136. Bitcoin is Pumping and We’re Buying More

I put in a thousand bucks now today, what would that be in 10, 20, 30, 50 years time? What's the bitcoin price going to be in 50 years time? Bitcoin could be 1 million, 3 million, 5 million. What you put in now versus what you're going to return in 20, 30, 40, 50 years time compounded is going to be unbelievable. Welcome to the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us scanning a fully remote subscription research business. And today we're talking about why I am buying more bitcoin. I've been through a lot of reflection over the new period. I always do. And one of my biggest points of focus for me right now is building wealth. Right. You know, I've got my business, Collective Shift, which cash flows, I earn a wage from that, but also, you know, I'm future planning, I'm thinking about what I want to do in the future. You know, once we get through this bull market, how do I want to diversify, how do I minimize my risk? You know, I've got a lot of accum, I've got a lot of concentration in crypto right now, but ultimately I'm looking to diversify in the future. Have property, have a share portfolio and, and you know, a few other income generating investments. But more importantly, what I realized I wasn't doing is I wasn't adding to my portfolio enough throughout the week or the month. Right. So I had, I'd have all my liquid assets in crypto and I would be living very, you know, I'd be living very close to the edge in terms of, you know, the amount of cash I had in my bank basically had no cash in the bank because I just had jammed all in crypto.

And I was, I was really happy with my crypto positions. Right. And still am.

And then what I happened late last year was that I was, you know, leading up into Christmas, it's a very expensive time, we need to buy presents and don't, you know, I like to go on a trip and all this sort of stuff. And I was like, well, I don't have a lot of cash. It was kind of stressing me out, so. And we had a podcast on this. I can't remember exactly what podcast it was, but I sold some crypto, I took Some profits. I'd had some good in trades I got into, you know, maple favor of mine. I was up 300% in a few months last year, made some good money. And Burgs's feedback was like, why are you being a dickhead? Why are you 99.9% in crypto? Like, take some cash out, just like, live, live your best life. Like, know what? Great idea.

So as you were getting very, very stressed out by this.

Yeah.

You're like, I just, just got no money. I'm like, you do, but it's just allocated over here. So take some of that reallocated to cash. So when you spend, you can see that you've got money in your bank, you have that kind of level of safety and you feel okay. Like you're not flying too close to the sun.

Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, you know, we've got our, our company. Right. But I don't treat that as, as like a bank account. Right. Like, we've got shareholders, we got, you know, I can't just take money from that. Right? That is like, that's the company. That's the, you know, to do the company things. Then I've got my personal assets, which is crypto. And again, I didn't want to touch that because it's crypto. It's all going to the moon. Didn't want to touch it. And then I had my salary, which I paid for my everyday things. But then what happened was that, you know, I, I was. I was wanting to reinvest everything back in my business. So I took a, you know, just a salary that would just pay for my everyday things. And then I wasn't adding to my crypto portfolio. And then it got to a point where I needed this money. So anyway, I sold some crypto, went and did all the Christmas stuff, went on a trip, live my best life, had had a great time, was happy, had some money to spend, had a great time. And then I've come back from my trip and now, you know, I'm earning a wage. And one of my biggest focuses here was my building wealth. And I got recommended this book called the Richest Man In. Richest man in Babylon. And it's a really simple book. It's, you know, basically a story of this guy called Babylon.

No, his name wasn't Babylon. He was the richest guy in Babylon. And there was some servants who basically looked up to this guy and just wanted to ask him all these questions about how he made the money that he did. And he just had some really timeless, simple Principles. And one of them was to feed yourself first, right before you go and you know, pay everyone and give everyone your money. You've got to look after yourself first. And his methodology is to put 10% of your income into, you know, your, your wallet. And he talks about fattening your wallet each and every time. So whenever you receive money, you put one in, in 10 in your wallet and you forget about it. And then you have nine out of 10 to spend. Is this kind of idea. And he said, you don't see the difference. You know, you save 10, you still got 90 of what you make. You're not going to make any difference, you're not going to notice any difference. And then you, you know, a few other things like reduce your spending and all this sort of stuff. And as he was sort of talking, he was talking about like, you know, 10, 20, 30 years of doing this and then giving that money. And at this time he was giving it to a bronze maker who would take that money, he'd make bronze shields, he would sell it to people and then he'd give basically the dividends back to the guy that gave him the money. So it's earning this, this money. And he was basically talking about how over 20, 30, 40 years the idea of compounding interest, how much money you actually make. And I don't know what it was about this, like none of this is new to me. I knew all of this already. But it was something about just like how simple it was of just putting 10% away to compound over time can just be life changing. And you know, he was talking about doing it in relatively safe index, sort of like investments. But what I got out of it was, oh my God, I need to buy more bitcoin.

Amazing. And the reason I wanted to buy more bitcoin was because in this story it talks about.

Something that the guy that we're just going Babylon did early on, which was that he gave his money to a jeweler or a mate that was going to go like 5 times 10x his money. But he knew nothing about jewelry, where he did know a lot about bronze making and he knew the way the business model worked and he knew how the economics worked and he had conviction and he knew what, knew everything about it. I know a heap about crypto, I know a heap about bitcoin, I know how it works. I don't know a lot about the property market, I don't know a lot about the share market. Like I'm talking about individual stock picking and these sorts of things. But I do know a hell of a lot about bitcoin and I know that it's just the best asset on the planet. And in my mind I'm like, why would I go and buy shares and buy property or do any of these, like, really low returning things? Yes, I will do it at some point to diversify, but my goal right now is not to diversify. My goal is to build my wealth. So why would I go and park it in the share market and earn 5, 10, 20% in an industry that I don't really have a lot of expertise in, where I have my edge in crypto? And I just know I'm so convicted that Bitcoin's going to be, you know, the best performing asset over the next 24 money. So what did I do, Bergs? I went in and now I'm taking not 10%, not 20%, but I'm taking 30% of my income and I'm reducing my expenditure across the board to put 30% of my income every time I get paid into bitcoin. And I'm so excited.

Brilliant, mate. I love to hear it. And these are very simple principles where you pay yourself first and then only invest in what you understand. So let's look at. Pay yourself first in business is called the profit first model. So in business, you decide how much profit you want. Great. I want 200,000 at the end of the year. Great. What are my margins? How much revenue do I need? And you work backwards from there. And when you receive money, if you take money out first and invest it and let it compound over years and years, you generate wealth slowly. It's close to a sure thing with depending on what you're investing in and you're putting yourself first and then you have 90% left to spend. And what that does, it automatically restricts your spending, so you don't spend wildly. Most people spend 110% of their incomes and there's nothing left over to invest. They're actually in debt. So that's a very, very clear principle. Like everyone should be doing that. Save up an emergency fund. And then once that 10% has filled your emergency fund, put it into investable assets and grow your wealth. Turn $1 into two. And the other one is invest in what you understand. So if you're not sleeping well at night, you know, you're either levered up too much, you put too much in or you don't understand it. And like you said, Ben, with stocks, you don't necessarily understand how they work or the ins and outs of property. It can be quite tricky. You understand crypto really well. And if you sit back like, I've done this myself and I'm like, okay, I've got, let's say, I don't know, $10 to invest. Where should I put that $10 for? And if my goal is to maximize my return over X period of time. So I'll look at, you know, real estate, I'm like, oh, it's complicated. It's long term. There's a lot of taxes. I have like management, everything. Don't do that. Then I'll look at things like cash. No, it's going to zero. Bonds. No, look at shares. I'm like, okay, returns, like what, 7 to 10%. If I go into a fund, the best fund on the planet, maybe 20%, then I have to pay my 2 and 20 after that. And then let's look at bitcoin. Is it going to be more than 20% in that time period? Yes. Do I understand it? Yes. Do I know how it works? Like that is the place where I will be putting my money. And it makes it really simple. Where bitcoin now becomes your savings account and it sits there, it compounds over time.

Exactly. And I think I was thinking about it differently. The reason I basically stopped accumulating was because I was happy with my portfolio. I have a lot of money in crypto and the money that I'm going to invest into bitcoin now is not going to make any substantial difference in a short amount of time. So I think about it, like, what? Like, I think so short term sometimes, like, well, what's the point? But then this idea of this book really got me thinking about, well, shit, like if I put in, you know, let's say a thousand bucks now today, right? What would that be in 10, 20, 30, 50 years time? What's the bitcoin price going to be in 50 years time? Yeah, like, holy shit, that could be like bitcoin could be like, who knows, 1 million, 3 million, 5 million, who knows? And like what you put in now versus what you're going to return in 20, 30, 40, 50 years time compounded is going to be unbelievable.

We don't think that long term and we want that immediate reward. And I remember reading a book and it comes down to back in the day like that told this story before where people used to build cathedrals. They were really ornate. They had like, you know, hand tools like a thousand years ago or more. And it would take more than your lifetime, sometimes multi generations to finish a cathedral. So you would be working on something you wouldn't actually see finished. That's how long term they thought. And now it's like, well, if I don't get a return in like a day or a week, why am I even doing it? So you need to really change your thinking and it's such a simple thing. And really the reason people don't do it is because you need to be disciplined over a long period of time, which is challenging to do. You combat that by setting up automation and that money comes out before you can even spend it.

Yeah. And having that long term and short term strategy, like I've had a long term strategy, but in my mind a long term strategy is like five years. But what about like super long term strategy? Like I want to be holding bitcoin forever. The reality is most of my old coins in my portfolio are going to be gone in the next two or three years out of my portfolio. Like what, what is relevant now may not be relevant in the future. And what's going to be a lifelong asset that I don't think is going anywhere and it's going to continue to compound is bitcoin. I don't want my money in anything else.

Absolutely. And I will highlight to the listeners that there is a trap here that people can fall into and that is not having enough cash reserves or in business it's working capital. So I'll start off with the business example where I know a lot of companies that raised money through eth. They held all of their money in eth, let's say they had thousand eighth, whatever it may be and they're like great. And they start working away, they've got money, they can pay employees and then eth drops by 90% and all of a sudden they don't have enough working capital to run their business. So you do need some stability there and some cash reserves. And just like in your life, if you've only got $1,000 in the bank and you have an emergency that costs $2,000, you're in trouble. So whatever that level is for you, make sure you've got that and then do that 10%. I highly, highly recommend using that 10% rule to fill your emergency fund once you're comfortable. 10% rule to start investing.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that I think. And that automation bur just getting up and, and just forgetting about it. I think that's something that is a great strategy. And that's what I did for two or three years. I took my whole salary in Bitcoin for two or three years back in like 20, 18, 29. And it was just like, you know, I didn't need any money to spend back then. I was living at home. And you just forgot about it and.

You accumulate a lot and, and don't even check it. So the exact, the example of this is, hey Ben, when was the last time you checked your superannuation balance?

Let me know where my super is.

Exactly. And that is what you should be doing when you're investing in these long term assets, whether it's a mutual fund, S and P, whatever it is, you just put your money in there and you might check it once a year or something like that. Just like you check your super balance once a year, it's off market, you're not going to sell it, you're just accumulating for your lifetime. Or if you have a super big emergency and you need it, or you're just quitting life and you're going to retire because you hit your number.

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, that's, that's my thought process. I'm back on the horse. And you know, this is a long term strategy. Like you know I bought bitcoin way cheaper than where it is now, but where I think it's going to be in 30, 40, 50 years is a lot higher than where we are now. And that's the timeframe that I'm thinking.

This is a very key point because bitcoin as of the recording date is at 50,000 USD. The highest it's been is about 65,000 USD. So we're near the top and Ben is still buying and the reason he is buying is because he's zooming out and looking at 5, 10, even multi decade or taking that time quite a long term view. So you're not worried about where we are in the cycle or all time highs. You're thinking where is it going to be in 10 or 20 years? And that's very, very different. This is why you see people like Michael Sailor accumulating so much because he's determined it's the best asset to hold and build his wealth over a very long term period.

Saying so when bitcoin dips, I'll continue buying for the long term. But then I've also got my short term strategy which through this bull market I will be rotating out of my altcoins, maybe building out my btc, taking profits, I'll be doing all of that. But I've got my BTC stack or portion of my BTC stack that I'm building that's going to be there forever.

Amazing, mate. I love to hear that you're still buying.

Yeah, it's. It's great. And you can just look at that from a comparison perspective as well. Like, what's your future projected comparable returns of different assets. But also, you've got to think about your strategy as well. Right now, mine is concentration and wealth building down the line. It's going to be diversification and, you know, ensuring that I maintain that level of wealth and take a risk off the table.

Absolutely, mate. And you're taking it. Like, for me, I'm already diversified, but I'm taking advantage of this market cycle.

Yeah. So you don't have to have this one. This is the only thing I'm doing. You can think about in different ways, you know, position your portfolio with different strategies, and it doesn't always need to be about, you know, just doing this one thing and then that's the only thing you can do. It can be a little bit more complex than that, mate.

I love to hear it and it's given me confidence as well to actually put more into bitcoin. So thank you.

Awesome, guys. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Hopefully you got something out of that. If you'd love the podcast or you think someone else would enjoy this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend. You can send it around and send them a link, WhatsApp it to them, send them a text. We'd love for them to start listening to the show and it's a great way for people to get introduced to crypto and making sure they're on track. But thank you both. We'll see you next week.

Thanks, Ben, and thanks, champions. Thanks.