165. Ben Updates His Crypto Investment Strategy

I've got a few different goals that I want to achieve. You know, this bull market and beyond. And the way I think about it is having three different types of goals, bearish, base and bullish goals. And the reason I do that is because the reality is we don't know how crazy this bull market can get. And for me, I want to sort of tick off at least my bearish and base goals as quickly as possible, but I still want to have that sort of dream of achieving my bullish goals if the market really goes the way we think it could. Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Burks podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite NBA 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 here in Australia. And if you like the podcast, we'd love for you to share it with a friend. Leave us a follow and listen into our podcast where we share with you independent insights each and every week to help you get ahead in the market. Now today I'm sharing with you my latest crypto investment strategy update. I've gone back to the drawing board over a few martinis in Mykonos and we've drawn up the new strategy burgers. We've whiteboarded it mentally, we've drawn it up and I wanted to update all our Benneberg's listeners, our family here on the podcast about how I'm playing this market, how I think about crypto, how I'm looking to, you know, you know, achieve my goals, what are my goals, how I'm going to do that, how do I think about the future? I'm going to dial all that in today, in today's session. So am I spiced up, made. I'm back in Bali. Quick pump on this morning, quick leg day, quick ice bath, mate. Now we're into the pod.

Look at this guy. Mental whiteboards, Martinis in Mykonos, mate. You're just a little bit fancy, aren't you? Just kicking back on your big European holiday, going, hey, you know what? I should update my investment strategy.

Well, I wasn't going to the gym. I was in, in, in Europe. So I had to think of the mental, the mental barbells, mate. The barbell strategy, not the physical barbells.

Start getting those brain reps in, mate.

So I've gone back to the drawing Board. And the theme at the moment is barbells. Right, the barbell strategy. Right. What is the barbell strategy? Well, for me, the two assets that I want to hold over the long term forever is bitcoin and property. I think they are the two of the safest, hardest assets that'll continue to outpace inflation, that'll continue to build long, long term wealth preservation, and honestly don't really want to hold anything else, you know, 40, 50 years in the future. Now with that barbell strategy, there's obviously the other side. The other side for me is something, you know, where I add more risk to the portfolio Altcoins as an example, to leverage up my overall crypto position to build out my bitcoin and property stack. So my short term goal for this cycle, this bitcoin bull market, sorry, this crypto bull market is ultimately to leverage my altcoin positions, have conviction in those altcoins, back myself to invest in those altcoins and then sell down those altcoins at the closest possible to the peak of this cycle to buy more bitcoin and property. Right. And with that bitcoin and property, I want to continue to hold that for the, for the long term and continue building that over time. So you. The main strategy for me this cycle is that I want to have.

At least two out of my three goals ticked off and I'll share my goals in a second. But Bergs, like when looking at the markets like, you know, gold has historically been this hedge against inflation, but not even gold over the last five years has outpaced inflation. I think gold's only up 40% or something, you know, in the last little bit. And you know, in comparison to the purchasing power and the loss of fiat currency, you're not even outpacing that with gold. So for me it's bitcoin and property. Are you, are you on the same wavelength?

Yeah, definitely, man like you, if you've kept your money in gold over time, you've lost money compared to other investments. And definitely like having Nathan on the pod well a couple of months ago. And saying bitcoin belongs on the real estate side was just epic. Real estate is great because people need somewhere to live. There's inbuilt demand. You can rent it out, you can depreciate it, and there's tax efficiencies there as well, which is really great. And even if you live in it for a while and then you sell it, it's your primary place of residence is tax exempt. Beautiful. We're starting to see those kind of things come up with bitcoin, where you can start to borrow against it. And I think we're going to have even fancier tools that are available. That belongs on one side, then you've got absolutely nothing in the middle, and then on the other side you've got your risky stuff. So this is the area that you're looking at, Ben. So what are your goals and what are you going to invest in now? Have you changed your investment strategy?

So I've got a few different goals that I want to achieve.

You know, this bull market and beyond. And the way I think about it is having three different types of goals. Bearish, base, and bullish goals. And the reason I do that is because the, you know, the reality is we don't know how crazy this bull market can get. And for me, I want to sort of tick off at least my bearish and base goals as, as quickly as possible, but I still want to have that sort of dream of achieving my bullish goals if the market really goes the way we think it could. So the way.

Yeah, we'll start with the goal. So for me, my bearish goal, so the thing I want to take off as fast as possible is to buy a property for my parents, you know, relatively close to that, hopefully to do that in the next sort of few months. And that for me is going to be my first, like, investment in the property market. I'm 99% exposed to crypto right now. So my ultimate goal this cycle is to, you know, really sort of diversify away. You know, you, you build, you build wealth through concentration and you maintain it through diversification. And that's my goal at the peak of the cycle is to diversify away and maintain that through. Through property. So I'll start to add property to one side of my barbell. My, my base goal is to have enough cash in the bank as well to redeploy in the next bear market. I fully expect bitcoin to go to 150,000 U.S. and then maybe back to 75,000 or it goes to 200,000 U.S. back to, you know, 75, 80,000. Right. And when, when we, when we get there, I want to sort of reinvest enough cash to. To sort of build out my BTC stack in the next bear market. And then my really, like, bullish goal is to have enough cash also invested into the stock market where I can start to try and aim or, you know, whether that's through private equity or a fund, or I can sort of aim for somewhere like 10, 10, 12%, hopefully return on a, on a portfolio where I can basically earn a wage equivalent per year through, through an asset outside of crypto. So if touch wood for, for whatever reason, everything goes to shit, I've got something outside of crypto that I can rely on, right? So that's, that's like, that's a bullish goal. Now outside of that, you know, something that I have come to more, come to realize more and more as I'm, you know, growing older and just sort of like, you know, I don't know, experiencing more about life is that I fucking love to travel, right? And I like to live a life where I can be happy and enjoy things and you know, live abroad, do trips, go snowboarding, go to Europe, whatever it might be. So a part of my goals is also to earn enough money on a day to day level to fuel the lifestyle that I want to live. For me, it's not about buying, you know, crazy, you know, clothes or, you know, crazy cars or whatever it might be. It's more about, you know, paying for things that are, that I like to do. And for me one of those things is travel. So, you know, I also want to build in a part of my goal, you know, this cycle to build up, you know, income and wealth, you know, ultimately through the business to maintain a lifestyle where I can continue to travel and have the time and, you know, location, freedom to do, you know, what I want to do when I want to do it. That's, that's, that's ultimate for me as well. So that's a part of my goal.

That's awesome. And the thing with goals is they don't have to be big grandiose, but they do have to be yours. And they can be as simple as have enough money to spend half a day a week with my friends or my child, or buy a bike or buy a car, whatever it may be. And the way you speak about goals is actually quite advanced because you have a tiered system because you don't know how high things are going to go and at which pace no one does. And I remember like a few cycles ago I was talking to actually one of our members and he had a big investment and he wanted to buy a property at 2 million. His investment went to 1.8 and then the market turned and he didn't sell on the way up. And if he had those tier goals where it's take some money here, buy this thing, take some money here, do this with it, he would have achieved a Lot more. And he would have been a lot happier not had all of that dread. So having those tiered goals is actually an amazing point of view, mate.

Yeah, I, I've learned that over previous cycle. And also how many similar conversations with people. So many people do that, right. They have 1.5 in their portfolio and they want to get to 2. So they don't sell anything and then the market turns and now they're back to 400k. Like it just makes, doesn't make any sense. You know, why, why compound all that risk? Continuing to try and achieve something that may not be possible and risking everything to do that. That's like doubling down on red until you get to your goal and. But if, if you get it wrong, you lose everything.

Very few decisions in life are all or nothing. Like people like to frame it in terms of offer on like dichotomous like situations that doesn't really exist. Everything. The majority of things are a spectrum. A lot of things are reversible. Investing I don't believe should be an all or nothing pursuit.

Me neither.

You need to build in a risk profile where you can actually make money regardless of how the market goes by still taking profits as we go up. And I'll share my sales strategy and how I do that in a second. But you know, going back to my barbell strategy, my strategy is basically at the end of this cycle is I want to be completely out of all of my altcoin positions. I don't want to hold any altcoins heading into the next bear market. I may hold Solana and Eth. Maybe we'll see where the market gets at the peak of this cycle, but.

We probably need to like, I think the crypto industry needs to reframe what an altcoin is because at the moment it's anything but bitcoin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think like when we have the majors, I think we're going to change our language around that as well.

It's not your blue chips, right? Anything outside of your blue chips, I want to be selling. Yeah. Like, you know, in every cycle previous to this, bitcoin will outperform altcoins 99% of the time. Right. So just holding altcoins is just a, is a dangerous game in, in, in the downturns and with my BTC, I want to be selling down probably about 50% of my Bitcoin at the peak of this cycle and keeping the remaining 50%. Reason being is that, you know, ultimately I'm trying to build out my bitcoin stack. So I don't want to sell everything but I do think the bitcoin will get quite over overbought in the, in the peak of the cycle and then we'll have a bit of a correction. So I want to sell down some of that and then rebuy, you know, close to the lows. But for me, you know, the way I'm building up my portfolio is ultimately I have my business, right. I have collective shifts, the cash flows. I have a salary and I'm moving as much as I can of my, you know, any business profits or you know, even some of the balance sheet of our business. We move into crypto. So I'm trying to continue to grow the exposure of my, over my overall exposure to crypto through the cash flowing assets that I, that I own or that I'm a part of. So for you, that might be your own salary, that might be a business, that might be a side hobby, whatever it might be using those cash flows that ultimately build up, you know, your bitcoin stack. Because cash at the end of the day, you know, I will spend that to fuel my lifestyle. But holding cash at the end of the day is, is only going to lose you 10 to 20%, you know, over time. So with that as well, at the moment I'm primarily moving those, those that, that new capital into altcoins. I've got a pretty good BTC and E stack. I will either add to my existing altcoins or I will buy some new altcoins from time to time. For example, you know, recently, you know, we've been looking into a couple of different sectors in the sort of gaming space as well as like the meme, the meme coin space. I may add a new altcoin once every quarter, something like that. I don't like to go chase old coins. It's more about having conviction and then backing those coins when I do. Now the last thing I'll add about this is like for me in the future, you know, I believe you can have full financial sovereignty around owning bitcoin. I think there's going to be very great, you know, defi protocols on bitcoin, even centralized protocols where you can lend out your bitcoin and earn a yield. You can take loans, I'm already doing that where you can take a loan against your assets, like collateralized loans. I think there's a future where if you own enough bitcoin you won't even need to go, need to go to a bank. You can just do everything yourself. You Know, without needing to be, you know, signing up and doing these sort of crazy things with the bank. Everything has just been built around bitcoin, which is a super exciting future.

That's a huge benefit most people don't really consider because we live in kind of a very sophisticated financial society. And there was a stat where it took the USA 200 years to print their first trillion dollars. And a trillion is a thousand billion. It's like a thousand thousand million. It's a lot, right? It's exponential, it's not linear. It's very, very big. When you look at all those pallets stacked up, it's insane. 200 years to print their first trillion. Now they're printing a trillion dollars every hundred days.

Which is absolutely crazy.

That's stuff.

So we know these things are happening. We hear it all the time in the news. And we need to be prepared for things getting just inflated away, currency collapses, whatever that looks like. And having sovereignty over your own money, like this is a hedge beyond the investment and appreciation, where you have a bearer asset that can be used as money and you can exist outside a system that has very large systemic problems.

Yeah, spot on bugs. And for me, that's bitcoin. Right? You know, and, and in, in the, in the short term, like, yes, I think altcoin's going to perform, you know, really well. And that's why I'm moving some of my, you know, cash into those altcoins. But you know, splitting up between the short term and long term strategy is really important. Like, you know, what do you want to do in the short term? What are those things? You want to achieve this cycle? But guess what? This cycle is not just going to end and then crypto is just going to, you know, turn off. Like crypto's gonna be here forever. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum. This is, this is technology that's not going away. So what are your goals long term? Do you wanna keep stacking bitcoin? What are those goals you wanna achieve? What is the dollar value that you need to achieve to do those things? Post tax, post spreads, post fees, like really get really micro on what you wanna achieve. And then you can reverse engineer a goal, reverse engineer a strategy to get there. How much profits you need to take, where do the prices need to go? Really map all that out. And for me, the sell strategy is more about selling earlier than late. Bergs is just sharing a story about a member that he was at 1.8, that he wanted to get to 2 and never sold anything because he never Got there. For me, that is a really poor idea. Like I like to sell earlier than late. Taking percentages off the top as we go up bank profits, minimize your risk, but keep a foot in the game. So you still got exposure as the market grows, but you're also banking profits. So God forbid another FTX happens, something happens that completely blindsides us all. You've actually taken profits versus just trying to pull off a Hail Mary, riding it all the way up, you miss the top, you're too late to sell, something happens and now you're waiting another four years. Like it just doesn't make any, any, any sense in my head.

Exactly. Take some profits in another four or five years, you'll still be around, you can invest more, there'll be other opportunities. It doesn't have to be like I stop and I retire now. And some people, what's the common thing now? I want to retire my bloodline. What a crock of shit. Like you're going to get bored. You will need to do something with your life. You don't. It's not an all or nothing game, it's just do better, do slightly, do slightly above average of what other people are doing and you will be fine. And just with what you said there Ben, with your short and long term, you need to define what short and long term means to you because to a general investor long term is at least one market cycle which is seven to 10 years. In crypto, long term is like four years, one cycle and short term might be a month, it might be six months, it might be three years. So define what those mean to you and then fit in with the longer term macro cycles in traditional markets and then the four year crypto cycle as well.

Yeah, yeah, spot on. Yeah. It's really down to you and you know, personalizing the strategy around where you're at because everyone's different. But I, I, you know, to that point as well, like I think sometimes your biggest competitor, and this is a part of my strategies around psychology, like the biggest barrier to holding you back, to actually making money is your own, you know, your own mind, right? You are your biggest competitor because when the things get bullish, you're going to move the targets. You think it's never going to go up and then when things go down, you get panicked, you want to sell, you want to chase things, you know, people really overcook it. And for me, you know, having an accountability group, having our analysts having collective shift like this is the reason why we built what, you know, built the business the way we've done and why we've had so many success stories is because it actually is very hard to do this alone, especially if you're talking to people that don't get crypto. You know, you're. Crypto is a whole different ball game. It's the most volatile asset on the planet. You can make a lot of money, but you can also lose a lot of money. And ultimately not many people actually know what the hell they're doing in this space. So how having a group or an accountability partner or people around you can also be a huge key to success. And I, and I speak from experience on that. You know, where I made most of my money back in, you know, 2020, 2020 21, when I got out on sort of 30 to 40x on some of those sort of early stage Metaverse projects, you know, I had, I had a, an accountability partner who was sort of, we were doing it together. And you know, without, without that, it can be very difficult to make logical decisions because you're, your, your emotions and the euphoria that that happens in a bull market is, is unmatched. It's quite hard to describe.

You're spot on, man. And having people that talk crypto give you a different perspective. We do this with eo, with our accountability group for business, and it's just the best. And it reminds me of like Kendrick Lamar where you talk about psychology, where it's like, I fight the world, I fight you, I fight myself. And really you think about the world, the world. Nature is hostile. Nature doesn't want you living on this planet. It's trying to kill you. And then you're on this planet with 8 billion other people that you're competing with resources for. And then you look at within your own body, there's like literally trillions of different.

Whole bunch of shit, different bacteria and everything going on in your body that's fighting for supremacy. You got like all these things in the world that you're fighting for and you're fighting your own psychology and as well with investing. And it's just you against all of these things. You need those other people and a group that are in it as well to give you that perspective and bring that clarity and calmness so you don't make rash, crazy decisions.

Yeah, I agree. Your environment is everything 100%. And you know the difference. You know, ultimately success in making money.

In crypto, change your environment, change your life, dude.

Even being in Bali, like recently, like just coming back here, just, you know, being around other people, that are, you know, on their own journeys. A lot of, you know, meditation people, mindfulness, like, but, but it's like very, it's a healthy environment. Gym, sauna, it's just like, you know, compared to Melbourne right now. It's cold, it's wet, it's rainy, it's miserable, it's overcast. Everyone's just inside, like, it's just a, it's a whole different perspective.

Everyone on the team's like got their hoodies on and beanies and they're all sniffly and sick. It's winter, it's dreary.

But look, I, I, I think those are the, those are the two things that I'm looking at. And then, yeah, just having that sales strategy, right, Making those investments, being logical. Portfolio allocation, I won't go into today. That's something, you know, I talk about in our strategy sessions for, for our members. But yeah, really sit back, have that strategy, continue to update it, be logical, think about what the long term is for you. Think about the short term. You know, when are you going to sell? What are your goals? How are you going to do that? What's the psychology, who, your accountability partners? You need all of these things to come together and that's what's going to be the difference for you. Making money this cycle, mate, that was beautiful. Brilliant, guys. I hope you enjoyed that. If you had any questions, feel free to reach out to us. You know, other than Twitter, send us an email, whatever, let us know. And if you are a member or you're wanting to become a member by actually, you know, if you need help with, you know, your strategies and stuff, you can join up to Collective Shift. You can book in a free strategy session with our Head of Member Success. Walk through what you're trying to achieve, see if it's a good fit. And then ultimately, every month I do hour long strategy sessions with our members where I go through my investments, I go through my strategy and I help you create your own strategy as well. So you can head over to Collective Shift, check it out. We'd love to help you out the cycle.

What an episode, mate.

Awesome. That was good. Little update from Mykonos Martinis and Mykonos strategy.

There you go. Love it.

All right, guys, we'll wrap it up here. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, champions.