4. What's Going On In Crypto Right Now? + How To Invest In This Bear Market

Foreign.

Episode 4 with the Bennetberg show where we talk about crypto, sport, investing, life, memes, food and whatever else comes to mind. Bergs, another epic episode today. We spoke about inflation, why bitcoin is important, how to invest in the upcoming recession. Bergs and I walk you through our personal strategies around an upcoming recession. How to invest, entrepreneur life, how to basically make shit happen and you know, whether you're a younger guy, you're you know, middle age, older guy, whatever. We give you sort of the walkthrough and how we're approaching this upcoming bear market. We also talk about the craziest month of crypto probably ever on history. So much random crazy shit happened. We walk you through everything to know. Wild week, wild month. Bergs, anything else I missed? It was a pretty good episode, mate.

We got Meme of the Week which is absolutely cracking lovely. And I even backed it up with it with a second meme this week just for you guys. And we've also got a new segment, Meal of the Week. You're gonna enjoy that one as well as Ben antics in the States and.

And make sure you, you're right about halfway through where Berg says he only eats tens, which is going to be interesting. Have a listen to that. That's pretty funny. Make sure you stick to the end. We went deep at the end. I'm gonna get started.

That's gonna be clipped up right.

Enjoy guys. Bye bye.

There really is. Stick around till the end. That was the best part.

Thanks guys. Bye bye.

See ya.

That's what I like about recording in the US man. I get to, I get. I'm on the seltzers and you're on the. What do you want? You're on the coffees.

So I have a coffee when I wake up, right? Because I've got to wake up instantly have a coffee. It's my little ritual, you know, get ready, do all that kind of stuff and then I don't know, don't feel like a second coffee. But I get on the tea. I'd love to crack a beer or a wine. But then everyone be like, oh, it's 9:00am and you're drinking, you're a high functioning alcoholic and that'll just be the end of it. And you're over there, you're sucking down the bloody. What are you, what are you on, mate? What are you having, man?

I'm, I'm on the White Claws, Hard Celsius. I'm on the Surge. So yeah, just rotate up to the 8% alcohol because I'm A. Because I'm a mad dog from the 5% of the 8.

It's the founder life, mate. You have to drink if you're a founder just to cope. You're on White Claws. So are you going to change your name to Kyle and then start punching holes in drywall? Like, what are you doing, mate?

Do the founder Life is literally fourth of July weekend. Spent the whole day at a cafe just grinding out, like, you know, emails and, like, trying to raise capital.

So I'm calling on you. We had the pod booked from yesterday, right? And I get this message. He's like, oh, mate, I'm at a picnic. And I'm like, yeah, cool, we doing the pod? And you're like, oh, I've got to do it two hours later. And in my head I'm like, man, he's probably 50 beers deep. There's no way he's doing the pod. This is just not going to happen. And you're like, oh, man, could we just do it tomorrow?

How was it? How was 4th of July, mate? Your first 4th of July. How was it?

I was busy. I was flat out, man. I had so much to do today. I literally just went to the cafe. So last night we. Because today's fourth of July. It's fifth of July where you are. So today's Fourth of July. Basically worked all day yesterday, had the picnic, which was cool. Caught up with some buddies. Aman and the crew were there. And then I was coming up to our pod and the guys were going out for drinks. I was like, okay, like, let's push the pod back. Got home, had some tacos, had a beer, but I was like, no. So I pulled out. I didn't even go to the drinks. I was like, nah, man, I'm out. So long story short, I moved the.

Pod and just went, yeah, fair enough, mate. Just call it. You got to be on for the pod, mate. You got to enjoy it. It doesn't have to. It can't be a chore. Like, we've got. We talked about this, about our metrics for the pod. And people go deep and they're like, how many listeners do we have? What's the duration? What's this? What's that? We've got one metric. Are we having fun? Yes. No. That's it. Done.

Yes or no? Yes or no?

I'm having fun just looking at your head, mate. Look at that hat. You got backwards. You style and you go full America. Look at that haircut.

So I played golf. I played golf the other day. Love it And I didn't have anything. So I wore my Hawaiian, Hawaiian, like, collared shirt, rolled up, bought a hat, had to hire clubs, hire the car. Just like, rolled up with nothing. Met some guys on the course, a couple of guys from Mexico, guy from don't know where, and cleaned them up, man. I actually hit him real well. I hit a. I hit a. First two holes are real scratchy. Hit like a 40, 48, which isn't that great for nine holes, but it was good for me.

What was pop.

And there's probably like, I don't know, like 38. Probably hit like a 10 over. So there's a course over the back here, just where I'm staying. And it's so beautiful here, man. It's like 28 degrees. Sun's out. It's like Friday afternoon.

Amazing.

Can't go wrong.

So good. So a year. So I played golf a couple times. Pretty average. Pretty average. Almost got a hole in one, which is just sensational. Like, these pros were like, well, pros. Guys that had their own clubs were behind us. And it's just. Just luck of the draw, mate. And they're like, oh, man, how long have you been playing? Ask me all this question. I'm like, bruh, it's my first time.

I was gonna try and lead him on, but I know zero golf terms. So you reckon golf's gonna be a thing for you? Do you reckon you're gonna do it for a long time, mate?

Okay, so first of all, golf is the most frustrating sport on the planet. Like, I've played. I've played a lot of sports, and golf is the most frustrating sport. However, for me, it's such a great outlet because you go out and you pick up the club and you just remember how bad you are at golf. And for, like, three hours or six hours, you just fixated on trying to hit the fucking ball in the hole, right? And it's such a good. Like, you're out in nature, maybe had a couple of beers, you're sort of with a couple of buddies. It's a great, like, for me, getting outside of, like, away from work. Put the laptop down and just go out and play. It's hard to go sometimes. You're always so busy when you get out there, man. It's just like, no matter if you're playing good or bad, it's just such a. It's a good environment to be in. I feel like it's a great de.

Stress. It's interesting because, you know, you're there for a certain Period of time. And it's very humbling because you're just not good at it and you're kind of disconnected. You're out in nature. It's a good deal.

It's really good, man. But yeah, I'm trying to, you know, over here, you know, riding solar now, like in the us I don't know many people. So on Saturday night, it's fourth of July weekend, right? I'm like, okay, what I'm gonna do, because it's like, weekends roll around, you know, there's only so much work you can do. You're like, right, I've need a break. So we sign up for a club, club tour. So. So, like a club crawl. So back in Australia, like a pub crawl, right? 35 bucks.

And you show up at this place called American Junkie at 9:00'. Clock. That's all I know, right? They take you to three clubs, 35 bucks. I'm like, okay, fuck it. Six o' clock rolls around. I'm like, oh, do I really want to do this? I'm not gonna know anyone. You know, those, like, the sort of insecurities come up.

You're like, oh, yeah, try and, try and talk yourself out of it.

God, I'm gonna be so weird. It had a couple of beers, went down the pub, had a. Had chicken burger. Oh, we gotta do chicken burger. The meal of the week. Anyway, we'll get to that. Nine o' clock kicks off and it's on. There's like a hundred people to this club crawl. I'm wearing like, you know, usa, like, necklace. I'm wearing like the red, blue and white. I meet this buddy at the. At the bar. He's in the Gulf, he's my age, moved here from like Minnesota or some. We hit it off. All of a sudden, shots of shots are rolling. We go to this club or this bar and they got the bull, they got the big, like, mechanical ball. So it's like 10 o'.

Clock.

I'm like, I'm not doing that ball. He's like, we're doing the ball, like, right, we're doing the ball.

Get on this mechanical ball and it's like, you know, one hand on you, got the arm up in the air. You're like riding this ball and everyone's packed. Everyone's like cheering you on, like, screaming at you. It was so much fun.

He.

He showed me around, went to like three or four clubs. It was good fun. Like, didn't know anyone met this guy. And yeah, it's good fun when you're riding solo, like traveling solo. It's a whole new, I think I mentioned this last time, like just a whole new way of doing things. You just, you have to put yourself in uncomfortable positions. You have to put yourself out there, you meet people. It's really uncomfortable. If you're like me, a bit of an introvert. It's sort of kind of awkward, but then, you know, you just get the juice of stuff flowing. You meet someone cool and then off you go.

Yeah. And you get amongst it, you make new mates, build new experiences. It's awesome.

So good, man. All right, jumping into Meme of the Week. And we've gone high tech. So high tech our YouTube guys couldn't get it going last week, so I'm going to share my screen. All right, we've got Meme of the Week.

And since it's winter and I've got seasonal depression, we're getting to some depressive memes. Here we go. All right, so this is me.

Listening. There's this poor little black and white dude just sitting in the corner smiling. And it says, when you clean your room so good, the only trash left is you.

It is so good. It's got those beautiful bear market feels. It's amazing. And then so I got this meme and my mate sends me another one and he just backs it up with this.

And this is a picture of Oscar the Grouch with sunnies on. Just because you're trash doesn't mean you can't do great things. It's called a game. Garbage can. Not garbage cannot. So good. Absolutely love it. So good. So my mate, he's just, he's. He's a software developer so, you know, he's full of depression and rage. He's going to print this out and put it on his wall and he'd be like, just remember, you can do the thing.

So good. So good. Love it. There we go.

I love me the week. We're going to be sharing some memes in our, in our Discord burgers. Then we've got the Discord channel going up. There's been a bit of action there this week, so fire off your, your memes and bergs, Chief Meme Officer. So if you've got some good memes.

For the week, cmo, that's a. That's the dream job, mate. Oh, mate, could you imagine that? Chief of an officer. Oh, I don't think I'd find a better calling in the world than just punching out memes all day long. I'm pretty sure that's Roasting people.

Pretty sure that's all you do. Anyway, the only worker. Yeah, Pretty much posting the meme chat.

Oh, it's just our works, like, mate all the time. Like, just about that life. Oh, and bloody hell. Okay, so we've got. We've got a bit of a hashtag going, so. From Ben's mates. So, you know, we've had this. We've had this consistent thing where I've been stitched up on the YouTube tiles habitually, right? Like, they are just horrendous. So I posted them in our. In our discord. If you want to find that, just go to benumbergs.com all spelled out. All right, so. And then, okay, we've got episode three. I'm like, great, Episode three. So this is what they do. They're like, oh. I'm like, cool. That's a really nice black and white photo. Ben's there. It's pretty awesome. And I look a little bit closer and I'm like, oh, geez, look at that head. And like, look at this, right? Look at, look at that. I look like I punched the fattest cone before the show. My eyes are so low. I'm like.

I just want some cookies. I look so stoned. And then, so I post this on. This is on Facebook, right? And I'm like, stitched up again. I look so stoned. And one of our friends, she's like the nicest girl in the world. She's amazing. And she's like, bergs, man. She's like. I thought was a great photo until you said that and now I can't unsee it. You look so stoned. So thanks again. See that anonymous YouTube person that stitches me up. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

She genuinely thought, oh, that was a good photo until you zoomed in and you look like.

You look like you're just like half asleep.

You brought.

You rolled a fat joint and you.

Oh, mate, it's habitually stitched up. At least it's slowly getting better. Like, they're not like horrendous faces. It's like slightly, slightly better. Maybe one day I'll just have a good face, you know?

Jeez, we do have that. We've got that.

We've got that Twitter trending hashtag, pray for burgs, which my brother, Shout Out James, has started a trend on Twitter for pray for burgs. He said to me, he said, I don't think that face can be fixed, but we'll start a trend. Oh, moisturizer can't fix that.

The Driest head.

So.

So first Ben sends me this message and he's like, he tells his brother to listen to the podcast. He's like, I listen to 10 minutes. Why am I listening to this? I don't have to listen to you, just give me.

And then he's like, so he watched the, he watched the YouTube video. He's like, I listen to 10 minutes. I don't look at your head. We got a podcast. Like, okay, I'll listen to the podcast. You want to look at our face.

So good. And then he's like, pray for burgs. Like, so apparently I'm like trending. They're going to get me new. Like, okay, look, can't get a new face. Too expensive. As much as I would like one. Let's just get a half decent YouTube guy or like suffer if you're, if you're decent at this kind of stuff, you can just chop my head up, make a tile, put in our discord. Let's go. We're hiring mate.

Mate.

Oh, dear. We need to hire mate. Jesus. All right, we also have a new segment. Mate. Should we do the new segment now?

New segment. Let's do the new segment.

All right. Do you want to go first or. I'll go first.

Yeah. Should I. I'll go first. I'll go first. Because I feel as though I've.

Just to be clear, there's only one meal I'm going to be reviewing each week and that's a chicken burger. So I feel as though.

We'Ve got a new segment called meal of the week, where basically we're going to be showing you a meal that we've made, cooked, bought, style, whatever, and we're gonna, we're gonna review it. So I, I am, if you haven't noticed already, a huge chicken burger fan. And so I'm gonna be reviewing this week a chicken burger from the American junkie San Diego. And then burgers you can go. So I'm gonna share my screen here. Let's get a photo up with this chicken burger. So can you see that? Burgers coming out. Okay, so for those of you at home, when I describe it, basically we had the tray come out, we're at a pub, you know, had a San Diego craft beer, and we, we come out with a brioche bun. We've got a chicken sort of, I don't know, breast, thigh. I'm not sure what it is. It's quite small in size. So I'm actually already slightly disappointed because if you're not seeing at the back of the burger there's actually just all bun, right? So you've got about four bites and you're out of chicken and it's all bun. So first of all, points degrade for that cheese is a little bit like, American. American love their cheese. Sort of a little bit oversaturated, kind of gross. It's like really greasy cheese. And then you've got their maple bacon, which I'm not a huge fan of because it's kind of thin. It's overly maple. Like, overly. Like it's too sweet. Yeah, too sweet. It sits in maple. Like, it's just kind of gross. Lettuce is an up. So it's fresh lettuce. You see the big dirty slice of tomato that they added that I took out on the back there? And they also wanted to add pickles, but I told them to fucking get that shit out of here. So look, overall, I'm gonna give this like a six. It wasn't great. The chicken was well cooked, but again, it wasn't big enough for the bun. Like, you can't have chicken that's half the size of the bun. Like, seriously, like, you know, I know we're in a recession, but fuck, Christ. Like, give us. Give us a break. You know, Chips. Chips are okay. But we're gonna come in at a six for American junkie Santa Airbergs. It wasn't great. Not gonna lie.

I reckon a six is generous to that, mate. It looks like small, overly sourced. They got your order wrong. I'm surprised you didn't take that tomato and throw it against the window and just rage out. But you're a generous lad. You're very, very generous man.

All right, what do you got for us?

So I don't have a chicken burger this week. I might have next week, but here we go. All right, so this is my meal of the week. So. Oh. So my number one food is Malaysian food all day, every day. Down my face. Let's go, son. Like any type of Malaysian food, you give me some noodles, you give me aluxa, you give me any type of, like, curry. Oh, man, it's on. All right, so this is from Hawker place in Perth. I forget the name of it, but there's like a lovely Malaysian lady there. Amazing. So this is just delicious. This is one of my go to meals. So on the right we've got beef rendang, which is just amazing. Kind of like beef curry type thing. The beef just falls apart. Giant chunks, just absolutely delicious. Packed with flavor and spices at the front We've got lemak, coconut cabbage. So this is cabbage that's cooked with a bit of, like. How to describe, like, a really coconutty, awesome flavor. And it just makes you feel so good. On the left, we've got eggplant that's just cooked in, like. It's just big chunks of eggplant stewed down, and it's cooked with, like, chili and all these sort of spices. And at the back you've got nasi lemak rice, which has got, like, pandan inside, which is like that green leaf. That awesome flavor. All of this stuff combined together is absolutely insane. Like, this is banging, lad. This is a 10 out of 10, son. I eat this all the time. It is amazing. It is my go to 10 out of 10.

You can't mate, when you come to the first episode.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Oh, lab mate. I only eat tens. I don't go around eating sixes, so. Gee, that's. That's gonna get cut up.

That's a horrendous guy. That's gonna be clipped. Do we put that up?

So meal of the week. I've eaten banging meals last week. Pick this one. There we go. Next week I'm gonna do. I'm gonna grab a chicken burger so we can both review a chicken burger and we'll see how we go.

Excited in your first pod burger. He only eats tens.

Oh, I'm gonna get slaughtered for the rest of my life. At least I didn't say I only eat once. Look, let's be grateful for small mercies.

Oh, I love that.

I love that segment. That's a good segment.

I love that. I love that. Yeah, let's keep it, mate. I love it. All right, so. So we've. We've done. We did the five minutes of prep here. So, Ben, we've got three things under meal of the week that we can get into just at the top there. Which one would you like to tackle first, mate?

Look, let's. Let's start with crypto, because I think.

Yep, the.

That's going on right now in crypto is just ridiculous.

I did a video on this for Collective Shift last week, and what we're talking about here is the institutional.

What would you call it? Show. Yeah, that's going on. So we're talking about three AC, Venture, Firm. We're talking about Terra Luna. That happened a couple of months ago. Blockfi and Celsius.

It's pretty wild, man. What's going on? Right, so I know we've got some notes here, so I'M just gonna sort of like do my best description of what's going on here and then Bergs, you can come in and fill the gaps.

Perfect.

So let's start with 3ac. So they're basically a VC firm that at the peak of a bull market had nearly $10 billion of assets under management. And these guys were.

A very, I'd say like gold class venture firm in crypto. They were all Web3 investments and made some really good investments. Like they had a big portfolio of some, you know, coinbases and you know, block visor. You know, they had a lot of, you know, good companies on there on their balance sheet. They also took Treasuries of crypto companies. So basically what does that mean? Well, a new crypto project being built. If they raised or an NFT, they said, let's say they raised like 500 ether, you know, thousand ethics. They would give their capital to 3ac to hold and trade and sort of, you know, try and make a return on it. 3ac then got themselves into all sorts of trouble by basically taking out loans and uncollateralized loans from other players, leveraging themselves up, taking bets that they couldn't afford to take. And when the market turned, they were holding some assets that couldn't actually be liquidated. So when you're talking billions and billions of dollars, crypto isn't, you know, that, that big. Right. You can't just go and sell a billion dollars worth of eth, for example. But that wasn't really the problem. These guys were holding things like.

You know, they were holding gbtc, the, the premium Bitcoin trust through grayscale that was trading at a premium and then when the market crash was trading at a discount. So they were basically, you know, instead of holding the actual Bitcoin, they were holding this sort of other synthetic asset that, you know, wasn't as liquid and wasn't even trading at the actual price. They were holding ste, which is again theoretically was supposed to be trading at the same as eth, but this is ST was going to be transferable for ETH after the merge, where the merge hasn't happened. They thought it was going to be trading the same as eth. It wasn't trading, it was trading as a huge discount. So they were holding these assets as collateral for their highly leveraged trades that weren't even one liquid or two trading at the, at the market rate because they weren't actually holding the underlying asset that were holding these other random assets. Right. So then what happened is from, from What I've seen they started, and this is unconfirmed. I don't. You know, I don't know if this is 100% confirmed or true yet, but from what I've heard is they were starting to trade their clients money, dig themselves out of holes. So people that they were trading their clients treasuries and loaning more money to try and get themselves out of the hole and betting bigger and bigger to try and get themselves out, they've ended up filed for bankruptcy. They've got liquidators in there, and it's complete bloodbath. They've had to for sell any or will be for selling any of their remaining assets to try and recoup some cash to pay back people. But crypto projects have been hurt. Retail investors are hurt, Big lenders are being hurt. Voyager Ventures, I'm pretty sure, lent them nearly $600 million. Like, poof, gone. Pretty sure Block Folio lent them a billion dollars. Poof, gone.

Blockfi.

Blockfi. I'm not sure. It might have been blockfolio. Sorry, not Block. Block. No, no, sorry. Blockfi. Blockfi. Lent them. I think it was a billion dollars. I'll have to, you know, don't quote me on that.

I saw that reported as well. Yep, yep. That was definitely reported.

Crazy. Crazy, right?

This is.

That was just. Yeah, and that was just 3ac.

This is so crazy. And I was listening to my first million. Have you listened to the latest episode You've been. Or you've been busy about that. Found a life mate. So there's one point where. Where Sampa is talking about.

Founder alignment and asking each other questions, and it's like a marriage and all this kind of stuff, like, what do you expect? And one of the questions was, okay, you're Lance Armstrong. It's 1999. Everyone is cheating. Everyone's taking EPO. You know, what do you do? Do you take it? And then Sian was like, well, that's not really the question, because the question about values, there's no right or wrong answer. It's, do you want to stay in the game and do you want to compete? And if you want to do that, well, you've got to take the drugs, right? And this is the kind of thing where you see in crypto and the things that people are doing, so they're borrowing money from people, lending it out, and then paying them a percentage on their money. This is hard because it's custodied and there's risk. You're basically risking, you know, whatever multiple you're going to get in a few years for about 7% now that's one thing. But then these guys that have done it, for them to compete with everyone else, it gets riskier and riskier, newer and newer and, and basically their risk teams are just YOLO finance, right? Where you know, and even in crypto, to be fair to these, to be fair to these guys, if you go 2, 3, 4 standard deviations out on the risk curve, crypto can go out like 20, like, you know, it's insane. The amount of cascading things that can happen and how fast things move, illiquidity, the way that money comes out of the market. It's a global 247 market and you see these kind of cascading effects and these poor companies where you know, they've worked hard, they've built products and they've got a big treasury and they're like, well, we're just a company that builds. We don't want to look after x million dollars. We'll give it to these guys to look after and bang, their Runway is gone, their company has to close. It's just, it is so, so huge. And even just talking about this, do you, you posted this in our discord, the June highlights. I've just put it in our doc. Do you want to read through some of those? Because this is absolutely crazy just what happened in June. We've got a list here and this isn't even everything but it is just phenomenal. Do you want to run through some of those?

Yeah, I'll run some of the big stuff. So we've got three Arrows Capital. So three ac which was talking about blows up likely committed crimes, knock on effects, severely damaged many large crypto companies. Many billions lost. Celsius, one of the most trusted crypto banks holds withdrawals on June 13, engages and restructuring legal and financing teams, likely going to bankruptcy and still customers money stuck in there. We've got Blockfire that lost hundreds of millions of dollars on bad loans to three AC and others. They've received a 250, 250 million dollar loan from FTX. And this is the crazy shit, right? FTX likely acquiring the entire company up to $275 million right now. For those you sitting at home, you're not into crypto or you're sort of on the Verge. $275 million sounds a lot until you understand the BlockFi's last valuation on their series fucking whatever D was 4point something billion dollars. Can't remember. 4.8 billion. I'm pretty sure now they've entered a contract to take on credit to, to keep their business alive with a term to be acquired up to 275 million. So all investors, unless you're in the seed round, have been completely fucked. 90% down. You know, imagine if you put in 100 million, you're about to get, you're about to exit for like 5, 4.

You got.

That is just absolute wrecked city. And like BlockFi was honestly held up by a lot of people as the gold standard of companies that are run in this thing. And you think about what's actually happened to them, right? So they've got this really good brand name, they got a lot of customers, they've got a lot of assets under management. All of a sudden those assets halve. Then they probably halve again when we've had this big downturn in crypto. So your, your balance sheet is very poor. The assets under management has gone down. Then you start getting calls. So all the loans you have out and outstanding money, you start getting loan calls, you have to start paying those out. So your balance sheet goes further down, down. And SPF from ftx, the white knight came along. We'll give you money to keep you afloat. But he has an absolute sweet kicker in there where he can acquire the company for cents on the dollar, which is just incredible, absolutely incredible because there is, there is still value within BlockFi. But man, to go from a company, imagine Ben, imagine building that company, mate. What you would have to go through and have that valuation and it gets wiped out within a couple of months. That is just insane. That is heartbreaking.

So these companies are, you know, how do they get to that valuation? Well, they're really growing at all costs. They're growing users at all costs, taking on probably high. You know, this is like the housing crisis of 2008, right, when they were super leveraged up to companies taking and giving out loans to probably people that couldn't afford the loans. And when that shit turns south and you got to recoup that money, they don't have the money. And that's just a domino effect, right?

So moving on from there, we also had the SEC rejects another grayscale beat, Bitcoin etf. The SEC continues to reject this ETF grayscale then says you and files a lawsuit on the same day. Crypto exchange coin flex loses 47 million on a bad loan to Roger Ver. We've got MicroStrategy buys another $10 million worth of Bitcoin. PayPal enables transfers of, of crypto We've got binance raising another 500 million dollar venture fund. London VC firm Felix Capital raises 600 million dollar Web3 fund.

Pro Share is launching short customer data got hacked.

That got hacked. So basically someone from customer IO, disgruntled employee, shared all the data.

So if you are on OpenSea and you have your email there, just be extra careful for the emails that you get from OpenSea. Don't ever click a link in your email. Always go to the OpenSea website, read the contract you're verifying with. When the contract pops up, jump on ether scan, make sure it's the right contract. Use your hardware wallet, make sure it's the right address, that they're all uppercase or lowercase and they match. Stay safe out there. Fam. And segregate your accounts as well. This is just a phenomenal amount that is happening and what, what I love is if I step back and I look at the juxtaposition, the two extremes of all this shit happening on one side and then you got CZ from Binance on the other side. Like who raised. He, he launched a token at 4 cents. It's now worth, I don't know, hundreds of dollars. He's got heaps of money. I remember listening to him a few years ago saying he pays all his people in, you know, Binance Coin is good. The vision he has, the way he's acquiring stuff. They haven't hired too many staff. They're still hiring at the moment. They've got a massive treasury, they've played it safe.

They're.

They've got a half billion dollar venture fund and they're just building out like that is just a masterclass in strategy and fiscal management.

And then you look at like public company Coinbase who are laying off 18% of their staff. You know, bank, banks are, I think it's, banks are in Australia. I think they're like, they're laid off their onboarding, offboarding Fiat Ramp for projects. I think, I think they laid off 40% their staff. Like 40 to 50%. That's incredible. That's half your team.

That is so crazy that. Oh, that's going to ruin that company. Like the culture. You're going to have to rebuild all the processes you've got. Yeah, you're changing into a completely different company if you're laying off that much stuff.

That is just so crazy. That is insane. And then we've got things like Celsius as well. So this was from yesterday. Celsius Network has paid off another $50 million towards this Bitcoin loan. So they've reduced their liquidation price to 8,840. So what a lot of these companies are doing is they've borrowed funds from customers, they've lent them out elsewhere, and then they've been called on these loans. So they're basically told, customers, you're not going to be able to get your money out if at all. They don't really say that, if at all. Part for at least the next couple of months. And they're using that customer's money to pay down that loan, bring down that liquidation price. So they're not insolvent and they're not liquidated. And I think that they're hoping that they get to a point where either the price goes up or they get more revenue, whatever it may be, to actually pay back these people. So it's borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. It's just. It is a crazy, crazy situation. Yeah.

So withdrawals, I don't think, are going to be opened up for a long time because basically they're taking your money to pay off their debt. So everyone doesn't get.

Yeah.

I have actually seen this done quite well before with Bitfinex, so I think. I can't remember what the event was, but it was. It was years ago. It's maybe 2016 or early 2017. I think there was a hack with Bitfinex or something happened and they lost tons of funds and everyone was just down in the dumps. It was. It was horrendous. Right. Could have been employee stuff up. I can't remember the exact cause, but what they did was they ended up releasing. I think it was a token, like an iou, and to their credit, they ended up paying everyone back. And it wasn't a situation of we've extended ourselves, we've lent stuff out, something's happened. It's like. No, it was like a system failure or something like that happened and they ended up paying everyone back. This one's actually really crazy. And especially if, let's say you're Australian, Right. This is the end of financial year has just happened. And imagine you've got significant gains and you've got a lot of money in crypto and you have to pay the tax man. You can't actually access your funds. So you got a decision to make. Do you write those funds off and offset your gains? Where do you get the money from to pay the tax man? Do you write it off and then it comes good and you make an adjustment later on? It just adds so much complexity. To this situation. It's got put a lot of people in, in quite challenging situations.

Now on the headburgs. And I think for me, we've got to learn from this as an industry, as a space, right? This, this can't happen again, right? Like, there's got to be regulation, there's got to be a bit of oversight, there's got to be founders and entrepreneurs and executives and board members that see this and go, this can't happen again. So many people have been hurt from the Terra Lunar event, Then celsius, then probably 3ac just goes on and on and on and on. Like, at some point we've got to learn from this. I think long term, I'm bullish on these events. I know that's pretty, you know, polar opposite of what's going on right now because it's scary as hell. But long term, I think it's good that this happens because, you know, same as the ICO boom. We learned from that, you know, we. You learn from these events. Long term, in the short term they're painful, but long term, it's better for the space because people learn, they find out the bad business models, they find out the economics that don't work. People get burnt, people learn, you get better, you get the scar tissue and you move on. So, yeah, that's exactly right.

And it's like in business where, you know, for everyone to progress, you need heaps of startups. The majority of them will fail, but then the strong ones succeed. And with this, as well as a principle of anti fragility, where a lot of the ones that are flying too close to the sun will get burnt, you know, their wings will melt and they'll fall down. But then you've got other cryptos that benefit from this, like ethereum and Bitcoin, they just become stronger and their value proposition becomes stronger. In every event, they survive, they become stronger.

Celsius is down 87% this year. The Celsius tokens, huge. And it's up 40. It's up 40% this week. The volatility on this thing is unbelievable.

Mate. Trader's dream. I'm staying saying, well clear, nowhere near that.

Not my dream. I'm out of here.

Nah, it's too, too much of a heart attack. And you're honestly, you're just catching a falling knife or putting your hand in a bear trap, you're gonna get snapped. Like it's. Yeah, it's full on. And, and, and when you see something go down like 90 and you're like, oh, I'm gonna buy in. Really think about what you're doing and who's on the other side of the trade and what's actually going to make that go up, because that can still go down a further 90% from where you are. And with the uncertainty in the market, the tightening of capital, with interest rates being, interest rates rising.

Lots of stocks down and crypto down across the board so people have less capital to deploy. Really think about what you're doing.

Mate. Should we jump to.

Yeah, go on, go, mate.

You know, you go, there's gonna say the market as a whole is, oh, you know, even the tech stocks looking at what's going on in that world, you know, you've got Snapchat down, you've got Airbnb, Shopify is down 80%. PayPal's taking a nosedive. Like across the board.

We'Re seeing huge, huge sell offs. And I think this is, we've spoken about it before. The over saturation of capital and fiat money in the system over the last two or three years has been astronomical and there's just this huge unwinding going on. But I will say that I think at some point that becomes oversold, right, when people go too far, too far down to, you know, same as we go too far up. And I think we're probably pretty close to that.

I agree. And even with the listed companies, you can look at their balance sheets, evaluations, all that kind of stuff is public. You can do your own sums on that and really make it, make a decision on, you know, what you think fair value is as well as the outlook. I think this is a nice segue into inflation, mate. And I saw a stat where since the GFC globally, we've printed something close to $35 trillion.

In excess capital, which is just mental. It is so, so wild. So you've got a few notes down here in inflation and you're in the States and I'm just so curious to hear about your take as an Australian bloke over there and what you're seeing down on the ground, mate, it's wild.

It's actually wild, right? Like some of the you hear as an as I know for me coming here, I'm like, what? So one of the things I was like, what to. The minimum wage over here.

Is somewhere around $7. I think it's $7 25. Again, don't quote me.

So you can buy one gallon of petrol per hour. That's pretty much it, right? It's like $7 a gallon. It's so crazy. So.

But this is not the wildest thing. You can be on minimum wage, which most like waiters and restaurant people, servers are usually on. And in the US you're obligated to give tips because the people aren't being paid so little that they have to live off tips. But what's going on is that most employers are having oversight looking into how much the employees are making through tips. And from what I've heard and what I'm seeing is that if some, some employees and some businesses, if those employees are making more than their minimum wage in tips, well then the employer doesn't pay them at all.

So let me just, let me just.

Like.

Let me just say that for the fucking people at the back down here, they do not pay this. Some people aren't paying their staff if they've given such a good service that the customer tips them as a non obligated thank you. The employer sees how much they're getting paid in tips and it doesn't pay them any money because they've received tips at the minimum wage at fucking $7 an hour. Like, are you kidding me?

This is okay, this is wild. Let's talk about tips. First of all, I don't know, we don't tip in Australia cause we get paid decently. It's just not the culture here. We don't do that sort of shit. And what I don't like is businesses shifting the cost to your customers. What the fuck? Like it's so dumb and it's awkward and it's weird and I don't like it. And what really pisses me off is exactly what you just said. I've never heard of them docking people's pay because of tips. What I've heard is if you get a certain amount then like the owner will tax like half or something like that, or they'll take a certain. Or the other one I hate is when you have a really good server and you want to give them the money, but it goes into a pool and then it's distributed to everyone. That really bugs me as well. Like if I have some money, I want to give it to that person. How as an Australian going in the States, how do you feel about tipping now? You've been there for a couple of months at least. What's your view on tipping?

So I've changed. I've actually tried to tip as much as I can in cash directly to the person that serves me if I have a good experience. So I'll go to some places where I actually have A great conversation with the person, you know. I went to a sports bar the other day, this was in New York, Irish guy. And he was awesome. We had a great conversation. We're talking, you know, he was just, it was just great service. You know, when you walk out of the place, you go like, that was great. Gave him, gave him a cash tip. I said like a thank you. Like hopefully you put this in your pocket and don't show anyone, you know, versus Yep. You know, it's like just a normal thing where it's like, you know, you pay, you swap your credit card, they turn the till over to you and you've got to punch in how much you know you're going to give them as a tip by default. It's like at 18% and now I'm like, I don't even know if you get this money. Like, who the hell is this actually going to.

It's. The whole system seems backwards. Yeah.

Is okay, is the service better because they're incentivized by tips than it is in Australia?

No, like, because it's nearly a way of life now. Like it, that's. No, because it's like, it's like people expect it, right? So it's like, it's just, it's, it's priced in already if you know it's coming. It's, it's. For me, it's, it's at a point where it's like, you know, you have to pay it, right? It's not like you, you work extra and you. Because it's. Because some of the receipts, some of the bills that comes priced in, you don't even have a choice. So like, it's not like they're going above and beyond for you to get this extra tip because it's like, it's priced in. You know, if I go back to Australia, I'm not getting, I don't feel there's any like difference in service. Like, it's, it's, it's pretty good everywhere I go. So I don't see why we need to tip. Like just price the fucking thing into the, into the meal or the whatever and then pay your employees properly.

That's another thing. So pricing, right, so when, when you travel, you get sales tax, build a new road tax, tipping, all this kind of stuff that's built on top of the price, right? In Australia we just get the price. That's it. The price on the shelf or on the menu is the price. We have a 10% built in goods and services tax, but that's already built into the price. Any price that you give to a customer in Australia has to have all inclusive, right? And the only thing we have is a gst. And that's not on everything. That's just only on a select amount of items so you know what you're paying. Do you find it confusing when you go to a store in the States? You're like, oh, that's all right. And you look at the price, but then you get to the two and you're like, plus this, plus this, plus this. And it just adds on, man.

The worst is when they give. You got to get, you know, they give you the receipt and you've got to figure out the tax on your. The tip on your own. You like, you basically good to get it your mental calculator out and figure out, like, what's 20% of, you know, or 18% of $64. 78. You know, you then you go, right, and you give your signature. So basically what they do is they swipe the card. They have your details, right? They're only inputting what you put on the receipt. They could put it. That they could put in a $10,000 if they wanted to, right? They're just taking what you put on the receipt and importing it manually into the machine and hitting the go button.

I heard this on Reddit, like, like, what's the weirdest thing? I actually read this last week where they just take your credit card, skive off, and then come back. Whereas, like, if we pay by credit card here, they'll like, bring the machine to you, they'll show you what it is, you tap it and they'll give.

You kind of straight touch the buttons.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. It is, yeah, that's. That's an odd thing, just to kind of build in that trust.

Okay, so the other craziest thing I heard that made me feel sick was I was speaking to. I caught up with. I've got a. An auntie, a great auntie that lives over here in, in the States. And I caught up with her for a coffee with her partner. And he's got heart problems, so he can't work. He's retired because he's got to take it easy. He was on these pills, right? His medication that he has to take for his heart or basically like, you know, gonna die, right? He needs his medication. One pill a month. It costs him $4,000 US for one pill.

Four mental fucking thousand dollars for one pill. And if he doesn't take it, he dies.

This you know what he needs to do? He needs to like monthly just go to like go over the border, go to Mexico, pay you $10 and take your pill. Like this is incredible, mate. That is just. That breaks you.

Like how sick does that make you feel? Like imagine. So I think he gets a discount because he has, he's got a.

He.

Was on some sort of, you know, employment that gave him Medicare benefits. But for someone that does not employed, you know, for those that don't know in the US it's completely different. You don't get this shit for free. Like you've got to be basically employed and like be on a whole, like the whole thing. If you're unemployed or don't have any health care insurance, you've got to pay full price for this stuff doesn't just come, it's not just given to you.

I don't understand why America tied health care to employment. Like when you're unemployed is probably when you need health care the most.

Exactly.

It's when you're, you're most vulnerable and you need the most care. So like over here, Australia basically has free healthcare. You can rock up to a doctor for free, you can rock up to a hospital for free. And obviously that's built into our taxes. Over here we also have private health care as well. So you can go to private providers, cost you between 2 to 4,000 per year. Generally if you're in a higher tax bracket you'll buy that. Otherwise you have to pay what we call a Medicare levy which covers all the public stuff. But I.

I struggle a lot when I think about people where they need to choose between do I eat tonight or do I go to the doctor, like those kind of choices and it's just so heartbreaking. Or do I have this medication or do I pay my rent. Especially people on minimum wage when things are so ultra expensive and I really don't see a way out of it for these people. Like I was watching a documentary on minimum wage and there was this poor lady where she worked two jobs. One was a Hungry Jackson, one was a Pizza Hut. She worked like 18 hours a day and she was, she woke up in the morning, walked in the dark, did an eight hour shift, went across the next one, did another eight hour shift and then walks back with her foot against the curb because she's so tired and she lives in a little motel room where it's like $80 per day. Lives in there with her two kids and her mum and they've got all their suitcases packed up the Kids go to school. At the end of the day, she had $4 left and she bought some pizza to feed her kids. And her way out of it is to make assistant manager in six to 12 months, then save up a bit of money, have a bond, and then she could pay rent. And then even hearing stories like Mike Novogratz. I think it's like a bail project. I forget what it's called, but basically it goes like this. A lot of people get pulled over for stuff they've done, whether it's speeding ticket or a crime or whatever it may be, and they get sent to. To jail. And the. Yeah, to pay your. Your bond is like, I don't know, 4 to 800 bucks to kind of get out. These guys don't have that money, so they stay in there. And the only way to get out is to sign and say that you're guilty. You say you're guilty, you can go back to your family, you can work, but you now have that crime against your name. You're a felon. And he was saying, if they just had that money and they paid it and they got out, nine out of 10 of those, like, petty little things won't even be prosecuted. They'll just let them go. And this is all because they have money. So they started this bail project where people that don't have money, they just bail them out. And then the cops don't even bother following up because there's too much paperwork. It is just incredible that people don't even have that small amount of savings and they just need to get home and get back to work so their family can eat tomorrow. It is absolutely incredible. I. Yeah, I. Our world is just not like that. And it is just hard, hard to fathom that that happens across the states where it's supposed to be, you know, this economic superpower. And you see all the rich people and everything, but then you see the really poor side as well, which is just eye opening. What are you seeing on the ground down there? You've been traveling around everywhere. What are you seeing in the cities and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, from. From place to place, it changes. Like, San Francisco was really bad. Like, a lot of homelessness, L.A. was really bad. You know, even some places here in San Diego, like, you get it, you know, from place to place where you get a lot of, like, tents set up, a lot of homelessness.

But. But there's also like these pockets in these communities of really underprivileged or lower socioeconomic people where they're like there's. But in every city I've been to, like the locals have given you sort of the note, you know, don't go to this place, don't go to this suburb. Like don't go there. Miami, there was one here in San Diego, there's one. San Francisco, there's one. La, there's, you know, there's like don't go down there. Right. So like I feel as though like even when you're traveling you're in a bit of a bubble because you sort of guided to not go to certain places where it's like pretty bad. So you know like the story you just told, like, you know, you're hustling 16 hour days, it's $7.50 an hour or whatever the hell it is is like it's just, yeah, you know who's making all the money? Because it's not, it's not, it's not like the businesses are struggling, someone's making money.

So. And prices are going up incredibly, right. So the minimum wage isn't going up. I think it's gone up slightly recently but prices are just accelerating. If you look at some of the graphs and you know inflation's like they say between like 3 to 11% depending on what you look at. But if you look at things like petrol that's like doubled, it's at like all time highs and a lot of different things that you buy normally in your life have just accelerated in price and there's many reasons for this. I've printed a lot of money, so the money's devalued, it's worth less, right. And then you got a couple of different types of inflation. So you got demand pool inflation. So that's when demand outstrips supply. Supply has been very, very hard because of COVID and things slowing down. People haven't been able to work, they've been at home. So there's in a lot of areas there's not enough goods. We saw it with things like graphics cards where they like tripled in price. Even things like shipping, everything you need to get to your house is taking longer. Ports are blocked up, ships get stopped because there's Covid on board. It's absolutely incredible. And then you also got cost push inflation where you've got all the inputs into a supply chain have become more expensive, all the chips are more expensive, shipping is more expensive, insurance is more expensive, getting your bloody contracts together is more expensive. So things are accelerating. And the way to get out of inflation, well, really sorry, the way to get yourself out of debt is to inflate prices so the debt becomes cheaper. So the reality is the whole world is going to have to eat shit for at least the next couple of years in order to ameliorate all of this debt and undo all of the fiscal stimulus that we've done. We've done a lot of fiscal stimulus where it's like, you know, stimmy checks to people. You get money, you go out, you spend in the economy, capital is being cheap or government propping up and buying businesses or giving loans to them. All of that stuff has a consequence. And we're starting to see that now, which is just what I. Yeah, what.

Frustrates me as well. Sorry, what frustrates me as well on that point is that that's not what's being communicated to the everyday person. You've got, oh my Joe Biden tweeting out to the fuel stations to lower their prices and blaming it on Putin.

Like, this is it. He says, Putin's pot. Yeah. Prince Putin's price hike. And if you actually look at the servos, their margins are razor thin. Like the majority of that is government tax. Don't be fooled. You look at where the, where the cost goes and where it actually is and it goes back to the government. And this is the thing, they like to spin this story about it being everyone needs a boogeyman. Everyone needs to come together and hate a certain person or a certain country or a certain type of people. That's what binds people together. And it's always great to blame someone else and not yourself, when in reality, it was his government and the government before him that printed shitloads of fucking money and made fiscal decisions and monetary policy decisions around interest rates. And now we are paying the consequences for those actions.

Absolutely incredible.

If you understand just a bit about economics, you could learn this in like an hour. You'll, your eyes will just be open, you'll be like, holy.

My take on is like, you know, I'm not an economics professional by any, any stretch, but like, I, I get it that the jobs will be hard and there was a lot of things in cover, like you had to do something. Right, I get it, whatever. But like, let's be honest about the situation. Let's not, let's not point fingers and make up all this mumbo jumbo about, you know, blaming the fucking petrol station. Like, no, you've printed $36 trillion worth of fucking money out of thin air. You literally went to your HP printer, you hit control P and you print out A bunch of money. So of course everything's gonna fucking go up. Right? Like, let's look. Why are we, like, why are you trying to like spin the narrative and you know, like the economy is great and, you know, we're all la di da. Like it's just a bunch of nonsense.

Yeah.

One, one thing we've actually. And there will be more pain because they're going to increase interest rates as well. So you'll be paying more for your home, capital will become more expensive, business will be able to do less loans. It's not going to be great. The one good thing we have though is employment's pretty good across most areas. If we just look at Australia and the States, people employed, wages haven't gone up that much, but they're okay to survive. But it's just such a challenging situation. And when we look at inflation, this is. I just want to tie it back to bitcoin. This is why we look at bitcoin and this is why people talk about it. And if you want to know, we'll talk about it briefly now. But if you want an in depth thing, just go look at Michael Saylor talking about treasuries or Andreas Antonopoulos. Google those two guys, they'll tell you in five minutes exactly how it is. But the reality is when with bitcoins built in monetary policy, you've got 21 million bitcoins, so it's a fixed supply. And really when you mine bitcoin, more bitcoin is created and goes into circulation, but there is a hard cap, so it's actually inflating, but at a decreasing rate. So every four years, the mining reward halves, it goes from one bitcoin to then half a bitcoin. So really that term is called disinflationary, which means it's accelerating, it's increasing at a decreasing rate. So it's not like that. It's sort of going like this over time. And then they get to a point where close to all the bitcoin has been mined, which is going to be in 100 years, something like that. But it's actually asymptotic, so it doesn't actually go down to zero rewards, it just keeps halving and halving and halving to infinity. And you start. So what happens is it goes from disinflationary to a point where the rewards are so small. And if you think about a fixed supply and people trading bitcoin and losing their keys or trading it somewhere else actually becomes deflationary, so that supply starts to go down as people either lose their coins or do something silly with it, or they've got their keys and they pass away, no one can recover them. Right. And this is why a lot of people are opting into this system, because it solves a lot of the problems that traditional fiat money does not.

So I think we've got. In this month, El Salvador bought another 80 bitcoins at like 19,000. You know, Michael Sailor just continues to double down. Like these people and these institutions, these countries that understand that their fiat dollars holding feet on the balance sheet is consistently losing purchasing power due to the supply being inflated.

Bitcoin is just such a, you know, a great bet long term. Now, obviously, it's being pulled down. There's a lot of. For selling a lot of. Tied up with the tech stocks. We get that there's a lot of players that, you know, aren't seeing bitcoin for what it is long term. But shit, man, it's.

Yeah. The argument for bitcoin keeps strengthening. And look at this. I saw this headline today. Cop this for a headline, mate. Turkey's inflation soars to nearly 80% as food prices decreased double and lira crashes. Wow. And you and I in Australia or the people in the States, we really think, oh, this is these dodgy countries, this will never happen to us. It's fucking happening right now. Go look at those petrol prices and really think about how you're positioned and what you're doing with your money, what you're investing in, if you're able to invest.

Because you will need to prepare. It's going to. It's going to be challenging, we'll all get through it and there'll be boom times again. But just prepare and put some thought into it. Have a bit of a plan.

You don't want to be one of.

Those that says, you know, what happened? What is the plan? All right, so my plan. Yeah, my plan is, as I was saying in the other episode, I'm cash heavy. So if we look at. Doesn't mean I got tons of cash, it just means in a pie chart, normally you'd have a small wedge of cash. Mine has more. That just means I have money I haven't allocated to investments. So I'm starting to average into stocks. So for me, it's the ASX 500 plus an ETF in the States and probably a couple of Vanguard funds as well. I like the emerging markets one and I like. I think there was a green one as well. And of course, none of this is financial advice, please Speak to your financial advisor, your tax person, everyone else. These are just the things that I'm looking at. And really if you think about what's happening here, prices are going up, a lot of stuff is happening. There will be boom times in the future and if you want to see out a few market cycles, you invest in these assets that are tax friendly and they're kind of inflation hedges. Because if you think about or inflation friendly rather with businesses, they're the ones receiving the money, receiving the benefits, they're making the cash, they're the things you want to invest in. That's what the government will stimulate and you want to benefit from that. And the reality is like I heard a quote so long ago when I was probably like 18 and it was don't put your money in the bank by the bank. You want to share in the profits in that bank. You want to be a shareholder, you want to get a dividend, prepare yourself for that. But I'm buying when things are at a lower price. I know that the boom times will come again, there will be another market cycle and I'm thinking long term and I want to position myself for the that. And of course always averaging into Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Yeah, I love that books. Great, great strategy.

How about you?

How are you don't buy the Tesla, buy the stock. You know, I think if you go, go back.

That's exactly right. Yeah, exactly. You can go and do this and it's like if you, yeah. If you bought your Tesla for 60 grand or if you bought Tesla stock and you see the difference and if you understand the difference between a depreciating asset and, and one that puts, you know, that appreciates, puts money in your pocket. And also think about how, how you're structured as well. Like do you have access to capital, do you have a home? Do you have a debt facility on that if you need it? Can you invest that money? Can you have that debt facility in case you lose your job or something happens? Talk to your professionals and make sure you're structured correctly for the things that you want to do and the goals that you have in the next five.

To 10 years is okay, I'm going to tell you mine. Bur cuz I think so.

What, what are you doing? You just, you're just like.

You just this is this going be cool, right?

You're going to get polar opposite crypto.

Let's go, let's do it. So you know and in context as well like you know, burgs, you got a family you know, you, you've got, you bought your, you know, your own home. You're like, you're at a different stage of life than I am. Right. So this is going to be good. Like again, non financial definitely.

I'm, I'm late 30s. You're early 20s.

I'm early 20s, yeah. So where am I? I'm trying to build a company. So I'm all in on collective shift, our company. I've invested basically everything I have into building that out. So I, you know, made some pretty substantial profits in crypto. Like I got into crypto five or six years ago, sold out a lot of my altcoins and a couple of cycles ago which you know, made some good profits and basically reinvested all of that into collective shift. Like I've put in.

You know, you know, low, very low seven figures, I'd say like India collective shift over the last like, you know, two years.

So for me I don't have much cash at all. Basically no cash. I have all my money in crypto. So bitcoin and eth. I basically own.

Most of my majority of my portfolios in bitcoin. I used to hold a lot of different old coins, sold a lot of those couple of years ago for cash. Invest in a collective shift and then.

Basically just holding bitcoin and eth. And I'm building equity so I'm building asset value in a company. That's my play at this point. So my focus and goal is to build as much equity value as I can in, in collective shift to build long term wealth because I'm super passionate. Collective shift. I think we've got something really exciting here and you know, trying to build more real value. So for me equity value is the thing that's the most exciting for me rather than investing. I'm okay at crypto investing, but that's not what excites me. What excites me is building something cool and, and that it attracts real world value. So over the next five or ten years, this is a ten year play for me. You know, that's the thing that's going to, you know, generate wealth for me is the equity value rather than sort of investing into, you know, assets and things like that.

Point.

Yep. And if I, if I had my time again and I was your age, so I probably started investing in stocks about your age or probably earlier and I went a diversification path and really wealth is generally created. I think the top three are either marry into it, you inherit it or you have a business. So wealth is Generally created through concentration, you know something or control something that other people don't or can't. So that's having a business or you know, Tesla's going to 100x or you're on the inside or something happens like that, that's how you make your money. Then you've made your money and then you protect it through diversification. And takes about five years to learn how to be an investor. Diversify so you can have the income you need, the growth that you need to live the life that you want. So at your station in life, you're doing absolutely, absolutely the right thing. And that's the thing. Like you're going hard, you're going really well and you're on the path to success. And if we go the extreme opposite and it blows up, doesn't matter. Your young twenties, you've learned so much, you've done so much, you can create another business, you can put all those skills on display.

So, so the other, the other component of absolutely phenomenal what you have, if you don't have anything else is you have your hands and your brain and your eyes. You've got that sweat equity as we call it. You have the opportunity to build something without needing money. That could be a business, that could be a job, that could be, you know, you could be an athlete, right? Like you think about yourself, you could be an influencer, you have yourself. And for me, like when you're starting out with nothing or you don't have a lot to start with, you've got to think about ways that you can like use yourself and your skills to build something without needing the money to do that. And for me, I naturally love entrepreneurship businesses. Started a bunch of different businesses before, lost some money, failed, built some cool. Like for me that's like, that's the path to success. For other people it might be playing basketball or like being an artist or you know, designing NFTs or you know what I mean, playing golf doesn't matter. You just got to find your nation. Double down.

100.

And this is not for everyone, right? And if I look at where I was at your age, I was probably just finishing uni, just got a job out of Unique. I knew nothing, didn't have any experience in the real world. And if I look at where you are and you know, the team of advisor advisors, you've had, how you've grown over the years, how you've built multiple businesses, you've raised capital, you've built high performing teams, you've built product, you've Got revenue, all of these kind of hard skills that will just serve you so well through life. It is absolutely invaluable. That is an amazing path, mate. Congratulations to you.

Oh no, no thanks man. I don't need.

Gratitude, you know, that's.

Not even like gassing you up or anything. That is just the honest truth. Where everyone else will come out of uni first year, they'll get a job, they'll be in debt and they'll know nothing. If you go to a pawn shop and you have your degree, it is worth nothing. If you went to a pawn shop and you had your business, they would buy it.

Yeah. That is the fundamental difference for me. I like, I really look at it like I'm, I'm so early, like I'm fucking nobody, you know, And I've got so much to learn and I love. That's how we met, right? Like, you know, you were super smart dude coming out of NBA, you're a hustler, you're a crypto guy, you have business strategy like up the wazoo. And I was like, holy shit, I need to learn from this guy, right? You know, and then you, then I, then I got another advisor who's like, you know, ex CMO at a massive company, you know, ex public listed company. I want to learn from him. Then you've got like Travis who we work with again, just an absolute baller, business strategist, manager, like what a baseballer? And you just, you just start to build these relationships and learn from these people and you ask them questions and you give them problems and you talk through your thinking and you know, from where I've come from, when I first started my journey like five or six years ago youo know, I've still got so much to go but like you just learn for me, like quitting school and just going all in on like just building and making mistakes and losing money and pissing people off and like learning is like, that's the game. I feel as though I've done four MBAs in like the last six years, you know?

Yeah. The reality is you have because in school everyone gets taught the same thing to do in the same way and it's worth nothing because everyone has it. Whereas you've gone off and you're like, how do I do this? I remember, man, like, shit, this is years ago. All right, story time, children. Gather round. You call me up and you're like, bergs, I'm meeting with this exchange, you would have been what, 21, 20, something like that. Give me a Call, Just random call. Meeting with exchange in half an hour. You're driving in your car. I got to put together a partnership deal. Never done it before. What do I do? And I'm like, okay, lad, you want to talk to him about this, this, this. You kind of want to get to this point, and then, you know, if there is a negotiation, this is what you can point. They're like, you come back and like, an hour and a half later, you're like, oh, lad, I closed them there. And then we're down for like, 90k for, like, three months or something. Ridiculous. I was like, holy shit. Like, for a person that's just like, I know nothing. You pick up the phone, I give you, like, the dodgiest brief, and you come away with a contract and cash. I was like, oh, this guy here, mate, Honestly, just. Just backing yourself. To be able to do that and giving it a go is just phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

I think you know, some. From what I've learned as being, like, an entrepreneur and a founder and like, a business owner, you've got to have some level of, like, naivety and, like, you know, some sort of maybe misconception of, like, reality and being so positive and so confident. That should all just figure it out. That's how it happens. Because if you were analytical and you ran the numbers and you ran the probability of success. If I ran the numbers and probabilities, you know, up to this point, you know the house is winning, right? Like, it's not that probable. Some of the decisions, some of the investments, some of the partnership, you try. You know what I mean? Like, it just doesn't make sense. But if you just back yourself and have a really positive mindset, I think that's just all about, like, really thinking that you're gonna win and just thinking about that future. And it's not a linear path, it's zigzagging and speed bumps, but it just figures itself out sometimes.

Yeah. And I. Seriously, that's one thing I'm. I'm. I said, like, a while ago, I was very envious of you because in, like, school and everything you taught, it's always linear. There's a way out. There's this, is that. And it's taken me five years, I'd say, to unlearn that and get more towards a growth mindset. Be. Be happy with the ups and downs, to be able to back yourself, to go against the grain, to have all these kind of, you know, naysayers or people that just because they can't do it themselves. I think you can't do it, which is absolute bullshit. But having that kind of environment and where I used to work and having that kind of fixed mindset and this is the way we do things and we don't deviate from the plan. And this was not my work I worked at previously. This was more the government side, what we interface with. Yeah. To get that out of your head and just to have that growth, I've always had an optimistic mindset. But to have a growth mindset and to back yourself and put your skills on display and know that you'll be okay, that's just one of the best skills that you can have in life that'll just serve you so well.

Totally agree, boys. Let's wrap there. That's another sick episode. Episode four. That was so much fun. I think we got deep there at the end. That was like. We got some real. Enjoyed that.

We went deep on a few things.

We went real deep. I like that. So thank you so much for listening.

Real deep.

Real deep. Bennebergs. We have launched on all, all platforms now but YouTube going if you want to see our leads, if you don't want to see our leads, you can Spotify Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. And we're part of my collective shift. So Bergs and I are hustling on collective shift. We've got an amazing team, amazing community, and we're helping people get into crypto. Whether you're new, intermediate, advanced. We've got something for you and we're helping you save time, navigate this space, understand what to invest in, what to not to invest in, how to navigate the markets. We've got thousands of members basically globally and we're building something really cool. We're building the bear market. We've got some amazing stuff. Portfolio analysis tools, upcoming airdrops community copy portfolios on chain data, sentiment data.

It's. Yeah, it's so awesome. Jump on the website, have a poke around, follow our tutorials, learn something. Follow around, create a web wallet, learn what they do. Just don't listen to all these people in your office that haven't done this before. Once you experience like moving a little bit, like even $5 worth of Bitcoin or Ethereum or buying an NFT for a dollar or something like that. Just do it and really think about how you've moved money around or value around on the Internet and experience it for yourself with five bucks before you make a decision. Jump on our YouTube. There's heaps of tutorials on There we've had some cracking content lately from Nathan, Matt and Nick as well as Ben gets on there occasionally. So honestly, get amongst it, experience it for yourself, learn it, you will need it.

And there's so much free shit. So if you had a collective shift IO and up the top and the menu, go to resources. We've got like top tutorials, we've got hundreds of free resources, we've got a beginners course, we've got a newsletter, we've got our crypto commandments which are like a top seven rules to investing into crypto so much free shit. So don't feel as though we're just like, you know, selling your stuff. There's so much free stuff to learn.

And get amongst it. We don't even want your email, it's just free.

Just use it, it's free.

Load up a private tab, I don't care, use a vpn, just get amongst it.

And then once you realize this is the future and then there's no other way but crypto, then you can sign up to be a member. We've got 50 off your free month, 50 off your first month and a dollar for seven day trial so you can try out a premium for a dollar for seven days. We have a 365 money back guarantee. Like it is just an absolute no price, no brainer. Get off your ass. Go learn. Yeah, learn about the future. Take control of your money.

100. We spent so much time trying to make it as easy as possible for you guys to get in and just learn. That's our mission here, just to educate people amongst it about this. We, we love it, we benefited from it and we want you to as well.

Get amongst it. Bergs Legend.

Let's wrap. What an episode.

Let's wrap it up. Good. See you next week.

All right, lad. See you, mate.

Peace.