September 5, 2025 • 40 mins
Why This Episode Is a Must-Watch
Are you curious about how Bitcoin and digital currencies can fit into your retirement plan? With new pro-crypto legislation and increasing mainstream acceptance, retirement investing with crypto is gaining traction. In this episode of Inspired Money, host Andy Wang takes you inside the future of digital asset investing for retirement, straight from the headquarters of iHeartMedia in NYC. Whether you’re a crypto skeptic or enthusiast, you’ll discover eye-opening strategies to protect your nest egg and potentially grow your wealth, tax-free.
Meet our Guest
Chris Kline is the Co-Founder and COO of BitcoinIRA, the pioneering platform that enables investors to hold cryptocurrencies directly in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. With over a decade in financial innovation, Chris has led BitcoinIRA from its inception in 2016 to becoming a $14 billion asset under custody leader, making him a sought-after authority on crypto and retirement investing.
Key Highlights
1. The Case for Crypto in Retirement Accounts
Chris Kline discusses how BitcoinIRA was created to meet the demand for alternative investments in retirement portfolios. As traditional pensions dwindle and inflation rises, Chris shares why diversification is essential. “We have a retirement crisis in America... Alternatives are no longer a luxury—they’re a necessity for long-term security,” he says.
2. The Power (and Potential) of a Roth IRA for Crypto Growth
Andy Wang and Chris Kline break down the appeal of holding Bitcoin in a Roth IRA, emphasizing the game-changing benefit: tax-free gains. Chris explains, “To have it [Bitcoin] in a tax-free, tax-deferred setting...when you hit that ripe age of retirement and can take those distributions out tax-free—that’s what the big money’s doing.”
3. Security & Innovation: The "Pentagon of Custody" Approach
Security is a major concern for digital assets. Chris highlights BitcoinIRA’s robust, multi-layered “Pentagon of Custody” system—which includes multi-signature wallets, insurance, and strict authentication—to protect clients’ crypto “nest eggs” from threats both external and internal. “We put [your assets] at the center and then we put these rings of protection,” Chris explains.
4. Financial Literacy & Accessibility
The conversation underscores the importance of financial literacy and demystifying complex concepts like digital assets for all generations. Chris advocates, “You need more advocates out there teaching it. But people have to be open to it… that’s what keeps us from really prospering.”
Call-to-Action
Don’t just listen—take action. Check your retirement accounts this week and see if you’re truly diversified for the future you want. Even if you start small, even if it’s just learning, your future self will thank you.
Find the Inspired Money channel on YouTube or listen to Inspired Money in your favorite podcast player. Andy Wang, Host/Producer of Inspired Money
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Aloha
(00:51):
Inspired Money Maker welcome back to Inspired Money, where we talk
money, motivation and meaning so you can live a
richer life. A little bit of a hiccup in that intro,
but I'm glad that we got the correction in there. I'm Andy
Wang. Today we're diving into something really big,
bitcoin and digital currencies in your retirement account.
(01:14):
Yes, you heard that right. Owning crypto inside an
IRA or 401(k). I'm not telling you to do it or
not to do it. Everybody has different goals, investment
objectives and tolerance to risk. What we can do
is learn about this together so that we can make smart, informed
choices about our retirement savings and investments.
(01:37):
With the current administration signaling a more pro crypto stance
and new legislation shaping the future of digital assets,
now is a great time to understand how cryptocurrency could
fit into your retirement plan. That's why I sat down with
Chris Kline, co founder and chief operating officer of
BitcoinIRA, the first platform that lets you hold
(01:59):
crypto like Bitcoin directly in your tax advantaged
retirement accounts. We're going to talk about what this shift means,
how a Roth IRA could make your gains tax free,
and what you need to know before jumping in. Now, this episode is
a little different than most. Not only is it a one on one
episode, but I had the opportunity to visit iHeartMedia's
(02:21):
New York City headquarters. It was a really cool opportunity
to peer into the studio where Elvis Duran and the morning show
broadcast from every day. There were posters of
legendary recording artists everywhere. It was a fun
and unique adventure for me to get out of
my home studio and into a professional radio
(02:43):
station. Now we're going to find out why
Chris believes this is just the beginning of a financial revolution.
So stick around. You're going to get insights you won't hear
anywhere else. Before we dive in, a quick
thank you to our sponsor, my fee only registered investment
advisory firm, runnymede Capital Management. Do you ever
(03:05):
feel like you're saving enough? Or do you
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too soon? It's a scary thought, but most people
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(03:28):
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(03:51):
getplanned today. Now our guest
for this episode is Chris Kline. I mentioned he's the co founder and
COO of BitcoinIRA, the first company to let
investors hold cryptocurrencies directly in their retirement accounts.
Since launching in 2016, he's
expanded the platform beyond bitcoin, built a secure and
(04:13):
compliant system and helped make BitcoinIRA
a leader in crypto retirement investing. So
let's get right into the interview with Chris Kline.
(04:36):
Chris, welcome to Inspired Money. Thanks for having me today, Andy. It's a pleasure to
be here. You are an OG in this
crypto space. Can you take us back? What led you from
a more traditional finance job into
launching BitcoinIRA? Absolutely. Well, I've never really been much of a
traditional guy. When I first jumped into the world
(04:59):
of self directed IRAs, it was about real estate,
precious metals, LLC, venture capital, private equity.
And then the challenge came across our desk, my partners and I, is it possible
to put Bitcoin into a retirement account? And at that time it
hadn't been done. So I had to take the orange pill, go down that
rabbit hole, so to speak, and really dive into what are the
(05:21):
fundamentals of crypto. And really, after reading the white paper a couple of
times and there were a few key pieces where I just fell in love as
an 80s baby and watching this plethora of abundance and monetary
supply, it just spoke right to my soul. Always
alternatives... Just more alternative every step of the
way, I guess. More cutting edge. Yeah. So if you take us back to
(05:43):
10 years ago, 12 years ago, what was, what did you
see as this potential evolution of money?
Absolutely. For me, the white paper, what really sung off the
pages for me was the halving concept. The idea that there
is a fixed supply, a scarcity of Bitcoin really
spoke to me and, and the instrument by which it was put in place in
(06:05):
order for us to avoid that or avoid what we have today with the US
dollar and fiat currency, is that we actually are taking away
the reward for the producers of it and to go from 50
down to 25, like the steps we've taken every time
there's a halving it just makes me feel better about the next generation, my
kids and their kids, that there'll be sound money available.
(06:27):
Because I grew up in the 80s where basically from
71, the Nixon shock, when we went off the gold standard, it's just been
print and print as fast as you can through crisis and that eventually
there's a day of reckoning for that at some point, I don't know if I'll
be alive for it. Maybe I will be. But you can't print something to oblivion.
I think the Romans taught us that and several others have taught us that's a
(06:48):
fall of civilization. So you got in early. We're in
this world of wanting instant gratification,
like things need to happen right now. Looking back,
were there times where you felt like, I am too early?
What am I doing? Yeah, you know,
watching. So our first little quick story, our first client was
(07:11):
the former director of the United States States Mint, Edmund C. Moy. He was a
friend of ours from working in the precious metals space. And I called him, I
said, hey, we're doing something really innovative over here. Would you like to try this
out? And he's like, yeah, I'd love to be the first person to have bitcoin
in an IRA. Which is kind of funny because arguably this was in
2008, 2009. He created the most amount of monetary supply in the
history of the US dollar. So for somebody that was responsible at the Mint to
(07:34):
watch that happen and then to go and grab sound money or an
alternative format of money to put it in, I thought that was
pretty unique. And Bitcoin was $250 a unit at that moment in
time. And so I remember. And then, you know, the tree falls in the woods
and is there nobody there to hear it? Did you really do something for those
first six months? I was dubious. I'm like, is this really going to catch traction?
(07:56):
Are we really going to get there? And then that first, first full years
of business, 2017, Bitcoin went from $1,000
to $20,000. And I was like, okay, maybe we did something great.
And then within 30 days, I was like, obviously crying again, because that was
the fall from 20 back down to 6,000. So it really. I mean, that was
before I had. That was when my first gray hairs came out, was those moments.
(08:17):
And. And there's been, you know, you're never too early, and also you're never too
late. I think that's the big conversation a lot of folks are having about bitcoin
now is, oh, I missed out. I think that that's crazy. We're still only at
3 to 5% mainstream adoption at this juncture. There's so much that's
happened in the last couple of weeks with Crypto Week and the legislation that's going
to supercharge this cycle and you're nowhere near being
(08:38):
too late. So I never really thought I was too early. I just said, you
know, you have those look in the mirror moments as can you get through this?
You know, you got your great years and then you got your really, I mean,
the bare markets. I always tell everybody on my team when we're having good times,
like right now is winter is always coming because that's the
nature of this beast. It's a very volatile, cyclical product. It's very, very
seasonal. Yes. So
(09:01):
combining cryptocurrency with an
IRA, that was really novel to come up with
that idea. Really a first of its kind move
back in 2015, what gave you the
conviction to build this? And, and how did you
overcome early skepticism? Yeah, I mean, right away there
(09:23):
was your first. You're talking about Bitcoin, and now you want to put it in
retirements. Are you crazy? And that was so. I think what was
awesome was our early adopters were, I call them my engineer nerds. They were retired
intel, IBM, NASA scientists, and they were on
the cutting edge of technology. And so they kind of made me feel better about
it, like they were. There was so much enthusiasm. We would put a press release
(09:44):
out or there'd be a Reddit thread and then the phones would ring for weeks.
And there was a moment in time where a group from Agora Financial,
Bonner and Partners, we had no relationship with them and they went
and they opened an account and then did a full like 10 page expose on
us. And I came in late to the office that day because I had a
dentist appointment. And everybody, we only had like eight, nine people at that time on
(10:05):
staff. They all pop up from their cubes and they're like, Chris, we have a
problem. And I said, what's wrong? Like, the phone hasn't stopped ringing for the
last three hours and it didn't stop ringing for three weeks. And
that's when I said, okay, wait a minute. We're really at the cutting edge of
something unique here that people are enthusiastic about. So that kind of gives you that,
that strength. What really for me was, I think we have a retirement crisis in
(10:26):
America. And that's why I was in alternatives to begin with, was trying to seek
for a way to really fulfill our mission as partners and as a business
was to help more Americans retire. We have a big
mess. Whether you're just about to retire, are you going to last? Is your money
going to last as long as you do? And for my generation and the younger
generations, that's not something they're even thinking about yet because between
(10:47):
student loan bills, housing payments, rising costs, it's the last thing you think
of. We're more of a gig economy today than ever before. So a lot of
people aren't working with corporations that have 401(k)s or pensions. And even
big corporations are starting to cut back on those because they need tighten the belts
with it with other expenses. So in collection, you've
got a society that right before COVID Northwest Mutual asked
(11:09):
a series of people, how much do you think you need to retire comfortably? And
the number was a half million. This was 2018, 2019. They just
resurveyed the same people. It's jumped to $1.8 million now in just
a short five years. And we're just going to be in another five or another
five after that. Everything is rising in cost. So it really helps
me every day to know that we've changed a lot of people's lives that
(11:30):
have gotten in early, whether they didn't think they could ever retire or they
had to come out of retirement because they took a big hit in '08 '09
with the housing crisis to give them something that they bet on.
And it's changed their retirement future. Yeah, definitely. Retirement
readiness in the United States is a constant challenge.
Yeah. And a part of that, I think, is financial literacy.
(11:53):
Not teaching kids in school. What is the power of
compounding? Why is it important to
invest your money? I was in elementary school in Colorado, Denver, Colorado. And
we have this thing called AmeriTowne. And they do, they basically
let us run a city for a day and we prep for it for weeks.
And part of it was, you know, there's a bank and there's a city hall
(12:14):
and there's these things. And I ended up running for mayor, but I lost.
And then I became the reporter, and then I tried to do a story about
the mayor doing something fraudulent. And this is a fifth grader just having fun. You
know, just understand the politics. But the banking piece, all they taught us how to
do for a week was to write a check. And I don't know about you,
but I haven't written a check in years. I mean, it's, it's, it's a very
rare thing, except for maybe like if you move into a new place, you got
(12:36):
to put a security deposit down or something. That's what they like. But that,
that world is so antique now. And, and, and I think
financial literacy is a huge gap we have. You don't learn things. I Even
went to University of Colorado Boulder Business School. And they don't dive
into business taxes and those things like P&Ls EBITDAs
very heavily. You spend all this time on these accounting equations that you just want
(12:58):
to forget by the time the semester ends, but never really the core elements of
running a business and the treasury of it and then your own personal.
And it's just something that we skip. And it's everybody. It's not
just Gen Z's or millennials with their avocado toast and their coffee.
It's across the spectrum of people that. That just don't have that literacy.
I try to make it a personal goal. My daughter's 11, and when she was
(13:20):
in TK (transitional kindergarten), I went to her school. The teacher asked me because she
knew I was into bitcoin. She said, could you come teach the kids about bitcoin?
I'm like, like kindergarteners. And she. And it was great because
I said, you know, probably going to be easier than teaching a room full of
adults about it back then. So what I did was, you know, every one of
those preschools has that Fisher Price like, store in there. And so that
(13:40):
was Izzy's store, and she ran the store. And then I had four kids
volunteer. I dressed one up with a caveman outfit. One is a Roman soldier,
another one just modern day, like us. And then a fourth one in an astronaut
uniform. And then I gave the caveman a rubber chicken and a rock, and he
went to the store and he barter and traded. So they understood, okay, back in
caveman days, that's how money worked. Then I gave a silver coin to the Roman
(14:01):
soldier. I gave 20 bucks to the kid that was modern, which, by the way,
he pocketed that 20 bucks. Never got it back from him. So smart kid. I
know, smart kid. Hopefully bought some bitcoin with it. And then the astronaut, I had
him use my cell phone, my coinbase, to make a transaction. And did the kids
understand it or they just think it was fun? Who knows, Maybe one of them
will grow up and say, I remember the day I learned about bitcoin and TK
that'd be awesome. But, you know, it's. And then I remember the
(14:24):
homework came for last year, and they were talking about pennies, dimes,
quarters, nickels. Because it's fractions, right? They're trying to teach kids fractions of the money.
And I wrote this little manifesto at the bottom of the report with the
teacher was like, I think you forgot the most important coin. Especially since they're gonna
basically stop making pennies. Soon they, it costs more to make them than
they're worth. So it, you need more advocates out there teaching it. But
(14:45):
also people have to be open to it. I think it's one of those things
that scares them so they just avoid it. It's an avoidance thing. It's like, well,
I don't understand it. So I just, I'm just gonna, I guess I'll just be
ignorant when it comes to money. And that's what keeps us from really prospering
and why you need channels like yours and to get people to think
beyond the basics of money.
With hindsight being 20/20,
(15:09):
I suspect that the home run story is if you can
invest your money in a Roth IRA and you could
have bought Bitcoin at 500 bucks and now it's over $100,000,
you grew your money tax free. Huge.
Absolutely. But you cited the 3 to 4%, I think, of
(15:29):
retail investors who have crypto exposure. You still
feel like even today, very early innings in this
baseball game. Yeah, very early innings. And it's going to take
pricing to get to a certain point because people are driven by one of two
things, fear or greed. And when, when the price of bitcoin maybe
gets to 130, 135, the retail wave will wake up. And the
(15:50):
institutions are thrilled right now that the retail buyers aren't here yet because they're
buying, they're being able to buy bitcoin cheaper than they may, may
have to in six to seven or eight months, you know? Yeah. Hindsight 20/20.
The William Roth 1970s created the, the Roth force from the
fine state of Delaware and put it up as a senator in legislation. And back
then it was because we had a savings crisis in America as well. People
(16:12):
just weren't saving money. So they wanted to incentivize what a great tool, especially
if you really believe in the ultimate growth of your assets, to have it in
a tax free, tax deferred setting. And then when you hit that ripe age of
retirement to take $500 and turn it into 5 million and be
able to take those distributions out tax free. That's what Peter Thiel's doing. That's what
the big money's doing. When they're betting on something big and that they believe in.
(16:34):
And this administration and this government today is kind of inkling
towards, bet on alternatives. If you're reading between the
lines, a lot of conversation about bitcoin, a lot of conversation about gold,
and a lot of, I think, acceptance that
we've gone past the point of no return when it comes to the dollar. And
if Americans are listening, they're going to take, they should take measures
(16:56):
today to start protecting themselves and their wealth. So
in the Roth, really helpful to have an asset that can
appreciate in a big way. What do you tell
people as far as allocation? How much
exposure should they have to bitcoin and
other digital currencies? I mean it really comes down to their individual risk tolerance.
(17:18):
Obviously this is self directed. So we usually see most folks
I know Fidelity came out with a suggestion of 1 to 3%. A few years
back they've just jumped that to 5 to 7. We've seen most
people somewhere in that range between 1 to 7%. But you have the people that
went all in. So one of those early engineers that I was talking about, he
actually left his, his job at Intel so that he could liberate his
(17:40):
401(k) because you know, if you're still working and you're under 59 and a half,
your 401(k) is kind of locked in until you either leave or you
or if you reach that age of rollover capacity.
He literally left his job so that he could get his, his 401(k)
liberated and put it all in into Bitcoin. And I remember having the conversations with
him, this was 2016. I was terrified because I'm. But
(18:02):
yeah, coming in gung ho and now obviously retired young and early
and enjoying life with his family and, and so, but I
think getting the bigger risk is not getting off zero if you, if,
if you don't get off zero if you haven't at least gotten some exposure to
bitcoin, you have your contribution for the year. You don't have to wait until tax
day to do it. You can do it at any time. Grab a thousand dollars
(18:23):
or up to $8,000 if you're over 50 and get off zero, get some exposure
to bitcoin. It's, it's never too late and your future self will
thank you drastically. So, Chris,
we have options today. We can buy
Bitcoin ETFs, right? Many people say it's about time,
but we have the option. We can buy those
(18:46):
ETFs in our IRA account. Tell
us about the idea of
BitcoinIRA. How does it work? How does it,
how does it work compared to buying crypto directly on an
exchange or versus buying it in an ETF (exchange traded fund)? So
a great question. Obviously there's direct investment here.
(19:09):
So instead of getting, I like to kind of call it a proxy certificate when
it comes to ETFs it's still a paper derived asset which is based in
dollars. Right now there's one to one ratios that will likely change.
ETFs always start with one to one of their exposure exposure but as they grow
they'll, you'll start seeing fractionalization of that. Beyond that it's also
they're limited during for their trading time periods. 90% of our
(19:31):
trades and we are at a $14 billion of assets under custody
and I think just about $4 billion of transactions lifetime.
We you have 90% of those trades have taken place after business
hours or on weekends. So this is an asset class that runs
24/7/365. So those are two big reasons for me
it's when I reach that age of distribution, when I get old, I won't have
(19:53):
to sell my crypto or Bitcoin for $30 to take it out
of my retirement. I can do what's known as an in kind distribution and take
the bitcoin itself and move it to my private wallet outside of my
IRA. So an ETF IRA versus a crypto
IRA, those are some definite differentials. Now why how is it
different than an exchange? Well the tax thing we were just talking about, if you
(20:14):
put it in, into an IRA setting you're going to get the benefit of putting
it in a traditional, the benefit of tax free distributions with a
Roth. And in between, whether you're, if you're, if you're just a bitcoin
guy and you're or gal and you're going to do just a maximal buy and
HODL strategy, lots of folks end up doing some trades along the way.
Even if their mentality is there. They'll dabble in some Ethereum or some of the
(20:35):
other altcoins, especially when they start taking off. We have alt season coming up.
When you trade anytime outside of an IRA you have a capital gains
implication. You bought something for A and you sold it for, for,
for B. Even if you swap between coins. A lot of people don't realize that.
And most folks that are outside of an IRA with their bitcoin don't realize that
they have somewhere between 15 to 25% less Bitcoin than they think
(20:57):
they do. Because at some point you're going to have to ante up to Uncle
Sam. And if it's years from now, as I think you know, we've only seen
taxes go up, even with friendly administrations, the pendulum swings and then
it swings back the other way. And, and if I'm thinking I just turned 40
this year, if I'm thinking by 80, 40-year strategy, who knows where
tax is going to be at that moment in time. So that's the advantage of
getting off exchange. There's also some nice things. We have a lot of clients that
(21:21):
do not just their IRA with us, but then they'll open up a non IRA
account because of the additional securities. So our platform, all
wallets are insured for up to $250 million. And you have,
you can set up your beneficiaries so you could be pretty
smart, set up a ledger device and have your seed and, and take all those
steps to hold my keys and hold my crypto. But what
(21:43):
we allow is I just flew here from, from Phoenix and if something
happened and the plane, and the plane and I wasn't. My wife and kid are
set up as beneficiaries to my bitcoin accounts, not just my IRA so
that it's an easy transfer of, for them to have that, those coins
put under their name as opposed to they have to dig through my desk drive
drawer and look for the seed. And I've never trained them on how to use
(22:04):
a ledger. Like those are things that, that's, I think what helped. It stalled out
mainstream adoption for a bit. It's not an easy thing to use. It's not like
when we launched credit cards. It was, it was pretty, I mean it was scary
to people. My favorite thing I've seen, I don't know have you seen the story?
It's like 1980s Texas and they're sitting at a Burger
King and a reporter sitting there asking people it's the first day of Burger King
(22:24):
is accepting credit cards and there's these guys sitting there. I don't need no credit
card. I got cold hard cash in my pocket. I don't need it. And look
at where we're at today. And that's just in my lifetime. Where are we going
to be in the future with digital payments and these types of things? And that
adoption is going to take some time. So yeah, I hope that's a little long
winded, but I hope that answers some of those questions for you. Yeah. Talk about
(22:44):
the "Pentagon of Custody" when it comes to security.
So the Pentagon, why I named it, that is, it's, it was designed to
be a building that was safe. Safe from attack. Right. And the way they design
it, if you've ever been there or know folks that have been there, is that
the joint, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the big guys, the five star generals, their
offices are all at the center of The Pentagon on that interior ring,
(23:05):
I think it's A through E is how they're labeled. So they're at the center
ring for an ultimate protection. That's how we treat your nest egg of
Bitcoin, is we put it at the center and then we put these rings of
protection. So the first ring is we use multi signature
exclusive wallets with BitGo, which BitGo is kind of like the
Brinks of a brand of the crypto space.
(23:25):
We built the first multi signature for custody with IRAs with
Mike Belshe and his team out of Palo Alto back in 2015. That was one
of the check boxes I had to do to make this reality is well, how
are we going to hold this in a traditional sense where there's custody. that
allows, where there's multiple keys, they're geographically dispersed. I call
them salt and peppered, but they're obfuscated. That's such a hard
(23:47):
word to say. But they're broken apart and then they're encrypted and
then we have a layer of consensus around that so that internally it
takes eight different people in order for crypto to move in or out of wallets.
That's one layer. The next layer is we try to protect you from yourself.
You're your greatest, you're your weakest link when it comes to anything digital.
We all heard the horror stories. I got SIM swapped my email
(24:09):
got hacked and they emptied out my Coinbase account account or my Kraken or otherwise.
And those things are getting more and more sophisticated. The spear phishing, the.
It's not just some Nigerian prince that's calling you that says that you need money
to grandma. They're getting good and they're getting. And with AI they're going to get
even better. So we have this layer of AI identity therapy, verification
and we'll actually. If you're going to move crypto out of your IRA, you
(24:31):
have to sit down on a zoom, on a zoom call and do a video
verification and likeness read and answer a series of questions, questions
before anything can move. And then those have to be moved through a
protocol of white listing, micro testing and
TXID verification. So each of these is a ring, a layer
around that pentagon to protect your nest egg from things that could go wrong
(24:52):
in typical services. And then your your own self
also. Last piece on that Pentagon. None of our trades are done on
exchange. So if you were to go buy a coinbase or
Kraken, you've got to take your cash, put it on the exchange and
then buy and sell what you want and then yes, you can move it to
cold storage, which is a step that a lot of people forget. And if they
(25:13):
get access to your phone with an instance they're already searching. Does he have a
Coinbase account and can I move it to a private wallet and drain that account?
None of our trades happen on they all happen on OTC markets.
So while you're in the app you will see oh, I just bought Bitcoin and
instantly settled behind the scenes is where all the security hear cold storage to cold
storage settlements happening. This was another added benefit of our configuration
(25:34):
that got us approved for the insurance and all the extra layers. So does
that help get understand that Pentagon visualization? Yeah, it's
technical. So you guys, it's well thought out. Yes, absolutely. Well, 10 years in the
making. Fantastic. Yeah. And we never stop. So security today as financial
services is not something that you just check a box, oh, I'm SOC 2 type
two rated like it's not something like that. Especially in crypto new threats spreads
(25:56):
are constantly there. So we actually take a chunk of about 20% of our
quarterly roadmap for our technology and product teams is dedicated
to additional security things, more pen testing more
more authentication, add ons, more AI, all the tools. So we
always there's. So if you look at our roadmap, 80% of its new product
and 20% is keeping the product we have safe. And it's an ongoing never
(26:18):
stops. We've been doing that since 2018 as a standard. So it's
evolving. Yep. Let's take a step back. Since you started your career
in real estate, gold,
commodities, why do you
advocate that retirees or
I guess even before retiring, when you're saving your retirement nest
(26:40):
egg, why is it important to have alternatives in there? And then
are digital assets the same or different?
Good questions. So first part, why alternatives? It's not our
grandfather's economy. So my grandfather passed in
2020, lived to about 92 and he had a
pension working for Hiram Walker and he basically could buy
(27:02):
and he taught me a lot when I was a kid. But he could buy
GE and a handful of other stocks and pretty much they went up over time
and he lived off dividends was his structure.
Unfortunately, that world is. The world's not that easy anymore. And there's so
many challenges we have to overcome with inflation, rising cost.
Ever since we went off the gold standard, almost everything all charts are up and
to the right and they're not. They don't seem to be. We have to go
(27:24):
to a deflationary state in order for prices to come down, which won't happen.
You also, a lot of folks will put most of their net worth inside their
primary residence housing. While it has its value, it
goes up, it doesn't go up all the time, as we learned in 2008, 2009,
but it also has quite a bit of expenses to it as well. You've got
to maintain the house. If you're renting it out, you've got renter issues. There's. It's
(27:46):
not that as easy as I buy a house and I make wealth, but it's
a piece of that alternative. So the modern portfolio theory in my opinion has the
stocks and the bonds, they still are important. You need your, your fixed income, but
there's got to be a segment. And some people it's up to a third. Others
it's down to like 15, 20%. But a piece of that pie that's
dedicated to the things you're not finding that are on paper gold is
(28:08):
great for it. I've worked in. We actually have a digital gold that's
on our platform that you can buy and it's real gold coins
and bars at a depository, but it's got a blockchain over the top of it,
so it can trade and settle instantly and swap with other digital assets. I think
that you're going to see more of those real, those alternatives.
Get into this real world tokenization, real world assets being tokenized across the next
(28:30):
few, few years. And then you've got a whole secondary market now you can
take your, your rental property and you can get some liquidity out of it by
tokenizing it. And, and not to go too far down around. This is really
exciting stuff that people. I think there's a lot of really smart guys in our
space that are going to launch some of these things in the coming probably 18
months that are going to change. These assets that sit kind of just, they're
(28:51):
hard, they're great assets, but they kind of languish. There's no, there's no way to
basically free financialize them. They're just there for that reason.
And that's where we're headed next. So there's going to be this kind of marriage
of the two. Can common stocks be tokenized in the
entire stock exchange as we know it
completely change? I think it could. It's going to start with stable coins. The stable
(29:15):
coins from the, from the Genius Act. And I last week I was sitting down
with a bunch of big bankers in boardrooms across the country
and that's the big thing they're talking about right now, they all want to figure
out how can they compete in the stablecoin space. They see it as
the, the next where there's going to be a lot of AUC
and AUM that's going to aggregate in those spaces. But they're thinking of it and
(29:36):
I didn't think of it like this. They're thinking of it as competing against each
other for who's got the best stablecoin. I don't know if that's really
the race that we have. You have a race to reserve with bitcoin
countries, nation states and companies. And now you're gonna have this kind of
race to compete in the stablecoin market. I think stablecoins are
great because they will lead to the tokenization of stocks and others,
(29:57):
whereas instant settlement and liquidity issues can be handled on chain
through these mechanisms. That's the institution win for stablecoins,
the retail win or the small business win for stablecoins is
the elimination of money. Money service providers, merchant service
providers, credit card processors. Because if you're settling
with stable coins you don't need all of those extra layers, those middlemen
(30:20):
which would lower costs for the retail user. And the business could
also if they're going to take payment in stable then they could easily
flip and take a piece of it and put it in treasury as bitcoin. Which
I think is the new big thing is we got big corporations that are putting
it on the balance sheet. Small businesses are going to start doing it as well,
just as a, as a hedge. And hey, I made, I had a good year.
(30:41):
I made $5 million EBITDA. I should at least take a million of that and
put it long term and help grow the business and the balance sheet for those
rainy days that might come in the future. Because businesses, they all ebb and flow,
right? So stable coins good for the dollar
or bad for the US dollar? Depends on
where they get that like their ping comes from.
(31:03):
So obviously the n the natural beginnings is stablecoin is ping
to US dollar, right? Will that, will it change to. Stablecoins
may be valued in bitcoin or other digital assets in the future.
As far as if you are a stablecoin issuer and what's your treasury look
like? First it's one to one dollar If I'm going to issue a stable coin
and I'm going to have a million tokens out there, then I need to have
(31:25):
a million dollars in reserve at some point. Could that be instead of a
million dollars, could it be 10 Bitcoin that you have in reserve and then that
actually strengthens digital assets and alternative assets than the dollar.
The dollar has done its damage to itself. And I don't know if there's
a, there's no like U-Turn. I think stablecoins will
maybe give it a couple more, maybe a decade or so more of like
(31:48):
fortitude and because it's tied to the dollar, because it's tied to it. But eventually.
Yeah, it opens the door to others. Just like BRICS, for example,
is, is really is, I think BRICS. And if OPEC decides
to stop having the reserve currency for OPEC be the
US Dollar, those are two very damaging things for the strength of the dollar
(32:08):
globally. And we're kind of seeing some cracks. What it's had its
worst year ever, down 10% in a matter of like 30 days. So
I know it. For years I felt like a doomsday. The dollar's coming down
and people just look at me like, who's this crazy guy? You know, you feel
like the homeless guy on the street corner saying that the end is near. That's
where I felt too early now with these, where people are seeing it. But
Americans, average Joe, they're not sitting there saying, okay,
(32:32):
I had $100,000 in my savings account and now I have $90,000 in my savings
account. Because to them they still log in and there's $100,000 there.
They don't quite understand that it now goes 10% further than it used
to. And that's that. That brings us back to that financial literacy component where
understanding that the ability for your dollar to do something
matters at certain strength relative to other currencies in the world. Ed
(32:54):
Moy said to me a long time ago, Chris, the dollars only is
great, but it's just the cleanest dirty shirt and the dirty laundry
hamper is really what it is. And that is for most of my career has
driven me to say I can't depend on fiat currency for my
long term wealth. Well, you've given us a lot to think
about. And I think proof that when it comes
(33:16):
to money, whether it's, you know, the
greenbacks in our wallet or digital,
we have to think about the macro and what's going on
in the United States and in the world.
Right. Everything's interconnected and everything's going to. We have
(33:37):
to look for major trends ahead. And the rest of the
world is looking at crypto even stronger. I think with the Genius Act and the
other bills that passed in Crypto Week, I think this is a place where the
United States is going to cement its leadership in the digital revolution that's taking
place, but it's going to be a competitive market. While the Chinese have banned it,
they also, there's still hash power happening out of the borders of
(33:59):
China, so it's still being produced and mined over there. El
Salvador completely jumped in with both feet, which I think is a
great case study. Argentina may be next and Zimbabwe. You see the number
of wallets that are open during crisis. So when Turkey had its
financial crisis a few years back, there was a slew of like a
wave of new wallets for crypto that were open. People are, while they've
(34:21):
traditionally ran to gold and silver, crypto is easier to run to if you need
to take money out and put it into a new, a new form of
money. So, yeah, I think this is, we've just
begun this story and we're going to look back in 20 years and go,
wow, that a lot has changed very quickly. We'll see
if it is indeed early, early innings in this
(34:43):
baseball game and how many innings there will be. Yeah,
it could be that record long one. What was it, 21 innings is the longest
game. And by the way, Andy, just so you, before we leave each
other today, a few things. One thing I'm really proud of with BitcoinIRA
is we're real crypto, real people. And what that means is we're not like
a typical exchange where you just get to, to talk to robots and FAQs. We
(35:05):
have a team of folks that help folk, help people like your audience,
open their account, fund their account, and inevitably trade their account because
retirement's not a one size fits all solution. Everybody's got sometimes pensions,
401(k)s, so they need some assistance, some handholding to get to the, to the
finish line so they can actually call. And this is a challenge I always put
out there. You can be on the phone in about 90 seconds during business hours
(35:27):
with a human. If you call
877-936-7175.
And be sure that they mentioned that they heard from Inspired Money because we have
a special for your audience. They can earn up to $1,000 in rewards
for our Summer of Freedom program. Freedom of Money.
The summer of Freedom of Money. Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks for having me
(35:48):
today. My pleasure. And good.
Awesome. Cool. Thank you, man. That was fun. You
knew Pentagon of Custody. Well. What do you
think about that conversation with Chris? And how do
you, how did you. Like the iHeartRadio studio, especially
with people walking around throughout the interview.
(36:10):
Chris has got content creation down as you can see. He
had a videographer
following
him around a la Gary Vaynerchuk so that he can
repurpose the content that he filmed
and made during his time in New York City. For me, I
(36:31):
love doing an in person interview. It had been a long time and it's really
nice to be sitting across from the person in the same room.
This is not your grandfather's retirement. Longevity is
a good problem to have and one that we have
discussed in
previous Inspired Money episodes. I
(36:53):
appreciated talking with Chris, who not only knows a lot about digital
currencies, but he's also an advocate and very passionate about
helping people increase their financial literacy. My
favorite takeaway he said the biggest risk is not
getting off zero. And that hit home because whether it's
bitcoin or any new asset class, the worst thing
(37:15):
you can do is ignore it completely and hope the
old ways will carry you into retirement. So I want to give
you an assignment this week. Don't just listen.
Take action. Check your retirement accounts this week and
see if you're truly diversified for the future that you want.
Even if you start small. Even if it's just learning your
(37:38):
future self will thank you. And if you want to have a clear free
snapshot of when you can retire, how to boost your income, cut debt
and protect your future, go to
runnymede.com/getplan. You can
get your 3 minute financial plan just takes 3 minutes and it
could change the way that you look at your money. Remember, small steps
(37:59):
can really create massive financial freedom tomorrow.
So get started. If this episode sparks something in you, let
us know in the comments or tag us online. I'd love to hear what
you think about alternative assets and digital currency.
Is it for you or is it way too volatile and speculative?
I think it's different for everybody. A shout out to the Inspired Money
(38:22):
production team. Excellent coordination
and edits by Bradley John Eagle Feather Graphic animations
by Chad Lawrence finally, for more information about Chris, you
heard him give out the phone number where you can call and talk to a
real person. Also go to bitcoinIRA.com
for more information. Remember to mention Inspired Money.
(38:45):
A few more thank yous before we part ways. Thank you to
Josh Carey of the Hidden Entrepreneur
Show for helping to schedule this interview and make it happen at
iHeart Radio. A shout out to Adam Posner,
who hosts the Pozcast:
Decoding
(39:06):
Success. He interviewed Chris Kline in studio right after
I did, so you can check out his show if you want to hear more
from Chris Kline. Do not miss Inspired Money next week.
We will be back with a guest panel once again. I think
we're scheduled for Thursday, September 11th at 1pm
Eastern. I'm currently assembling a panel to continue
(39:29):
this conversation. The topic is going to be "The Future of
Cryptocurrencies (39:32):
Exploring Blockchain and Digital assets."
I think it's a timely conversation and one where we can benefit
not only by talking to one on one experts, but a
panel of experts. So please mark your calendar. Check
us out on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss
upcoming episodes. We've got a lot of great
(39:56):
topics and episodes in store. Until next time. That's
next week. Do something that scares you because that's where the
magic happens. See you next time.
Aloha
(00:51):
Inspired Money Maker welcome back to Inspired Money, where we talk
money, motivation and meaning so you can live a
richer life. A little bit of a hiccup in that intro,
but I'm glad that we got the correction in there. I'm Andy
Wang. Today we're diving into something really big,
bitcoin and digital currencies in your retirement account.
(01:14):
Yes, you heard that right. Owning crypto inside an
IRA or 401(k). I'm not telling you to do it or
not to do it. Everybody has different goals, investment
objectives and tolerance to risk. What we can do
is learn about this together so that we can make smart, informed
choices about our retirement savings and investments.
(01:37):
With the current administration signaling a more pro crypto stance
and new legislation shaping the future of digital assets,
now is a great time to understand how cryptocurrency could
fit into your retirement plan. That's why I sat down with
Chris Kline, co founder and chief operating officer of
BitcoinIRA, the first platform that lets you hold
(01:59):
crypto like Bitcoin directly in your tax advantaged
retirement accounts. We're going to talk about what this shift means,
how a Roth IRA could make your gains tax free,
and what you need to know before jumping in. Now, this episode is
a little different than most. Not only is it a one on one
episode, but I had the opportunity to visit iHeartMedia's
(02:21):
New York City headquarters. It was a really cool opportunity
to peer into the studio where Elvis Duran and the morning show
broadcast from every day. There were posters of
legendary recording artists everywhere. It was a fun
and unique adventure for me to get out of
my home studio and into a professional radio
(02:43):
station. Now we're going to find out why
Chris believes this is just the beginning of a financial revolution.
So stick around. You're going to get insights you won't hear
anywhere else. Before we dive in, a quick
thank you to our sponsor, my fee only registered investment
advisory firm, runnymede Capital Management. Do you ever
(03:05):
feel like you're saving enough? Or do you
wonder if you're saving enough to retire or if you might run out of money
too soon? It's a scary thought, but most people
don't have a clear plan. And that uncertainty
only grows as the years go by. At running Me Capital Management,
we've been helping families turn that anxiety into confidence for over
(03:28):
32 years. Now you can get your own 3 minute
financial plan@runningmede.com getplan
in just minutes, you'll see exactly when you can retire, how to
boost your income, cut debt and protect your family's future.
It's completely free. Stop guessing, start planning.
Visit runningmede.com
(03:51):
getplanned today. Now our guest
for this episode is Chris Kline. I mentioned he's the co founder and
COO of BitcoinIRA, the first company to let
investors hold cryptocurrencies directly in their retirement accounts.
Since launching in 2016, he's
expanded the platform beyond bitcoin, built a secure and
(04:13):
compliant system and helped make BitcoinIRA
a leader in crypto retirement investing. So
let's get right into the interview with Chris Kline.
(04:36):
Chris, welcome to Inspired Money. Thanks for having me today, Andy. It's a pleasure to
be here. You are an OG in this
crypto space. Can you take us back? What led you from
a more traditional finance job into
launching BitcoinIRA? Absolutely. Well, I've never really been much of a
traditional guy. When I first jumped into the world
(04:59):
of self directed IRAs, it was about real estate,
precious metals, LLC, venture capital, private equity.
And then the challenge came across our desk, my partners and I, is it possible
to put Bitcoin into a retirement account? And at that time it
hadn't been done. So I had to take the orange pill, go down that
rabbit hole, so to speak, and really dive into what are the
(05:21):
fundamentals of crypto. And really, after reading the white paper a couple of
times and there were a few key pieces where I just fell in love as
an 80s baby and watching this plethora of abundance and monetary
supply, it just spoke right to my soul. Always
alternatives... Just more alternative every step of the
way, I guess. More cutting edge. Yeah. So if you take us back to
(05:43):
10 years ago, 12 years ago, what was, what did you
see as this potential evolution of money?
Absolutely. For me, the white paper, what really sung off the
pages for me was the halving concept. The idea that there
is a fixed supply, a scarcity of Bitcoin really
spoke to me and, and the instrument by which it was put in place in
(06:05):
order for us to avoid that or avoid what we have today with the US
dollar and fiat currency, is that we actually are taking away
the reward for the producers of it and to go from 50
down to 25, like the steps we've taken every time
there's a halving it just makes me feel better about the next generation, my
kids and their kids, that there'll be sound money available.
(06:27):
Because I grew up in the 80s where basically from
71, the Nixon shock, when we went off the gold standard, it's just been
print and print as fast as you can through crisis and that eventually
there's a day of reckoning for that at some point, I don't know if I'll
be alive for it. Maybe I will be. But you can't print something to oblivion.
I think the Romans taught us that and several others have taught us that's a
(06:48):
fall of civilization. So you got in early. We're in
this world of wanting instant gratification,
like things need to happen right now. Looking back,
were there times where you felt like, I am too early?
What am I doing? Yeah, you know,
watching. So our first little quick story, our first client was
(07:11):
the former director of the United States States Mint, Edmund C. Moy. He was a
friend of ours from working in the precious metals space. And I called him, I
said, hey, we're doing something really innovative over here. Would you like to try this
out? And he's like, yeah, I'd love to be the first person to have bitcoin
in an IRA. Which is kind of funny because arguably this was in
2008, 2009. He created the most amount of monetary supply in the
history of the US dollar. So for somebody that was responsible at the Mint to
(07:34):
watch that happen and then to go and grab sound money or an
alternative format of money to put it in, I thought that was
pretty unique. And Bitcoin was $250 a unit at that moment in
time. And so I remember. And then, you know, the tree falls in the woods
and is there nobody there to hear it? Did you really do something for those
first six months? I was dubious. I'm like, is this really going to catch traction?
(07:56):
Are we really going to get there? And then that first, first full years
of business, 2017, Bitcoin went from $1,000
to $20,000. And I was like, okay, maybe we did something great.
And then within 30 days, I was like, obviously crying again, because that was
the fall from 20 back down to 6,000. So it really. I mean, that was
before I had. That was when my first gray hairs came out, was those moments.
(08:17):
And. And there's been, you know, you're never too early, and also you're never too
late. I think that's the big conversation a lot of folks are having about bitcoin
now is, oh, I missed out. I think that that's crazy. We're still only at
3 to 5% mainstream adoption at this juncture. There's so much that's
happened in the last couple of weeks with Crypto Week and the legislation that's going
to supercharge this cycle and you're nowhere near being
(08:38):
too late. So I never really thought I was too early. I just said, you
know, you have those look in the mirror moments as can you get through this?
You know, you got your great years and then you got your really, I mean,
the bare markets. I always tell everybody on my team when we're having good times,
like right now is winter is always coming because that's the
nature of this beast. It's a very volatile, cyclical product. It's very, very
seasonal. Yes. So
(09:01):
combining cryptocurrency with an
IRA, that was really novel to come up with
that idea. Really a first of its kind move
back in 2015, what gave you the
conviction to build this? And, and how did you
overcome early skepticism? Yeah, I mean, right away there
(09:23):
was your first. You're talking about Bitcoin, and now you want to put it in
retirements. Are you crazy? And that was so. I think what was
awesome was our early adopters were, I call them my engineer nerds. They were retired
intel, IBM, NASA scientists, and they were on
the cutting edge of technology. And so they kind of made me feel better about
it, like they were. There was so much enthusiasm. We would put a press release
(09:44):
out or there'd be a Reddit thread and then the phones would ring for weeks.
And there was a moment in time where a group from Agora Financial,
Bonner and Partners, we had no relationship with them and they went
and they opened an account and then did a full like 10 page expose on
us. And I came in late to the office that day because I had a
dentist appointment. And everybody, we only had like eight, nine people at that time on
(10:05):
staff. They all pop up from their cubes and they're like, Chris, we have a
problem. And I said, what's wrong? Like, the phone hasn't stopped ringing for the
last three hours and it didn't stop ringing for three weeks. And
that's when I said, okay, wait a minute. We're really at the cutting edge of
something unique here that people are enthusiastic about. So that kind of gives you that,
that strength. What really for me was, I think we have a retirement crisis in
(10:26):
America. And that's why I was in alternatives to begin with, was trying to seek
for a way to really fulfill our mission as partners and as a business
was to help more Americans retire. We have a big
mess. Whether you're just about to retire, are you going to last? Is your money
going to last as long as you do? And for my generation and the younger
generations, that's not something they're even thinking about yet because between
(10:47):
student loan bills, housing payments, rising costs, it's the last thing you think
of. We're more of a gig economy today than ever before. So a lot of
people aren't working with corporations that have 401(k)s or pensions. And even
big corporations are starting to cut back on those because they need tighten the belts
with it with other expenses. So in collection, you've
got a society that right before COVID Northwest Mutual asked
(11:09):
a series of people, how much do you think you need to retire comfortably? And
the number was a half million. This was 2018, 2019. They just
resurveyed the same people. It's jumped to $1.8 million now in just
a short five years. And we're just going to be in another five or another
five after that. Everything is rising in cost. So it really helps
me every day to know that we've changed a lot of people's lives that
(11:30):
have gotten in early, whether they didn't think they could ever retire or they
had to come out of retirement because they took a big hit in '08 '09
with the housing crisis to give them something that they bet on.
And it's changed their retirement future. Yeah, definitely. Retirement
readiness in the United States is a constant challenge.
Yeah. And a part of that, I think, is financial literacy.
(11:53):
Not teaching kids in school. What is the power of
compounding? Why is it important to
invest your money? I was in elementary school in Colorado, Denver, Colorado. And
we have this thing called AmeriTowne. And they do, they basically
let us run a city for a day and we prep for it for weeks.
And part of it was, you know, there's a bank and there's a city hall
(12:14):
and there's these things. And I ended up running for mayor, but I lost.
And then I became the reporter, and then I tried to do a story about
the mayor doing something fraudulent. And this is a fifth grader just having fun. You
know, just understand the politics. But the banking piece, all they taught us how to
do for a week was to write a check. And I don't know about you,
but I haven't written a check in years. I mean, it's, it's, it's a very
rare thing, except for maybe like if you move into a new place, you got
(12:36):
to put a security deposit down or something. That's what they like. But that,
that world is so antique now. And, and, and I think
financial literacy is a huge gap we have. You don't learn things. I Even
went to University of Colorado Boulder Business School. And they don't dive
into business taxes and those things like P&Ls EBITDAs
very heavily. You spend all this time on these accounting equations that you just want
(12:58):
to forget by the time the semester ends, but never really the core elements of
running a business and the treasury of it and then your own personal.
And it's just something that we skip. And it's everybody. It's not
just Gen Z's or millennials with their avocado toast and their coffee.
It's across the spectrum of people that. That just don't have that literacy.
I try to make it a personal goal. My daughter's 11, and when she was
(13:20):
in TK (transitional kindergarten), I went to her school. The teacher asked me because she
knew I was into bitcoin. She said, could you come teach the kids about bitcoin?
I'm like, like kindergarteners. And she. And it was great because
I said, you know, probably going to be easier than teaching a room full of
adults about it back then. So what I did was, you know, every one of
those preschools has that Fisher Price like, store in there. And so that
(13:40):
was Izzy's store, and she ran the store. And then I had four kids
volunteer. I dressed one up with a caveman outfit. One is a Roman soldier,
another one just modern day, like us. And then a fourth one in an astronaut
uniform. And then I gave the caveman a rubber chicken and a rock, and he
went to the store and he barter and traded. So they understood, okay, back in
caveman days, that's how money worked. Then I gave a silver coin to the Roman
(14:01):
soldier. I gave 20 bucks to the kid that was modern, which, by the way,
he pocketed that 20 bucks. Never got it back from him. So smart kid. I
know, smart kid. Hopefully bought some bitcoin with it. And then the astronaut, I had
him use my cell phone, my coinbase, to make a transaction. And did the kids
understand it or they just think it was fun? Who knows, Maybe one of them
will grow up and say, I remember the day I learned about bitcoin and TK
that'd be awesome. But, you know, it's. And then I remember the
(14:24):
homework came for last year, and they were talking about pennies, dimes,
quarters, nickels. Because it's fractions, right? They're trying to teach kids fractions of the money.
And I wrote this little manifesto at the bottom of the report with the
teacher was like, I think you forgot the most important coin. Especially since they're gonna
basically stop making pennies. Soon they, it costs more to make them than
they're worth. So it, you need more advocates out there teaching it. But
(14:45):
also people have to be open to it. I think it's one of those things
that scares them so they just avoid it. It's an avoidance thing. It's like, well,
I don't understand it. So I just, I'm just gonna, I guess I'll just be
ignorant when it comes to money. And that's what keeps us from really prospering
and why you need channels like yours and to get people to think
beyond the basics of money.
With hindsight being 20/20,
(15:09):
I suspect that the home run story is if you can
invest your money in a Roth IRA and you could
have bought Bitcoin at 500 bucks and now it's over $100,000,
you grew your money tax free. Huge.
Absolutely. But you cited the 3 to 4%, I think, of
(15:29):
retail investors who have crypto exposure. You still
feel like even today, very early innings in this
baseball game. Yeah, very early innings. And it's going to take
pricing to get to a certain point because people are driven by one of two
things, fear or greed. And when, when the price of bitcoin maybe
gets to 130, 135, the retail wave will wake up. And the
(15:50):
institutions are thrilled right now that the retail buyers aren't here yet because they're
buying, they're being able to buy bitcoin cheaper than they may, may
have to in six to seven or eight months, you know? Yeah. Hindsight 20/20.
The William Roth 1970s created the, the Roth force from the
fine state of Delaware and put it up as a senator in legislation. And back
then it was because we had a savings crisis in America as well. People
(16:12):
just weren't saving money. So they wanted to incentivize what a great tool, especially
if you really believe in the ultimate growth of your assets, to have it in
a tax free, tax deferred setting. And then when you hit that ripe age of
retirement to take $500 and turn it into 5 million and be
able to take those distributions out tax free. That's what Peter Thiel's doing. That's what
the big money's doing. When they're betting on something big and that they believe in.
(16:34):
And this administration and this government today is kind of inkling
towards, bet on alternatives. If you're reading between the
lines, a lot of conversation about bitcoin, a lot of conversation about gold,
and a lot of, I think, acceptance that
we've gone past the point of no return when it comes to the dollar. And
if Americans are listening, they're going to take, they should take measures
(16:56):
today to start protecting themselves and their wealth. So
in the Roth, really helpful to have an asset that can
appreciate in a big way. What do you tell
people as far as allocation? How much
exposure should they have to bitcoin and
other digital currencies? I mean it really comes down to their individual risk tolerance.
(17:18):
Obviously this is self directed. So we usually see most folks
I know Fidelity came out with a suggestion of 1 to 3%. A few years
back they've just jumped that to 5 to 7. We've seen most
people somewhere in that range between 1 to 7%. But you have the people that
went all in. So one of those early engineers that I was talking about, he
actually left his, his job at Intel so that he could liberate his
(17:40):
401(k) because you know, if you're still working and you're under 59 and a half,
your 401(k) is kind of locked in until you either leave or you
or if you reach that age of rollover capacity.
He literally left his job so that he could get his, his 401(k)
liberated and put it all in into Bitcoin. And I remember having the conversations with
him, this was 2016. I was terrified because I'm. But
(18:02):
yeah, coming in gung ho and now obviously retired young and early
and enjoying life with his family and, and so, but I
think getting the bigger risk is not getting off zero if you, if,
if you don't get off zero if you haven't at least gotten some exposure to
bitcoin, you have your contribution for the year. You don't have to wait until tax
day to do it. You can do it at any time. Grab a thousand dollars
(18:23):
or up to $8,000 if you're over 50 and get off zero, get some exposure
to bitcoin. It's, it's never too late and your future self will
thank you drastically. So, Chris,
we have options today. We can buy
Bitcoin ETFs, right? Many people say it's about time,
but we have the option. We can buy those
(18:46):
ETFs in our IRA account. Tell
us about the idea of
BitcoinIRA. How does it work? How does it,
how does it work compared to buying crypto directly on an
exchange or versus buying it in an ETF (exchange traded fund)? So
a great question. Obviously there's direct investment here.
(19:09):
So instead of getting, I like to kind of call it a proxy certificate when
it comes to ETFs it's still a paper derived asset which is based in
dollars. Right now there's one to one ratios that will likely change.
ETFs always start with one to one of their exposure exposure but as they grow
they'll, you'll start seeing fractionalization of that. Beyond that it's also
they're limited during for their trading time periods. 90% of our
(19:31):
trades and we are at a $14 billion of assets under custody
and I think just about $4 billion of transactions lifetime.
We you have 90% of those trades have taken place after business
hours or on weekends. So this is an asset class that runs
24/7/365. So those are two big reasons for me
it's when I reach that age of distribution, when I get old, I won't have
(19:53):
to sell my crypto or Bitcoin for $30 to take it out
of my retirement. I can do what's known as an in kind distribution and take
the bitcoin itself and move it to my private wallet outside of my
IRA. So an ETF IRA versus a crypto
IRA, those are some definite differentials. Now why how is it
different than an exchange? Well the tax thing we were just talking about, if you
(20:14):
put it in, into an IRA setting you're going to get the benefit of putting
it in a traditional, the benefit of tax free distributions with a
Roth. And in between, whether you're, if you're, if you're just a bitcoin
guy and you're or gal and you're going to do just a maximal buy and
HODL strategy, lots of folks end up doing some trades along the way.
Even if their mentality is there. They'll dabble in some Ethereum or some of the
(20:35):
other altcoins, especially when they start taking off. We have alt season coming up.
When you trade anytime outside of an IRA you have a capital gains
implication. You bought something for A and you sold it for, for,
for B. Even if you swap between coins. A lot of people don't realize that.
And most folks that are outside of an IRA with their bitcoin don't realize that
they have somewhere between 15 to 25% less Bitcoin than they think
(20:57):
they do. Because at some point you're going to have to ante up to Uncle
Sam. And if it's years from now, as I think you know, we've only seen
taxes go up, even with friendly administrations, the pendulum swings and then
it swings back the other way. And, and if I'm thinking I just turned 40
this year, if I'm thinking by 80, 40-year strategy, who knows where
tax is going to be at that moment in time. So that's the advantage of
getting off exchange. There's also some nice things. We have a lot of clients that
(21:21):
do not just their IRA with us, but then they'll open up a non IRA
account because of the additional securities. So our platform, all
wallets are insured for up to $250 million. And you have,
you can set up your beneficiaries so you could be pretty
smart, set up a ledger device and have your seed and, and take all those
steps to hold my keys and hold my crypto. But what
(21:43):
we allow is I just flew here from, from Phoenix and if something
happened and the plane, and the plane and I wasn't. My wife and kid are
set up as beneficiaries to my bitcoin accounts, not just my IRA so
that it's an easy transfer of, for them to have that, those coins
put under their name as opposed to they have to dig through my desk drive
drawer and look for the seed. And I've never trained them on how to use
(22:04):
a ledger. Like those are things that, that's, I think what helped. It stalled out
mainstream adoption for a bit. It's not an easy thing to use. It's not like
when we launched credit cards. It was, it was pretty, I mean it was scary
to people. My favorite thing I've seen, I don't know have you seen the story?
It's like 1980s Texas and they're sitting at a Burger
King and a reporter sitting there asking people it's the first day of Burger King
(22:24):
is accepting credit cards and there's these guys sitting there. I don't need no credit
card. I got cold hard cash in my pocket. I don't need it. And look
at where we're at today. And that's just in my lifetime. Where are we going
to be in the future with digital payments and these types of things? And that
adoption is going to take some time. So yeah, I hope that's a little long
winded, but I hope that answers some of those questions for you. Yeah. Talk about
(22:44):
the "Pentagon of Custody" when it comes to security.
So the Pentagon, why I named it, that is, it's, it was designed to
be a building that was safe. Safe from attack. Right. And the way they design
it, if you've ever been there or know folks that have been there, is that
the joint, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the big guys, the five star generals, their
offices are all at the center of The Pentagon on that interior ring,
(23:05):
I think it's A through E is how they're labeled. So they're at the center
ring for an ultimate protection. That's how we treat your nest egg of
Bitcoin, is we put it at the center and then we put these rings of
protection. So the first ring is we use multi signature
exclusive wallets with BitGo, which BitGo is kind of like the
Brinks of a brand of the crypto space.
(23:25):
We built the first multi signature for custody with IRAs with
Mike Belshe and his team out of Palo Alto back in 2015. That was one
of the check boxes I had to do to make this reality is well, how
are we going to hold this in a traditional sense where there's custody. that
allows, where there's multiple keys, they're geographically dispersed. I call
them salt and peppered, but they're obfuscated. That's such a hard
(23:47):
word to say. But they're broken apart and then they're encrypted and
then we have a layer of consensus around that so that internally it
takes eight different people in order for crypto to move in or out of wallets.
That's one layer. The next layer is we try to protect you from yourself.
You're your greatest, you're your weakest link when it comes to anything digital.
We all heard the horror stories. I got SIM swapped my email
(24:09):
got hacked and they emptied out my Coinbase account account or my Kraken or otherwise.
And those things are getting more and more sophisticated. The spear phishing, the.
It's not just some Nigerian prince that's calling you that says that you need money
to grandma. They're getting good and they're getting. And with AI they're going to get
even better. So we have this layer of AI identity therapy, verification
and we'll actually. If you're going to move crypto out of your IRA, you
(24:31):
have to sit down on a zoom, on a zoom call and do a video
verification and likeness read and answer a series of questions, questions
before anything can move. And then those have to be moved through a
protocol of white listing, micro testing and
TXID verification. So each of these is a ring, a layer
around that pentagon to protect your nest egg from things that could go wrong
(24:52):
in typical services. And then your your own self
also. Last piece on that Pentagon. None of our trades are done on
exchange. So if you were to go buy a coinbase or
Kraken, you've got to take your cash, put it on the exchange and
then buy and sell what you want and then yes, you can move it to
cold storage, which is a step that a lot of people forget. And if they
(25:13):
get access to your phone with an instance they're already searching. Does he have a
Coinbase account and can I move it to a private wallet and drain that account?
None of our trades happen on they all happen on OTC markets.
So while you're in the app you will see oh, I just bought Bitcoin and
instantly settled behind the scenes is where all the security hear cold storage to cold
storage settlements happening. This was another added benefit of our configuration
(25:34):
that got us approved for the insurance and all the extra layers. So does
that help get understand that Pentagon visualization? Yeah, it's
technical. So you guys, it's well thought out. Yes, absolutely. Well, 10 years in the
making. Fantastic. Yeah. And we never stop. So security today as financial
services is not something that you just check a box, oh, I'm SOC 2 type
two rated like it's not something like that. Especially in crypto new threats spreads
(25:56):
are constantly there. So we actually take a chunk of about 20% of our
quarterly roadmap for our technology and product teams is dedicated
to additional security things, more pen testing more
more authentication, add ons, more AI, all the tools. So we
always there's. So if you look at our roadmap, 80% of its new product
and 20% is keeping the product we have safe. And it's an ongoing never
(26:18):
stops. We've been doing that since 2018 as a standard. So it's
evolving. Yep. Let's take a step back. Since you started your career
in real estate, gold,
commodities, why do you
advocate that retirees or
I guess even before retiring, when you're saving your retirement nest
(26:40):
egg, why is it important to have alternatives in there? And then
are digital assets the same or different?
Good questions. So first part, why alternatives? It's not our
grandfather's economy. So my grandfather passed in
2020, lived to about 92 and he had a
pension working for Hiram Walker and he basically could buy
(27:02):
and he taught me a lot when I was a kid. But he could buy
GE and a handful of other stocks and pretty much they went up over time
and he lived off dividends was his structure.
Unfortunately, that world is. The world's not that easy anymore. And there's so
many challenges we have to overcome with inflation, rising cost.
Ever since we went off the gold standard, almost everything all charts are up and
to the right and they're not. They don't seem to be. We have to go
(27:24):
to a deflationary state in order for prices to come down, which won't happen.
You also, a lot of folks will put most of their net worth inside their
primary residence housing. While it has its value, it
goes up, it doesn't go up all the time, as we learned in 2008, 2009,
but it also has quite a bit of expenses to it as well. You've got
to maintain the house. If you're renting it out, you've got renter issues. There's. It's
(27:46):
not that as easy as I buy a house and I make wealth, but it's
a piece of that alternative. So the modern portfolio theory in my opinion has the
stocks and the bonds, they still are important. You need your, your fixed income, but
there's got to be a segment. And some people it's up to a third. Others
it's down to like 15, 20%. But a piece of that pie that's
dedicated to the things you're not finding that are on paper gold is
(28:08):
great for it. I've worked in. We actually have a digital gold that's
on our platform that you can buy and it's real gold coins
and bars at a depository, but it's got a blockchain over the top of it,
so it can trade and settle instantly and swap with other digital assets. I think
that you're going to see more of those real, those alternatives.
Get into this real world tokenization, real world assets being tokenized across the next
(28:30):
few, few years. And then you've got a whole secondary market now you can
take your, your rental property and you can get some liquidity out of it by
tokenizing it. And, and not to go too far down around. This is really
exciting stuff that people. I think there's a lot of really smart guys in our
space that are going to launch some of these things in the coming probably 18
months that are going to change. These assets that sit kind of just, they're
(28:51):
hard, they're great assets, but they kind of languish. There's no, there's no way to
basically free financialize them. They're just there for that reason.
And that's where we're headed next. So there's going to be this kind of marriage
of the two. Can common stocks be tokenized in the
entire stock exchange as we know it
completely change? I think it could. It's going to start with stable coins. The stable
(29:15):
coins from the, from the Genius Act. And I last week I was sitting down
with a bunch of big bankers in boardrooms across the country
and that's the big thing they're talking about right now, they all want to figure
out how can they compete in the stablecoin space. They see it as
the, the next where there's going to be a lot of AUC
and AUM that's going to aggregate in those spaces. But they're thinking of it and
(29:36):
I didn't think of it like this. They're thinking of it as competing against each
other for who's got the best stablecoin. I don't know if that's really
the race that we have. You have a race to reserve with bitcoin
countries, nation states and companies. And now you're gonna have this kind of
race to compete in the stablecoin market. I think stablecoins are
great because they will lead to the tokenization of stocks and others,
(29:57):
whereas instant settlement and liquidity issues can be handled on chain
through these mechanisms. That's the institution win for stablecoins,
the retail win or the small business win for stablecoins is
the elimination of money. Money service providers, merchant service
providers, credit card processors. Because if you're settling
with stable coins you don't need all of those extra layers, those middlemen
(30:20):
which would lower costs for the retail user. And the business could
also if they're going to take payment in stable then they could easily
flip and take a piece of it and put it in treasury as bitcoin. Which
I think is the new big thing is we got big corporations that are putting
it on the balance sheet. Small businesses are going to start doing it as well,
just as a, as a hedge. And hey, I made, I had a good year.
(30:41):
I made $5 million EBITDA. I should at least take a million of that and
put it long term and help grow the business and the balance sheet for those
rainy days that might come in the future. Because businesses, they all ebb and flow,
right? So stable coins good for the dollar
or bad for the US dollar? Depends on
where they get that like their ping comes from.
(31:03):
So obviously the n the natural beginnings is stablecoin is ping
to US dollar, right? Will that, will it change to. Stablecoins
may be valued in bitcoin or other digital assets in the future.
As far as if you are a stablecoin issuer and what's your treasury look
like? First it's one to one dollar If I'm going to issue a stable coin
and I'm going to have a million tokens out there, then I need to have
(31:25):
a million dollars in reserve at some point. Could that be instead of a
million dollars, could it be 10 Bitcoin that you have in reserve and then that
actually strengthens digital assets and alternative assets than the dollar.
The dollar has done its damage to itself. And I don't know if there's
a, there's no like U-Turn. I think stablecoins will
maybe give it a couple more, maybe a decade or so more of like
(31:48):
fortitude and because it's tied to the dollar, because it's tied to it. But eventually.
Yeah, it opens the door to others. Just like BRICS, for example,
is, is really is, I think BRICS. And if OPEC decides
to stop having the reserve currency for OPEC be the
US Dollar, those are two very damaging things for the strength of the dollar
(32:08):
globally. And we're kind of seeing some cracks. What it's had its
worst year ever, down 10% in a matter of like 30 days. So
I know it. For years I felt like a doomsday. The dollar's coming down
and people just look at me like, who's this crazy guy? You know, you feel
like the homeless guy on the street corner saying that the end is near. That's
where I felt too early now with these, where people are seeing it. But
Americans, average Joe, they're not sitting there saying, okay,
(32:32):
I had $100,000 in my savings account and now I have $90,000 in my savings
account. Because to them they still log in and there's $100,000 there.
They don't quite understand that it now goes 10% further than it used
to. And that's that. That brings us back to that financial literacy component where
understanding that the ability for your dollar to do something
matters at certain strength relative to other currencies in the world. Ed
(32:54):
Moy said to me a long time ago, Chris, the dollars only is
great, but it's just the cleanest dirty shirt and the dirty laundry
hamper is really what it is. And that is for most of my career has
driven me to say I can't depend on fiat currency for my
long term wealth. Well, you've given us a lot to think
about. And I think proof that when it comes
(33:16):
to money, whether it's, you know, the
greenbacks in our wallet or digital,
we have to think about the macro and what's going on
in the United States and in the world.
Right. Everything's interconnected and everything's going to. We have
(33:37):
to look for major trends ahead. And the rest of the
world is looking at crypto even stronger. I think with the Genius Act and the
other bills that passed in Crypto Week, I think this is a place where the
United States is going to cement its leadership in the digital revolution that's taking
place, but it's going to be a competitive market. While the Chinese have banned it,
they also, there's still hash power happening out of the borders of
(33:59):
China, so it's still being produced and mined over there. El
Salvador completely jumped in with both feet, which I think is a
great case study. Argentina may be next and Zimbabwe. You see the number
of wallets that are open during crisis. So when Turkey had its
financial crisis a few years back, there was a slew of like a
wave of new wallets for crypto that were open. People are, while they've
(34:21):
traditionally ran to gold and silver, crypto is easier to run to if you need
to take money out and put it into a new, a new form of
money. So, yeah, I think this is, we've just
begun this story and we're going to look back in 20 years and go,
wow, that a lot has changed very quickly. We'll see
if it is indeed early, early innings in this
(34:43):
baseball game and how many innings there will be. Yeah,
it could be that record long one. What was it, 21 innings is the longest
game. And by the way, Andy, just so you, before we leave each
other today, a few things. One thing I'm really proud of with BitcoinIRA
is we're real crypto, real people. And what that means is we're not like
a typical exchange where you just get to, to talk to robots and FAQs. We
(35:05):
have a team of folks that help folk, help people like your audience,
open their account, fund their account, and inevitably trade their account because
retirement's not a one size fits all solution. Everybody's got sometimes pensions,
401(k)s, so they need some assistance, some handholding to get to the, to the
finish line so they can actually call. And this is a challenge I always put
out there. You can be on the phone in about 90 seconds during business hours
(35:27):
with a human. If you call
877-936-7175.
And be sure that they mentioned that they heard from Inspired Money because we have
a special for your audience. They can earn up to $1,000 in rewards
for our Summer of Freedom program. Freedom of Money.
The summer of Freedom of Money. Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks for having me
(35:48):
today. My pleasure. And good.
Awesome. Cool. Thank you, man. That was fun. You
knew Pentagon of Custody. Well. What do you
think about that conversation with Chris? And how do
you, how did you. Like the iHeartRadio studio, especially
with people walking around throughout the interview.
(36:10):
Chris has got content creation down as you can see. He
had a videographer
following
him around a la Gary Vaynerchuk so that he can
repurpose the content that he filmed
and made during his time in New York City. For me, I
(36:31):
love doing an in person interview. It had been a long time and it's really
nice to be sitting across from the person in the same room.
This is not your grandfather's retirement. Longevity is
a good problem to have and one that we have
discussed in
previous Inspired Money episodes. I
(36:53):
appreciated talking with Chris, who not only knows a lot about digital
currencies, but he's also an advocate and very passionate about
helping people increase their financial literacy. My
favorite takeaway he said the biggest risk is not
getting off zero. And that hit home because whether it's
bitcoin or any new asset class, the worst thing
(37:15):
you can do is ignore it completely and hope the
old ways will carry you into retirement. So I want to give
you an assignment this week. Don't just listen.
Take action. Check your retirement accounts this week and
see if you're truly diversified for the future that you want.
Even if you start small. Even if it's just learning your
(37:38):
future self will thank you. And if you want to have a clear free
snapshot of when you can retire, how to boost your income, cut debt
and protect your future, go to
runnymede.com/getplan. You can
get your 3 minute financial plan just takes 3 minutes and it
could change the way that you look at your money. Remember, small steps
(37:59):
can really create massive financial freedom tomorrow.
So get started. If this episode sparks something in you, let
us know in the comments or tag us online. I'd love to hear what
you think about alternative assets and digital currency.
Is it for you or is it way too volatile and speculative?
I think it's different for everybody. A shout out to the Inspired Money
(38:22):
production team. Excellent coordination
and edits by Bradley John Eagle Feather Graphic animations
by Chad Lawrence finally, for more information about Chris, you
heard him give out the phone number where you can call and talk to a
real person. Also go to bitcoinIRA.com
for more information. Remember to mention Inspired Money.
(38:45):
A few more thank yous before we part ways. Thank you to
Josh Carey of the Hidden Entrepreneur
Show for helping to schedule this interview and make it happen at
iHeart Radio. A shout out to Adam Posner,
who hosts the Pozcast:
Decoding
(39:06):
Success. He interviewed Chris Kline in studio right after
I did, so you can check out his show if you want to hear more
from Chris Kline. Do not miss Inspired Money next week.
We will be back with a guest panel once again. I think
we're scheduled for Thursday, September 11th at 1pm
Eastern. I'm currently assembling a panel to continue
(39:29):
this conversation. The topic is going to be "The Future of
Cryptocurrencies (39:32):
Exploring Blockchain and Digital assets."
I think it's a timely conversation and one where we can benefit
not only by talking to one on one experts, but a
panel of experts. So please mark your calendar. Check
us out on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss
upcoming episodes. We've got a lot of great
(39:56):
topics and episodes in store. Until next time. That's
next week. Do something that scares you because that's where the
magic happens. See you next time.
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