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December 30, 2024 41 mins

Ever wondered what draws a successful crypto influencer to the glitzy city of Dubai? Join us for a fascinating conversation with Lark Davis as he shares his journey from Pennsylvania to New Zealand, and now, the vibrant metropolis of Dubai. Discover how Dubai’s entrepreneurial spirit, strategic location, and appealing tax incentives have captivated him and his family. 

Unearth the secrets behind Lark’s wildly successful YouTube crypto channel, boasting over 600,000+ subscribers since its launch in 2017. Lark reveals the highs and lows of riding the crypto wave, and how his passion for educating others has built a thriving community. This episode promises insights that could transform your financial journey.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with
Ryan Greenberg and Nick Kalfas.
All right guys.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Everyday Millionaire
Show.
We're here with Lark Davis.
How are you doing, lark?
Doing good.
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Thanks for coming, Lark.
Where are you coming from?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
So based in Dubai right now.
I've been here pretty recentlywe moved here but it's a great
change.
So far we're loving it.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
So how did I know, a little bit briefly before the
show you mentioned, that yougrew up in PA and then, when you
were 16, you moved to NewZealand.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
That's right.
That's right.
Grew up in a very small town inPennsylvania, very poor small
Appalachian mountain town.
Up in a very small town inPennsylvania, very poor small
Appalachian mountain town.
You know, typical.
If you've driven through thatpart of the country, which I'm
sure you guys have, being inMaryland, then you've seen, you
know those sort of small towns.
That's one of the small towns Iwas from and for some reason my

(00:58):
mom got this crazy idea let'smove to New Zealand.
Basically, we want to get justsomewhere right into the world,
and that's what we did.
New Zealand basically want toget just somewhere right into
the world, and that's what wedid.
So she had a little bit ofmoney saved up and just that was
it.
We went and moved to NewZealand and then it was quite
the change.
Quite the change.
You know it's funny.
I actually went back toPennsylvania for like a short
trip when I was like 17.

(01:19):
I was like holy cow.
I got to go back to New Zealand.
What am I doing here?
So yeah.
New Zealand's home, but I'mcurrently in Dubai and will be
here for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
So why did you choose Dubai, and of all places, from
New Zealand to Dubai?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah.
So there's a lot of goodreasons why we chose Dubai.
I mean, I know everyone's likeit's just the taxes.
The taxes are, of course, agreat benefit of living in Dubai
, but there was quite a fewother things that really were
attractive for us.
I don't think the taxes wereenough reason to uproot our home
and all that stuff, but thecurrent state of New Zealand was
just wasn't loving.
It wasn't loving the vibe rightnow.
We don't have any family in NewZealand at the moment, so my

(01:55):
wife's mother is in Russia, myparents are in the States, so
you know we're just here in NewZealand and anytime I go see
family we have little kids.
30 hours on the plane, threeplanes, two airports just brutal
.
And you're doing that two timesa year to go visit two
different grandparents.
So it's four of those brutalkiller flights.
So I just thought, gosh, darnit, what are we doing here?

(02:17):
Let's switch it up for a while.
Let's go somewhere.
Go to Dubai.
The vibes there are crazy, so's, so entrepreneurial and all
these kind of just cool peoplecome in here all the time.
So it's been a really good movefor us.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
So what does that look like when you go to get
citizenship in a differentcountry like that?
Does it take several months,does it take a year, or what
does that look like?

Speaker 3 (02:38):
So Dubai doesn't give out citizenship.
I mean, it's an exceptionalcircumstance.
I think Kevin O'Leary got acitizenship here, but that was
just like a gift, you know.
But for most people who comehere, you'll be on a residence
permit.
So basically the residencepermit depending on which one
you get will let you live herefor a certain amount of time.
So you can get the sort oftwo-year residence permit that's
linked to a business that youbring over or some kind of.

(02:59):
If you get a job here, you canget a residence permit.
That way kind of if you get ajob here, you can get a
residence permit that way.
Or you can get a golden visa,which requires an investment in
either property or in governmentbonds, right.
So you can invest in either oneof those two things and you get
a 10-year visa.
So I think it's about $600,000for that one.
But you have to invest, right.

(03:20):
It's not like you're justgiving them money.
You invest in bonds or propertyand if you're buying a house
here or something, that gets youthe golden visa, basically, and
then you can live here for 10years and get another one later
on.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I'm assuming then you rent there because you are just
kind of there for just acertain period of time and then
you'll maybe travel somewhereelse.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, so the initial commitment by me and my wife is
we're going to live here for twoyears.
So we decided okay, we're justgoing to rent during that time.
It's too short of a time todeal with all the hassle of
buying a place, fixing a placeup to get it to how you want to
live in, and then you're leaving.
So if we stay longer and wemight we might live here for
much longer than two years, butthe initial commitment's for two

(04:00):
years and if we like it aftertwo years, then we'll probably
buy something here.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
What's the rental market like there?
I mean, we're here in Maryland,as I mentioned, and we're very
familiar with the rental marketsin our area.
What's it like over there inthat type of space over there in
Dubai?

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, it's interesting.
The prices are very high.
You pay high rent but you alsoget the tax benefits.
So you're definitely furtherahead by paying the higher rent
tax benefits.
So you're definitely furtherahead by paying the higher rent.
But rents are pretty high,comparable with major cities
like London or New York kind ofrents.
But there's also a lot of greatstuff available loads of beach
villas and incredible apartmentsand stuff like that.

(04:36):
However, when we first startedlooking around places, there's
also a lot of just rough placeswith unusual stuff where
landlords don't take care of it.
I remember we went to see oneplace and this guy, the real
estate agent, was just hyping itup so much like, oh, this is
like one of the greatest places.
You have no idea.
This is going to be super hot,this place is going to go
instantaneously, and so we getthere.
The guy hasn't even been there.
It doesn't work.
The key is over.

(04:56):
The apartment is finally get inthere.
There's stream of water comingdown and it's just like there's
mold all over the place.
I'm like my dude, like why areyou always?
You literally haven't seen theplace before, so you get that
here too, Right, but there's alot of great places here and
we've got ourselves a beautifulvilla, you know, right on the
beach and stuff, so it's a verycool spot.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Nice.
So what do you?
So I see on your profile herethat you're into the crypto
space, right?
So I see on your profile herethat you're into the crypto
space, right?
What exactly do you do to makemoney in the crypto space?

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
So obviously there's theinvesting side of things, right.
Investing in crypto at theright time can make a heck of a
lot of money, obviously.
But it's also business, right.
The whole social media channels.
They're a business.
We provide educational content,opinion entertainment, all that
kind of stuff.
So that's monetized in a fewdifferent ways through affiliate
marketing, but also through ourown products.

(05:50):
We have our own newsletter,thewealthmasteryio, so it's a
three-time weekly newsletterthat we send out.
We sell paid sponsorship spotsin the newsletter and paid
sponsorship spots on socialmedia as well paid sponsorships
on social media as well.
And we have a premium versionof the newsletter, too, which
sort of goes much more in depthwith charts and tutorials on how
to use new cryptocurrencyprotocols and stuff like that

(06:13):
how to find airdrops which iskind of like free testing.
You test software, basically incrypto, and sometimes you can
get free money as a result ofthat by getting tokens from that
company for testing theirsoftware.
So we cover all this kind ofstuff, courses and stuff as well
.
So it's sort of a multi-prongedapproach to income generation,

(06:34):
because different people willneed different things at
different times, right?
Somebody who's staying up todate with the market is going to
find the newsletter productsmore valuable.
Somebody who's new to cryptocompletely is going to find our
courses more valuable.
Somebody who's relatively newto crypto and looking for a safe
place to buy or tradecryptocurrencies or a safe
wallet device to store theircryptocurrencies on.

(06:56):
They'll benefit from ouraffiliate marketing, for example
.
So that's kind of the main waysin which the business makes
money.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Would you say that's the main way, like through
education and through yourYouTube channels and all the
other social media platforms?
Is that pretty much your breadand butter, your main source of
income?

Speaker 3 (07:14):
That's the main source of income, without a
doubt.
I've got a pretty good stockportfolio, largely focused on
dividend stocks that providesome nice income there as well.
So I'd like to diversify out abit more into real estate in
particular.
I did have some gold.
I've had to sell that recentlyto pay a tax bill, but I'll
probably get some more, a littlebit of metals in the future.
I mean, gold's kind of boringdoesn't do that much.

(07:36):
You don't get any cash incomeor anything from it, but
something psychologically I justlike having a little bit of it
sit around yeah, I mean, thegrass isn't always greener on
the other side.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
The real estate is great, but it seems like what
you have going on.
I checked your profile earlier.
It looks like you have about610,000 subscribers on YouTube,
which is very impressive, and Iwanted to ask you a couple of
questions in regards to that.
Like, at what point did it kindof just take off?
You know cause?
Obviously, to build a channellike that doesn't happen
overnight.
It looks like your first videowas maybe seven years ago on

(08:06):
YouTube.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, the first video , I think, was posted in July
2017.
And look, it's a grind.
It's been a grind and it's avery tough business to build in,
because crypto is very limitedattention focused from the
broader public.
There's always new peoplecoming in, no matter what's
going on in the market, right,but the reality is is that you
spend about three years witheverybody thinking that crypto

(08:28):
is dead.
Crypto is a giant scam.
Nobody wants to hear anythingabout it, nobody wants to invest
in it, which is, ironically,the absolute best time to be
taking notice and investing incrypto.
But people don't want to do itthen.
They only want to do it whenit's consensus that crypto is
hot again.
So you have about one yearduring which you'll have most of
your growth, most of yournewsletter subscribers, most of
your new subs on Twitter or onYouTube or wherever else they're

(08:51):
coming in.
So it's a very interestingbusiness to build in.
But I think the first cycle Iwent from about zero to 50,000
subscribers.
Then, in 2021, so it was 2017,we went for about probably by
the end of the bear market.
There is up to about nearly100,000 subscribers, and so it
went from 100,000 to probably400, some thousand, and then,

(09:14):
over the last sort of year and ahalf or so probably, I've had
another 100, 120,000.
But in the last month we'veadded 20,000, right, so people
are paying attention again.
People are pouring back intothe market because the prices
are going up.
I like to make the joke thatthe the best thing in crypto,
the best technology in crypto,is number go up technology, and
that's the thing people love themost.
When the when the number isgoing up, the tech's great.

(09:36):
When the number is going down,the tech sucks interesting.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
So did you hit um before you started all this?
Did you hit one of the coinsbig, like in the beginning
phases, is that you know?
Did you like amass like we knowa couple people that have
amassed, like you know a bunchof Bitcoins, and then it went up
.
Is that something that happenedto you at some point?

Speaker 3 (10:05):
investing in 2017.
That was actually part of thecontent I started doing, and I
never really set out to become abig content creator in the
cryptocurrency space.
That sort of came a little bitlater on, but I basically
started out by just investing.
I bought some bitcoin, I boughta few of the different alt
coins and then I kind of said,well, now, what?
Now I'm going to start doingother stuff and trying to find
out what's going on in the spaceand learn more.
And I was so excited and justobsessed with crypto in the

(10:28):
first few months I'd just be uptill three in the morning just
buzzing like, oh my gosh, I'vegot to do this and this and that
and the other thing.
And so I started really divingin and creating content.
And most of the content I wascreating was my own journey of
finding out about stuff.
Ok, what is Bitcoin mining?
Ok, well, I've educated myselfon that.
Now I've read a bunch of stuffon it.
Great, now let's make a video.

(10:48):
And then you make that videoand somebody asks well, lark,
what about this thing?
Okay, that's a great idea.
I have no idea, but let's gofind the answer for that.
And that's kind of how thecontent creation journey started
off by doing that kind.

(11:08):
Gotcha, did you do Bitcoinmining yourself as well?
No, I never actually didBitcoin mining.
I did, but not at home.
So I did a bit of Bitcoinmining but outsourced, which is
not a great business decisionfor you know, not a great
financial decision to throw anymoney into, because the only
ones who really win from thatare the companies renting out
the space.
Right, you're much better offjust buying the Bitcoin at the
end of the day versus payingsomebody else to mine it for you
.

(11:32):
But I did buy a Litecoin miner,but I was living in a very small
apartment at the time.
And so I get this machine fromChina and it's this big, giant,
heavy, you know, 30 poundcomputer or whatever, just a box
for mining crypto coins and Iget it.
I'm like, yeah, it's awesome,awesome and at the time that
thing would have been makingabout two or three hundred
dollars a day or something likethat.
But I live in a small apartment.
These things are super loud andI didn't know that beforehand.

(11:54):
So I got it, I plug it in andit's just like incredibly loud,
like somebody's like running asaw in the room like all the
time, and it's also.
They also generate crazyamounts of heat, so it's just
blasting out heat and it's superloud.
So I had it on for like 30minutes, like there is no way
this is gonna work.
So I just had to sell it,unfortunately.

(12:14):
But, um, yeah, I never reallygot into the uh, the mining side
of the business, and now miningis just such a crazy business
anyway because largely it'sbecome an industrial game.
It it's dudes with warehousesfull of machines.
That's not to say that youcan't make it as a home miner.
You can and people do, but youhave to have really, really
cheap energy to make it evenvaguely sensible.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Right, so people with solar and different sources of
energy that's not paying thegrid probably makes more sense
than somebody at their housethat has to pay an electric bill
.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, exactly, I think, to give you some kind of
idea, a lot of the Bitcoinminers.
They're getting their power forlike two cents per kilowatt
hour or something like that, ortwo and a half cents or three
cents, and most people in mostplaces do not get energy
anywhere near that cheap.
So you can't really competewith those guys who are.
They get the newest machines,they order them in bulk, they

(13:08):
get giant discounts.
So it's a very, verycompetitive game because there's
so much money to be made.
You can make it as a home miner.
There are people that do.
I know some guys that do, butthey're few and far between,
especially these days.
But long gone are the days whenyou can just pull out your
laptop or run it on your home PCand mine some Bitcoin.
There are other coins that canbe mined, but it's not really

(13:28):
very popular to do this sort ofsmaller altcoin mining anymore.
It kind of died off in 2017,2018.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Okay, so what do you think about this cycle?
Are we getting to the top ofthe market?
Do you think it's still gotroom to grow?
I mean, we saw Bitcoin go upover 100,000.
I don't know where it's atright now, but what do you think
about that with the market?

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I think right now the market'sat a very fascinating phase.
We're basically entering amajor markup phase of the cycle.
Now how long that lasts for isanybody's guess.
It could be three months, couldbe six months, could be a year
and complete the sort of fouryear cycle that we have seen
previously in cryptocurrencycycles.
Will that happen?

(14:14):
I guess we'll find out, butright now Bitcoin's breaking out
in a major way, but the vastmajority of the rest of the
cryptocurrencies aren't.
I mean, there's some exceptionsof coins that have gone and just
made crazy new highs and stufflike that, but the majority of
the coins have had some niceruns recently, but most of them
have not yet hit their all-timehighs, so they're still under it

(14:35):
.
You know big names like XRP hada 500% rally over the last six
weeks, but it's still 40% or sounder its previous all-time high
, so it still has some room togo in order to hit that level
right.
So when this starts happening,we start seeing more of these
big cap altcoins starting totake off.

(14:56):
That's when things really turnaround for the crypto altcoin
markets and they'll really startto move in a much more
aggressive way.
My guess is that this cycle,like previous cycles, you'll see
a lot of the coins making whatI like to call the Burj Khalifa
pattern, where they just gostraight up basically for a few
months.
There's this sort of finalmassive rally where gargantuan

(15:20):
amounts of retail investors comein and buy high and then
inevitably sell low.
It's a pretty brutal game, butunfortunately, most people only
want to pay attention to mostassets when they're worth a lot
of money.
They don't like buying thingswhen they're cheap and they're
non-consensus.
That's the unfortunate realitything.
Quick question for you guys Doyou guys own any Bitcoin?

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, I have a little bit.
I've been buying it like 100bucks a week for the last
several years Nice but I don'treally pay attention to it.
It just sits there and I justReal estate's our game.
I have assets.
I have a bunch of NVIDIA sharesthat I sell calls on every week
and I do a couple of things inthe market, but for the most

(16:02):
part, we're pretty heavyinvested into rental properties
and actively flipping homes.
That's where most of our soit's interesting to talk to
somebody on the other side ofthe coin that does most of their
stuff in crypto space, andthat's something that I haven't
really learned enough about totalk about, I guess.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I really like your approach because, to be honest,
a lot of people I think are inyour situation where they're
interested in crypto but theyjust don't have a lot of time to
deal with it.
It's insane the amount of stuffgoing on in the cryptocurrency
space right now.
It goes.
It's insane the amount of stuffgoing on in the cryptocurrency
space right now.
It goes so deep and there's somany niches and sub niches and
you can do crypto full time andI still feel like I'm drinking

(16:42):
from a fire hose every day andthere's so much new stuff going
on.
But here's the thing If you'rejust a casual investor and you,
you've heard about Bitcoin,you've learned about Bitcoin,
you know it's cool, you want tohave a bit of that.
Your approach is actually afantastic approach because it's
not your main game, but yourecognize the value and so
you're just putting a little bitof Bitcoin every week, a little
bit of money into Bitcoin everyweek, not really thinking about

(17:04):
it, automating the process,Just having exposure to Bitcoin
for the casual investorsprobably all you need Maybe
Ethereum, maybe Solana, if youreally want to go off on the
limb for the again, we'retalking about the average
investor here who just you don'twant to spend a bunch of time
learning about these fromblockchains and all that stuff,
but you just want to have sortof exposure to the
cryptocurrency asset class, Justbuying some Bitcoin and dollar

(17:26):
cost averaging in.
That's a pretty simple methodfor winning, especially if you
can take a long-term view, which, because you guys are property
investors investors youunderstand what long-term
investing is about and that youcan hold an asset for five or 10
or longer years, Whereas mostpeople in crypto there's
definitely, when the markets getmoving, a large amount of
people who come in and want toget rich quick.

(17:53):
They want to be the guy who buysthat new dog coin for five
bucks and that turns into amillion bucks.
But most people don't do that.
Most people are just gamblingand they lose all their money
gambling.
In fact, the odds are muchworse than going to a casino.
There is a website calledpumpfun, which is not actually
that much fun.
It's more like a retailslaughterhouse where people can
launch meme coins and theylaunch all kinds of meme coins
every day Thousands, tens ofthousands, some days.

(18:16):
New meme coins.
Most of them don't make it morethan a few minutes or a few
hours and they've done thestatistics on it.
It's something like 95% of thepeople who have used that
website lose money.
About 4% break even or make avery tiny profit, and about 1%,
which are probably mostlyinsiders and highly advanced
traders using sniping bots andstuff like this, actually made

(18:38):
big money.
So, yeah, just staying inBitcoin.
It's the safe, it's simple andit's the one crypto that.
If I had to buy any crypto andhold it for 10 years, it would
obviously be Bitcoin.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
So, other than just buying and holding any type of
cryptocurrency for the long term, is there any other strategies,
like day trading or any otherways to leverage money that
someone would have into anycryptocurrency?
100%.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
But it's all depending on your risk-adjusted
returns, right?
What kind of money are youwilling to risk?
What kind of time do you haveto dedicate to that?
Day trading sounds like afantastic idea until you realize
that it takes a lot of skill,it takes a lot of determination,
it takes a lot of emotionalcontrol and that most people
lose most of their money doingthat.
Sounds like a great idea, butyou know, if you're somebody who

(19:26):
doesn't have a lot of time todevote to that, there's a lot of
traders that I know and theymake a lot of money, but that's
their full time deal.
It's what they do.
They're not kind of dabblingfor a half hour after putting
the kids to sleep or somethinglike that.
No, this is what they dofull-time and it becomes a game
of odds.
Right, they win 55% of the timeand lose 45% of the time, but

(19:47):
it's enough to make good money.
So it's its own sort of skilland there's a lot of things to
do in crypto when it comes todifferent strategies and stuff
like that.
The temptation, of course, forBitcoin I was having this
conversation with some guys theother day is OK, well, bitcoin,
what else can I do?
I see these big gains happeningin crypto.
The compound annual growth ratefor Bitcoin has been crazy.

(20:09):
It's something like 30%, 40% Idon't remember the exact number
off the top of my head, but it'slike 40 percent a year or
something like that on average,or if not higher.
I can't remember the exactnumber, but it's a shockingly
big number.
So you don't actually need tobe doing much more than just
buying and holding the Bitcoin.
Now.
If you again, if you want to gooff and OK, you want to find
some hot altcoin or somethinglike that Great, there's a lot

(20:31):
of opportunities out there andif you have a little bit more
time to dedicate to the space,then you can actually make much
bigger returns than holdingBitcoin.
The problem is you're takingmore risks to do it.
Now, some of those risks arerelatively small.
If you're going to go and buysome different altcoins like Sui
or the Aptos blockchain orAvalanche blockchain, like these

(20:56):
are pretty top coins, they'reall in the top 20.
Like they're not going to rugpull or something like this and
chances are, if Bitcoin can movefor the rest of the cycle from
here to about $200,000 or$250,000, which is kind of where
I've been looking at potentialcycle top for Bitcoin, then

(21:17):
that's only 100% move, or maybe130, 140% depending on the price
when people watch this.
That's great, that's huge.
Those altcoins I just mentionedthey're probably going to have a
3 to 5x outperformance versusBitcoin during that time.
So there is a lot more money tobe made.
If you start going a littlefurther down the risk scale

(21:39):
there and some of that is you'retaking more risk, but you're
not really taking that much morerisk.
And that's the interestingthing to consider when you're
looking at some of these altcointhings is that some of the
bigger ones it is more risk 100%.
These networks are far fromcertain.
A lot of this stuff is here'sthe crazy thing.
A lot of these things arebasically being tested in the
wild.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
And we do see things break so there's things that
I've been hearing in the newslike certain things are getting
regulated, like XRP.
They're saying that that couldbecome some country's currency.
Essentially, is that stuff youknow?
Is that true or is it?
You know, like the XRP is theone that I hear the most about

(22:21):
recently, I feel like that couldbe like the next one to take
off.
What's your opinion on that one?

Speaker 3 (22:26):
XRP has had a huge rally recently.
Look, there's been some reallycrazy stuff going on If you
haven't been watching the spacevery, very closely recently.
The new Trump administrationthey're going hardcore into
crypto.
I mean, trump himself haslaunched a decentralized finance
protocol.
They've been buyingcryptocurrency altcoins over the
last week or so things likeChainlink and the Aave protocol.

(22:48):
Trump's teams are buying thatstuff.
Trump owns Ethereum.
He's brought in a crypto and AIczar David Sachs.
He's coming on.
The new SEC head is a verypro-crypto person, so we're
going to see a lot morepro-crypto regulation.
So right now, we have Bitcoinand Ethereum ETFs, but we also
have ETF applications for XRP,solana and Litecoin right now,

(23:12):
which, when the new guy gets in,that will probably be all
approved.
The United States is talkingabout a potential strategic
Bitcoin reserve, which whetheror not they just keep the
Bitcoin they have right now andcommit to hold on to it, or they
actually start buying Bitcoin,either way, it's absolutely
massive.
Brazil's introduced a bill intoCongress to make a strategic
Bitcoin reserve.

(23:33):
We have a lot of othercountries starting to talk about
it now, from Argentina to Japanand Russia and beyond.
So big things are happening onthe geopolitical scene with
Bitcoin that have never reallyhappened to this kind of extent
before.
It's a level of adoption thatpeople have been talking about
for the last decade and it'sfinally starting to happen Now,

(23:54):
when it comes to the adoption ofcertain altcoins, we're also
seeing the biggest adoption foraltcoins ever.
The fundamentals of crypto haveliterally never been better
than they are right now.
So with XRP, they're launchingthey have just been approved for
.
I think it might actually belaunching tomorrow or the day
after the RLUSD stablecoin, sothe Ripple Labs US dollar

(24:16):
stablecoin.
Now here's the thing A lot ofpeople that are sort of not more
deep in the crypto space maynot know One of the killer
applications for crypto has beendollar-denominated stablecoins.
So a stablecoin is a digitaltoken that represents $1.
It can be divided into tinylittle pieces, of course, but it
represents one dollar.

(24:37):
Those have done trillions ofdollar trillions a year in
volume.
They are some of the top 20buyers of us.
Debt like these guys areabsolutely massive, and the
stable coin use case has beenvery, very clear.
Not only is, of course, usedfor people just to go and buy
dog coins, but people are usingit for cross-border transfers.

(24:58):
Increasingly.
People are using it forescaping capital controls in
places like China, and on and ongo the use cases.
Now Ripple Labs has created theRLUSD stablecoin.
Ripple Labs are the guys whowork on the XRP ledger.
Who work on the XRP ledger sothat RLUSD stablecoin, if it
becomes successful, if it seesthe kind of adoption that the

(25:22):
two dominant stablecoins, usdtand USDC, have seen, which
together have about $200 billionin market cap, if the RLUSD
stablecoin can get those kindsof levels or more, because they
are literally partnered up withsome of the biggest commercial
banks and central banks in theworld.
And, of course, trump's nowagain on the crypto train and he

(25:43):
said that American madecryptocurrencies could be
exempted from all capital gainstax.
That's XRP, that's Cardano, afew other names there as well,
stellar Lumens and a few more.
That positions the XRP token todo incredibly well because if
the RLUSD stablecoin becomessuccessful, every time they're

(26:06):
minting new RLUSD stablecoinsand transferring them, it's
going to require a little bit ofXRP to be used and to be burned
because they have a burningmechanism.
So think of it as a perpetualstock buyback mechanism that
will increase the more adoptionthat their stablecoin gets.
It's not certain that theirstablecoin is going to see
massive globe dominating sort ofpotential.

(26:30):
But it's there and it could,and if it does, then all the
things that the XRP investorshave been saying for years could
come true and XRP could go.
If it does, then all the thingsthat the XRP investors have
been saying for years could cometrue and XRP could go to the
moon.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
essentially, Interesting Good stuff.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
So when you say you remembertalking before about the safer
ones, like you're just saying,Bitcoin is kind of the creme de
la creme of all the cryptos thatyou can own right.
So, like the people that arebuying slowly but surely in
Bitcoin, that's the safest routethat you would suggest somebody

(27:01):
go into investing into crypto.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Absolutely.
If you're very time poor andyou don't have time to learn
about all this stuff, but youwant to have a little exposure.
Bitcoin's the one.
Bitcoin's just digital gold.
That's probably the simplestway to understand it.
It's digital gold and it's inmany ways, vastly superior to
gold.
It's got a set supply and allthis stuff.
But there's a lot of othergreat cryptocurrencies out there
, especially again, even in thetop 20.

(27:24):
You're going to take a limitedamount of risk with some good
potential upside, and prettysoon you're going to have the
ability to buy most of the stuffvia ETF products.
Now, not your tiny micro-capdog coins, obviously, but you
'll probably see in the nextyear maybe 10 altcoin ETFs.
So we already have one which isfor Ethereum.
So if you're just somebody whowants to have some passive

(27:45):
exposure to the cryptocurrencymarket, you can buy four or five
ETFs for some of the top cryptocoins that could be.
You buy some Bitcoin ETFs, someEthereum ETFs, some Solana ETFs
, some XRP ETFs and just take itas a sort of a basket approach.
None of those cryptocurrenciesare going to disappear Extremely
unlikely, I guess anything'slikely, anything's possible in
crypto, but it's very unlikelyany of those are going to go

(28:07):
anywhere and if you're just sortof dollar cost averaging to
those for the next five to 10years, I mean crypto is only
going to keep going up.
Oh, there's going to behorrific bear markets and it'll
all go down terribly again.
But if you take that long-termsort of view on stuff, then
you've got really easy exposurecoming by these etf products for
someone just starting out ininvesting in crypto, what

(28:28):
platform would you suggest thatthey buy their crypto on?
yeah.
So if you're depending whatcountry, of course you of course
you're in, for people in theUSA, cryptocom, I think, is a
really good place to go.
They've got a great mobile appand cool debit card and stuff
like that A lot of great options.
Obviously, that's buying nativecrypto directly.
So through the app, you'rebuying actual Bitcoin and actual

(28:50):
Ethereum tokens.
You can just use your broker.
So if you're out of what's oneof the brokers TD Ameritrade and
whatever kind of stuff that youguys might use Robinhood these
guys offer actually Robinhoodoffers real crypto these days.
But you can also buy the ETFproducts there.
So that's a pretty good.
If you just want Bitcoin orEthereum currently and pretty
soon a smaller basket altcoins,then that's a great place to do

(29:12):
it.
But cryptocom is great forAmericans do it.
But cryptocom is great foramericans great people in the uk
, uh, internationally, you'vegot a lot of great options.
I like bybit personally.
It's one of the biggestexchanges out there, but it's
not available in the unitedstates or the uk right now
interesting and what I guess?

Speaker 1 (29:27):
what makes things not available in certain countries?
Is it like they're just notable to be regulated yet, or
they're just like?
What makes it?
Does it make it sketchy that itcan't use it in the US but you
can use it somewhere else?

Speaker 3 (29:39):
It's actually quite funny the US regulatory
situation, because the UnitedStates has basically been waging
a war on crypto for years andit's really reached its
crescendo peak with the Bidenadministration, who is the most
hostile administration ever inthe history of crypto not that
crypto has been around for sucha long time, but they were
literally trying to kill crypto.

(30:00):
There was something calledOperation Chokepoint 2.0.
Now, operation Chokepoint 1.0was when the Obama
administration tried to debankthe cannabis industry.
Operation Chokepoint 2.0 wasthe Biden administration working
to debank the cryptocurrencyindustry.
So cryptocurrency founders,cryptocurrency companies, were

(30:21):
debanked right, you couldn't getbank accounts.
People were having their bankaccounts taken away from them.
They were trying to make itvery, very difficult for people
to be able to buy and sellcryptocurrencies in the United
States.
Plus, the SEC waged a war oncryptocurrency companies,
literally suing everybody allthe goody two shoes companies.
They went out and sued Kraken.

(30:42):
They went out and sued Coinbase, cryptocom Everybody's getting
sued for listing illegalsecurities when none of the
cryptocurrencies are reallysecurities.
There are a few that could bequalified as securities, but
they're not really listed on anyof the US-based exchanges.
So at the same time, theyturned a blind eye to massive
fraud at companies like Celsius.

(31:02):
In fact, they took lots ofcampaign money from sorry
Celsius, massive fraud at FTX aswell and they took massive
campaign contributions from theFTX guys.
So there was a lot of dirtybusiness going on in the USA.
A lot of dirty business goingon in the USA and Americans.

(31:22):
Because of the draconianoverreach from the SEC in the
USA, a lot of crypto companieshave simply steered away from
doing anything with AmericansBecause basically the idea is
that the SEC says, well, ifyou've served an American
customer, then we havejurisdiction and we're going to
come after you anywhere in theworld, and so most
cryptocurrency exchanges willjust completely avoid allowing

(31:45):
Americans on, except theUS-based ones like Coinbase and
Kraken and Cryptocom, becausethey're US companies and they go
down that sort of getting alicense in every single state
and it's a really difficultprocess to onboard people in
every state and to deal with theSEC.
And all these companies had tospend literally hundreds of
millions of dollars defendingthemselves in court against the

(32:07):
SEC, which has basically beenjust going on a warpath against
these companies for no goodreason other than to try to just
drag them down in lawfare,which has been crazy.
So even stuff like airdrops.
We mentioned the airdrop thinga few minutes ago.
You can go and test softwareand crypto and if you're an
early tester, you know thesenetworks need early tests and

(32:27):
people will come in and trythings and see what breaks, see
what doesn't break, etc.
If you come in and test some ofthis crypto in the early days,
you can get an airdrop.
So when they actually launchtheir mainnet go beyond their
testnet and launch their mainnetthey'll say hey, all you guys
who helped us out during thetestnet, here are some free
coins, thanks for your help.
Americans can't get thatbecause nobody wants to give
Americans free coins, becausethey're too scared that the SEC

(32:49):
is going to come after them.
So that's been.
The biggest problem of whythings are available in some
places and not others is thatregulators have been trying to
basically kill crypto,particularly in the United
States.
The UK and a few otherjurisdictions have been pretty
rough too.
China's been really bad oncrypto, but some jurisdictions

(33:10):
have gone the complete oppositedirection, like Singapore, the
UAE, france, going very muchinto saying yes, we want crypto
companies to come and base theiroperations here.
We want to pass regulationsthat say you can help up a bank
account, you can launch yourtokens here, and we're going to
give you the framework to dothat.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
So would you say, like you have an American
passport, I assume.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
No.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
No, you don't.
Okay.
So you were born in the UnitedStates, but you gave up your US
passport.
That's right.
If I moved with a US passportto Dubai, for example, would I
be able to use those exchangesand skirt those things?
Not skirt, but be able toparticipate, even though my
passport says I'm a UnitedStates citizen?

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Probably not.
In a lot of cases you're goingto be excluded from those things
because of that US passport.
I mean, there might be somesituations where you'll get,
like, a local driver's licenseor something and then you've I
don't know.
Some exchanges will say oh,it's plausible deniability.
You just gave us a driver'slicense from Australia, so maybe
you're Australian.
We didn't check passportsbecause we don't need to check

(34:19):
passports.
There's those situations.
But the crazy thing, of course,is because you're American, if
you were to move anywhere,that's not America.
You know you get taxed globallyon your income, which is
insanity.
So if you come to Dubai,there's not many Americans in
Dubai actually, because you comehere as an American and Uncle
Sam he wants your money.
No matter where you go in theworld, if you're making money,

(34:41):
uncle Sam wants to put his handin your pocket, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
And that'll come back to the US, the tax money that
you're referring to.
That's right.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
That's right.
That is pretty crazy.
There's a lot of dual taxagreements.
So let's say you live in Francewhere the taxes are higher than
the USA, then it cancels it out.
You've already paid your highertaxes, so America doesn't want
anything.
But if you live in somewherewith lower taxes, america is
going to want whatever thedifference is.
And there are some, of course,no income tax countries, and
there are some countries thathave minimal taxes compared to

(35:11):
the United States, likeSingapore has lower taxes than
the United States.
Hong Kong has lower taxes thanthe United States.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
So if you're living there you have to pay, whatever
the difference is back toAmerica.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Wow.
So was that your strategybehind giving up your US
passport, or was that done at ayounger age when you moved to
New Zealand?

Speaker 3 (35:29):
So it was definitely.
The tax situation wasdefinitely a part of it.
There's a variety of differentreasons why to give up a US
passport.
The tax thing is prettyannoying American citizens.
It's interesting when you tryto get a bank account abroad as
a US citizen because it's thiswhole like.
It's like these warning bellsgo off for any bank, even like

(35:50):
New Zealand or something likethat, and suddenly you've got to
go through all this extrapaperwork and do all this extra
stuff and you know it justdidn't seem as a New Zealand
citizen, it just didn't reallyseem like a great thing to be
holding on to anymore.
I didn't really need it, itwasn't really useful.
I wasn't adding much to my lifeat the stage that I gave up the
passport and the citizenship.
So, yeah, no regrets aboutdoing that by any means.

(36:12):
New Zealand passport's afantastic passport and they you
know it's ironic, you know youthink of the US oh, so much
freedom as an American passportholder Like no, where's your
freedom?
They chase you everywhere inthe world for your tax money.
Is that freedom?
It doesn't sound like freedomto me.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, no, it doesn't for sure.
So as soon as you gave up yourUS passport was it just the
transition from getting the newzealand passport?
Is is when you gave that up,because I guess you can't
actively have two at the sametime oh, you can have lots of
passports you can have.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
You can have half a dozen passports if you want.
My wife's got three, I've gottwo, so you know it's.
Uh, we bought, um, we boughtgrenada passports, which was an
interesting experience.
My brother went to school there, which is was funny.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
In Grenada, nice.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
I've never actually been to Grenada.
We should go someday Just tosay, hey, we came, we came, we
got the passports, we came.
But we start to realize howjust silly the whole damn system
is.
You can literally go out andbuy passports if you have enough
money.
You know just the it's a crazyworld to live in and when you
start to see how just broken thesystem is in so many ways, you

(37:22):
just start to stop taking it allso seriously.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
So what's the process of getting rid of it?
Then, when you got rid of theUS passport, what was that?
Sure, sure.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
So there's a renunciation process.
You have to go and book intothe embassy and then you have to
go in and actually show up,renounce, sign a paper, make a
declaration saying that you'rerenouncing your citizenship.
They then take that and theyhave to check it and confirm it
and actually accept yourrenunciation request and then

(37:54):
from there on out, that'sbasically it.
You're not a citizen anymore,you don't have passports or any
of that kind of stuff, so it'srelatively pain-free.
They do charge you to leave.
By the way, there's a fee youhave to pay to renounce your
citizenship and there is apotential exit tax over a
certain amount of unrealizedcapital gains.

(38:17):
They will take about 28% ofthat as the exit tax fee as well
.
So they pull at every stop totry and get that money out of
your pocket.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
I bet.
Wow, look, I don't have anymore questions for you.
I know we have to get onanother episode in a couple
minutes.
You got anything to plug on foryou where people can find you
and what kind of stuff thatyou're doing on YouTube?
All that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
I just want to say it's been a really cool
conversation.
We went to all kinds ofinteresting places with this
conversation, so I reallyenjoyed talking to you guys.
If anyone wants to follow along, come find me over on X,
probably, where I do a lot ofthis stuff, or on YouTube, just
Lark Davis, make sure it's theverified account.
Or come check out ournewsletter at thewealthmasteryio
.
It's free.
You just get all kinds ofcrypto info straight to your
inbox.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
I have one more question before you go quickly.
I know you mentioned earlierthat you know you would like to
get started investing in realestate.
Is there any areas that you hadin mind that you wanted to
potentially invest in realestate in?

Speaker 3 (39:16):
In terms of like geographically or just kind of
real estate.
So I was thinking it's bothyeah.
So I was probably going toinvest largely back in New
Zealand, actually just becausethat's my home country, right, I
may not go back there for quitea while, but I like the idea of
just having a bunch of propertyback in New Zealand and
probably just residential stuff,looking at like new builds,

(39:37):
things that probably won't needtoo much maintenance for the
first 10 years or so.
That's kind of the generalthought process right now.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
I have.
It's funny you say that becausewe've had somebody from New
Zealand on the podcast who justrecently flew here to buy real
estate with me here from NewZealand and she does a lot of
real estate investing over there.
She does a lot of like, um, aclass boutique hotels and Airbnb
style um property stuff overthere.
So I'll have to link you guysin an email because she's from

(40:05):
New Zealand that she activelydoes that she's starting to buy
a couple here.
Uh, she's trying to buy acouple here, um, but yeah, I'll
definitely have to make thatconnection.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
U S T U S a.
Real estate laws are veryfavorable.
New Zealand's got a lot offavorable laws too.
There's no capital gains tax onthe sale of the property after
a five-year period and stufflike that, and interest paid on
mortgages is now tax deductibleAgain.
The previous government took itaway, this government brought
it back.
So there's some certain things,but I think the depreciation in
the United States they tookaway depreciation in New Zealand

(40:35):
for residential real estate andI think they've taken it away
for commercial real estate aswell.
So that makes a big difference,I think, to the bottom numbers
that you get.
So I can see why Kiwi investorswould be coming and looking at
US markets for some propertyinvestments.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely All right, Lark,
we'll be in touch.
I'll definitely link you guysup in an email.
We'll talk when this video getsreleased.
Awesome, thank you so much, yes.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Thanks for coming on.
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