224. How I Would Invest $650k In Crypto Today

Welcome back to another episode of the bennetbergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift, alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and COO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus, get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. And quick disclaimer, we do not provide financial advice on this podcast or a Collective Shift. Everything we give out is general in nature. So please make sure you you check with your own financial advisor. We obviously don't know everything about you. So today this episode is off the back of a platinum one on one I had recently where it was essentially some sort of strategy and insights around deploying $650,000 in cash in the market. And I thought it was an interesting conversation we had and I wanted to share back on this podcast the way I would think about deploying $650,000 in crypto today because it's an interesting conversation, right? Because, you know, essentially this money came from this client, from a property he sold. He's got, I think he had a bunch of properties, maybe seven or eight properties, a heap of cash. He's already got a good chunk of crypto, but this amount of cash would completely trump the existing portfolio he's got, right? So if he bought a bunch of Bitcoin back at 60,000, let's say Bitcoin, and he's about to deploy all this cash, his buy price is going to be elevated right up to sort of that 80, 90, $100,000 level. So it's a bit of a unique circumstance. But I thought today burgs maybe it'd be a cool little episode to talk about how we would deploy that amount of cash in the market today. And I guess you could, you know, you could adjust this based on, you know, relevance to you guys who are listening at home. But it's an interesting conversation and I love these sort of more trickier case studies because it always makes you think when you've got so much cash to deploy, how would you do it? Where would you put it, in what time frame? Especially when the market's been performing so well.

And this is great. And in the background here, you know, Ben will help the people with their goals, what they want to achieve, their time frames. And then we're Collective Shift. We know the different coins, the generally what they've returned in the past, how risky they are, and we can help them with a strategy. And this is a. You're right, this is a brilliant case study because we can actually see the thought process that goes into this, into how you would deploy this capital, what this person kind of wanted and the general principles behind it. So they can then take that away and they can go and make their investment decisions with that new knowledge of the market.

Yeah, yeah, spot on, mate. And the market has rallied a lot, you know, over the last six or seven weeks. We, or even eight weeks, we've essentially seen just upwards trajectory on, on crypto. So it's kind of hard to, you know, be in a psychological position, to think that you're getting in good prices, especially when bitcoin's at all time high and some alts really outperforming. So, I mean, the first thing I think about as a starting point is obviously where, like, you know, where your existing portfolio is at. So, you know, what, what do you currently have? What are you exposed to? What are you not exposed to? Because I find a lot of people don't even know what they have and particularly what sectors they have exposure to.

Bro, do you remember you went into the City, into a platinum member's office and sat in their boardroom and just gathering where they had their different crypto, like one exchange, one wallet, one here, one there, and they plugged it into our dashboard to see what they had, percentages and sectors and they were like, oh, that's what that actually looks like.

No, totally, totally. And honestly, the dashboard that we build is so, so insightful in my opinion, because not only do you look at the percentage allocation of each asset, but also the sectors that you've got. And that's where a lot of people don't understand. Like, I spoke to a lady the other day that had, you know, 40, 40% in eth and then also, you know, 20% in layer twos. So she's essentially got 60% exposure to eth. She never know.

So people don't do this auditing and generally the only time they would ever do it is when they' their tax and their accountant will prepare it for them. And that's the tail wagging the dog. You need to make sure you know how you're allocated before you start. Go through all those tax things and then take tax into consideration before all of that.

Yeah, yeah, bang on. So understanding what you have is the first step of any strategy and then understanding where and what sectors you want to have some exposure to. And I always look at, you know, what are your goals? So starting at the End in mind and then reverse engineering and you know, we help time poor people. We don't help traders. We're not for people that are trying to make a million bucks overnight, you know, with some crazy 100x meme coin. That's not us. We help investors that are really wanting to build long term sustainable wealth and that comes from having a quality plan. So looking at the end in mind in reverse engineering. So this person, you know, is basically, you know, he's pretty wealthy already. So looking at long term, looking at asset growth and basically trying to set himself up for retirement. So for me that always starts with bitcoin and looking at trying to stack as much bitcoin as you can. That's my strategy. You know, I look to use property to cash flow over a long period of time, getting those properties into positively geared and use that for income. And then crypto or bitcoin specifically for capital growth is the way I think about it because unfortunately for a lot of people, they want to try and get to a point where they can retire or, you know, reduce the hours of work. And that's great. But crypto doesn't generate cash. It's not a cash producing asset. Uh, you can, you know, stake your assets and earn a yield, but then you're, you're earning those rewards in a token that's just as volatile, which isn't helpful for income.

And people don't really think through this. They're like, oh, I invest, it goes up, I make more money. But why are you investing and what stage of life are you in if you're near retirement and you want an income stream or you want a dividend and you want lower risk? Well, you need to know how crypto operates. You need to know the cycles of crypto and you need to know, hey, this might be going down for two or three years and if you're reliant on that for income, you need to take that into consideration, appreciate those risks before you choose your asset class.

Yeah, yeah, bang on, bang on. So once you've got that in mind, you can understand what allocation you might want to have and then what risk appetite you want to have. And for me again, it always starts with Bitcoin. And you know, beyond that, trying to get a good sack of bitcoin because then you're not worried about too, too much short term, you know, volatility or focus. So why do you invest in altcoins? We invest in altcoins to try and grow and outperform Bitcoin so you can buy More bitcoin. If you're holding altcoins and not, not outperforming bitcoin, it's a complete waste of time. And the reality is most of the market up into this point has underperformed bitcoin outside of a few assets. And we've been really good this cycle so far in picking some really, you know, cracking ones, whether it be, you know, Sui hype syrup to name a few, have all outperformed. But a lot of the market is underperforming. So trying to stick with majority bitcoin and then looking at other sectors around the outside is how I look at it. So whether it be layer ones, defi are probably the two majors I'm looking at at the moment. And then you've obviously got some other broader sectors like you know, AI if you want some memes, if you want, you know, different other sectors, you know, whether you want to go out and look at other layer ones outside of the sort of next gen ones you've got eth obviously they're the sort of, I guess the most common sectors we're looking at at the moment. But you know, you don't want to get too, too complex. And this is where long term investors go wrong is they start to add more and more and more coins and end up with this complex crazy crypto portfolio with shit everywhere and that becomes infinitely harder to sell.

Why is this? I find that and I am a sucker for this and I've been very strict myself the last year, but I am a sucker for complexity. It feels like I've studied something, I know it better than anyone, I can put my money into that and I've earned it because I've put the hours in and I've done all of the work. In reality I'm just complicating my portfolio and it's happened cycle after cycle where I've returned less gains than if I just held a few really high quality coins.

Totally. It's where everyone goes wrong. And, and we looked at some research recently to look at previous cycles. What altcoins outperform the market and one of the clearest, I guess, consistent indicators are those assets, the altcoins that bounce the hardest off the bottom and outperform bitcoin early in a bull market, tend to keep outperforming. It's a consistent pattern, but most people actually get that wrong. What they do and what they think is once the coins move, they think they missed the boat and then they start to look at other assets and they joe chasing other coins. But the reality is the early.

Assets, they outperform continue on. And that's why our members are doing so well, is because through the research, through the infinite noises in this space, if you can actually look at some of the data, it shows that these assets will most likely continue to perform well. And they have done so far. So that's basically been, you know, the conversations we're having when deploying cash is, is follow the assets that are doing well and stack a lot of bitcoin.

I saw Simon post this in our Slack a couple of days ago and the gist of it was strength begets strength, where something is really moving and people will think, okay, it's rotating, I'll go down the stack and I'll pick the next one. But the one that is moving gains more and more momentum, and the gains are just astronomical.

Yeah. So, so crazy. And, and, and that is literally the strategy. Right. So I'd start with bitcoin. Bitcoin is the best asset in my opinion on the planet. It's combating at 40% annually over the last 10 years, plus or minus volatility. Amazing returns, will continue to do some great returns, in my opinion, over the next five to 10 years. Probably going to be the hundreds of thousands. There's going to be bear markets, there's going to be a number of corrections. It's never just straight up to the right. There's always going to be a lot of volatility. But that's where I'd start with my cash. If I was going to deploy, I'd have a large percent that is more than 50% at least, and then allocate the rest into high conviction sectors and altcoins that are already showing strength. So for me, ETH is starting to do well. SUI is doing well. There's Solana syrup hype, just to name a few. They're the ones that we're sort of actively tracking and investing pretty heavily in. But in terms of timing and how I deploy that cash, it would be a dollar cost averaging strategy. I always looked at dollar cost average. I split my investments usually into three into thirds and then deploy over a period of time. And you can look out months, you can do weeks, you can do days, but I try and split that over a period of time. So you're getting the average buy price. You know, a lot of things you cannot predict in crypto. There's things that happen. There's, you know, right now there's obviously the conflict overseas, which is, which is impacting markets. There's tariff News, there's all sorts of stuff that impact markets that you can't predict. So that's why you always look to try and do it over a period of time rather than all at once. Because you can.

Yeah, and just get the average price rather than trying to pick the absolute bottom or being unlucky and picking the absolute top. Get that chunk in the middle and that's how you succeed.

Yeah, yeah, Bang on. And yeah, I think the, the other one I would just recommend is holding a good chunk of cash. And I think you're really good at this, burgs, you know, holding that. You know, I won't call it an emergency fund, that's probably more for lifestyle. But your crypto deployment, you know, investment cash, I like to think about having cash on the sidelines to give you flexibility because when you do get those corrections or you do get the deeper bear markets or an opportunity arises and you don't have cash, you're restricted by what you can do with that with your portfolio. So when having a bunch of cash to deploy, I always try and keep 10, 20% sideline for a rainy day.

Absolutely. Because so many opportunities appear and they happen quickly in crypto and, and not being fully deployed and just having cash flow, whether you have a business or a job or other investments that throw off dividends, keep that aside because you always want to have some dry powder to deploy. You know, you can always set up your dollar cost averaging, your direct debits, everything like that. But sometimes there's an amazing opportunity. There's no worse feeling than spending years in this game and understanding the markets, then seeing that opportunity you've been waiting for and you don't have money to deploy. And this might also be that, hey, I might have the money in my bank, but I can't get it to my exchange. Or, you know, there's, there's a problem where it takes two days and I need it now. So thinking about the money that you have and where it actually sits to deploy for these opportunities is very important too.

Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And crypto is volatile. And as I mentioned, there will be more corrections. You know, in the last bull market, Bitcoin had 12 plus put pullbacks of over 10%. You know, recently April, Bitcoin went down 35%. Most altcoins were down 50 to 70%. And that's very normal in crypto. You know, people forget about that. It wasn't that long ago bitcoin was at, you know, looking at 80, 80,000, 70,000. Ethereum was at 1700 Solana got down to $92. That was only a couple of months ago and that seems like a lifetime ago.

Yeah, three, three or so years ago when I was in Melbourne with you, I remember bitcoin was around like 20k, something like that. Like it was really tanking and now we think it's very expensive and it's like, geez, you just wait until 2030, which is under five years away folks. 2034 and a bit years. If you think bitcoin is expensive now, you just wait.

Crazy. I totally agree. And, and I think that's a good reminder is to try not to time the market perfectly. It is very hard to do. Most of you that listen to this podcast are not traders. We don't do content for traders. Trading is very hard in crypto and trying to time the markets is very difficult, you know, so buying dips, focus on strong performing assets, accumulate and don't get emotional. Is going to outperform anyone trying to time the market as it just creates stress. Poor decisions does a lot of things that can really impact, you know, I guess the overall.

Performance of your portfolio and also your health in to be honest.

That's the thing like the true cost of anything is how much life you give up for it. And life can be things like stress, sleepless nights, arguments with your partner and all of this is there's a process and a methodology behind it. This is Ben, myself, our entire team, even from all the Platinums that.

We work with and pro members, all of our members, over a series of years, multiple market cycles. All of these lessons are deployed into the seven step strategy that we guide you through. So you have a much, much higher chance of success doing it in a very structured way rather than just what you know and what you feel.

Yeah, totally. And, and the seven step strategy process is that process that we take everyone through. It's a proven process. It allows you to simplify everything. And every call I have with Platinums now is just that. Oh wow, that was just so helpful. So clarifying. I feel so calm, I feel confident.

I feel relieved is what they say in the group. They're just like, I was actually able to let go of that thing that wasn't working or I now understand where I'm at and where I want to go.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's quite fascinating once you go through the process, how easy it becomes, especially if you've round tripped a cycle and you've, you've seen your assets come and go and you're stressed, you're concerned you're going to do it again. It's overwhelming. You don't have time to sit down and have these sessions. I find is super, super helpful. And there was a platinum member that replied.

Yeah, they put in the, in the, in the platinum group yesterday. How she had this, I won't mention her name but she put this in the Platinum WhatsApp chat. Yes, I had my one on one strategy yesterday. I got so much out of it. Most importantly, I have renewed enthusiasm for my crypto investing and conviction about the upside ahead. Thank you so much Ben and group. What an awesome journey we have ahead. And that is just encompassing of someone that's been in crypto round trip, super stressed to have a bunch of money in there and now actually have a proper plan to denial it.

Well, this is it. Because we get stressed, we're in our own heads and we think about our portfolios and what collective shift brings in with the analysts and you, Ben, is the macro environment where crypto is heading and all of the data to back that up. And it's a very calming feeling that you're still on the right path. You just need to make a few adjustments to align with your goals and have a higher chance of achieving them.

Exactly, exactly. And that seven step strategy process is the, is the first step. So you actually get that I think on our website for free. Or maybe it's a member thing. I should actually.

Yeah, yeah, we've got it for free on our website.

Go and check it out. But yeah, that's, that's how I think about deploying bugs. And I think, you know, it obviously changes strategy in crypto. It's fluid. This is not a static thing. In time this will change. But you know, flexibility, bitcoin, back to high conviction assets that performing well and keeps in cash is sort of the core principles in my opinion.

Exactly. And it depends on your goals too. So this person with 650k in 2 or 3 years, if they wanted to get to a million, then they're going for the kind of lower risk stuff. If they wanted to triple it, then you're like, well that's a lot more risk. There's a high chance of failure. But these are the kind of ones you can look at or if they want moonshots or if they want half, half. And it really depends on that individual's goals. And then we come in and we help you with these are the different asset classes and how they work.

Bang on. Amazing. Well, thank you so much folks for listening. Hopefully enjoyed that. If you have a friend or family member that has $650,000 in cash to invest, you might be able to share them this one or just generally anyone that's looking to invest and need some, you know, some support and education around how to structure a portfolio, hopefully this might help them out. So we'd love for you to share with a friend and family member.

Exactly right. And this is not just 650 is a big number. This could be a thousand dollars and you would still apply the same principle. So don't feel like this is out of your reach and it's not for you. There's a lot of free stuff on our website too, and these are the principles that we want all crypto people to know so they can succeed too.

Yeah, spot on. And I'm going to just leave you all with a reminder that I gave our platinum members last week. Think in six to 12 month windows, not six days. You're an investor, not a trader. 99% of traders lose money. You don't. You just don't see them. Create content about their losses. Stay the course, don't split hairs and get in the market.

So good, mate. Love the refrain.

Thank you so much folks. Please leave us a follow on your favorite podcasting app or subscribe on YouTube and we'd love to. Yeah, as I said, reach out and share with a friend. If you can tell we grow the podcast and we'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks, champions.