Freedom Money Ep5

Today on the show, we have a very special guest. Patrick Ebert is here to talk about the communities he's building. Welcome to the podcast, Patrick.

Thanks very much, Kevin. I appreciate being on your show.

It's nice to have a LATAM connection here. So, uh, just one country over, I guess. Pardon me?

Just one country over, I guess, today.

Yeah. So I'm in Costa Rica and Patrick's in Panama, and I think we're both relocated Canadians.

Correct. Yep.

Um, so maybe, maybe, uh, a good place to start is a bit of your background that took you to the building space.

Uh, yeah, I'll try to make the story not too long here, but, uh, I'm, as you mentioned, I was originally Canadian and, uh, I was in the software industry, computer science degree and that sort of thing, and created a couple software companies for the oil and gas energy space and, uh was able to fortunately sell it and, uh, at a pretty good timing. So I was able to take a little time off with my family, my kids, and travel around a bit. And one of the places we landed up was actually in Nicaragua, just country just above you in Costa Rica. And, uh, I was a bit like a kid in a candy store because the property was so inexpensive. I was living in Vancouver, Vancouver Island area in Canada, and, uh, it's kind of like the San Francisco Bay Area in the US where it's super expensive. Property, and especially for waterfront oceanfront property. So when I saw the property prices in Latin America, I was like, ah, I'm gonna get myself a place. I really just wanted at that time just a tiny little sliver of a place to live on the beach and, or have a place to go to on the beach.

And it sounds familiar.

I ended up buying a farm that was on the beach and the kilometer of space of, of farm, um, beachfront. And so I thought, well, I'm a software guy, I can, I can create a website and see if anybody's interested in being a neighbor and subdivide the property up. And that's how everything got started to being in the community residential community development space. So that was about 20, 25 years ago now, I guess. But, um, so we built— we've been building communities ever since then.

And so what's the mission with building the communities? What's the goal?

Well, it's been an evolution, to be honest, Kevin. Now, we started building kind of regular types of communities, beachfront resort type things and residential communities. But I lived on a boat with my son for a while up in Canada, off of Vancouver Island. So sailing around in the ocean, and it was very liberating and, you know, a very freedom-oriented life. We were catching our own food or, you know, creating our own potable water from the salt water with reverse osmosis and all those sorts of things. And nobody, you know, producing our own power. And nobody was— no, no government and no corporation was really in control of our lives. And I didn't realize how freeing that was. And so at some point it kind of hit me. I said, like, I want to take that to land. And so, um, you know, the challenge was 20 years ago to create an off-grid luxury community. Everybody said you can't do that, it's just not possible, you can't produce enough power with solar systems and things like that. So I took it as a challenge, and, and we actually did create the first community in, in Nicaragua at the time that was 100% off-grid, but luxury homes, large homes with, you know, 5 bedrooms and, and, you know, all the flat-screen TVs and all, all those sorts of things that you want in your, in your home. And you wouldn't know it was any different except you didn't have any power bill. And so we just kept moving on with that kind of philosophy. And then when COVID hit, um, we actually created what we call the FIRST philosophy. FIRST stands for Freedom, Independence, Resilience, Sustainability, and Transparency. And, um, it kind of resonates with a lot of people these days that are sort of tired of the authoritarian governments and all sorts of things. As a fellow Canadian, you, you know the things that Canada did during COVID with, you know, all the lockdowns and mandates and, you know, putting pastors in jail for having a congregation, or arenas could be open for hockey games, but you couldn't go to the gym. And, you know, there was all sorts, you couldn't go to the beach, even though viruses don't like either salt water or UV light. So it was just, nothing made sense. And so we created these communities called Veritas Villages, now around different countries in Latin America, And I can explain why we chose this region, but that really was the impetus to do that is originally it was just sort of, we need to create a place for family and friends that is sheltered from that kind of nonsense. And we can just close the gate and we have our own food, we have our own water, we're 100% off-grid. Nobody's in control of anything that we do here. And it's just a very freedom-oriented, self-sustainable life, but still with a community of like-minded people. So it just really took off. We had a— we created the first one and we had a webinar and I think within, you know, an hour we sold 90% of it and, you know, 100 homes or whatever. So it was really popular and it continues to be popular. We have a nice problem to have as we can't create the inventory as fast as we have people interested. So that's great.

So I would like to dig into a bit, a bit more, uh, like you said, in terms of why you're building in the area, I guess I'll start with this. Why, why not build in Canada?

Uh, well, I mean, it's pretty hard to create freedom-oriented communities in an authoritarian nation. So yeah, I mean, Canada, I think there's a race to the bottom when it comes to Canada, the UK, um, you know, the UK announced exit and wealth taxes, and I think last year they set a record of 15, roughly 15,500 or something like that, high net worth people left the country. Norway tried that a while ago and they don't realize that all those people are the ones that create the businesses, create the jobs, and, and pay the bulk of the taxes. And they flee, then it just cripples your economy. And Canada is going to find that out over the next few years as well. And even the U.S. and a lot of European countries, Germany, France, they're all going through the same thing. Netherlands actually retracted their ridiculous statements from the law from a few weeks ago where they, they put a tax, I think it was 36% tax on unrealized gains. Yeah, I mean, that's just, that's a crippling thing. I mean, you can just play that out and see how, how bad that is. And I guess they got enough flak that they actually are saying that they're gonna, you know, strike that down now. But, and then Denmark just, uh, got some new rules too. So we, it was interesting the other day, um, here, actually, I'm at Veritas Village Coronado in our welcome center now. And, you know, this, this is one of our flagship communities, one of the earlier ones or one of the current ones that's kind of growing fast. And we had couples from 10 different countries in a row a couple of weeks ago, you know, viewing and wanting to buy a home here. And they were all like-minded, kind of libertarian, freedom-oriented Bitcoin kind of people, and but they're all from 10 different countries like Italy, France, Netherlands, Germany, UK, Canada, US, New Zealand, Australia. So all kind of spanning the world, but there's a lot of people that think like us, I guess. And my estimate is somewhere around 2 to 5% of the world is kind of freedom-oriented and kind of waking up to, to, you know, what Western governments are starting to do. And, uh, so we're not alone. Even 5% of the world's population is a pretty big number.

So yeah, no, I agree with what you're saying. I mean, my experience in Canada with COVID was, uh, you know, having bank accounts frozen and making, you know, the police locally found it just to be an enormous violation that my kids would be playing outdoor hockey, you know, in the evening. And, uh, that would shut down, like shut down aggressively. Yeah, it was crazy. Like there was a, like I used to walk in High Park with my dog. You know, which is a big park in Toronto, and they put a fence around the whole thing. The whole thing, like, unbelievable use of public resources to stop people from— and, and the irony with High Park was it was donated by a person to the City of Toronto on one condition, and that one condition is that it remained open to the public. And so, you know, only they could take it back now. We had these laws, we had this Charter of Rights, and then I don't know what happened. Like, I thought those were important. So one question I have is if you run into— yeah, there's so many questions. First of all, let's start with the community, because for me, I was, you know, I discovered Bitcoin after I left Canada. When I was looking back at the matrix, none of like, you know, seeing the fake food, fake money, fake news, fake everything. It just became super clear that there had to be a better solution that didn't involve the government just printing money at will while we all worked for it.

Yeah.

And so, uh, yeah, that, that was kind of a realization, but what gave me hope after that realization, because when I came here, I really didn't have hope. I was, you know, literally just trying to get out with my, my assets and my, my safety at that point. And it's, uh, you know, interesting times. So my question, uh, you know, related to that in the community and these people coming from all across the world and connecting, like Bitcoin for me gave me hope. And then what I discovered after a period of time was that really the Bitcoin community was what gave me hope, is these people pushing this idea forward kind of with, you know, in a unified voice, and nobody really had to talk to each other to know what they thought. And so, you know, I'm just trying to understand how you're able to bring that community together. It's just, you know, a whistle you put out and everybody knows?

Yeah, I guess that it's amazing how, you know, like-minded people find each other, I guess. And, you know, doing things like this on podcasts and people hear, hear about what we're doing and they can relate very quickly to, to it. And like I said, they're— it's a pretty loyal group once they find each other. It's just so refreshing that— I mean, I really can't stand the censorship and cancel culture of the, of the woke world these days, and You know, you can sit here in our Welcome Center and have a glass of wine, watch a sunset with anybody in the community, and not be afraid at all of what you say because everybody's, you know, open-minded enough to, to, you know, you might agree to disagree on things, but that's kind of how things used to be. You don't get canceled for anything you say, and, and it's just refreshing because, you know, somebody might feel, you know, throw out some conspiracy theory or something that like, like the, you know, the COVID-19 virus was man-made, and then you find out 4 or 5 years later that, hey, I think pretty much everybody agrees with that now. So, you know, it's, it's those kind of conversations you couldn't have. Like, I mean, I have family members and friends that just literally have canceled me. They consider me a wild conspiracy maverick out there, and all we're doing is building very sane communities for people that have a logic and open mind and are, you know, open to talking about different things and enjoying their neighbors and living kind of the old-fashioned way. Where I grew up in a small, small town in Manitoba province in Canada, and, you know, to me it's kind of like that here. It's a— we have a stream with minnows in it that, you know, kids can go catch minnows and butterflies and things like that. And we're going to have a, a school on site here, so your, your field trips are just literally right outside your door. And it's just, it's a very peaceful place to live. And so, you know, we decide one of the benefits, I guess, we have too. Well, the other thing you mentioned is why in this kind of, in this area. Well, the, as you've probably discovered now, the, the Latino culture is very live and let live. They don't really consider putting mandates on you. I mean, they went through the same fear of COVID and things that a lot of places did, but they kind of lifted them faster. Um, Nicaragua was actually a little beacon of light in, in the world at that time. It didn't put any mask mandates or vaccine mandates in at all and basically said, you know, the president, for all his shortcomings, I guess, came out and said, you know, I'm not your father, you're not children, you know, treat yourself as you would like your neighbors to treat you. And, you know, if you need help with your elderly people in your family, the government is here to help you. But we're not going to shut down our economy or anything like that. So That was a little bastion of freedom among here. And that's kind of the culture of Latin America in general, I find. And so we're here, we have two of these communities in Panama. We're just opening up one in Costa Rica very soon. So what's that?

Pura Vida.

Yeah, exactly. And that one's going to be in the Atenas area, which has got the fame of being noted by National Geographic as the best climate in the world. So that always helps on the marketing side too. It's kind of like springtime all the time. And we have one in Nicaragua as well, Veritas Village in Nicaragua. And, and so it takes us, my son and I, a long time to find these community locations because they have a long checklist of what, you know, when you're completely off-grid and you're growing your own food and you have to produce your own water and energy and everything, um, you know, it's not easy to sometimes find the beautiful locations like we have here. And, you know, the Costa Rica and all the communities are, are located in beautiful places with rivers running through them or in the mountains with amazing views of the ocean and things like that. But, you know, it's also got to check the boxes of we can grow enough food here. Like, it's difficult to do it on the beach because of saltwater spray and heat. Generally, you can't grow as much stuff. So we are usually kind of in sweet spot is sort of like 300 meters, 1,000 feet elevation or higher in there. And that it's a little bit cooler. You don't have the salt spray. You can grow anything. You know, as you know, you have a year-round growing season here. So it's not like Canada where you got 3 or 4 months to grow your food. So there's— I mean, that's another reason why we wouldn't do it in Canada. And being off-grid with solar systems, you get so much solar power here near the equator that, you know, it's so much easier to create off-grid homes. And the technology has changed an awful lot in the last years too. But it'd be much more difficult to frankly do it in, in Canada or, or the southern end of Chile or something. It would also be difficult You know, closer to the equator is just happens to have the best culture and, and the best climate.

Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree there. I mean, the climate here in Costa Rica, I'm on the beach and, you know, most days it's well into the 30s, hot sand beach. It's just absurdly hot. Um, so, you know, you're going outside in the morning and at night, but then if we go into San José, you know, through Montañas, it can be 10, you know, 15 degrees cooler. It could be 35 degrees on the beach and 15 in San José in the night.

And so, exactly, I mean, I have a place in Panama City and I'm, I'm less than an hour or about an hour's drive from there here in the community. But Panama City is excruciatingly hot. I mean, no bones about it. It's like you said, it's at night it's 25 Celsius, so what is that, close to 80 Fahrenheit? And then in the high 90s every day in Fahrenheit, and so in the low 30s Celsius. Here at Coronado and our Veritas Village here, it's more like 21 to 27, so that's kind of the year-round range. So it's warm enough that you can use your swimming pools and stuff like that and, and enjoy being outside all day, cool enough at night that you barely have to air condition. And once you get acclimatized, you generally don't.

Yes. Um, well, this is amazing. Uh, I, I again have so many questions, but I'll just keep, keep going through a few of these. So now you're building— so I, I guess one of the questions I have, and maybe you have some clients who have concerns about this, uh, in terms of investing in developing markets with respect to property rights or anything like that? Do you have pushback from clients who have concerns? I mean, not, not that property rights are enshrined. I mean, there's some stories about what's going on in the property market in, in Vancouver now with respect to, you know, I think the natives claim Kamloops in BC.

I don't know how that's going for them, but I mean, that, that kind of thing also wouldn't ever happen here because it would— you wouldn't ever get that I'm sorry, with that woke kind of concept, like, oh, you know, we're on stolen land or something like that. It's just not how people think down here. It's like, sorry, this land was conquered. It's now titled and for sale. That's how it works, right? Yeah.

So I bought my place on the beach here. The other piece I was going to tell you is I planted bananas, you know, and a few fruits. And within 6 months I was eating bananas from something that I planted.

It's incredible. Yeah, it's crazy.

They were small bananas.

I always laugh at the papaya trees because they grow. Like 20 or 30 feet tall in a year and a half. And we actually have to cut them down because they're covering the solar panels and stuff and shading the solar panels. So within months you have all sorts of fruit. We have an orchard here that my grandson was just raiding the other day, and just star fruit and bananas and lemons and limes and all sorts of things. So it's amazing. That's another thing. Not only can we have a much smaller solar panels or system here than you'd need in, in Northern Canada or whatever, then, but you, you can grow everything year-round and you can have a, an orchard that's, you know, it's a number of acres or orchard here, but it's still, you know, not huge and it's still easily enough to feed the community.

So yeah, incredible. Um, so you mentioned you're, you're working on this new project in Costa Rica now. So my next question is, generally walk me through what you're building right now and why. And bonus points if it enables freedom and inclusion. So I, I'm really interested in hearing more about this project.

Well, all the Veritas Villages follow the same first philosophy. They're all about freedom. Freedom includes lots of different freedoms— freedom of, you know, socially being free, but also financial freedom. So they're all Bitcoin-centric communities. We don't have many rules, but any commercial businesses within the communities have to use Bitcoin or accept Bitcoin. They can also accept US dollars or whatever currency they want, but one of them has to be Bitcoin. We are creating basically Bitcoin citadels throughout the region. I think one of the advantages we have is because, like, a lot of developers come down, they buy a big tract of land and they're not really developed. They don't really know what they're doing. And they, they often, you know, sell to their sister and their dentist and that's where it stops. And then nobody's paying HOA fees and they're just flipping lots and just never becomes a community. We have a number of things that we do to avoid that. Unfortunately, our communities have been so popular that they become communities very quickly. But the beauty of that, too, is I just got back a couple of days ago from Argentina. We're looking in the Mendoza, Córdoba area of Argentina to create another Veritas Village. I'm going this weekend to El Salvador. Obviously, when you have Bitcoin Citadel communities, El Salvador is one of the more likely places to have one. We're just working with the government there on residency programs so that, you know, because it doesn't pay to have a home if you can't be a resident there, especially as a plan B. If it's kind of an escape route for you, then you kind of need a residency. And so the beauty of having all these Veritas Villages communities around Latin America, and it'll be outside of Latin America, you know, we're looking in Malaysia and different areas as well, but you can visit any one of them as a as a resident, you get to use all the amenities and discounts at the restaurants and things and shops and things like that. And it doesn't pigeonhole you into, well, if I move to Costa Rica, I have to really like Costa Rica because I can't go anywhere else. That's my home now. With Veritas Villages, I mean, they're obviously easy to sell your home too because of the demand. But you could just say, I'm going to spend— we have clients that buy a home, one in Panama, one in Costa Rica, and likely would be one in Argentina because they like vineyards and growing their own grapes for their own wine and stuff like that. Our Costa Rica property used to be a big coffee plantation, so you can imagine how many coffee plants we have in there. People can— we already make Veritas Village coffee now. And so they all have the same freedom-oriented philosophy, like I said. So they're all attracting like-minded people. Doesn't matter which country, it's just same, same kind of person that just appreciates freedom and doesn't want to— it's kind of a libertarian philosophy and like do no harm and, and, you know, that's about it, right?

Yeah, it's, uh, you know, I, I think coming here what I realized is it's kind of— I almost feel like it's a bit of the language. Like in learning Spanish, people are thinking differently. They're not thinking the way that people think in Canada and the United States. Their language doesn't even support that thinking. And so I find it pretty interesting.

Well, they're super family-oriented too, which is really important to us as well. I mean, I'm not saying it, you know, conservative from a right or left politics perspective, but they're conservative, um, family, you know, kind of values. And, and, you know, a lot of things that go along with that, you know, gun ownership is quite easy to have here and those sorts of things. I wouldn't break into a Veritas Village if I was anybody that there's a lot of gun owners in the community. Not that that is a thing, but I'm just saying it's another one of those freedom-oriented things. If you want to have a gun, you can have a gun, and nobody's going to tell you you can't. So it's just, it's just a— yeah, and I, my, my wife is from Ecuador, and so I'm always learning more Latina type of things. And, and it's just a, you know, she's— their family is excruciatingly close. Like, it's very common for some, you know, a kid in a family to live with their parents until they're in their 30s. Now, it's common in Canada too, for different reasons, because they can't afford to buy their own home. But down in this part of the world, they want to be together, right, for as long as possible. And, and they, you know, when the parents get older, it's just understood that the kids are looking to them. You, you can— you can't really find old folks homes or whatever you want to call them, right? Yeah, because it's, it's a family's responsibility, and nobody even thinks about, you know, I'm not putting my mother in a home, that's ridiculous, right? So It's a very family-oriented, very nice values. And, and so that kind of woke mindset of, you know, DEI and everything like that does just doesn't get absorbed here because, you know, it's just like, what are you talking about? That, you know, so yeah, I kind of like that part of the culture too.

Yeah. What, um, what are the biggest tech or operational challenges you run into with these communities? It sounds like it's a long process, obviously. Permits.

It is, it's permitting. Government permitting is still difficult. The one thing about Latin America, as you've probably discovered, is it moves extremely slowly. I mean, that's both the good and the bad side of the sword, right? It's, it, it really, if you're in a, a, you know, a rat race kind of, like I was in the software business, that's a very dog-eat-dog kind of business. But when I moved down here, it just instantly all that rat race is gone. Nobody's in a rush to do anything. And, and, but so that really is nice, you know, probably makes you live a lot longer without that kind of stress. But on the other side, like, my background is German.

This is the reality we sometimes run into in Latin America. Sometimes in Latin America what I find is the technology— like, I, I had internet issues yesterday morning. Sometimes there's no electricity.

So I don't know if you hit the wrong button, but yeah, no, somebody was calling me and some reason it bumped me off of here. I don't know if it— what happened on your side, but hopefully it's just— I thought I'd put do not disturb on, but apparently it got through anyway. Um, yeah, I mean, well, we used, um, we use Starlink in our communities and it's been very reliable, and so we have no issues with the internet. And a lot of people, you know, I'm doing podcasts and things like I am right now. I'm— this welcome center is 100% off-grid and You know, everything is, as is everything here, there is no power line coming into this community at all. So, so yeah. And anyway, culturally, yeah, I think it's, it's just, you know, the slowness is frustrating on one side. Like when you've, I went to buy guitar strings the other day and it took me like an hour because I saw them on the shelf, but I had to go to the warehouse to get them. And then they bring them back and you go to a different cashier and then you go to a guy that stamps the invoice. And I'm just like, this is ridiculous. If a Best Buy opened up beside you, you'd be wiped out. But yeah, but on the, you know, the good side is, you know, it really takes the stress level down. But for us, the challenge is permitting. Permitting, it takes forever. The governments really are into, you know, environmental protection, which is good, but they make that ambiente environmental permit here takes forever to get sometimes, especially when you're changing this. These communities used to be farmland, right? Or like ranches and different things like that. And when you're changing a ranch into a residential community and subdividing dividing the lots. It's a lot of work. I don't, I don't recommend it for anybody unless you have a lot of stamina and stubbornness. But, you know, it can take years to get that through. And, and so that's, that's really the thing that slows us down. And it's frustrating because we have such a, a large, you know, growing following of people that want to live in these communities, but they have to wait. Fortunately, the one in Costa Rica is going very quickly, and I think Our goal is in April to, to be able to, you know, open up the first home sites there.

Amazing. So, uh, you know, you've been in the space for a long time now, uh, the freedom space I'll call it, and in the building space. What is your best advice for builders?

Uh, stay out of Latin America. It's, it's, it's frustrating to build here. I honestly don't, don't, if you're a person, you know, I'm not promoting this just because it's our communities, but we build all our own homes. We don't let anybody else come in and build homes because it just, if somebody gets a bad home, a bad quality home, it just reflects poorly on the community. And that goes for property and rental management as well. If you know, you rent a home through Airbnb in one of our communities and it's not clean or doesn't have the utensils you wanted or whatever the issue is, the toilet doesn't flush or something. It's just, you know, you, you, you, you reflect on the community and you think, oh, this place is garbage. I don't want to live here. So the same thing happens with, with home building. One of the beauties of Latin America too is that people don't like to say no, right? So if you ask anybody that you meet on the street, are you an electrician? Yes. Are you a plumber? Yes. Are you a structural engineer? Yes.

Right?

They don't like to say no. So you think you're hiring a builder that's of quality, and do you build good homes? Oh, absolutely, yes. They may have never built a home before, They just don't want to say no. And then you get what you expect when, when that's the case. And, uh, it's just, uh, you know, so we, we've— I, I don't recommend, like in Canada or US or Europe, you could just say you hire a builder and say, you know, I'll come back in 6 months and see how it's going. That is impossible here. It would just— you would— I've had so many early, 25 years ago when I was cutting my teeth at this, so many bad experiences. I had homes built on the wrong lot. I had homes built backwards with the back of the home facing the street. And, you know, I've had homes that were painted all blue and, you know, and they were supposed to be a totally different color. So it's just all sorts of different things that just— you wouldn't even imagine it. Someday I'll write a book on a few chapters on home construction in Latin America, but it's a challenge.

Well, I, I really appreciate you taking the time, Patrick, to explain what you're doing and, uh, give some tips for everybody watching. Is there anywhere we can send people who want to connect?

Yeah, absolutely. If you go to veritasvillages.com— villages with an S, veritas is in the Latin word for truth— and, uh, you know, there's a contact us form. Our property experts are very responsive. You'll probably find that surprising too in Latin America because, you know, most people, like I said, time doesn't mean much to Latin America. So there you might get a response back in a week or two. Here you'll get a response back in an hour or two from our folks. So, and, you know, I always recommend to people to come down and visit the areas too. Like, you know, before we get a lot of people that will buy a home sight unseen and just be ecstatic that they've got a place. But it's best if you can come down and tour around a little bit, check if the area is going to be something that you like, and then just have an open mind and realize that things are going to move slower when you get here. You know, if you want to get groceries and the hardware stuff that you want to buy and wash your car and whatever else in a day, pick one thing. That's probably all you're going to get done in one day. It's a different kind of life, but it, you know, it's a great life for people that are looking to kind of slow down their mind a little bit.

Yeah, no, it's been amazing for me completely. Uh, you know, one of the better decisions I've ever made in my life was leaving Canada and coming here. And I thought of a few other places and I have absolutely no regrets here.

Uh, so yeah, I, well, I think the other thing, Kevin, is that a lot of people feel guilt when they're talking about this. Like you just said, you know, one of the better decisions you made was leaving Canada. I love Canada. I love the natural beauty of Canada. And, you know, I love having, you know, a sailboat there and sailing around and just enjoying the mountains and the creeks and, you know, lakes and everything. It's the politics that is killing the country. And, you know, it's, it's, you know, those— the economy, I mean, is just on a spiral. Downward. And, you know, like I said, a race to the bottom with the UK and Germany and France and Netherlands. Everybody seems to want to— who can be the worst at running a country. But I don't, I don't have any guilt, um, you know, in leaving Canada. I'm, I'm a little disappointed, honestly, in the, in the, in the people right now reelecting the same government that, you know, destroyed half the country. So That surprised me a bit, but I think that was just an anti-Trump vote. And, you know, that might change in the future, but it's getting to the point, like, I think you mentioned printing money and stuff like that. It's getting to the point where it's irreversible. It's just not sustainable.

No, it's my, I have kids there who are still in university. They're 22, 20, and 18. And I really don't, I don't see any possibility for them to, you know, stay in Canada and kind of. Progress with opportunities, uh, you know, they're just going to be shut out. And it's completely horrifying to see, you know, there's so many problems. And you say it's politics, right? And, and I think I used to think that, but I think the problems are with the money. And if we fix the money, right, so we take the power away from these politicians who can print, you know, this additional money, give themselves additional powers, not balance the budget What happens over time is as a society, we're just increasing a bigger and bigger percentage of everything we produce into government. And if you told any investor that they were going to be long government to the limit, you know, this was the, what they were going to invest in, people would give you a hard shake, right? But that's what, that's what's happening in Canada and most of the developed world. So I agree with you when you say you're disappointed. Pointed at other Canadians, right? Like, I, you know, your neighbors were calling in, you know, if you had your son had friends over, you know, the police showed up during COVID because your neighbors called the police.

And that was ridiculous. And that's another thing about the culture here that would never, never happen down here. I mean, your neighbors are your support group around here. And, and yeah, I mean, the other thing with, you know, it'd be great if Canada would just adopt Bitcoin like El Salvador did, and that would help fix you know, 50% of the problems with the economy because I think closer to 90.

I honestly think closer to 90. And look at the experience of other— supports it.

Yeah, I mean, we've, we've been a Bitcoin treasury company since we began. I mean, before that was cool, right? You know, people, people have been able— you can buy, you can buy your home and lot here in our, any of our communities with Bitcoin. I mentioned the commercial entities have to accept Bitcoin. We mine Bitcoin with excess solar power. We, you know, we are a Bitcoin treasury company. We accept and keep as much of our treasury assets as a— we're a public company. Our symbol is AUTR if you want to look on the stock market. But, you know, we are big believers in Bitcoin and we're creating Bitcoin circular communities. And I'm happy that we have a lot of our assets in Bitcoin. I don't really care about the short-term volatility, ups and downs, it doesn't matter at all. We keep enough, we have to, that's the only reason we do, we keep enough in fiat because in order to build homes, we have to still pay with US dollars. But in El Salvador, we don't, we can pay builders with Bitcoin. So, it just makes more sense for everybody to consider Bitcoin. If you're not into it yet, you should. And everybody thinks, oh, I'm in too late. It's like, you aren't in too late. Now is a great time to buy Bitcoin.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, uh, I also have to thank you now for the therapy session, Patrick. And, uh, I, I know we'll run out of time, but I want to connect. Obviously Dana can probably help with some financial solutions for your clients. Maybe I'll send you some information. I really appreciate, uh, your time today and look forward to reconnecting soon.

Great. Well, I appreciate you having me on the show, Kevin. And, uh, yeah, absolutely. I think some of the things that you guys do with, uh, Bitcoin-backed loans and things like that is, you know, right up our customers', our clients' alley because people like to self-custodian their Bitcoin, but they're willing to use it to back, you know, buying a home or whatever it is. So there's a lot of things that we could talk about for sure.

Sounds good. Well, we'll reconnect soon.