Fireside Chat Interview With Ben Simpson (NGMI Podcast)

Yeah, the idea of having $100,000 in Bitcoin and being able to cash flow $40,000 of that and using the resting collateral and you pay it down, you know, 6 or 7% or whatever it is, and it means you don't have to sell your bitcoin and you can stay within the ecosystem. Like, I think that's going to just continue to grow, and I think that's ultimately a good thing. Like, if we didn't have to use banks, like, amazing.

Really fucking good to finally sit down with you and actually do this. I'm really glad we have the podcast Lepo, Doug. That is a really nice addition.

It just makes it for a couple of ADHD guys like us. Just really brings things down a couple of notches.

Maybe we're gonna have a little distracted. Pat. No, everything's fine.

If you don't need something to fidget with, you've got a dog to pat.

This is great. I want to get a dog just for pose.

The po dog.

Po dog. Girlfriend really wants a pug, but, oh, I just can't, man. If I need a dog, I could go for a run with.

You need, like, a man's dog. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm like, Basil probably is not gonna run too far with you, but, like, he's gonna go, you know, he's a man that's gonna sit on the pode with you and just keep you, like, yeah, nice and calm.

My mate ran with his dog a lot, and he essentially, the vet was like, you have to stop running with him so much because he's losing. He's losing too much weight.

Well, training for marathons, literally, he's, like.

Doing, like, 10, 15K runs. The dog loves it, but it was like, they were like, christ, he's eating everything. But he's seriously underweight.

So.

Yeah, he was running, you know, 30 kilometers a week with me.

Yeah, that's. That's still fucking solid. Yeah, man.

But no, thanks for having me, man. And sorry for rug pulling you the last time we. Dude, that's scheduled.

That's absolutely fine. That's all good, man. Yeah, I don't think I've been. That's not a rug.

I've been rugged.

I've been rugged a lot. The past month, just. I've been donating Solana to the. To the devs on pretty frequent occasion, man.

Calendar reschedule is a rug, you know, that's. Yeah, it's.

It's absolutely fine. But, dude.

Yeah.

Very glad to sit down with You. It's fucking all time.

No, man. Thanks for having me. I mean, I feel as though we're in enough group chats now and we're talking enough about crypto this time to actually, you know, dial in. And I mean, you've been crushing it too, on the. On the memes lately, right?

Memes? Yeah, they've been doing, like, pretty well relative to the rest of the port. Like, it's one of those things that I have a couple of friends that are just kind of like, way better at it than me. And so I kind of was just like copy trading them for a little while and then it just ended up getting real fucking stupid. And it's the sort of thing where I'm like, yeah, meme core, it's such a weird thing to be in because they're so kind of pointless.

Yeah.

But I do wonder if memes are bad for the market in general. Like, in terms of, like, you have all of this capital come in and then the only thing that people really want to invest in, it's like, it's almost this wider acceptance of like, yeah, it's all a Ponzi.

And it's a great look. It's a great question. And I've heard both sides of the story. I think, like, the reality is there's a lack of narratives in the market right now for anything else to be invested in. Like, if we go into 2017, we had the ICO boom and everyone just was piling an ETH into ICOs 2020, we had NFTs, gaming AI. There's so much exciting. It's like, what's really exciting about this market right now? Like, Bitcoin. Okay, great. But what are the. What are the. The, you know, quote unquote, more sophisticated crypto folks going to rotate their money into, like, memes are the only thing that are really like half exciting at this point in time. Ethan are performing. You know, we've got S.E.C. looks like they're suing, you know, uni swaps or defi is like, you know, enemy under the finger again. You know, gaming and Metaverse is kind of, you know, it's ticking along, but nothing new is coming out. There's not, there's not like this crazy new tech like we've had or narrative or innovation like we've had in previous cycles. So I feel as though that's why it's like, well, let's go to memes.

Yep. Do you think we have, like, do you think we're going to see a change soon where it's actually like I can see some things happening but they're kind of set for later on in the year. Like there's lots of really, really interesting games now. I've been bearish blockchain games for a very long time in the sense of like again not poo pooing the tech side or like the, the novelty of having NFTs and games. And like I know a lot of get kind of upset at if you just kind of paint it all with the one brush. But I do think the blockchain games historically have been one of those things that it's like everyone comes in and I play them because there's tokens and there's assets in there that are going up along and so it's like no one gives a fuck about the game. The games are usually like and like I'm not going to name names but it's like a lot of like the really hyper successful things of last cycle were kind of a thing that like I downloaded and was like oh cool. Like I'm not a huge gamer.

Yeah.

But like I have some kind of feeling for what's fun. Like everyone does. Like I'm probably the perfect normie gamer. Like I'll do it if it's fun. I kind of around with everything and was like yeah, we're not really hitting. I think people like that, man.

Yeah, you're right. Like crypto folks are playing for the economics. Right. Like you're not. Economics are kind of interesting but in a bear market or when the economics aren't really favorable to people making money, you have to go back to the game. And if the game was like well.

You know, wait one minute, what are.

We doing here again? And I think it's like you know, for us to really break into that gaming narrative and like really expand the ecosystem. Like we really have to break into non crypto folks.

Yeah.

You know and I think the games just aren't there right now. Like I'm not a big gamer either but the economics certainly I don't think are that favorable for a lot of individual tokens. Like you know Alluvium for me is an interesting one. Like I think it's got a great narrative. I think the games are probably the some of the best that we've seen in terms of Web3. But you look at like how much of the circulating supply they've increased and where the market cap needs to get to to get back to previous all time highs. Like I think the token price is down 93% from all time highs but the market cap is probably 18 to 20% off all time highs and a lot of retail investors don't understand that. Right. They're probably sitting down 70, 80% depending on when they bought. Holding off a dear life going oh let's, let's all pray it goes back to all time highs. This thing needs to get in the billions if not tens of billions FTV just to get back to where it was before. Yeah, and I talk about this a lot to new members coming in and the retail and they're like oh, I didn't even know that. Like wow, like really, you know because they see token price and it's like oh it's at 150, it needs to get to 15,000. Like that's only, you know, that's not far away. Well, you know it's not, it doesn't really work like that. You know what I mean?

I think there's been a lot of like those kind of inflation things that people have forgotten about from last cycle. Like even Solana, like it's at all time high, high market cap. Yeah, kind of. I mean it reached it a couple of weeks ago but it's like, you know, it's still $120 something dollars off all time high prices and so I mean it's kind of coming through and establishing itself as the third network now I think if it, if it works.

No, I definitely agree. I mean I think like. But I bet, I mean it's getting stress tested right now. Like if we look at the meme culture and the airdrops and like it's got a lot of attention, it's really being stress tested. I definitely think it spread, it fits number three. But Solana's not even too bad. You look at something like XRP for example, which I'm just generally just not a fan of at all. And you look at that, I mean that's XRP is down the most that it's ever been. No, they're down, down against BTC terms. It's highest in three years. It's down like 55% this year against BTC. And again the circulating supply is just like expanding constantly and people are still holding on for, for dear life I guess on a lot of these tokens going on. When are they going to come back? But a lot of these older chains, a lot of the older layer ones, Cardano Polkadot, like I just don't see how these are going to compete or get a large market share in future months and years. It's like I don't see there being like a big wave for Cardano or Polkadot versus Soul Ethio. Like all these other newer chains are coming out. It's like, why, why would they. I don't see how it's going to count, you know. Yes, I think end of the day the tide lifts all boats in bull markets. And I say this quite often. It's like even if you hold those things, it's not like it's not going to go up, but it's opportunity costs for me of like where are the narratives? Where is the money going to go from the new money coming in to get the most growth?

Yeah. Well, I was joining with a guy from Tangent Ventures. Guy called, he was on the POD recently and he was talking about just essentially Cardano being like a PhD wet dream of like. But it doesn't like fucking do anything. Like one of my like investment theses very loosely used as a term investment. It's, it's, it's something. I'm calling it a thesis. But it was essentially like, because it's like my initial capital this cycle is. It's not like, you know, my size is not size. And so I was kind of like, okay, where can I do a. Almost like spray and pray, but kind of concentrated as much as possible that can pick things up. And I was like, as memes were starting, I went to kind of each chain or like layer one that was either functional or kind of being released soon. Like there's a couple where, you know, there's. There's layer ones that are doing airdrops. And so I was kind of like just trying to find the fastest horse meme coin on each chain. Stupidly I held Pepe ages ago and then got rid of it.

Yeah.

Because I was like, well, not doing anything and then just kind of woke up one morning and was like, yeah, it's.

We smell of defeat. Yeah. Now.

But it is that feeling of like feeling paralyzed of being like, oh God, if I sell this one thing, it's going to be $1 billion. And I feel like that can be, that can be really counterproductive.

Dude. Crypto is such like a psychological warfare, you know, and not even really against other people. It's actually like psychological warfare against yourself. I've been talking about this a lot through that group is like at the end of the day, like the only thing that you need to win or beat is your, your own brain. Because in, in the, in the periods of now, like opportunity cost, what do you hold? What do you sell? That's A difficult decision when you go to actually sell, you know, the time that you sell, do you think it's going to keep going? If you sell too early, then you've got the, the fear of, or the remembering of you holding all those tokens and now you don't have that and then it rips or you don't sell at all and it crashes. Like the psychological warfare that you have to play against. And then also trying to figure out because crypto makes kind of not much sense either, right? Yeah, you know, like it's, it's kind of like, you know, like, you know, we had a platinum the other day. He's like, why is, you know, because we're doing a deep dive on Maple. You know, one of the projects I've invested in, you know, they actually put out financial statements. You actually see the revenue, Whoa, God.

Forbid, can I get a P and E on Maple?

And you know, looking at the numbers are like, if you, if you were to look at this as like a. Basically I think they were doing $160,000 revenue quarters, so 50k revenue and burning 1.4 a quarter. Right. So arguably, you know, quite a substantial amount for startup. But and the question sort of came through is like, how is this thing valued at 120mil FDV at these, at these numbers? It was like, well, it's not the same as a, as a normal startup. You know, you're not, you're not evaluating crypto projects on EBITDA or revenue multiples. Like you're looking at a range of different things. Most of them you can't actually, you know, pinpoint as like an actual number. Things like sentiment, narrative, community, you know, potential growth, like markets are going to go in like a lot of these things. You then overlay with like sentiment on chain analysis and you know, things like FDV or loan value or like, you know, on chain movements, wallets, all this. But there's no one singular blueprint to evaluate a company and, or a project. So then you got that side, then you got like the tech right. Cardano, arguably the best tech going around.

But on paper, yeah, on paper, yeah.

But at the end of the day, build it and they will come isn't necessarily right or true. And I've spoken to a few projects, you know, in the time I've been in crypto, looking at potentially investing and, and speaking to the founders and you can speak to the most smartest dudes who are creating this unbelievable synthetic layers three tech that's going to revolutionize all this stuff. And they're like, the reality is no one gives a fuck and no one needs this.

Yep.

You know, and that again, is a dichotomy against meme coins, which is like, no one needs meme coins, but they are the things that are going out the most. So it's, you know, it's such a fascinating space to be in because really, at the end of the day, nothing makes sense.

Sometimes I do think that it's like, there's so much to do with the valuation stuff and this is something that I can attest to because, like, when I first started looking at crypto, it was very much from like this perspective of like, well, I. Not even kidding. Like, well, I can't get the body EBITDA on bitcoin, so there must be a fucking Ponzi. And that's like what I initially ran when I first looked at it. Also because I had friends that were like, super into it and were like super evangelical, like, bro, you have to buy. And I was like, well.

I was like, dude, chill. I don't. I don't feel like buying it. Why do you want me to buy it so bad?

My back. Why are you taking my pants off?

This is like 2019, mind you. And so my mate ended up working, like, at an actual crypto trading firm in Sydney. But yeah, it was this like, very, like, it felt like it was pushy and I felt like it was, right message, wrong package for me. But I, I did kind of avoid picking things up for a long time because I was like, oh, well, you know, and I really did mid curve it for. For the longest possible time where I was like, I sat on the sidelines for so long. Like, I bought some Bitcoin ETH in 2020, like late 2020.

And then, yeah, I kind of just didn't really. Nothing really clicked for me with it. It was more just like a, okay, cool, I have some exposure to it. And then the more that I started looking into it and the more I started actually going through what the value prop was, I. Because I did want to formalize a way of looking at how do you value these things that isn't just like, oh, well, there's a bull market and there's a good narrative and so it's super speculative and people are just buying shitloads of it, which, like, a fair bit of it is during crazy run ups. But I've seen lots of things from a couple of the guys at Blockworks, which is like a media, crypto media publication, are really good at this. And they essentially talk about blockchain projects being very similar to commodities in the sense that they're like digital goods and they, they kind of provide platforms for things rather than being like, you know, revenue generating investable asset, like, like a Facebook or. Because everyone's like, oh well, you know, why don't they just have stuff. I mean, to a lesser extent, ETH kind of has, you know, valuation metrics that you could look at. Deflation.

Yeah.

Burn rate.

Yeah.

What the actual. Yeah. So I'm like, there's, there's things.

Yeah.

But yeah.

It'S a, it's a whole can of worms that I feel like is, it's very, it's almost like a prophylactic tradfi. Because they look at it, they're like, it's that meme of the guy.

Yeah.

In the, with the coffee in the Patagonia gray sweater being like.

It's like I was watching the Wii, the we crash documentary the other day, like the. And when they went to do their, the IPO and they basically just went against all of the, the normal paperwork you've got to fill out and they just created this like photographic story of like the wework culture. And I feel as though that's kind of like reminiscent of crypto. It's like, no, no, no, don't worry about financial.

How about these pictures?

What you've been done? No, no, no. Look at our office, like literally like, look at the plants we have. Like, I feel as though that's like.

Have you seen the plants? When you, when you get that on a pitch, you're like, sell it.

This is why it's worth 40 billion, you know. Yeah. So, you know, back to sort of what you're asking around, like. Yeah, the gaming, like, you know. Yeah. I just think, I don't know. At the end of the day, you know, we're still in this sort of period of like betting on what we think is going to happen in the future. And I think that ultimately is the, you know, what I put down to the valuations that you can get on crypto is based on the fact that a lot of people are speculating that this could actually happen at some point in time, how many years we're actually trading in the future, who knows? But the end of the day, like people like to speculate. The idea for retail investors that you can make life changing amounts of money in an asset class where they can get access to has never been available before. You can't do this in the stock market. You can't invest in private startups in Australia, unless you're accredited investor. Like, they literally make it impossible for an everyday Joe to buy into early stage businesses. You cannot do it outside of crypto. Like, you literally, if you don't have a lot of money, you cannot buy early stage investments anywhere. And that for me is like, that's what triggers people because they like, oh, wow, I have this asset class and I see a lot of people want to make a lot of money. I don't have enough money. I want to invest, I want to learn about this. And people go on this journey and I feel as though like, crypto is this thing that inspires them to become like their own, like, investor. Like, they. They start to learn about something. It's fun, it's exciting, it's like, it's new knowledge, it's something new. And I think that's where people ultimately, you know, don't necessarily know what they're doing, or some do, but people like to speculate and there's a whole culture built around it. Like, it's. It's a whole industry being built off.

Basically hope that this will change their lives. And that's kind of just such an interesting and fascinating idea.

Do you reckon that's part of the reason, like, you started collective shift side of things?

I started collective shift, so bitcoin was the thing that stood out to me the most. Like, back in 2017, an old friend of mine introduced me to bitcoin. He sent me some bitcoin. I was like, what the fuck just happened? Like, oh, my goodness. And I was running a sportswear company at the time. So we were manufacturing sports uniforms China and Pakistan and selling them into Tassie. And I, you know, I was, I don't know, 15 at the time, 16. And I was like, I don't know what money is. I'm just like making some money and like, selling some. And like, I know it takes four weeks to get to China and they take a bunch of, like, fees and the bank always asks me what I'm doing and it's like, why is this such a pain in the ass? But never really thought into it too much more until, like, I was like, I need to find an alternative to this. And like, it was like, just by luck, my friend was in. The old friend was in a crypto. Send me some bitcoin. I was like, whoa, how you just sent me that to here? And the bank didn't ask? Wait, there's no bank. Wait. I just got that instantly. And I literally rang up my guys In China. I was like, do you take bitcoin?

They're like, God, no.

Absolutely cool. Let's use the Fiat systems. Do that.

Yeah.

But then I just went on this like six month journey and rabbit hole. I was like, wait, what's going on? Wait, the government can print money, inflation, what is that? Wait, they can literally just do whatever they want and no one asks twice. Wait. That's why everything goes up and wages stay stagnant and like, wait, the government has control of everything. And I was 16 or 17 at the time and I was just like, what? That trail is going on here? And I remember just talking to mum and dad about it and they didn't know either. I'm like, wait, so no one knows about this? And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, this is going to be massive. This is, this is ridiculous. And then basically got rid of my company and went all in. I started working for an old friend of mine who was running a crypto YouTube channel. Was like an education sort of play. I was like running operations marketing. Just, you know, I quit school at the time to run my sportswear business. So I was. No qualifications and, but just loved entrepreneurship and loved building businesses and then fell in love with crypto. So I had this role, I volunteered there for, with him for a few weeks and just learned. I just remember listening to Ant Antonopoulos every day on YouTube where I was like, just like Andreas was like in my ears every day with the bitcoin, his books on bitcoin. Like I was just for six and eight, six or eight months, just going super deep and I'm not a super technical guy, so it took me a long time to really wrap my head around it. And then one day I was just like, oh my God, this is just going to be the future. So yeah, so I worked for him, went all in on crypto, put everything. I was still sharing a bunk bed with my brother back then. Took just everything I had, I put in it and started working for him for three years. That business was going really good. Learn a lot about crypto. Unfortunately that business partnership just completely went to. I got completely screwed on that. Lost a lot of money, went through a really rough time. You know, this was collective shift had already begun and we're starting a separation and then shooted the fan and then it was just like a complete and utter disaster and sort of made it through that period of time. Pretty scarred. Took me about a year to really like get my, get my, you know, get back on my feet. The collective shift Just survived the whole way through somehow. And what, what. At the, the core of the reason why I stuck out and thought it was required is because there was just nowhere that I felt in Australia that was. Had like a trusted, reputable, independent information. Like influencers were pumping stuff. The ICO boom was crazy. And I used to work for an influencer and saw the inner workings like projects literally make you make these influencers sign non disclosure agreements to pay them obscene amounts of money to promote projects. Right. And we never did that, but I saw it and I saw who else the contracts were going towards because we saw the deal terms and I'm seeing all your major influences that we could name right now doing the exact thing that they were asking us to do. I'm like, oh my God, this is just a big Ponzi. Like yeah, everyone's just getting paid to promote these projects. They all own a stake in it. They pump it up. There are non disclosures. The retail buyer, they sell and it's just on repeat. I'm like, oh my God.

Well that is the danger with like the anonymous nature of like, I mean you can have your. Obviously you can track, you know, wallets to exchanges and all that kind of stuff, but it's like you can kind of spin up a lot of fresh wallets and you can have these influencers, these huge holdings don't show up. Like essentially there's no on chain transactions really for them. I mean you get there. But yeah, there's been a lot of projects even in like the last two years, like just doing like very, very basic investigative work into some of this stuff.

Yeah. Whoa, whoa, wow, wow.

And lots of, yeah, 3, 4, 500k plus followers. Just. There's always a tell when it's just like, oh, and here's a ticker. And I love this coin so much.

You're like, it's just so cringey and that's like the, that was the biggest thing as well. Looking back, the incentivization model of these influences is affiliate links, pump and dumps, paid promotion, advertising. That's how they make their money. Right. If you've got a major, all the major influences, their top link is probably a Buybit link. Yeah, right. So how can you be talking about investing and then making a commission off your clients or your audience then trading that information. That makes no sense to me. Like, like that doesn't. That is not aligned because you're basically then profiting off decisions your customers are making. Now if you're managing their funds, different story. But you are basically making money of every time they go and make an action. And that's why, like, not a lot of influencers talk about selling either. It's all about. Because they don't make money on you selling. It's about, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Yeah, so we flipped the switch and. Because I'd been burned in this space before, and I used to work with a guy and I lost a lot of money, and I just saw everything that was wrong about this space, and I believed in bitcoin so much, and I was like, I just genuinely wanted to help other people navigate and invest it the right way. And, you know, that's when I started working with Matt. I mean, I was working with Matty in the last business, and he's just a, you know, one of the smartest analysts I know. The smartest analysts I know in crypto.

Matty is great, dude.

He's just, like, so switched on. And so we were already investing and, you know, I made really good money in the 2018, like, metaverse, early year into 2021. Made a lot of money there. I'm like, dude, we know what we're doing. Like, we're making serious money. Why don't we share the research we're doing for ourselves and sell it and only be incentivized through subscription fees, Meaning that if the information we're putting out is not good, they will cancel their subscription and that's it. If we do a good job, they're making money where they keep it. That's great. So if we're winning, they're winning and it's a win win, right? If we're not doing a good job, they cancel that lead. That's the only way we make money. And any money we make in the business, we can then just buy more crypto with. It's like, well, okay, Amazing.

And it is a proof in the pudding kind of thing of like, well, hey, we're putting the revenue back in.

So we're like, if we do a good job, we can just buy more crypto. Like, that's ultimately what we're here to do. So that's kind of been the thesis of the business from the start. And there's been different variations of that and we're looking at different things we're trying to do, like, NFT gated stuff. There was talks of a token at some stage. It was like, all sorts of different stuff. At the end of the day, like right now, like, it's just amazing to have. I think we got about, like, 1100 paying members that pay for our services. And these are not necessarily degens, you know, we're talking like entrepreneurs, doctors, mum and dads with a decent chunk of crypto that just have no time to navigate this space and we just help them with our research and ultimately like we're at a point now, it's like the success of our members drives, that's what's fulfilling for me. Like being able to get up on stage at a conference or do a, you know, a master class or you know, doing a pod like this and being able to share my tips and all the losses and every, you know, the wins and everything to help others not make the same mistakes. Like that's what, that's what I like.

Yeah, no mate, congratulations on, on everything that you've done so far. Like it's quite impressive like what you've, what you've built and.

Yeah, no thanks man, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's been, it's been tough man. Like honestly like you know the last when I went solo on collective shift, like, yeah, in terms of solo meeting, like I, you know, it was like broke away from the ex business partner. I was like this is me for like for two and a half years, man. It was just, it was brutal. Like you know, we, we lost with all this shenanigans that happened, we lost 80 of our revenue. You know, we went from doing like, you know, mid six figures a month to like to like, you know, 50k a month. Like, like we lost like 80 of our revenue, you know, in a matter of months. Yeah, we, and we had all the fixed expenses of massive staff, we had office, we had like, we were spending quarter million a month. Like we were like, it was a big operation. And then to lose 80% of your revenue overnight, it's like oh shit. Yeah. You know, and I was all in on this business because I sold a lot of my crypto to build collective shift, which meant I had a massive tax bill and all of my money was in a non liquid asset being my brand, being my collective shift to keep it going. So I had a huge tax bill, basically put all my crypto in to build this business. Losing a shitload of money every month. And I was like cool and fantastic. And then we went into like the 2022 bear market. I was like, oh brilliant. Bitcoin's gonna go to 16 000. Great, thanks guys.

So, yeah, okay. It was tough man. We had to cut half our team, we had to cut salaries. It was just like, it was brutal man. It was like it was ramen, Ramen noodle sort of stuff. Yeah. And we had to go out and raise money. And I mean, the reality was we were still. We still had revenue, we had a good business model, but it was just like a tough time.

Yeah.

And luckily, you know, we raised from some really good investors. They backed me. We raised 1.5 mil a couple of years ago. And that's what sort of been able to, you know, I was able to invest that and sort of turn the ship around. And, you know, it's kind of been the start of the style of dogs sparking up over like the story before. Yeah, it wasn't really until like, sort of, you know, late last year, October, when things started to really turn around and I couldn't have done without our team, man. Our team just pulled through. Like, we didn't ever lost anyone. All of our team got. Actually, all of our team took massive pay cuts, like, but they stuck, stuck, stuck by the journey. And yeah, now on the other side, it's. It's pretty, it's pretty amazing because none of our competitors made it through. Like, we don't, we don't compete with anyone in Australia. There's no one doing true premium crypto research. Like, there's Mazarin Delphi in the us but, you know, there's new sites, but we're not news. Right. We're like investment analysis. So, yeah, it's kind of like just an interesting spot to be in now. And it's kind of. Yeah, it's, it's exciting.

Well, it speaks to just like actually sticking with it and having convictions. I feel like, you know, you have your influencers that do your. Yeah, that love it when things are running hot, but it's like having that conviction to be like, all right, I guess this is like, I started my career properly in crypto in 2022, like at the very, very start, and kind of came in and was like, oh, yeah, this is cool. And then was like, oh, oh, well, not anymore.

Yeah, we're talking about this too. Like, I love what the media brand that you're building. It's like, we've spoken about this as two completely ADHD entrepreneurs. Like, it's very hard to not get distracted. Like, I love a shiny object syndrome. And I look back at everything that I've done and the time waste projects I've worked on and it's all been shiny object syndrome.

Yep. That is my absolute. Like, kryptonite has always been like, oh, this thing, that thing, that thing. And I feel like it's there's forgotten where I heard it. But there's a thing of like the curse of competence where it's like if you're kind of okay at stuff, it's even more dangerous because you know, you, you have that. You get addicted to that feeling of like getting like having a small win, being like, oh, this, this could be, this could be a new.

Yeah, this could be a new thing.

And then it's like just. And then after like a month or two, like the thing kind of dies out. And I feel like crypto is just a place where if you don't put blinkers on and just very much be like, okay, this is like the one thing that I'm going to focus on. You're just going to get absolutely demolished. Because even like last month like I very much got.

Got delayed purely just from like literal like being investing in fucking meme coins, all things. But it's like when that was then a calculated kind of call, like this year I very much tried to be a lot more.

How would you say it?

Totally blanking on the word, but a lot more just actually focused in on the one or two really, really important things that matter. And just like, you know, the, the wins come from staying consistent and just doing the same thing more or less every day. And it's not pretty and it's not nice, but you just show up and you get it done.

Dude, I couldn't agree more. Like literally my CEO Aaron, you know, his half. His job is just literally just to remind me and just, and tell me stop fucking doing that shit. Like just focus on the thing.

Yeah.

And like, you know, that's been invaluable having other people around me in our team to really like, you know, I feel as though sometimes it's just a ball with a red flag. And like if you, you know, without someone holding the red flag, I'm just like running around in circles. Yep. But that consistency and dialed in even from an investing standpoint, like you know, when I was, you know, we want a team of analysts now to do like a majority of the work and I do more strategy rather than like individual in analysis on the individual tokens. But back in the day when I was going hard, like you've just got to be super dialed and you've just got to keep focusing and patience was the biggest thing I didn't have. I made the biggest mistake, my biggest investing mistake in crypto was.

So Ethcon came to Sydney in 2018. Vitalik came down with the, with the crew and Remember going, yeah, we're basically in a room with Vitalik and Eth was 80 bucks. And, dude, it was like, you know, it was like, absurd, right? And all the talk was like, when is Eth gonna get back to a hundred dollars? Like, that was like the biggest. Like. Like that was the biggest question, like. Like Vitalik, like, when's Eth gonna. He's like, well, you know, you know, we're building. You know, I can't copy. Yeah, but you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And they had a bunch of new projects come in, pitching at the conference. And one of them was at the. At the time was called Haven from one of the Warwick brothers. And we were listening to Haven this pitch, and we were like, oh, my God, Synthetic assets is going to be massive. Oh, my goodness. It was like, you know, tiny market cap. And I was like, right. I mean, fuck, yeah. So barreled in. Don't know how much ease I put in. Whatever got in was super pumped up. And it basically nothing for a number of months. Well, what I thought was months, could have been weeks. I don't know. At the time, I was like, you know, let's go.

This is the problem. Like, you're in crypto. Your, I guess, time preference, like, it just gets destroyed, I feel by. Especially when you go through periods of, like, really quick gains.

Yeah.

You're like, dart. It's been four days and nothing's done.

My demand an increase.

It's like, meanwhile, it's. Yeah.

And this is what happened, right? I sold out too early. I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't dialed in enough. Everything else was pumping up after this project. So I. I escaped, hit the exit button, ejector, went elsewhere. And little did I know that we're going through a rebrand. Haven rebranded to Synthetics. And Synthetics absolutely took off this thing literally went to Mars. And it met, like, it was the most sickening feeling, looking back, going, right, that's now worth in the millions.

Yep.

And I have a T shirt that says Haven. All I have left. I still have the T shirt to this day.

Hey, that's. That's good.

Who's the real winner?

The T shirt man. Like, listen. Yeah.

It reminds me to this day, like, patience in crypto is, like, super important.

It's not about the money. It's the shirts we get along the way.

The as color, poorly printed T shirts.

Jesus, that is savage.

Yeah, savage. But, like. And that's what reminds me to this day of, like, you know, where we're at, like, let's talk about the market right now. Like, people like, oh, there's something, you know, the bull markets, everyone's euphoric. It's all happening. Like the bull market's gonna end. Like, it's like, no, it's not like markets last forever. Like crypto is still going to be here when we're 80, right? Everyone chill the out. Like, this space moves so fast. We have such quick moves to the upside, we have quick moves to the downside, but overall, this space is not going anywhere. There's going to be coins come, coins go. But ultimately, if you get in the right projects, in the right time of the right narratives, you can make an obscene amount of money. And I very certain we're nowhere near the end of this cycle right now. Like, we're not even at the bitcoin halving yet at the time of recording, right? And like, you know, yes, this cycle could be happening faster than others, but the euphoria felt in 2017 and 2021 is just the most absurd feeling you like, you could ever feel. And everybody's in crypto. Like the whole world seems like they're going to be like, everyone's making money and that's when you know, it's time to get the, get the hell out. And it just doesn't feel like that speaking to the exchanges, they're not seeing the retail volumes. A lot of the money seems to be circulating by bigger wallets. I'm going to say like folks like you and I that are just sort of like, you know, rotating, you know, college funds through low cap coins at this point in time.

I was gonna say folks like you, but not like, mate, this is, but.

You know.

It'S just, it's just an industry that's just so exciting. And I think people just think too short term ultimately, like, people just get too, they get the blinkers on and it's just too short term. Like bitcoins are 40,000 in the start of Feb. Like, yeah, I, we just.

Forget that it is something that I do. It's so difficult because it's like I spent like just like you. I'm in this 24 7. Like it's, it's bad, but I'm like, I essentially like live online looking at so good tokens pretty much like, and I mean for work as well, because it's like, and it's funny balancing that kind of thing of like doing the reporting and actually being like, okay, like serious analytical brain on. I'm actually doing like, you know, productive.

DJing off like, you know, professional on.

Can't wait to crack open the Dex tools again. Now another screen. No, I very much, I've. I very much avoid shitcoining at work.

Yeah.

Just because it's like, it's one of.

Those things, like, it's such a distraction, man.

Like, it, it is. And I feel like it's so dangerous.

Yeah.

And it's something that I just so strongly do not recommend for anyone. It's like I spend all my time, like, for better or for worse. Like my, my girlfriend just loves how much I. How much time I spend looking at tokens.

But there's no Netflix insurance deck screen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey man, sorry, I gotta open bird eye. Just, just. I wish that that wasn't true. She'll watch this and be like, Yep, that's. That's 100 now.

Senko tonight.

Yeah, sorry guys, we're streaming on. On Seiko. But it is quite interesting balancing that, like, analytic side of being like, okay, this is actually doing, you know, work in the industry and.

I feel like I'm probably one of the more risk on kind of reporters, but I do feel like it gives. Like if I'm reporting on stuff, actually having knowledge of doing it is so useful.

Yeah.

And I don't know, I've copped like a little bit of flak in the past of like, oh, geez, like, aren't you, you know, too heavily invested for a reporter? It's like, well, I think that having skin in the game is so much more important than like just kind of pretending that you're sitting above it all and being like, oh, well, I'm being.

This is what they're doing.

So objective and unbiased. And I'm like, if there's something that I have a position in, I disclose or I just don't cover it. Like, there's enough media out there that can cover the things. And it's like I feel as though every. It's difficult because there's the media issues with reporters at places like Bloomberg and, you know, just larger financial publications covering things. But. And I feel like it's a very easy thing for people to look at, like, look at from the outside and go, oh, well, this journalist is covering this favorably because they hold a position in it. But I just feel like if it comes down to the individual editorial teams and the publications themselves, and it does raise questions. But I do think that it's like if your integrity is sacrificed by you having exposure to a certain thing, like you can no longer, you know, tell the truth about Something because I hold some bitcoin. No, it's like, I'm still very skeptical of like, you know, bitcoin's energy consumption claims. Like, it's the sort of thing where it's like I always hold everything at an arm's length. 100 working in this space. And yeah, I just think that the actual value of creative skills that come from just actually being in the industry and doing stuff and participating, especially as a crypto reporter, because it's like you're kind of a tech reporter. You're kind of like a very niche. I was going to say, like it's tech adjacent. But then you're also a financial, like a finance reporter and then just kind of everything else in between. And it is truly the world's most entertaining industry.

Like, I mean, I'm, I'm wearing a similar boat, but like all of our. We were investing crypto. Like, as long as you have. Have a disclosure, then for me that's fine. You understand, You've. You. You own a piece of this and people can rec. I mean, smart people can recognize good journalism, right? Versus just pumping your bag. And like, that is the opposite of what you do. Like, even the newsletter you write, I love that because it's like you're in the weeds. You're looking at this thing and you're actually describing what's going on at the, at the ground level. You're not in your Eiffel Tower talking about, oh, this is what they're doing. It's like, well, I don't give a about that. Like, tell me what's going on. Like, and you're not going to know that level of detail unless you're personally literally invested in it. Because what, you know, what's the point?

Why would you care?

Why would you care so much?

It's the same thing with like the economics majors being like, well, I think the economy is going to do this. And it's like, yeah, okay, that's fantastic. And it's so theoretical and it's so disconnected. So I'm like, have some skin in the game.

It's like real. It's like learning from a book or doing the real thing. It's like, where would you rather learn?

100 and you do not learn by. It's true of. True of everything. It's a very trite thing to say, but it's like, I spent a lot of time at uni, did a philosophy degree. Philosophy and econ of all things. So.

Jesus.

Much to my parents disappointment, I started off in law and Journalism disappointment.

Yeah.

No, no, no. It's more of a joke.

Like, it's.

It's a very. I do remember telling dad, though, being like, hey, remember I was doing law?

Yeah.

I'm doing philosophy.

Like, that's what's so fascinating, though. Like, you know, I mean, I. I quit school. I quit year. Starting year 12. So I feel as I went down that path of, like, I went alone. I need to. I need to do the thing. But economics was my favorite subject. Economics and business. It's just so fascinating. I didn't quite get the philosophy, but there's definitely. There's pros and cons to both, I think, you know, the practical and the theoretical.

But, yeah, back to, like, the. The crypto side. Like, yeah, actually being in the weeds versus listening to someone that's just kind of on the out. It's like, you know, you might go to the AFR and read about Bitcoin, but, you know, they're probably not invested. It's like, no, you know, you're in the weeds. I want to. I want to hear what's going on at the ground floor.

Yeah. And I think that there's. There's a function of all those things as well. Like, you can. The wonderful thing about different types of media is it's like, if you want the AFR's perspective on crypto, you can go get it. And I do think that they have, like, you know.

Yeah.

Pretty solid coverage on a lot of stuff that I'm like, including crypto, where it's like, you want there to be, like, actual charitable, not even charitable critics, but it's. There's a couple of guys like Cass Piancy and Bennett Tomlin run the crypto critics pod. Yeah. And they, like, they hate the idea of blockchain, and they're just like, Jesus. Like, they. They hate the speculation, they hate the financial side. And I'm like, I really appreciate them and I really like them. I've never met them, but it's like, I like them as people because I think that everyone plays a role in contributing in their own way. And everyone.

Loves to. To kind of come in with their own, like, you know, hefty opinion of, like, well, this is how everything should be done. It's like, calm the down.

And that's why there's a market. Right. That's why there's buyers and sellers. It's like, yeah, you know, there's. There's winners and losers and there's skeptics. There's critics and there's believers.

Yep.

And that's what creates the market, you know, so we have to have that healthy skepticism. Otherwise everyone would be on the buy side, which would be amazing. But.

Which would be great. But, but yeah, no, it's, it is fascinating. Where do you. We were talking a little bit before about, you know, we're still, well, I mean at this, at the time of recording, we're still about what, 10 days out from the halving.

Yeah.

So what do you see kind of happening post halving?

I mean, it's really happening very similar to the 2020 Bitcoin halving. Right. Where we have sort of a nice little correction leading up, which we had like 2025. We have a consolidation through the bitcoin halving itself. I would expect another sell off that happened Very, very textbook ETF announcement. Sell off. You buy the room and sell the news. We'll probably expect the same to happen. I think the halving is more or less, you know, priced in at this point.

And then we usually have like just a consolidation period because it was like, oh, okay, cool. Now there's, what are we looking forward to now? Oh, it's boring. Sell off. And then fundamentally things sort of, you know, build up again. We, you know, if we're having steady inflows in the ETFs, maybe we have some sort of narrative that sort of comes back. You know, we had the election coming up later this year, you know, maybe that, you know, Trump gets in, Gensler's out. Like maybe it sort of spurs things a little bit more. You know, rates have to come down a little bit more. Bitcoin continues to build up. I would think that bitcoin will continue grinding towards a hundred thousand, like, you know, towards later this year and then through like once we really get through, like real open, open waters in terms of price discovery, like Bitcoin hits 80,000, 85, 90, embrace to 100. Then I think it's like, oh, okay, this thing's actually like, this thing's actually legit. Like media comes back out, starts when you met bitcoin again. Bitcoin breaks to 100. Like, that's a, that's a big headline. Bitcoin breaks 100,000 US. That's a big headline.

Yep.

That's going to get everyone's attention. Now. It's like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Let's get back into crypto. Bitcoin is expensive. So let's like look at the other stuff. And that's generally how it happens. Retail get in, they start to sort of look at other stuff. And yes, there's going to be big corrections along the way. It's not going to be as easy as that. But yeah, ultimately I just, it's kind of, it's just all happening very, very simply and plainly very similar to the previous cycles if she doesn't repeat but it doesn't rhyme. And I definitely think it's happening very and will happen very similar to the previous cycles. But when you get in the open waters like a pass all time highs, it's like in pure price discovery that's where it's like well who, who knows how crazy things will get. True, there is that bias of like.

Well bitcoin is a hundred thousand dollars. I can't afford bitcoin. I know 100, I'm going to pick up the.

That's what happens.

Whatever I can off the floor.

Yeah, it's like oh 50, 60 cents. That's cheap. It's like, it's like that's what retail investors look at. And you know, I think that's in the day when there's, when the craziness happens and big money rotates from BTC and ETH downwards and they start buying because they know that retailers coming and then you get those big movements at like those that later phase of a bull market when things are just going just ridiculously parabolic. Yep, that's an exciting time but man a lot of people lose a lot of money at that point. Like just 90% of retail investors just come in and just get, just get screwed.

True. What is your kind of approach for picking all coins? Because I know that you're like a lot of the stuff that you talk about online is very much like have that core bitcoin ETH position because it's just the most kind of sensible, reasonable thing to do. It's like if you want to actually protect wealth, not be exposed to these like horrific or even more horrific kind of like drawdowns when they don't like especially people coming from traditional finance looking at this. I mean like like a 20% week in a day is not something that like people are very well acclimatized to at all.

Like meanwhile we go for our second scoop of cereal of the morning. Yeah. Oh okay.

Oh good.

Moving on.

Do I need.

No, I think yeah, we're cancel my lease. Like it's uh.

Oh honey, we'll find that bag. Yeah. Now we're big believers as you know, Bitcoin and ETH up front. Like I think I own 50% BTC, 20% ETH and the rest altcoins Ultimately, we like to look at fundamental value that we think is going to be here for a long time that has a good quality narrative and a team behind it that we think can sustain the bear and bull. So usually something with history that we've seen these founders get through a difficult time is bullish for us. So Maple, for example, is one that I'm bullish on. Team made it through the bare market. Defi just under the hammer. Most of its competitors died off and they just keep innovating and made it through like very lean, good, fundamental tokenomics, good. And I still think Defi is severely undervalued because of the SEC sort of stuff. So that's something we look at narratives like, you know, the layer three dmt, which we're both, you know, invested in. And, you know, I think, you know, I. I found that from you and I sent it over to Maddie and we both had a look and we were like, oh.

Like, it really reminds me of early metaverse back in 2018 when the metaverse was kind of a thing, but it wasn't. And you look at these metaverses, you're like, oh, this is kind of like. But it's got like, it could be something and I can see how someone will stick onto it. I think that's where like Senko is right now. It's like this is kind of like, you know, kindly, but you know where it's going and what, what the way when I say shit, I'm talking about the UI and like the spin polish. It's like, that doesn't matter. The idea of the behind it of like, you know, a Web3 Twitch streaming platform rewards incentivization for a decentralized platform for viewers and creators. And then burn mechanisms and Dex and like NFTs. I was like, okay. Then a layer three and you look at it against other projects and layer three, you're like, okay, this has got legs. This could be something that could be actually pretty big.

Yeah, well, I just, I really enjoy seeing crypto native products now that I've been in the space long enough. Like, I feel like it's one of those things that if you knew, you'd be like, what in the shit? Like, it's a streaming platform built on Arbitrum. Like, there's so many layers of knowledge of like, well, there's ETH and then there's arbitrum and then it's built on there and they're releasing another. Another chain that's a layer. It's like, what, what? But I do really like. And I'm just, yeah, shamelessly shilling, like, bags here. But it is, like, the reason that I bought was because we were streaming. We wanted to do it with, like, the potato capital po, which is me and a couple of other guys that are dispersed throughout Australia do a little weekly slash fortnightly pode called Le Pode. Everything about it is just. Just silly, silly business. And they're like, well, we'll see if it turns into anything. But I think everyone's. Everyone just has, like, a lot of fun with it. And that's, that's the one thing, having everyone over at my house. But it was literally like my girlfriend came in. It was like, holy, you guys look like you're, like, having, like, a little play date. Like, we're grown men. Literally, like having like a, A LAN party back in the day where you play, like, Modern Warfare 2 on two fucking computers. It was like that, but five dudes just dispersed throughout the house.

Pod parties.

1. L was sitting in the kitchen on, like, this low chair on, like, my kitchen counter, like, perched up like this. I was like, it's being budget productive, you know, so. Oh, we wanted to stream on something that was like, actually a crypto product. Yeah. And I remember one morning we're having an issue. It was like, Australia Day. We're doing a stream at like, 8 o' clock in the morning. Because that's, that's, that's what we do in our spare time. I have a very exciting life.

And we, like, messaged the dev of the things. We're having issues and got back to us 10 minutes later and was like, yeah, it's fixed. No way.

Fuck.

And it's this thing, like, it's so boutique and it's so small. Like, obviously, you know, you wouldn't expect that from Twitch. You're like, hey, I'm gonna message the CEO of Devon. Twitch. Hey, bro.

Good little bugs.

And I'm like, it just kind of speaks to the fact that, I don't know. Team's nice. Like, they're, they're really pushing hard. And a couple of the guys from Rotato met up with the Senko crew in New York, and they're, they're, they're switched on guys that just want to do something a little different. I just like it. I always get behind.

And that's what drives people trying, and that's what drives narratives, you know? I think that's, that's, that's a big thing, you know, trying to find, like. I mean, that was like the Solana play too, right. Like you know, Jupiter was. You know, that's been performing really well for me as well. Like, you know, looking at these other chains and like you said, like actually looking the individual ecosystems and going which ones are going to get the narrative right. And then you back Solana, you back the metamask of Solana being Jupiter. It's like, okay, well if I just sit in that which is not a huge amount of risk. As long as Solana keeps getting attention, that's going to perform well. And then I've sort of built out, I've got the Eigen layer airdrop I've invested still layer two is really have underperformed sort of optimism. Arbitram really haven't done that. Great.

Nick analyst wrote a piece the other day about how he thinks that's coming later this year. So interesting to see when that. When and if that sort of narrative comes. I think Make a Dow is a big one that's just been just a workhorse the last like seven years. And you know, you know the fact.

That that's I mean curve the. It's one of those things that I just looked at and was like. Like I remember for a piece I was doing, I was trying to look into like the Make a Dab how it works. I'm like, I don't mind a good abstract financial concept, but I remember like reading through their documentation just being like never in a second thousand million years will I understand what's actually happening here. Like at a mechanics level.

I was like d. Me neither, man. I. I mean Chat GPT has been my best friend anyway.

Hey buddy, explain what the this does.

I'm being light papers and chatgpt just explain this to me like God forbid.

Even better auditing the code. It's open source. That should be like, hey, find vulnerability. Yeah, here's one you're like.

But yes, I did that with a couple of like token bot sniping protocols. Like one of the Banana Gun contract got hacked some. This is pre before Banana Gun became. Yeah, we're now getting into very deep DJ here. But someone ended up auditing the code on Chat GPT and it found the vulnerability. And they're like guys, did you. Who the did you hire to do your audit?

Wow. And it just kind of hitting the sell button at that point.

Like, oh yeah, it completely tanked and I had to like re. Maybe it wasn't. I hope I'm getting my naming. We'll scratch this from the record. Not Banana Gun because I know someone that'll be very angry at me if I get this wrong. So.

Take that out.

Yeah, like. Yeah, I don't know. I. I think Ethereum is the best risk to reward play this year, holding a really good position of eth. I think that's underperformed ultimately and I think once it gets the spotlight that back from a big btc, I think the fundamental. I mean, you just spoke to, you just had a big ether.

Had a great chat. Yeah, fantastic. Always just kind of. I feel like he had, you know, the brotato capital Poe. There's five of us and I feel like we had the collectively less iq dude. He's hassle coming on the pole.

He's got just his head screwed on. He's like the most like delta neutral ball in terms of like, he's not like out there throwing out there like super crazy, but he's just a smart dude that backs up everything he says. And when I did the pod with him last year, I was like, God, I need to sell more stuff to buy Ethereum right now. I'm not sure how you felt after chatting with him, but just the level.

Of conviction and, and like, I really like it in the sense that he has really strong logic and reason behind the conviction as well. It's not just like a. And emotionally he crosses me as a very, very, like, I was gonna say like Apollonian kind of guy of being incredibly just kind of cognitively in tune with his beliefs. And I feel like that's actually kind of rare in the crypto space. Like a lot of people say they believe in certain things and then they have these times where things show up and they're like, oh, well, I didn't mean it like that, but I feel like with Susano it's where we. Oh, no, here's 13 reasons why I hold these positions and go through them. And that's what I kind of got that sense on the, on the pod. Chatting with him for the first time, I was like, this, this guy is.

He's a smart dude.

Yeah, he's just very, very methodological and I really like it.

Yeah.

And it's like he will say these claims he came out being like, I think eth ETF gets approved in May. And he had fucking like his own fantastic reasons for why. And I was like, this is. This is ideal.

So, yeah, no, I, Yeah, I think he's a super switch on dude. I think he's going to perform well. But yeah, it's still. I mean, I'm quite boring in that sense. And we do we teach that. It's like, you don't need to. Especially we're talking to retail, right? So it's like, you know, unless you've got full time in the space or you're very sophisticated, like, you don't need to take that much risk. You know, you end up just going to screw yourself over if. If you're time poor and you're trying to figure all this stuff out. Like you meat and potatoes, get BTC and Ethan door, then play around with some molds. But just find good positions, hold for a period of time, take a good exit strategy which we can help and just like, don't it up. Like, yeah, that's all you need to do.

I think that's a big one.

So silly.

But it's like, don't it up. That's literally. It's pretty funny. That's the title of the newsletter that I'm putting out.

I love it, essentially. Yeah.

So I was like, oh, that's good. Because yeah, it's. I feel like it's so easy to get kind of sucked into the, the dopamine addled haze of when things are going very, very well. And like, before you know it, you can kind of be like, oh, damn, what happened to this Happened what?

Just, oh. Because you look back in a bear market, you're like, wait, I had how much money? And I didn't like, wait, what? But in a bull, you're like, oh, it's gonna keep going up. It's like, then we're gonna go down.

And adjusting those targets all the time of like, well, it's already here. That. Yeah, what's to stop it from going to 8, 70 billion trillion dollars?

And dude, that's why I'm like, what I really talk about a lot because I've lived through this is like for a lot of people. For most people, you don't have to pick the absolute picotop. Like, live your life and do things with crypto to make your life better. And like, I try and live that, you know, like, you know what? I'm making good money in crypto. Yes, I could make a lot more, but also I could get a few things here to just make my life like, like, even better. I give myself to like a 7 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10. If I can do this, like, bought a car, got a chef, like, you know, bought an Apple watch and I'm buying a new mattress and I'm like, now I'm sweet.

Like, I like the mattress and the Apple watch coming in Chef. Tesla mattress.

Mattress are like, no, but that is. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah. And I was doing this reflection the other day. I, like, sat down, like, wow. Like, life is fucking great right now. Like, I don't need a lot of materialistic things, you know, like, you know, I look at, you know, I was looking at a watch for a bit and all these sort of things. I'm like, you know what? That'd be nice, like, down the line. But it's not going to really make my life better, per se.

Yeah.

Like a car. Yes. A guy that makes me healthy food. So I don't need UberEats. And I can work more, especially if you hate cooking.

Like, I feel like it's one of those things where it's like, find the things that you hate doing and then use money to get you the time back from those things. I love cooking.

Yeah.

So I'm like, I do more of that. Yeah. I'm like, I. There's a bunch of other shit that I'm like, I would happily pay someone to take these things off.

And I feel as though you do those things. I know you've got awesome, like, goals are like, you want to go to France and, you know, do the whole, like, you know, overseas travel and, you know, live over there and, like, amazing. Like, if you can do those things, that's what fucking matters.

Yeah.

No one's going to look back and go, man, he's such a good guy. Because he sold within 5% of the top.

Like, bro, this guy sold the pico of a sub 500 shitcoin. What a guy. Did I tell you?

But, like, for you, internally, if you can do the things that. And I think this is like a bit of whole mindset shift, because going back a year ago, Ben, I was like, I gotta make all this money. You know, I want to get to this number. And, yeah, I've got those numbers still in my head. But it's not a driver right now. It's like, no, I just want to. I want to optimize my life to a point where I can just be like a 7. If you're on an 8 out of 10 every day.

Yep.

If I can do an 8 out of 10 every day, on average, yes, I'm gonna have bad days. But, like, if I can do things that make my life get to that point and crypto can help me do that, well, then it doesn't fucking matter.

Like, how would you, like. And it's the kind of thing I don't think I'VE asked you this before, but how do you look at where your sell targets are? And again, not getting into like, you know, not financial advice, but it's like, when you're kind of, when you're talking to people about selling, what are some of the things that you discuss? Because I feel like it's one of those things where everyone.

Has a target. And then if that gets absolutely, like, let's just say that you had a target of like, oh, I'd love it if bitcoin got to $60,000 and now we're sitting well above it out from the halving. And it's one of those things of like, whoa, should I, like, is it silly for me to not take profit at 70 and pay myself? And yeah, to a question, I always.

Start with, what are your goals personally? Like, I start with like, and let's get realistic. Like, some people come to me and go, oh, hey man, I've got $10,000. How do I be a millionaire? It's like, well, you know, you know, go and put on the, on the test.

Yeah, go illustrate. But like, I try and get a realistic number from them and try and get two or three. Like, I like to have like a bearish scenario, a base scenario and a bullish scenario. And my goal is to tick off my bearish scenario as quick as possible. It's like filling the tank up. Right? So my goal would be to get to, let's say, and I look at an individual coin perspective. So like, maple for me, like, we're probably 2 or 3x away from getting to a market cap where I feel as though now we're getting in the overvalued territory and I'm going to sell down on that position to basically fill my bearish target for this bull market. And then I'll start to rotate up. So I like to take like chips off the table. So sell down percentages to fill up those bearish base and hopefully bullish cases as soon as possible. But I do it in a way where I'm taking 10%, 20% as coins or individual projects are getting to a valuation where I think it's getting pretty, like, pretty overvalued. I'll take 10 to 50% off the table into stables or Fiat and keep the rest to ride. And I'll try and get near the top. So that way I'm like, I'm taking 50% off roughly to feel the goals that I have of my bearish case and then the rest of 50 I'm going to ride. Just try and pick near the top. If I don't get it right, well, I've already taken a good chunk. But if I do get it right, well, then I'm getting much further towards my. My bullish case in terms of profits. And that all comes back to one of my goals. So my goals are I'm trying to buy my mom and dad at home. I want to have enough cash to reinvest in the next bear market, and I want to. I want to diversify and get a large, like, share equities portfolio. Because I'm 99% concentrated in crypto right now. I want to, like, diversify away.

I'm 102. I'm like 103. I don't own a stock anymore since.

Amazing.

Yeah.

So, like, ultimately, the way I think about it is I want to get financial freedom, you know, time freedom, really. And I don't want to risk everything by continuing to bet the farm to get near the top. I want to take chips off the table as we go up. Yeah. And that way, yes, you know, looking back, if I held everything to the top, I could have made a lot more. But the risk you're taking, the longer you hold is exponentially higher because once the crash period happens, you know, it becomes exponentially harder to sell on the way down because it was at that price and now it's this price, and you're going, well, I can't sell now. And then. That's how you just drag.

That's always hindsight bias. Oh, if only I had held until the perfect day at correct 3pm on a Thursday when I was gonna obviously sell. At this point, it's like, no. Yeah, I feel like. But it's funny because it's like I still find myself, you know, doing that with certain things. I like, oh, I finally learned held and done this thing. And it's just like, well, you just got.

That's the psychology, bro. It's like. That's just like. That's just.

It's not often, but it's like there are those moments when you fumble something incredible, and you're just like, wow.

It's like. It's like. Especially on the highly speculative stuff, it's like, I'm not sure if you're a gambler, but, like, if you go to the casino, it's funny. I've never, never gambled.

Not. Not really. Like, it's never held any kind of.

Fascinating weight to me, but. Well, you know, you're very switched on, though. It's like you're not like you know, I meet some people that are just like completely like they were no hope on earth of actually retaining any money they make in crypto because they just want to keep betting the farm. Yeah, like you're a smart dude with risk.

Like well it's funny because I'm like extremely risk on.

Yeah.

Like it's, it's weird how money is probably the one place where it's like I'm probably the most calculated with my risks everywhere. But it's like I was heaps into like, yeah, like highlight. Like I've always been drawn to extremely like risk on activities, especially as like a younger adult. Like a thin shit that people like, oh, it's probably not smart. I'm like, oh, it'll be fine. And then afterwards I was like, yeah, fuck man. Wish someone had told me not to do that. Everyone's looking around like adhd. Yeah, that's, that's probably quite.

Anyway, so I think like. So I spoke to a high net worth financial advisor recently and just getting some, some, some learnings from him. Basically it's like what's the future state look like? Where do I need to get to? What does this look like? Basically there was two main targets that he found his high net worth individuals got to which made life considerably easier. The first target is $3 million of investable liquid assets, not including your, your home that you live in. If you get to $3 million of investable liquid assets, life becomes very easy or easy. Like basically that's the tipping point where you can live off that because you can earn let's say 8 to 12% on 3 million every year. You're making 200k just off dividends. Right. Or yield. The next target beyond that is 10 million. Once you get to $10 million of liquidity assets, everything basically becomes as easy as it will get. And anything beyond 10 million basically makes no material difference because you can't really do much else with it. Unless you want to get my PJs and islands and things like that. Right? Yeah. So they're the two like levels. So if you think about like 3 million is like the first trigger of like really financial freedom, then you can sort of work backwards from there. You don't need to get there this cycle that can kind of be a few cycles down. But maybe you want to get to 500k or a million, you want to sort of work your way towards that and get that in an asset that you know, like bitcoin. Like for me I want to continue to buy and hold Bitcoin for a long period of time. A lot of my profits that I'll make, I'll either just reinvest in a BTC now or the next bear market. And in 20, 30 years I'll get to 3 million, like probably at the 10 million, like a lot sooner. But like I think bitcoin's going on a million dollars a coin in the next 20, 30 years. You have a few BTC in your pocket. You don't need to take a lot of risk. By the time we're middle aged, unsweet.

You know, I do treat it like, almost like burying gold in the backyard with putting, buying bitcoin, putting it on a ledger and just being like goodbye. Literally I'm like, and it's gone. Yeah. I don't think about it until one day.

I think the bitcoin ecosystem will create this financial ecosystem where you can just like let's say you had 10 BTC or over 1 BTC. It doesn't actually doesn't matter. You know.

Like you'll be able off that.

Don't you worry no.

One, no, sorry.

But you'll be able to just loan. Well, you can do it now. Loan against your BTC position to cash flow it you pay 6% back, you never have to sell your BTC and you can just live off your bitcoin.

Like this is an interesting thing. I'm like, this is now getting into a can of worms with the BTC eco stuff. I saw some maxis kind of come out of the wool work recently talking because it's all on Rune. Rune protocol. Is that it? Maybe I'm misnaming it, but I'm pretty sure it's oh, Thor chain.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And that's like the main platform that they've then kind of upgraded their protocol recently. They kind of slashed liquidity like loan requirements. So it's like you put more initial down but there's essentially they've. They promised no liquidations, zero percent interest.

Right.

And I feel like that just triggers a lot of people in the space who've been through things like just Luna and shit of like, hey, don't worry guys like guaranteed kind of yield on your stuff. Well, I mean this is more taking out like you know, cash based on a bitcoin loan.

Yeah.

But yeah, how do you feel about like if you are BTC guy and you're like, well I can't. Yeah, I can't actually, you know, make like I can't use it as stuff. It's still an asset that I can loan against. Yeah. What do you think about loaning against BTC in that scenario?

I mean, the problem we've faced is everyone just doesn't trust it because of Celsius and. Yeah. Luna and blockfi and like all these centralized parties. But at the end of the day, I think that's the way it's going. Like, where you can have traditional bitcoin defi protocols, where you can, you know, you can loan against your BTC in a way that it's like it's safer collateralized. You know, you can see your BTC in the address. It's not being mixed up, it's not being traded. It's not doing anything like that. It's just like, you know, it's just got the. Someone else on the other side of the screen, you know, wants to use that capital and they'll pay you 6% to use it. You know.

I don't see why that won't happen or isn't a good thing. Like, as long as we can build these protocols that are reducing the counterparty risk so we're not getting the disaster that we've had in the last two or three years. Ultimately, I think that's what people want. That's what I want. If I'm holding a decent chunk of bitcoin, I don't want to sell it, but if I can cash flow against it, that's how the banking system ultimately should work. You should have to have. Well, now we're going a bit deeper. Like, that's a rabbit hole in the last 10 minutes.

Come on. We'll just go into the metaphysics of Lyme. Let's go.

But like, yeah, the idea of having $100,000 in Bitcoin and being able to cash flow $40,000 of that and using the resting collateral and you pay it down, you know, 6 or 7% or whatever it is, and it means you don't have to sell your bitcoin and you can stay within the ecosystem. I think that's going to. That's going to just continue to grow. And I think that's ultimately a good thing. Like, if we didn't have to use banks, like, amazing. Yeah.

It is quite interesting because there's the. The now kind of infamous clip of Michael Saylor showing up on. I don't know which station it was, but he was essentially just talking about, he'll keep buying bitcoin until the day he dies. Now, I didn't like Michael Saylor when I came into the space, but I've kind of Come around. I'm like, hey, this is just like, there's something so funny about Michael Saylor to me that I'm just like, he's quite aware that it's like he's. I feel like there's a level of self awareness with Sailor that it's like he's quite aware that he's like taking the piss.

He's a smart dude.

And I feel like there's a lot of people that read into it at a very kind of like earnest level where they're like, this guy's just buying bitcoin. And the presenter who was interviewing was like, like, you know, come on, Michael. Like, you know, we're. Everyone buys stuff with the expectation of selling it. And it's like, you didn't really have to say it, but it's like, no, people buy stuff with the expectation of loaning against it.

Yeah.

And I do think that that's something that, like, if you can figure out the problem is with these kind of protocols is it's something that there's a guy called Chris Black has talked about it. He's like, you know, the issue is with a lot of these protocols, they can change rules, they can change terms and conditions and they're like, no, actually we want to recall the loan. So I do think there's a ways to go for bitcoin defi and I think there's a lot of it will need to be like a well tested product over a long period of time because I feel like everyone's just got that like, yeah, you put like you, you bury it in the backyard and you figure it out. But I do think that it just makes the most sense that if you want to have a value accretive ecosystem where people do, you can't just treat it as this thing of like, well, we'll put it in the coffee tin and we'll hide it under the floorboards. It's no, you should probably be utilizing it so that it's actually like an asset that people want. 100 over time that aren't just people being like, oh, so it's digital gold. It's like, yes, yeah, let's have a vault for it and let's do, let's use that stuff.

Yeah, you're right. We do need the protocol and the businesses to actually be the intermediaries so we can actually trust them and know that it's going to be legit. We're not going to just lose our money.

Yep.

And that's what's not here right now. Yeah. But like, again, like, Michael is kind of an interesting guy because the reality is, you know, the MicroStrategy stock did nothing for like 12 years. It was basically flatline. It was like, you know, business intelligence.

I'm sure they do stuff. I don't know what that thing was.

Flat as a surfboard for about 10 years. And he goes, you know what? And I know he's ever said this publicly but like, you know, my intuition is he just went, you know what, fuck this. Let's just buy bitcoin and let's just like ride the wave. And you know, all of a sudden their stock is just, just exponentially grown. And will they ever sell their bitcoin Will probably not. Because MicroStrategy may probably live beyond, you know, Michael. Right. So hold a bunch of bitcoin on the balance sheet, let it go up.

And you imagine the day that Michael Saylor goes, oh yeah, sorry guys, had some shit come up. I'm selling everything.

It would just be like, this is ultimate. I mean, I'm not going to say it's like satoshi levels, but like, I mean what is the own 1% of the supply?

It's something phenomenal. Now it's, it's over at current prices, it's well over 8 or 9.

Looks wild that it's just like issuing bonds and then like buying bitcoin with the bonds and then just like, I don't know, I don't exactly know how the repayments work of like private bond dividend distribution. But I'm like, he's basically just like loaning money to buy more bitcoin and then paying it off.

Like diluting MicroStrategy shares. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. So we're doing these loan repayments and we're going to buy more bitcoin. It's like, I do think long term MicroStrategy shares feel like a dumb thing to own in terms of like, it's literally just a business that finances buying more bitcoin. Yeah.

So why don't you just buy bitcoin?

Diluting the performance relative. I think it was up like well over a thousand percent in the last three since. Yeah, it was something phenomenal. Like it's way outperformed bitcoin. But I do think there will be that day of like, wait, what are we doing with these chairs again? And it's like, ah, yeah, like wait.

What does that business do?

It's like business intelligence stuff. Business intelligence, don't worry.

Yeah, that's like a company going, we do AI. It's like, okay, cool, guys. Yeah, great. It's like you've wrapped chat GPT.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I don't know the inner workings well enough of microstrategy to make like actual conclusive comments on it. But it does feel like one of those things. I'm like, probably just hold the underlying. Dunno. Is that not volatile enough? Like, isn't such it. Don't you have enough like risk with that?

But you know. Yeah. I think Bitcoin being bought on the balance sheet of companies is just going to become more and more.

Obvious. You know, we do it a collective shift. It's like, would you rather hold a bunch of cash, which you're losing like 10 to 20% purchasing power every year, or do you buy a hedge against that, like Bitcoin? And ultimately that's what's happening with retirement funds like fidelity now have 1 to 3% bitcoin allocation to conservative and balanced ETFs, which is ridiculous. That's insane. It's starting to be seen as a risk off asset. I think it'll be in superannuation funds here in Australia. The day that someone pulls their finger out and decides that we probably should update our Ponzi, like housing superannuation play like it's too big to fail anyway. That's a whole other.

That's a. That's a separate. We could go into that, but you.

Know what I mean, like, that's where I think it's going. And you're just going to have consistent buyers with a limited supply asset with new supply harming every four years. It's like, what else do you want to own?

Yeah. Yeah. It does kind of baffle me that I took a very long time to come around it to Bitcoin as like an investable asset. But it does. It's become a lot clearer to me as to the reasons why you'd want it. I did have my issues with it, like, being like, you know, a hedge against inflation during like 2021, 2022, when it's like literally it was like, inflation up. Oh. I was like.

You were like, oh, yes, thank you. Interest rates. Oh.

But again, it's like. And it is one of those kind of like annoying statements, but I do. I've started to come around to the idea of zooming out just that little bit more and being like, okay, it didn't work perfectly as everyone fled directly into Bitcoin and bought it. It's like, obviously not. It's. You know, you have. Do you think that a lot of Crypto sits outside of macroeconomic circumstances as well. For I'll take my own claim there with a grain of salt. But yeah, I've become a lot more partial to the thesis that Bitcoin over time is becoming more slightly more of a hedge against.

Debasement. And again, I don't subscribe to the Austrian school of econ theme to the full extent. Yeah but like the Robert Breed love like to that extent I'm like I, I fundamentally that's where I kind of go like.

I step off the train. But it's like I again, I'm not the kind of person that has like hyper mega conviction on things I guess, you know, in a financial sense. Like I'm not.

Yeah.

That way emotionally inclined where I'm kind of like I like assessing and I like.

Yeah, you like to be fluid.

Yeah, I like to be like okay, cool. And that's, that's just me. I probably won't make any trillions of dollars.

No, no, I like it because I.

Won'T bag hold till the very like in the bitter end. I'm kind of just like.

Well, I think too like it's also. You're right like you know, it's got the properties of a hedge against inflation. But the reality is is it there right now while again it's a market, people have to believe it for it to work.

Yeah.

I mean that's it. That's. There's buyers and sellers. Right. Just because I say that's a cup doesn't mean like it's a cup. You know, I mean like yeah, we've all got to believe it. So you know, I think it's going to take the fidelity is adding it in risk off ETFs. It's going to take superannuation funds to add it. It's going to takes more of the market to believe that that is the thing before it becomes the thing.

Yeah.

You know and I sort of. But that's where you can make money because you're basically believing in something and backing something before it's actually occurring if it actually plays out. Well, that's how you. That's how.

And that's what the risk is for. It's like well yeah, the chance that it may not then that there's your risk.

That's your risk.

But no, I do think that I'm Yeah. I'm much more subscribed to the idea that it becomes. And like you have blackrock. I, I don't. It's one of those things where it's like you have 10 major financial institutions. Obviously they make their little fees.

Yeah.

And like that. It's still a product to them. Like it's still a thing. They're not like fully orange peeled.

Yeah.

And neither am I to a certain extent. But I do just see it. You look at its qualities compared to other assets and you think like okay, why wouldn't you have this as an investable asset class? The end. Yeah.

Yeah, man. They get a hundred million dollar tokenized fund. It's just like yeah.

Discussion. Yeah, that's something we can, we can leave for a later pod, man.

So there's about four new pods there. We came up with the last half an hour.

It's like we've got. We've got a lot of topics. Crack out on the. Get back to the couch.

This is a very nice student of the studio, mate.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, I like that. This is for my.

This is for the. The NGY podcast.

I'm like studio.

I'm gonna finish up with like a. Thank you so much for coming on. It's like well, I'm in your house. Your gear.

No merchant. Well mate, because you know we had to set up and you know it was. It meant I didn't have to leave the house either.

So it is pretty good. Okay. Walk in, get mic'd up. I'm very, very happy.

And now we're gonna shoot off to. To listen to another bro. Brotato Capital founding member Swiss.

Yes. Speaking about ordinals. Just.

Just pump bitcoin for us.

Yeah, should be good. I'm looking forward to that this afternoon.

That should be good.

Yeah, should be something going on.

We'll take the. Take the. Take the new whip for a spin and oh true. A couple of. Couple of chapel laps and we'll head.

Over, do a couple manies. This is ladies and gentlemen, a couple of manes in the. In the. In the Tesla. I promise this isn't a cringe crypto podcast.

We might have cut this out. We're over. Back over in Tasmania of young that you know in Launcesa. Right. The. The blocky route would like. It took like 20 seconds because like the city's like wasn't able to see. It's just a little town like it's like four streets and you've done it. You've done a laugh mate. That's.

I grew up in a. In a coastal. I wouldn't. It's not even a town, it's a village and it was called Woolai Woolley Mini Waters It's a village.

Yeah.

I'm not kidding. Like, two to 300 people.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Like, we didn't have Internet there till I was, like, 13. Oh, geez. Yeah, no, no, I. You're a probability. The sticks, man. Like, it was the kind of thing like.

Like, you. Like bare feet?

No, we had shoes.

We did have shoes. But I remember taking my girlfriend there on, like, a trip to see my family, and then the first time she was ever there, she was like, what the is this? And I was like, yes, that's where I grew up TILL I was 17 years old. Like, we don't have a supermarket. There's the petrol station. That is kind of like the shop. And of course, there's a pub, so.

Of course. And then you're like, you're in a house, right? You're not like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no, dude.

So in my head, I'm like, you're.

Like, imagining just, like, you might.

Like, like a.

Like a bamboo. Like, like a tent in your spare feet.

But village is a loaded word. It's a very small town. But.

Okay.

Yeah, but no, I understand the. The very, very small.

Yeah.

Town kind of thing.

It was.

It was a place that I loved growing up in, but at the same time, could not wait to leave.

Yeah.

I go back and I'm like, oh, I see why my parents moved and lived there. It's fantastic.

Chill, quiet. Yeah, awesome, man. But, dude. Yeah. Great to have you. I was gonna say great to be on.

Great. Yeah, yeah. It's like. It's such a funny, isn't it? I will say thank you for coming on the show, but also thank you for hosting me in your house and using all of your gear. Very much appreciate it. I'll claim as much of this as I can.

You had to travel here, man, so I appreciate that. And that's good fun, man. But feel as though we could have gone for another two hours.

Yep. Well, time to wrap it up.

Thanks, bro.

Thanks for coming on the show.

Cheers, man.