51:04):
they just put we don't know we don't know right,
they just pull it out.
And what you said is true whenyou look at in, in theory, your
whole productivity.
When things become moreproductive, then the price
should go down and of course thesong I sing is you want your
buying power to increase.
Of course you know so muchabout minimum wage, minimum wage

(51:25):
.
And look at California.
They got a $20 minimum wagesand the fast foods are shutting
down.
Restaurants are leaving becausethey cannot sustain that $20 an
hour, but the powers that behas convinced the politicians to
vote.
You need to do $20 an hour.
Well, what good is going $20 anhour?

(51:46):
And I go from 30 hours to fivehours and so that 2%.
And again, from what I read,they've just created it there.
But what it does is it drivesup the price of everything
across the board.
And I remember back in the 70s,72, 73, when the gasoline

(52:07):
shortage took place, my mothershe was driving a Volkswagen
Beetle there and you were buyinggas on even days and odd days.
And you were buying gas on evendays and odd days and you went
from 25 cents a gallon To 50cents and people just freaked
out.
We had 50 cents a gallon there.
Everybody would be happy there.
But when you go back and youlook, and it was a spillover

(52:28):
From during the Johnsonadministration, the Johnson
administration was going tofight the Vietnam War and was
going to fight poverty, vietnamwar and was going to fight
poverty, all at the same time.
Well, where did the money comefrom?
The federal reserve?

Speaker 1 (52:41):
I understand that type of inflation, like to solve
a momentary problem, yeah, andalthough it might not solve the
problem, I understand why youattempted to do it, why why you
thought you could do this.
What I don't understand is thethe, the requirement for it to
exist outside of times like that, and there has to be something
else.
There has to be anothermechanism that's causing these

(53:02):
gears to turn this way.
I think it gets lost thesegears.
I think that the message, thereason behind a lot of this gets
lost in the traditionalfinancial world because there's
so much gray Like I can't go,just like you said earlier, you
might not know all the moneythat a person is working with
right, because they might haveother accounts, other

(53:23):
investments elsewhere and I'mnot saying necessarily that
everybody should, but you, inprinciple, me, you, anybody else
cannot see the inner workingsof banking systems, of financial
transfers, of any of that, sowe don't actually know what goes
on behind the scenes.
One thing I was thinking aboutleading up to this podcast was
all the things that I get toknow about Bitcoin simply

(53:44):
because I know they don't happen.
I don't need evidence that theydo happen, because I know
mechanically they don't, whereasin the traditional financial
world it's the opposite.
I get to know a lot aboutwhat's happening for me, but I
don't get to know anything about, mechanically, how any of this
works beyond me.
An example would be if I wantto send money to you in the
Bitcoin world, you give me anaddress.

(54:05):
I can see everything that's inthat address.
So if you give me your addressand it's say you have all of
your Bitcoin stored in oneaddress, I can see your entire
Bitcoin collection.
I can't touch it, I can't doanything to it.
I can deposit to it, but Ican't withdraw from it.
I can't alter it.
The opposite is kind of theexample for the traditional
financial world.

(54:25):
If I want to send you money onCash App, I get to know who you
are, but that's it.
I don't get to know how muchmoney you have and not
necessarily that I should.
But the mechanisms that allowthat transfer to occur are
hidden in the traditional systemand the mechanisms that allow
you to see that in the Bitcoinworld are for everyone to see
what you don't necessarily knowwho everyone is.

(54:47):
So it's a different version oftrust.
I don't know who you are, but Iknow that this mechanism will
keep me safe and I can watch it.
I can watch my money go fromyou or from me to you or vice
versa, and the other system Ican't.
So, in terms of stock, the waythis kind of relates to is I
could wake up tomorrow morningand Bitcoin be down 20%.

(55:09):
In previous bull markets we'veseen 80% drawdowns,
life-changing drawdowns.
People would jump out of thewindow on Wall Street if we went
down 80%.
Oh yeah, but I don'tnecessarily know why Bitcoin
went down or up, but I know whyit didn't.
I know it didn't go downbecause the CEO did something
stupid.
I know it didn't go downbecause of insider trading

(55:31):
yesterday at some other companybefore a product was released.
I know it didn't go down or upbecause of XYZ.
That does happen when I'mtalking about a stock market or
a stock for a company.
If Steve Jobs had never saidI'm going to come back to Apple,
we wouldn't have Apple.
I couldn't know that Steve Jobswas going to come back to Apple
before he came back to Apple.
So I couldn't make aninvestment based on knowledge

(55:53):
that I didn't have.
And then, when the stock goesup because Steve Jobs is back or
because they released theiPhone for the first time.
What have you if I didn't knowabout that beforehand?
I only get to watch the results.
I don't get to know all thesethings about all these companies
and there's too many companiesfor me to worry about Whereas in
the Bitcoin world you getBitcoins produced every 10
minutes on average.
That never changes on average.

(56:14):
There is no CEO for me to worryabout.
There's no new plugs being putinto the system that are going
to change the way it acts.
All I have to understand issupply, demand and security.
That's the three things I haveto understand to try to gauge if
Bitcoin is okay.

(56:34):
If security is stillwell-rounded, with plenty of
miners and plenty of nodes, Idon't need to worry about
security.
Supply is still limited to 21million.
I don't need to worry aboutthat, about that.
Demand is the only question,and we consistently see
indicators for demand, so I kindof get a indication of how
demand is going.
It's very similar to the, thegrowth curve of the internet,

(56:55):
whereas today I have a bitcoin.
You know outlook well.
In 1998 not many people had aninternet outlook, but now
everyone I mean just takesomebody's phone for an hour and
watch what happens.
They start wigging out.
Everybody's got an internetoutlook.
It's because of those unknownsin the traditional world where I

(57:18):
feel I can't make the rightdecision because I will never
have enough information.
I don't know if the informationthat I have is accurate and in
large part, when I was in thattime in my life where I might
would have invested in stocks, Ididn't have somebody like you.
If I see Fisher WealthManagement on the side, I'm
going to make assumptions.
If I was 19 years old, I'mgoing to make assumptions that
that's for rich people, that hasto do with the stock market,

(57:41):
and I don't have enough money toeven play that game Just not
even I look at the Bitcoin worldand I see the exact opposite.
That's for everybody.
That's understandable anddigestible, because I've bridged
that technical gap and I'm ofthe right age.
I'm in my 30s, obviously, soI've got, hopefully, some time
ahead of me.
I say all this, though I don'twant to make it seem like I'm

(58:04):
against stocks, right?
Just I don't want to make itseem like I'm against stocks.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
My risk tolerance is based on knowledge instead of
potential or failure.
I believe Bitcoin has long-termpotential, but it may end up
failing and if it does, I madean investment that was based off
of the best knowledge I couldpossibly gather at the time,
instead of a prediction over aproduct or a change in the

(58:29):
future.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
Well, the thing, too is about the whole concept of
money.
We don't understand what moneyis because no one has defined
money.
The whole thing about thedollar bill is that that dollar
is easy to fold up and put inyour pocket.
Nobody looks at the dollars,nobody looks to see that it says

(58:52):
a note that's good for anytender or transaction there, but
in their mind it's going to bethe answer to all my problems.
Now I realize and again, it'sjust a note there that's created
, in this case by the UnitedStates government to give you a
self-assurance.
And the thing about the Bitcoinis it goes back to those old

(59:13):
principles of supply and demand,because we know it's a limited
supply out there, and then, asmore people use it, of course,
with that limited supply is thatman goes up.
The price has to go up.
It's going to protect, as Itell people, it's going to
protect my labor.
I get paid $100 for doing a taxreturn today.
I wake up tomorrow that $100 isgone down to $99, $98,

(59:38):
depending upon what has takenplace, and there's so many
variables that can affect, inour case, united States currency
.
There I mean just like ifyou've been following the whole
thing with the petrodollar.
Well, now that they're makingthe modifications on that, it's
going to be less of a demand forthe petrodollars there.
And of course, china's beendumping the US security, like

(01:00:00):
the world may be coming to anend.
So again they're getting rid ofUS security and people are
going to have to look okay, whatis money?
And again, growing up on a on afarm in the country, um, if I
got a bushel of beans and yougot a pig, all of a sudden that
bushel of beans and pigs is nowbecome money because of what you

(01:00:23):
need and what I needed there.
But of course we don't havethat now and that's what the
public's got to learn is what ismoney?
And because true money is goingto gain value, not lose value,
and unfortunately that's what'shappening with the US currency
right now.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
You know.
I'd also like to mention, youknow, stocks over time.
I don't need to tell you this,you know they've been part of
people's families.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
And people have grown up.
You know listening to theirparents talk about stocks.
People have collected dividendsoff stocks that have helped
supplement their income inretirement and over a long
period of time, it reallychanged, um, how a lot of
americans have lived.
Um, it's uh, you know stocksover time have made a lot of

(01:01:14):
people wealthy and um, you knowso.
And and you know when we thinkabout you know when they first
started trading stocks.
You know a long, long time ago.
You know bitcoin's still arelatively new investment.
You know a long, long time ago.
You know Bitcoin is still arelatively new investment.
You know when you think aboutit.
It's only 15, 14, 15 years old,right, and so you know it's
going to be hard, especially,you know, when we hear about the

(01:01:36):
things that have happened.
You know whether it was Mt Goxor FTX or Terra Luna or whatever
it was there.
Just there hasn't been a lot ofgood news.
You know there's good news whenwe look at what the value has
done over the last few years.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
But like a lot of things when you hear about them
in the press.
There's not a lot of good newsout there.
I think you have to.
This is where a place thepublic generally gets confused
is they conflate crypto withBitcoin.
Terraluna, crypto, Mt Gox,stolen Bitcoin, Right, A variety
of these things that you hearabout on the news are related to
crypto tangentially, but notBitcoin specifically.
That's correct.

(01:02:16):
I'll flat out say for my ownpersonal opinion I don't buy
anything that isn't Bitcoin.
I don't care what it's going todo, I don't care how fast it is
.
I don't care how manytransactions per second it can
do.
I don't care what it's going todo.
I don't care how fast it is.
I don't care how manytransactions per second it can
do.
I don't care.
Yeah, Because there's only onename in the game for me and
that's Bitcoin.
But in terms of bad news, thenews is bad collectively.

(01:02:42):
The world is on fire.
Inflation is through the roof.
Although everyone says on thenews that it's actually okay,
it's not, it's improving.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Yeah it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
People are hurting and when I look around this
dumpster fire of the world thatwe live in these days, between
all the wars and all the stuffthat's going on, it's like
things aren't getting better inmy life so far.
Right In my lifespan I've bornin 86, I came up through the
glory days of the late 80s andthe 90s, which to me, I think,

(01:03:12):
were a pretty good time, butsince then, like since 9-11
that's kind of my earliestmemory of things something being
wrong was 9-11.
Since then, things reallyhaven't gotten better.
I look at bitcoin as like abeacon of hope, like this is
something that is getting betterwith time and it's doing it
mathematically.
And then I look at the otherside and say, well, there is a

(01:03:34):
bunch of bad press, but there'sbad press about everything.
They're lying to you.
Like I don't think BlackRock issitting around going.
We're sitting on a couplebillion dollars worth of Bitcoin
right now and I don't know,somebody just got hacked, so we
should get rid of it.
It's not what they're doing.
They're accumulating at arecord pace.

(01:03:58):
And why are these big entitiesdoing this?
It's because trusting in otherthings is beginning to fail.
Right, warren Buffett said thebest investment he could have
ever made was his firstinvestment.
If he had just made his firstinvestment and never changed,
just never.
Just didn't pay attention tothe headlines, didn't do
anything, just bought stock whenhe was 13 years old and done
nothing else, right, just keepbuying stocks from there on out.

(01:04:21):
And he ran the numbers withsomething like a hundred dollars
invested at his earliestinvesting age was millions and
millions of dollars by the timehe would have retired.
So you can't accumulate thatall works.
But think about all the badnews that came between the time
Warren Buffett could invest andthe time that he could say,
retire from his investments.
Bitcoin's going to have a lotof bad news.

(01:04:43):
It's going to continue to havea lot of bad news because it's
young's going to continue tohave a lot of bad news because
it's young.
People are going to getconfused and do wrong things or
and people are going to gettaken advantage of.
To the, the and I.
I'm not trying to sound like aconspiracy theorist, but the
media collectively isn't tellingyou things are good when they
actually are right.
They tell you go to the grocerystore and inflation's not that

(01:05:04):
bad, it is in the, the realworld.
But then they tell you Bitcoinis terrible but it's actually
good.
So just look at the news and dothe exact opposite of what they
say.
Unless you're going to have a65-year horizon, then you can
play with stocks a little biteasier because you have time to
let that accumulation occur andyou can just ride the S&P 500.

(01:05:26):
You don't need to invest inindividual stocks necessarily
and just assume that you betwith America that America is
going to do well over the longterm.
Whether or not that happens andthe dollar maintains that's a
whole other question.
But you can't do that.
But people need to be awarethat the bad news that you're
hearing about Bitcoin is thesame bad news you're hearing
about everything else, and mostof it isn't as they're telling

(01:05:49):
you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
And you're, you're, you know, as far as the Mount
Gox and the Terraluna, you know,those are just things that you
know I was thinking about offthe top of my head, there's been
a ton of them there.
But also there are politiciansthat are completely against it
you know, and so that's nothelping either.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
Good, you know, um, everything's good for bitcoin,
so the more people that fight itgood, yeah, because, um, the
just us talking about it we'respreading the we're spreading.
I'm not going to call it avirus, but it functions like a
virus.
Me and you have a discussion.
The person listening to us mayhate bitcoin and may think that
it's the biggest scam on themarket, but, but he's thinking
about Bitcoin and he's going tohear it in the news and he's

(01:06:29):
going to hear it at the bar Tenyears from now.
He's going to recognize thatBitcoin's a good thing and then
he's going to buy in, just likeeverybody pretty much is.
And when that occurs, it willbe because me and you had this
conversation.
It'll be because somebodyplanted that bug and it just
grew over time.
There there isn't all thepoliticians that are against
bitcoin.
I look at them like I look atthe federal reserve chairman.

(01:06:51):
You're close enough to themoney printer where you actually
care if it stays on.
You don't want it to turn offwell, you have to understand too
.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
You're going to have politicians who are going to be
against it because they like thepower that they have and the
political contributions they getfrom the different lobbyists.
You know, if people reallyunderstood in the United States
how our political system works,the power that the lobbyists

(01:07:19):
have and the influence that theyare able to manipulate behind
the scene.
And the thing of it is, withthe whole Bitcoin and that
blockchain technology, it'sgoing to take away that
corruption.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
It takes away a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
And see, and that's really when you get down to it,
that's the biggest virus thatcapitalism have is the
corruption.
And when you look at the wholeconcept of Marxism and communism
, and what have you?
It's based on corruption, ofsomebody paying somebody off to
get a special favor that theywant.

(01:07:59):
And that's why you have so manypeople that don't understand
the whole concept of money.
Because if you were to tellsomebody, well you know, if a
bank has $100, they can turnaround and loan out what 90% of
that.
They don't understand that that$100, and that's part of the
whole 2% that $100 has nowgenerated another $90, and that

(01:08:21):
$90 has now generated roughlyanother $80.
And yet, at the end of the day,you have now generated $1,000.
Well, no, it was only $100 tobegin with there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Faction Reserve Banking.
I think eventually banks willcatch on to Bitcoin.
There was recently a thing Iforget exactly what it was
called, but it was effectivelyallowing banks to custody
Bitcoin.
That was put forth in Congress,I believe, and Biden vetoed it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Yep, I think that was FIT21.
Something like that, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
And why would Biden veto it when the banks want it?
Well, the banks obviously wantit, or at least the collection
of banks that were involved inthis decision-making process,
because you're not going to geta gang of banks to get together
and make a decision where theycollectively want to do
something unless they actuallywant to do it because they're
competing against each other.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
I think they're starting to use blockchain to
transfer assets.
I know that there are mutualfund companies that are using
blockchain to settletransactions.
It works, so I think JP Morganhas exposure to blockchain.
They've invested in it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
That's a great example, JP Morgan, because
Jamie Dimon will come out and belike Bitcoin's garbage.
Meanwhile, he's got a wholelegion of people working on
Bitcoin.
Totally, it's completelyopposite of what they want you a
whole legion of people workingon.
Bitcoin Totally.
It's completely opposite ofwhat they want you to hear or
what they want you to believe.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
But I think the banks are definitely involved with it
.
Mutual funds are becoming moreinvolved.
Fidelity, franklin Templetonyou've probably heard of those
companies have some exposure.
So I think it's becoming moreand more part of traditional
finance.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Do you think Fisher as a company will at some point
take a look at?

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
it.
So again, we're just financialplanners and so we don't pick
and choose necessarily what goesinside of a portfolio when a
manager, when we hire a manager,no.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
I mean for their own asset to maintain, because I'm
speaking broadly and from anuneducated standpoint about how
this works internally.
But I presume that as a company, the company has a balance
sheet and that balance sheet hasa certain amount of money
within it, that is, operationalprofit savings.
However you divide it up, Iimagine that amongst those

(01:10:47):
divisions is investments, andamongst those investments could
be an ETF, could be cold storage, bitcoin, could be XYZ.
I mean, if you buy NVIDIA,you're probably going to do okay
through the initialencroachment or onslaught of AI.
Bitcoin sits in a similarposition as NVIDIA does if you

(01:11:07):
look at the past 10 years as faras how much it's gained and
appreciation.
So you have a comparisonfinancially to say, if we had
invested in NVIDIA as a treasuryasset 10 years ago, we would
have 20X'd our money or whateverNVIDIA has done.
Same thing for Bitcoin.
But you have to make thedecision to walk outside of the
traditional stock world, whichmay impact the perception of

(01:11:29):
Fisher Wealth Management.
It may have a microstrategyeffect where other wealth
management firms say we need toadopt this as a treasury asset
because look how good Fisher isdoing or how bad Fisher is doing
, depending on how things go,but do you think that it that
you're you.
you're not necessarily lookingat the budget of the company

(01:11:49):
here no, I'm an employee of thefirm but but do you think, like
amongst the people there, thatthe conversation would ever
occur to do something like that?

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
you know.
It would be like asking, um youknow anybody in a small
business.
How is the owner gonna umallocate their funds?

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
I mean I have idea.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Maybe a little too close.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Yeah, and you know that would be completely up to
him.
I mean, I've heard him saythings, rick, that you know
blockchain is going to changethe world.
I think there are a lot ofpeople in our industry that feel
that way it already has.
I think there are a lot ofpeople in our industry that feel
that way it already has.

(01:12:28):
How you take that informationand allocate and act upon it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Yep, that's his business.
One day we should ask Rick.
We can get a hold of Rick andbe like so yeah, what do?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
you think you got to buy up some.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Bitcoin right, because I want to make.
I truly would like to see, inthe long term, alamance County
and the pillars of the communityfrom a business standpoint and
a government standpoint becomeknown to the Bitcoin world and
vice versa, because the Bitcoinworld only knows about certain
cities.
The Bitcoin world knows aboutum I forget what the name of the
actual name of the place is,but they call it Bitcoin beach

(01:13:03):
in El Salvador.
We know about places like um,uh, like Austria, because of
Austrian-related economics.
We know about certain placesbecause of their relationship to
Bitcoin, but there's yet to bea town in North Carolina that's
known for Bitcoin.
I know some Bitcoiners here.
There's some big ones, notnecessarily in Alamance County,

(01:13:28):
but in the area.
There's some big Bitcoinersthat have big voices in the
Bitcoin world.
They've been on stages, butthey do it from a company
standpoint or from a brandingstandpoint Specific to Bitcoin,
whereas if the Bitcoin communityknew, like the gun store that's
in downtown Mebane, you can buyguns from them with Bitcoin.

(01:13:49):
You might not necessarily wantto.
There's a variety of thingsthat you need to consider, but
you can.
They're probably one of theonly gun stores in America where
you can do that If we get acoalition of businesses who say
look in our own market, in ourown way, we're pro-Bitcoin, then

(01:14:09):
the Bitcoin world will thenturn its attention to this
market.
It's a new source of customers,it's a new source of revenue
and expands your markets intonon-local markets.
So I think everybody should atsome point, especially if you
look at MicroStrategy and howwell that company's done since
adopting a Bitcoin strategy.
I think at some point everyentity that I speak with I hope

(01:14:29):
that they will adopt Bitcoin.
If nothing else, just a littlebit 1% to 2% allocation is not a
bad idea for an aggressiveinvestor.
It does.
It does 1% to 2% allocation foran aggressive investor yeah
there you go.
Might not be such a bad idea.
Yeah, and I hope maybe thefolks at Fisher.
Well, we plant the bug right.

(01:14:51):
We just hey, we're here, we'rehere to help, we're not bad guys
.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Oh, I don't think anybody would think that anyway.
So you know, if we go back justa few short years, you know the
IRS was interested in knowingabout, you know, people that had
Bitcoin.
Um, it certainly wasn't showingup as the number one question
on the 1040 right below youraddress you know it's the number

(01:15:17):
one question on thefront page and so, um, you know,
for the people that think thatit's going to go away or the
government's going to shut itdown, they probably wouldn't
shut it down if it was the firstquestion right under the
address on the 1040.
And so there's been thisevolution, and when you read
that question and you justtalked about it a second ago
it's a little confusing.

(01:15:37):
And one of the things that Ihear from Rick Edelman, the
gentleman that I was referringto earlier, is that for people
and this is not you, trey, butpeople that are interested in
buying digital assets, they'regoing to need some advice.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Yeah, and I was in a continuing ed class before COVID
at 15, 16, 17, and it was aninstructor and that was the
first continuing ed class that Ihad that were, and she didn't
talk that much about Bitcoin,talk more about cryptocurrency.

(01:16:14):
And she was worked at afinancial planning CPA firm in
New Jersey and what she wasdealing with was the parents who
are clients.
Who was coming in there saying,well, look, my son is down in
the basement.
I don't know what he's doing,but a Lamborghini just got
dropped off last week.

(01:16:35):
And this is those early stageswhen Bitcoin was going from what
?
$0.08 to $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, what have you there?
So, as you said, it has slowlyevolved and that's the thing
that really just blows my mindwhen you look at it, the history
of it.
I mean, it's a roller coaster,but every time it goes down it

(01:16:56):
goes up that much higher.
So, of course, that's somethingthat the IRS and different tax
agencies is going to look at,because that's why they in
business to collect the taxrevenue, going back to the days
of jesus and matthew there.
You know that's why jesus wascrucified not crucified but
criticized.
You know why you got this taxcollector here with us, because

(01:17:19):
that's their job is to collecttaxes, to turn over to the
government and hopefully we'vegot able-bodied leaders.
That's going to be rational.
But as we see, they don't.
They just throw money, throwmoney, throw money, throw money,
which to the government andhopefully we've got able-bodied
leaders that's going to berational.
But as we see they don't.
They just throw money, throwmoney, throw money, throw money,
which gives more and more tothe inflation there.
So this whole thing of thinkingthat it's going to go away, I
don't think it's going to goaway.
I don't see how it can go awaybecause you're going to continue

(01:17:42):
to have people to invest there.
And then two people, people whoare working.
Again, they want to protecttheir labor, they want to
protect what they have done.
And how can you protect it whenyou're putting your money into
some currency, whether it's thedollar, whether it's the Mexican
peso, whatever it may be, andit goes from $1 tonight to 99

(01:18:03):
cents, to 98 cents to 97 cent.
So that means that at the endof a year when you got 10%
inflation, the value of yourmoney has gone down.
So you have lost that buyingpower there.
And again, the IRS and the taxagencies the biggest problem
they see that they have rightnow is having people who

(01:18:25):
understand it there.
And the whole thing about thewallet, which I think is going
to create another situation whenyou start talking about a state
, because if there's a walletout there and nobody knows about
the wallet, it could very wellbe millions and millions and
millions of dollars that the taxagencies can't get to because

(01:18:49):
nobody else can get to.
But but again, it's going to besomething that's going to be on
the radar and, of course,finding someone who understand
it and, in fact, that's beenassociated with trade.
That's one of the things thatI've been doing for the last
year since COVID is just tryingto throw myself in the deep end
to find out more and more aboutit, because right now it is a

(01:19:09):
capital asset.
You buy it, you hold it, yousell it, so you got a capital
gain, and if I get paid inBitcoin, just like bartering,
it's got to show up as incomethere.
That's why that question isthere on the tax return there to
kind of trip you up and again,if you answer that incorrectly,
and you audit it and the auditorfinds a million dollars of

(01:19:32):
Bitcoin and you have said no,you committed fraud.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Well, I have a question.
If to kind of come back to yourpoint how this is evolving If,
as a thought experiment, ifthere's only 21 million Bitcoin,
a certain amount of Bitcoinhave already been lost.
We know that.
So let's say there's 18 millionBitcoin that can be accessed.

(01:19:59):
Of that 18 million, let's saythat only 16 million exist in
circulation.
The rest hasn't been createdyet.
Right, it hasn't been mined yet.
If it were to come to a point intime that all value for all
things was then denominated inbitcoin and one bitcoin was one,

(01:20:23):
what do we say?
16 million?
If there's 16 million Bitcoinsin circulation that are
available or can be accessed, ifone out of 16 million Bitcoins
represents one out of 16millionth of all value in the
world.
If that were to occur, how muchtrouble do you think you'd be
in with the IRS or with thefederal government or with any

(01:20:46):
government entity, if you ownone 16 millionth of all value in
the world?
Because history has shown usthat if you have a lot of money
and not a lot of power, somebodywill come and take that money
from you.
Because they have a lot ofpower In terms of the IRS, the
federal government, they willstop at nothing to eviscerate

(01:21:08):
you, should that occur.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
Oh yeah.
Because, once you break $50,000, your passport can be revoked.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Wait.
So if you earn more than$50,000, a year no in taxes.
If you owe more than $50,000.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
And you don't have an arrangement and you leave the
United States.
When you try to come back, oh,stop Interesting.
Yeah, this passport is no.
Yeah, now, if you have aninstallment agreement and you're
in good standing.
But if you don't because I do alot of non-files, delinquent
taxes, what have you?
I've had two clients duringCOVID.

(01:21:43):
They couldn't get back in.
Everybody's on the phone.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah.
And again you're going to payyour taxes there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
Just a matter of how and when.
Right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:58):
Right, I mean Al Capone.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
I wonder about that.
So we sit here and we talkabout Bitcoin today.
If I'm right, right and bitcoinbecomes the principal
underpinning of the financialworld, say and this could be 60
years from now at some point inmy life, prior to the end, I may
be one of the people who weretalking about bitcoin before it

(01:22:23):
became you know what.
What I think it might be, andto to be at that point where, if
it becomes something insanelyvaluable and people know that I
was the one on the radio talkingabout it I was the one who's
saying go buy it, do this Likeit's a target.
It's a target on my back forany, any entity listening.
But at the same time, I feellike, if I feel like I'm

(01:22:49):
fighting a war and I'm on thegood side, then dying is part of
part of that process and takingthe risk of being attacked as
part of that process.
And I do feel like, to acertain extent, I'm not fighting
a war against the traditionalfinancial system.
I'm fighting a war against acorrupt and unjust financial
system.
I'm fighting a war against acorrupt and unjust financial
system.
I think what you do iscompletely within the realm of

(01:23:12):
good and just.
You're taking people and givingthem advice based on the
existing infrastructure andexisting systems to get them to
a better place.
So I'm not criticizing you orFisher, but I criticize the
system at large for what it'sdone to people over time.
But yeah, I don't know, I loveBitcoin.
Stocks are.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
We'll see, we'll get you, we'll get you on the stock
trade.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
I was going to ask you if we had another show.
We had another guest and wefelt like we needed some more
financial horsepower,traditional financial knowledge
Sure, would you be willing tocome back and talk?

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
with us, absolutely.
You know it could be anysubject, I still want to talk to
Tom about the new 1099 DAthat's going to come out in 2025
.
So it'll be that Maybe we'llwait for the next program.

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
Let me get a continuing ed class on that.
I tried not to get too in frontthere with the new forms.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
Do you know about it there?

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
No, no, I knew you know, of course we deal with a
lot of self-employed people, sowe've been getting them to
understand the differencebetween that old 1099
Michelinians and the new 1099non-employee compensation.
There it goes back to creatinga tax system, because in the

(01:24:28):
whole thing about that NEC thatit creates a social security tax
.
So whereas you may not owe anincome tax, you very well owe
the 6.2 social security and the1.45 Medicare and you're not
going to get out of that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
But I think this is a brand new point yeah.
And this was part of themeeting that I went to.
They were talking about rollingit out, and it'll be kind of
interesting to see what happens,because when you think about it
, most people don't just.
Well, look, if you just ownBitcoin and you're holding it,
you might not need a 1099, right?

Speaker 3 (01:25:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
But if you're staking ETH or if you're holding
multiple digital assets andyou're buying and selling you're
getting airdrops or forks orwhatever it is you're going to
need some help.

Speaker 3 (01:25:16):
Which again tells us it's not going away, it's not
what does the new form?

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
consist of it's just a 1099, but it's a 1099DA
digital asset Digital asset Yep.
Okay, a 1099, but it's a 1099.
Da digital digital asset yep,okay, I'll show you when that,
when we, when we finish up here.
But, uh, tom, tell me what youthink about this idea.
Uh-oh, are you ready?
Here we go, all right.
So imagine, for those peoplethat are interested in taking
one or two percent and they putit in a roth ira, you know, and

(01:25:43):
it grows tax deferred andthey're custodians out there.
I believe they're custodiansand you, I believe there are
custodians, and you can maybebuy the ETF and put that in a
Roth IRA.
But imagine if you could put,you know, bitcoin, eth, whatever
it is in a tax-deferred accountand let it grow tax-deferred
and be able to pull it outtax-free one day.

(01:26:03):
That's going to eliminate a lotof the problems that we were
just talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Yeah, it really gives you protection against
inflation, there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
It's not for everybody, it's you know it's.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
You're taxed on the sale.
If I buy Bitcoin today and sellit tomorrow, I'm taxed on the
sale based on my profit, correct?

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):
The gain.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
Based on my gain A profit gain.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
A Roth IRA is pre-tax right, so you invest dollars
into the account, you putdollars into the account and
then you work to buy, like forexample, the Bitcoin ETF, and
leave it in there to grow taxdeferred.

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
So I'd put dollars into an account.
Right, those accounts, thosedollars would accumulate up
until the point in which itcould buy a share or some
quantity of an etf or a stockthat I wanted, or, in this case,
an etf, let's just say thebitcoin etf.
Okay, so we buy, it'll buy aone share of the uh, blackrock
etf.
Yeah, I think it's ibit.

(01:27:01):
Okay, that's what they'recalled.
Okay, so it'll buy one share ofiBit.
And then later on in life Iwould then liquidate that
without paying taxes.
That's correct in a Roth IRA.
But if I'm using dollars in thetraditional world, if I put
dollars in, those dollars aregoing in pre-tax from a paycheck
or from a deposit of some kind.
Right For a Roth.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
IRA.
So in a Roth IRA it's alwaysafter-tax.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
It's after-tax.
Which one is pre-tax?
Are there pre In a Roth IRA?

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
it's always after tax .
It's after tax.
Which one is pre-tax?
Is there a pre-tax one?
So I think of a pre-tax as kindof a 401k, just a regular 401k,
oh the traditional, thetraditional IRA.
You may get a tax break, adeduction, but the reason why I
was mentioning it is if youcould grow it tax-deferred and
pull it out tax-free and if wethink it's going to do what we
think it's going to do and youjust put a little bit of money

(01:27:48):
in there.
I mean, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
It'll be a nice little payday.
Yeah, it's a pretty interestingproduct and that would reward
you for being disciplined andsaving money Is nobody offering
a service like this.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
So there are custodians out there.
We're not one of them.
I'll make that real clear thatyou can hold Bitcoin in an IRA
with us.
You cannot do that at LPL.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
Okay, I thought I have seen an article.
I read internet reading, youknow you read two or three
sentences and then boom, you goto something else.
But I was thinking I have seensomething pop up on the
telephone, or what have youabout that?

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
And I was like, hmm, this could be be pretty
interesting there's somecustodians out there that allow
you to do that okay, so anyway,I just, you know, everybody look
being a financial advisor,everybody wants a stock tip, you
know yeah so we're not going totalk about stock tips today,
right, I mean I can.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
But well, there's the big there's the big, was it the
magnificent seven right stocksright now that are that are
really driving the marketupwards?
Yeah, uh, nvidia apple meta ismeta one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
I think so I think that is one of them there's a
few others.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
They're mainly technology companies google, uh,
amazon, yep, they're the onespushing the stock market up.
You look at everybody else.
They're kind of you knowsideways action, maybe a little
up, maybe a little down, butthey're not doing what these
other seven or eight companiesare doing.
So my stock tip would be one ofthe seven.
If you're going to buy stocks,I would guess I mean

(01:29:15):
realistically, knowing what Iknow about computers NVIDIA.
It's going to be hard for a lotof other people to catch up
with NVIDIA.
When NVIDIA is this heavilyinvested in AI and producing
hardware that's specific for AI,it's going to be hard to catch
up with them because AI is goingto accelerate their ability to
produce and manufacture thingsfor AI and because they're

(01:29:36):
already in those relationships.
They're already in bed withthese companies that are
producing AI, just like Teslajust bought some ungodly amount
of hardware from Nvidia toinvest in their AI or maybe it
was X, it was X or Tesla, one ofElon's companies.
So they're already there at theforefront of the market.
And the other companies thatcan play in these markets just
their name isn't in theMagnificent Seven.

(01:29:57):
Their name isn't carriedforward to the AI conversation
because they're late or theyjust weren't as good.
The other companies, like MetaFacebook, has kind of become the
kids say that Facebook is forold people, so the kids aren't
adopting that type of socialmedia.
They're adopting TikTok and fastsocial media If you get on

(01:30:20):
Facebook.
I don't have Facebook, but ifyou get on Facebook, it's
basically just ads.
You scroll and it's ad ad, ad.
Oh, one of my friends.
You scroll and it's ad ad ad.
Oh, one of my friends ate acake.
Ad ad ad ad and you get onTikTok, it's video video.
Video video ad.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
And it's entertaining , I must admit.

Speaker 1 (01:30:41):
It is entertaining.
I catch myself on Twitter justscrolling, just scrolling, just
looking at stuff, video aftervideo, post after post.
Um, and I'm I'm lucky in thefact that I was able to break
myself away from Facebook fouror five years ago.
I don't even think aboutFacebook now as like a platform
other than just generalconversation.
The only thing I pay attentionto is X.

(01:31:03):
There, you go Because X is I getimmediate.
I is x there.
You go because x is I getimmediate.
I get immediate content that'srelative to my interest and to
the current time.
So if I want to know what'sgoing on bitcoin's price, I go
to x, because x is going to tellme a lot faster than any news
headline.
Generally speaking, news justisn't fast enough, but I I want
to thank you yeah for coming onthe show.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
Um good to finally meet you, tom absolutely, we've
talked on the phone before Right, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
I wanted to ask everybody who comes on the show
signs our little Bitcoin canvasover here where season one this
will be all the guests that wehave in show or in-house that
will come on and give us asignature.
So if you're willing to do that, we would love it Absolutely.
We're going to auction it offat the end of 21 episodes.
Great, if, if a person bids onit and they win the bid, I will

(01:31:54):
donate the proceeds to theBitcoin core developer group.
Oh okay, if, if nobody bids onit, I'll I'll put in a donation
to the Bitcoin developer groupsand it'll just go on my wall.
So, no matter what happens,you'll be a part of this podcast
history, as well as Bitcoin'shistory, for the foreseeable
future, at least in one home.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):
That's great.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
So, yeah, I'd love to have you sign it and I'd love
to have you I don't know whetheryou would be able to, you know,
read my handwriting.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
That's okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
Ed Priola signed it up there.
He was a or is.
Oh, I see, yeah.
Yeah, his signature looks likeum e with scribble yeah.
So if you don't know who he is,then you'll have to try to
decipher that one some at somepoint later I need to get some
handwriting lessons from tomjones whoever that guy is yeah,
I don't know, you know good luckand when we have other guests

(01:32:42):
on, um, you know, given anappropriate uh topic, like our
next guest or not our next guest.
But one of the other peoplewe're talking to is interested
in a drug called kratom.
It's a legal drug that he feelsenhances a variety of things.
So maybe not for the kratomepisode just because it's not in
context, but future episodes,if we have some people come on
that have a deep financialknowledge or we need to explain

(01:33:05):
something that I just simplydon't understand, or or taxman
doesn't know, uh, maybe we'llbring you on if you're
interested.

Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
You, you, just let me know.
Awesome, awesome I figured out,um, you know how to, how to do
this through compliance, and uh,it's a fairly easy process and,
uh, we'll have to maybe givethem a copy of it.
Of course it'll be online forthem to for them to listen to.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
I'll probably have it up in a day or so yeah, day,
day and a half, but I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
I'd like thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
Yeah, no, I'd also like to thank fisher for being
willing to, you know, pass myemail around till I got to the
right person, yep, and not justthrow it in the garbage because
it said bitcoin so that wasjessica.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
Yeah, you could thank your buddy jessica next time
you go to a football game yeah,yeah, yeah, I reached out to
Jessica because I saw her.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
I went to Fisher Wealth Management's website and
was like who is the most like,who's the person I can email
that is most likely to respondbased on the information I can
gather from your site.
And so I'm scrolling throughall the people that work there
and Jessica shows up and I waslike wait.

Speaker 2 (01:34:01):
I know her.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
That's the girl that is at the football games with my
son, I think her son playsfootball.
And so I reached out to Jessicaand she's like, yeah, just send
me the email and I'll forwardit on.
But I figured that once it gotpast Jessica, amongst your
colleagues and the people thatyou work for Bitcoin, like no,
we're just going to put that inthe trash.
But you guys didn't.
You guys responded.
I think I heard from you just afew days later, if that Yep.

(01:34:23):
So kudos to Fisher WealthManagement and you for
maintaining an open mind andbeing willing to come talk to
some scraggly guy and hiswell-respected community friend.

Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
Hey well, it was a pleasure, I enjoyed it.
I hope I get another invitation.

Speaker 3 (01:34:35):
You will Absolutely Yep, yep, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
I think we had a good time.

Speaker 3 (01:34:38):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Awesome, well, thanks everybody.
ReadreidbolingerB-O-L-I-N-G-E-R at lplcom.
Cool.
So for all of your traditionalfinance needs investment
planning, things like that reachout to Reed.

(01:35:01):
Let's get the Bitcoin communityinto Reed's inbox and let's get
the regular people who justneed help with traditional
finances in the same place.
Tom the tax man, jones, onceagain, how can people find you?

Speaker 3 (01:35:12):
Tom Jones taxescom.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
There we go, there we go and, as always, where the
Bitcoin is, dead, podcast.
So if you need anything, findus on Twitter or X, youtube,
spotify all the places that youtypically find podcasts and all
of our contact informationshould be right there.
But I'd like to thank everybodyfor listening in and thank you
both for attending.

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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;}Traditional finance is here with Reid Bolinger | Bitcoin is Dead