174. Navigating Volatile Crypto Markets & Avoiding Scams | Economic Explored Interview

Ben Simpson from Collective Shift, welcome to the program.

Thanks so much for having me, mate. It's good to be here.

Yes, it's excellent. Ben, so you've been doing some fascinating things with Collective Shift. Could you tell us a bit about which you're the founder of? Could you tell us a bit about Collective Shift, please? What is it that you're, that you're offering?

Yes, I've been full time investing into the crypto space for seven or eight years. And it's a very messy, chaotic industry. A lot of misinformation, a lot of bad people in the space. It's just very difficult to get clarity on what's going on actually when you invest in crypto. So when I first started out, I personally didn't really know what was going on. Took me a lot of time to figure out blockchain and Bitcoin and Ethereum and just all these terminologies and what it all meant. And I started working with someone in the education space to help people with crypto and eventually I started my own thing about four years ago. And, you know, what we've built now is we're the largest independent education and research company in Australia. We have over a thousand paying clients around the world that pay us for crypto investment research and sort of advice. And then also we provide research and content to the crypto exchanges here in Australia. So Those coin spot, SwiftX, those are buy and sell cryptocurrency for, like, for retail customers. We provide them with some of their content and research as well. So, yeah, we've got a team of about 10 full time now here in Australia. And yeah, we've been around for about four years. And my, my mission is just to help people try and navigate their way through crypto the right way because I know I've been burned in the past in this space, it's very easy to lose money and be led down the wrong path. So we're trying to just help people the right way.

Right, okay. And you mentioned that you were concerned about some of the misinformation in the, in crypto, what, what type of things we are you thinking of?

It's just a lot. So in cryptocurrency there's thousands and thousands of different cryptocurrencies right now. So like, if you think about the stock market, there's basically that equivalent in crypto, but a, an endless amount of cryptocurrency projects that you could buy. And my opinion is 95 to 98% of them are worthless. Like they're they're just built on, you know, community and, you know, fomo and, you know, they don't have a lot of underlying re real value. And a lot of people get sucked into these projects, buying them with the hope of making a lot of money because they provide these crazy marketing guarantees and returns and all these sorts of things that people get sucked into and ultimately lose money. So that's really where we're trying to help guide people from an education standpoint, where to invest. And then ultimately, cryptocurrency is extremely volatile, and it can be hard for someone to stomach the risk that comes along. With crypto. Bitcoin, on its journey from a few hundred dollars to today, 55, 60,000 US dollars has gone up and down hundreds of times more than 10%, and sometimes it goes down 40, 50, 60% in a period of days or weeks, which can be very concerning for a lot of people because you don't get that in the stock market. Right. If 2 or 3% in a day is kind of big in crypto, you could see 10, 20, 30% moves in a day. So we try and just help people understand why that happens, how to have the mindset and understanding of where the market's going and not panic and ultimately try and not lose money.

Gotcha. Okay. There's a few things I wouldn't mind following up there, Ben. So, I mean, there's the issue of, I mean, why does this happen? Why is crypto subject to such wild swings? Why is it so volatile, for one? Could we start there, please?

Yeah, let's start there. So one common thing that some people don't know is that cryptocurrency trades 24,7. Right? Right. When the stock market open, has opened open and closed times at Monday to Friday, cryptocurrency trades 24,7. And what we saw, you know, in the last few days in Japan, you know, Japan saw one of its worst days since the 1980s in the stock market. Recently, I think it dropped 7 or 10% in a day. They halted trading. They literally just withdrew the sell button. You can't sell anymore. Right. In cryptocurrency, that's not. That's not a thing. You can't just halt trading in crypto. Right. This is a free market. There's no one selling, no intermediary to stop what you're doing. So it's a free market. And ultimately people, you know, have emotions. They fear, and if they're going to sell, they're going to sell. And in cryptocurrency, because the Market caps of these projects are relatively small. You get these liquidation events, and what happens is basically these cascading effects of traders get liquidated, whales get liquidated, retail investors then panic, and then you get these huge fluctuations. So there's a lot of different variables, but ultimately it's a free market. No one's manipulating it from a, you know, intermediary perspective. And if people are scared, they're going to sell. And it happens pretty quickly.

Right. Okay. Now if you're getting into this market, I mean, if you're interested in crypto, do you, do you provide some guiding principles or do you identify red flags? Can you tell us a bit about what new investors should be looking out for?

Yeah, so if I have a new investor that comes to me and wants to figure out how to create an investment portfolio, I really, I really try and recommend that they start off with just Bitcoin. It's really important to understand that Bitcoin is the biggest, most leading cryptocurrency. It's the most well known. Then there's thousands of other cryptocurrencies after that. Right. So it's important to differentiate bitcoin from cryptocurrency because bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, but Bitcoin is its own separate thing. And that's, that's the way I look at it. So I usually start off by just looking at Bitcoin. And Bitcoin ultimately, for me should or for others should be looked at as a hedge against, you know, your overall investment portfolio. Right. It's, it's not correlated.

You know, to stocks or the property market or, you know, bonds. It's ultimately a completely separate asset that is in its own area. And I would probably think, you know, even owning 1% of your entire net wealth into Bitcoin, I think is a pretty good, good idea, just in terms of its risk to reward ratio. So the, the reward being potentially if it pulls off what it's trying to achieve.

In terms of the global monetary asset, the price returns are quite, or the projections are quite large, where the risk is quite minimal in a sense of, it's been around for 10 or 12 years. It's now got its own ETF, which was one of the largest ETF launches in history. It's owned by a lot of NASDAQ listed companies. It's owned by governments on their balance sheet. The risk of Bitcoin now is far.

Far less than what it has been in the past. And where we think it could go, I think everyone should consider it. In terms of just even owning a little bit.

Right, okay. So in terms of where you think it can go, I mean, are you, are you thinking bitcoin to a million? I think. Was that, was that Cathie Wood? Did she have that prediction? I mean, is that, is that serious or credible?

I mean, look, you know.

Who knows is really the answer, Gene? Like, you know, who knows where this could go? The biggest thing that I think is the most important thing to understand with Bitcoin is it's a limited supply asset. There's only 21 million bitcoin that ever be created. And the supply and demand economics as we've seen recently, there's more demand for bitcoin than there is supply. Right. And just basic supply and demand economics is showing us that if you get a lot of people wanting an asset and there's very few of it, the price goes up over time. Do I think you can get to a million dollars? I do think you can get there at some stage. Maybe it's probably going to take 10, 20, 30 years to get there. But for me, bitcoin compound has been compounding at 60% year over year for the last 10 years. It's up 75% of the last 12 months. It's one of the best performing assets on the planet. For me, I think it's one of the best investments you can own.

Right. Okay. And.

What'S your theory or like, why do you think that there is this underlying value? Because there is a lot of skepticism about cryptocurrency, particularly from economists, and there's all sorts of concerns about regulatory risk. I mean, you pointed to the fact that, okay, it's been held. You know, certainly people are investing in it at the moment. But.

Yeah, I just wonder what's the story regarding the actual use case for it? Is there a use case outside of some illegal transactions?

Yeah, and I think, I think the hardest thing for most people to wrap their head around is that, you know, you can't touch it, you can't feel it, you can't smell it. Like it's completely digital asset and it doesn't have free cash flow. Right. Warren Buffett hates it. He calls it rat poison squared. Right. There's a lot of people that don't like it because it's not, not similar to what's been around in previous times. If we look at a country like, you know, Venezuela. Right. Or, you know, Mexico, some of these places, not maybe not Mexico, but Venezuela. Right. We look at some of these places where that fiat currency, Argentina, sorry, Was I was looking for their local. Local currency has inflated so much that it's basically worthless. Right. It just continues to inflate because of the government has printed more and more money. So holding something that isn't controlled by government, something that is inherently deflationary in a sense that it doesn't increase its supply. In fact, the circulating supply slows down. People are looking at Bitcoin now as a new digital gold. Not to say it's going to replace gold. Gold is one of the safest assets on the planet. But this is a new version of gold. I use Bitcoin to pay my employees. If I go and try and pay my overseas staff with my bank account, it gets shut down. I'm getting phone calls from their frauds team. They want to know where it's going, why it's going. They take huge conversion rate fees. It takes two weeks to arrive. It's horrendous. Where I can send Bitcoin instantly to anyone in the world with no middleman and I can receive it, you know, within seconds. And that's being utilized more and more from, from, from businesses in different countries as well, from a payments level. But ultimately the use case for me is it's a digital gold. It's an asset that.

Continues to perform.

Over time. And I think the best way to look at it is that digital gold analogy. And we're seeing companies like MicroStrategy, a Nasdaq listed company, holding hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Because if you continue to hold cash, just the purchasing power of your dollar is into devalue. Like where do you park your cash? What asset can you hold that's going to be a hedge against inflation? Gold hasn't outbeaten inflation in the last five years. Where do you put your money? And Bitcoin's starting to be seen as something that you can park your capital in.

Right? Okay. And what do you see is that are there regulatory risks with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? Central banks are looking at CBDCs, the central bank digital currencies. Is there a risk that there could be a regulatory crackdown on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

Yeah, I definitely think there's a risk for some cryptocurrencies. You know, again, important to differentiate Bitcoin different to other cryptocurrencies. The SEC in the US has clearly defined Bitcoin as a commodity and now they have their own Bitcoin spot ETF now the Ethereum spot ETF so this, the government has approved and the SEC has approved these financial instruments to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum in the US And Australia tends to follow. There's a Bitcoin ETF in Australia. So it's from a regulatory framework. Bitcoin and Ethereum really is in a. It is in a safe category now. But there is a lot of other crypto assets that could. Could potentially look like securities, and that sort of plays a bit into some of these exchanges not being able to sell it. But no, the direction we're going in and what we're seeing now from the US And Australia is that even Donald Trump. Right. Donald Trump the other day spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference and wants the US to be the hub of crypto. He wants the US to be the center of cryptocurrency development in the world. I think it's actually moving towards politically pandering or not.

Politically. A good thing for these.

Candidates to be pro crypto, because the reality is a lot of people own it.

Right, okay. And what's the regulatory environment like here in Australia? I've been seeing some of Senator Andrew Bragg's commentary and like, he. He's been grilling treasury public servants at estimates hearings, and it looks like that they've been rather slow in setting up a regulatory environment. Would, you know, what the issues are there? I mean, what needs to happen with regulation in Australia for crypto?

Yeah, I think we're actually asking for more regulation, really, like this. There's really not much clarity, like. And as an educator and someone that wants to help consumers, there is very little regulation. It's very much in a gray area. You go and talk to lawyers and they give you a roundabout answer. But I think the reality is, Gene, that this asset class is so new and so few people truly understand it, that the existing regulation of securities and stocks and assets just doesn't fit well with crypto because it's so unique and it's so different. So many loopholes and so many unknowns and variables. I know there was a paper drawn up about recommendations recently, but these things move relatively slowly, and it goes for a lot of hands. I'd love more regulatory clarity. You know, we saw some pretty poor things that happened in the US over the last few years, like ftx, you know, Celsius, these crypto exchanges that were doing nefarious things. You know, ultimately that had nothing to do with the underlying asset. That wasn't Bitcoin's fault. That was people running these exchanges that wanted to Defraud customers, that was their fault. And if we had better regulation and overview, perhaps that wouldn't have happened. So we're welcoming that, but just. Yeah, these things take time with the, the politics and government, unfortunately.

Yeah. And what does it mean for the, the tax treatment of crypto? So if you make a, a gain or a profit on your, or a capital gain on your crypto, you're liable for, for tax for that, are you?

Yeah, yeah, just like normal capital gains. Like if you sell Telstra shares for BHB shares, it's a taxable event. You pay your capital gains. You know, some investors may think that they can get away with it, but reality is cryptocurrencies are built on a blockchain, and a blockchain is an immutable ledger that anyone can see.

Yeah.

And we've seen the ATO now develop software to actually go and track these, these accounts that aren't paying their tax. All the Australian exchanges have to report on all their users. So, you know, they're having a real crackdown on that. And as they should. People thinking they get away with it is not, is not the right way to think about it. You know, people are paying their capital gains and yeah, there's a, there's a lot of oversight now in that tax space as well. So yeah, very much similar to the stock stocks. How would you, how you'd pay your tax?

Yeah, gotcha. Okay. Interesting with the.

Just going back to the crypto education. I mean, I think that's so important because the, the concern I have is that the, you know, everyone thinks crypto is the next big thing. And I mean, you know, possibly it is and yet, but you have a lot of dumb money go in and you've got a lot of people who probably shouldn't be putting all their hard earned savings into, into a speculative asset. I mean, maybe, I mean, you're steering people toward the more established ones, but they're also, you know, there are thousands of other crypto currencies out there, aren't there? So yeah, if you did, if you did come across a proposal or a new. What is it? Is it an ICO or initial coin offering or. If you're looking at investing in crypto, what are the sort of things that you should be. That, that, that would be a red flag that would set off alarm bells that, because I know, I've heard this term rug pull. How would you, how would you know if you could be a victim of that?

Look, unfortunately it's very common in the cryptocurrency space. You know, I, I tend to, to direct people in, in, in only investing into older coins that have been around for, for a little while. Like these ICOs initial.

Were a big thing back in the day and unfortunately a lot of people get sucked into these because they promise return. Like anything that promises returns, guarantees percentage returns over a period of time, has crazy lockup periods where you have to basically give your cryptocurrency and lock it up for a period of time to earn rewards. Anything that pays you to bring on other people, like a Ponzi scheme, anything that has crazy marketing on social media. None of these good projects do any of that. And ultimately a lot of those are probably scams if any of the projects you've invested in does that. So I would ultimately focus in the top assets, the top 10 top 20, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Solana. Start there before working your way down. The further down the market cap list you go, the more risky the investments are. And unless you're really tapped in and know what you're doing, it can be very difficult to navigate those investments. And rug pools are common the further you go down. Rug pools are basically if you think of standing on a rug and someone pulls the rug underneath you, that's just really. When the founder or the owner or there's a, there's a hack of the project and you lose all your money. So you really do need to be careful.

Gotcha. So someone comes to you. So would they go to the collective shift side and then there's a online course you can do?

Yeah. So we, we, we. There's basically two tiers. So one is we just have our, our platform where you, you sign up, you log in, you can see all of our token ratings. So we, we do, you know, token things like Morningstar for crypto. That's what we're trying to build.

Yep.

Token ratings, research community. We do live group sessions. They can jump on a live session with me and I go through the market and how I'm investing and then we have a higher tier for those that are a bit more, have a bit more capital at play. Usually they're wanting to invest a quarter of a million plus or they already have that. Invest in crypto. That's where you can work one on one with me. We have private events, we do online sessions, you know, private sort of WhatsApp group where we can kind of help you out and deliver you more support. And that's really where we have our team of analysts by your side to give you independent Information. And that's really what people pay us for. Because you can go online, you can listen to YouTubers, you can try and figure it all out yourself, but it's going to take you a heap of time. You won't know who to trust. Most likely the person that's giving you an information doesn't really know what they're talking about. And you can lose a lot of money if you're not sure what you're doing. So that's really where we can come and help.

Yeah. So what takes a heap of time doing the research or getting set up or getting the wallet? I mean, what, what actually takes the time?

Probably initially just even researching the space. What coins to buy, when to buy, when to sell, how to store it, where do you store it, how do you, you know, how do you not stuff it up? What are the scams? Look like this, like, as you go further down the rabbit hole, there just becomes this infinite amount of information. And you Google crypto and you just get a million different opinions and a million different people saying different things. And I think really where the time gets sucked in is the information overload. Did you start reading it like, this is something, this is something else. Everyone has their own opinions, which right or wrong is, can. Can just send you down a path of confusion. And that's where we work with a lot of people that come to me and go, ben, I've done this, or I made this mistake, or, you know, I just need help, I don't know what to do, can you help me? That's kind of where we sort of step in and can guide you.

Okay, and so this, what would this be? Why a bitcoin ETF is a, is an attractive proposition relative to actually owning bitcoin yourself? Or.

Yeah.

Am I thinking, is that right? Or I'm just.

Yeah, two options, right? If you want to go, yeah, Ben, I want to go buy Bitcoin tomorrow. What are my options? Well, number one is you go, you sign up to a cryptocurrency exchange, you buy bitcoin. So you deposit Australian dollars, you buy a bitcoin and then you need to store it somewhere. You either store it with the cryptocurrency exchange or you get a wallet and you store it yourself. Right? Yeah, that's what I do. That's what I recommend most people do. But that is ultimately you have to have some sort of knowledge. Right. The other option is you go to your brokerage account and you go and buy a Bitcoin ETF. And that's what's been so big in the US recently? About 9% of the entire Bitcoin supply is now owned by ETFs. And basically the ETF is where you buy a share and that sits in your portfolio and then the ETF provider is buying that bitcoin and storing it on your behalf. So you have to worry about all the storage and custody. Yeah, gotcha.

And did you say there was a. There's a bitcoin ETF here in Australia?

There is, there is, there's a couple. I'm not actually sure what the. The ticker is. I'll have to maybe send that to you later, Gene.

That's okay. I'm just interested. Yeah, yeah.

But there is one. It launched recently. Yeah. In Australia. I think it might be ebtc. I don't know. I have to double check, but yeah, mono. Sorry, monochrome. IBTC. Monochrome is one of the first Bitcoin ETFs, so you should be able to get that in your brokerage account.

Yeah, but the people who come to you, it sounds like you're helping them get set up on their own. And.

Like, it sounds like you've got. I mean, you've got people who are really, you know, keen to learn, keen to. Keen to get into crypto. What's the demographic? I mean, can you.

Yeah, for sure.

Yep.

Really two types of customers we work with. One is.

You know, 50 to 65 that maybe are investing in their SMSF or they have a large amount of funds that they've invested into crypto and they really want to. Wanting to set themselves up for retirement. They need some help just figuring out how to do it. And the other demographic is, you know, 35, 40 years old, have a family, have a business, have large amounts of investments elsewhere, and they might have 500,000, a million dollars. You know, we've got guys right up to 25 million in crypto that have their own businesses and stuff going on, and they need our help and our research and our frameworks to help guide them through the market. Think about exit strategy, risk profile, storage, you know, asset selection. You know, it's. It's like in. It's your own investment, you know, family office for some people. So they need some independent guidance to help. Sure. You know, they don't stuff it up.

Right. And are you, as part of that, are you providing advice on other investments on their whole investment portfolio?

No, no, just. Just cryptocurrency. So we give, we give sort of general frameworks and insights and research and data to help Them make ultimately they still need to make the decision themselves. You know, we're again, back to the regulatory piece, you know, where we're going to be first in line to get a cryptocurrency financial license when we can. That doesn't exist right now because crypto isn't. It isn't seen as a financial product in Australia.

Or commodities aren't. So once that becomes available, we're going to be first in line to get that. But for now, we just give general sort of information and then people make up their mind from there.

Okay. And so do you have the. What is it? The Australian Financial Services License? Afsl.

Yeah, that, that, that's what I mean. We actually can't get one for cryptocurrency.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Because it doesn't fall on. Cryptocurrencies don't fall under that framework. So we had a, we had a meeting with, you know, asic, a private ruling, you know, a while back, and it was just. Unfortunately, they can't provide one because cryptocurrencies don't fall under that. And that's where that regulatory discussion is going on. At some stage, it should fall under something.

Yeah.

And then we'll be able to be able to go and get that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it just looks like a real dereliction of duty on the part of our regulators because, you know, you've got a lot of people interested in it and investing a lot of money. It sounds like it in it. I mean, if you've got people with, what was it, 25 million in crypto or something.

Yeah.

Wow.

And we, you know, from our business model, Gene, like we're purely independent. Right. We charge subscription fees for our information and that's it. Right. You've got others that are charging fees, taking commission on investments, selling investments, getting paid to promote tokens like it is the Wild West. What some of these people are doing, right, and that's completely just unregulated. People just go and do what they want. We don't do any of that because we're genuinely trying to help people. But yeah, we're, we're wanting this to come to the space so people can, you know, be, be more trusting in the information that's out there.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that's a good, a good strategy. And yeah, I mean, it sounds like you need some type of license like that that'd be good if they can develop that. And then particularly if advice can be provided to people about how this sits within the whole portfolio and you know, what other investment opportunities there are out there for people. 100%.

Yeah.

Very good.

I'd like to go on before we wrap up just to, you know, what's happened, what's the state of the market recently? So you mentioned. Well, there's no, I mean you said there's no correlation between crypto and other assets. I'd like to talk about that and just understand what you mean there. I mean, because there was a bit of a sell off, wasn't there when we had the recent sell off in, you know, the S and P and.

Yep. So like how do you think about that, that correlation to Clarity.

To clarify, the, the price is, is definitely still correlated right now. Like in terms of like when the stock market sell offs, you know, there's definitely correlation with Bitcoin. To clarify in terms of like where I think It'll be in five or 10 years time. I definitely see bitcoin as a, as not being correlated with the stock market. But yeah, what we saw over the last few days with you know, know the recession fears and then Japan selling off and you know, that, that carry trade idea that's been going on where people are borrowing money in Japan for zero interest and you know, buying assets in the, in, in, in the States and then Japan increased the interest rates and all of a sudden everyone gets sort of margin called that found its way into crypto. And then, you know, one of the, one of the fascinating things, Gene, is what happened on the weekend was that if you've got a margin call on a weekend where you can't go and just withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars from your account, it takes 1, 2, 3 days from your banking.

Yeah.

You know, position. Right. Crypto is liquid 24 7. So people need money and they've got liquidity in crypto. You can go, just pull that out tomorrow. Right. You need $10 million tomorrow. You can get that within a second. Right. If you have those, those assets, if you want to withdraw 10 million out of your brokerage account. Oh my goodness. Right. You got to call someone out. They're going to want to know where it's going. Why is it, why are you doing that? It's going to take multiple days to, to get approval. So what we saw was people need liquidity. They go to crypto. Crypto sold off. There's a lot of margin calls. Then what happens is the long, the long trade is in crypto got liquidated, the price just dumped. And then that was on our Monday and by Tuesday Japan had sort of, and the Futures market had corrected. Looks like they're starting to get the money printers going again. And then crypto sort of bounced. I think Bitcoin's up 10 or 12%, Ethereum's up 6 or 7% overnight. So it was one of those real technical sell off events, fundamentally. Nothing wrong with the asset class, but that's what I mean. With the volatility of crypto, things can happen. You're down 20% one day and up 10% the next day. It's pretty wild.

Yeah. So you've got to be prepared for that and that's part of what your education is. So it's the. Yeah. I should note we're recording this on the 7th of August in Australia and yeah, I'm always loathe to talk, I'm always reluctant to talk too much about, you know, what's happening in the market at the moment because things can, you know, things can change and by the time you put a, the podcast episode out, things can be completely different. But I thought I'd ask you about that. Yeah. Now it sounds like, it sounds like you've got a good little business there and you're helping people because there's certainly an interest in crypto and I think it sounds like you're coming from the right place. Is there anything else? I mean, what sort of, what are you focused on at the moment in the crypto market? What exciting things are you seeing, Ben?

Yeah, that's a good question, Gene. I mean, I primarily focus on just building my portfolio of those more blue, blue chip, quote unquote, blue chip assets, Bitcoin, Ethereum. I'm a very big believer in decentralized finance or DeFi, the idea where you can take out loans, earn interest on your money without the need of a bank and then you can buy those underlying.

Tokens that support that project and you can earn the fees and interest from the lenders and the people putting up their capital. So Defi is a big place for me. I'm pretty heavily invested into that. A lot of that DEFI activity is built on Ethereum. I'm a very big believer in Ethereum. And then you've got other, you know, different things going on, whether it be web3 gaming, whether it be, you know, different blockchains. There's a lot going on in the crypto space. Yeah, sometimes I think that, you know, and I talk about this a lot. There's, there's a million solutions fighting for about five, five problems that, you know, that actually need to be sold. And I think for A lot of people, you know, that follow my content online. It's a bit of a breath of fresh air because you listen to a lot of crypto people and it's just. It's up only. Right. It's never going down. Everything's amazing. Well, reality is, it's not. And there's a lot of crap in the crypto space.

Yeah.

Pretty honest about that and calling it out. So, yeah, lots going on. But for me, bitcoin is just. Bitcoin and property, for me are the two assets that really, I think, are going to be the best performers over the next few years.

You're talking in Australia or. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, bitcoin internationally. Oh, sorry, yeah.

Australia for property and then bitcoin internationally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha. Okay. So where can people follow you is the best place to follow you? On YouTube.

Yeah, YouTube. If you like video content, just go to Ben Simpson on YouTube. If you're on Instagram, I put up and like shorter form content. I put content up on Instagram. I always have my own crypto podcast called Ben and Bergs. If you like podcast.

Yeah.

And then we also do a newsletter as well. So if you like email, you can head over to Collective Shift. There's a newsletter button at the top and we send like a weekly, weekly digest of what's going on. So depending on the medium, I'm pretty much on all of them.

I better make sure I subscribe to that. I don't think I have. Sorry about that. That's it. That sounds like the sort of. Sort of thing I should subscribe to. And was it Bennenberg?

Did you say Ben and Bergs? Yeah. B E R G S. Okay. That's our podcast. So we do two episodes a week on crypto. And again, it's really. No, no nonsense. No, no, no bullshit, as we'd like to call it. Just sort of giving you what you need to know.

Oh, that's good. I like that. Your final question. It just occurred to me with this defi. With the decentralized finance. Finance, how disruptive could that be to the traditional banks, to the big four banks in Australia here, for example? I mean, is this something that they should be. They should be concerned about?

Yeah, I don't think it'll ever take over the bank stream. Like, I think the reality is that, you know, you look at the big four banks, that they're probably the biggest companies in Australia. Right. You know, I don't think a lot of people are going to turn away from this because you need Some level of skill set with Defi, but I believe it's a better model where you're not paying the middle person.

You know, look how much money Combank and Anz are making. Like it's obscene, right? They make all these fees and it goes to shareholders and you know, I understand business is business but you know, with a decentralized model there is no middleman. You don't have to pay some person in the middle just because they were there. All that money and value can stay within, you know, a peer to peer environment and you know, those things already existing. I can take out a loan tomorrow. I can basically take my bitcoin and I can go and take a collateralized loan out so I can go and put up, let's say $10,000 of Bitcoin and I can lend out against that bitcoin as a collateralized loan so I don't have to sell my bitcoin and I can cash flow it without selling it. And that idea I think is only going to continue to grow where people can stay within the crypto ecosystem and not have to go to banks to go and to finance different activities, loans, mortgages, whatever it might be. So yeah, I think it's very disruptive. How long is it going to take to disrupt? Who knows. But yeah, I like that space.

Right. And now there's some good companies here in Australia or are they mainly in the US doing this?

Yeah, there's, there's one or two in Australia. We work with a company called Block Earner. They're not purely defi, they're more of just a lending company. A pure defi company that I'm invested in that's in from Australia is called Maple, Maple Finance. Oh yeah, and Maple. And yeah, they're probably one of the largest defi providers in the space. Founded out of Sydney. So yeah, a pretty cool project you can go check out as well.

Good one. Okay, Ben, this has been terrific. Anything else before we wrap up?

No, that's it mate. Thanks so much for having me, Gene. And yeah, if anyone wants some, some help, we also do some free, like just a free 30 minute call. If you're thinking about getting into crypto or you need some help, you can jump on a call with one of our team and we can help you out. Just head over to our website which is just Google Collective Shift and yeah, we'll see how we can help.

Yeah, yeah, that's terrific. I mean it, it sounds like yeah, you're coming from the right place. And my, my next door neighbor at Watso in, in Brisbane, Thomas, he's well aware of you, so he's. He gives you the big tick of approval. So. Well, I'll. I'll put links in the show notes to you, all the. To your. To your website and to your podcast and YouTube. Ben, this has been terrific. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Thanks, Jane. Thanks for having me, man.