The Massive Structural Differences When Evaluating Bitcoin vs Crypto | Ideas by Mike™ EP55

Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast. I am Mike Milligan. Today's episode's, uh, going to be a great conversation with someone who's, uh, as a third-generation entrepreneur, has gone from corporate America into the world of independence. So we're going to talk about the institutionalization of financial planning. We're going to talk about The journey to independence, and then we're going to talk about how he, uh, super niched his way into expert status into Bitcoin. We haven't talked Bitcoin on the Ideas by Mike podcast, so stay tuned as I welcome Eric Rungy from Veritas Wealth to the show.

Late night drive with the dashboard glow, head full of questions.

There's people you meet in your life along the way that you realize they're just doing something unique in the financial planning space. And it's rare that a financial advisor who owns one financial planning firm will bring on a financial planner from another firm onto the same show to bring value. But you know me, I'm all about never missing a moment. And my personal mission is to educate, coach, and plan. That's what we do here on the Ideas by Mike podcast. So when Eric was presented to me as a potential guest and I got to know him, And realized that he truly has, has worked his way into expert status in Bitcoin. I thought, wow, let's do this educational podcast so that we can start getting the conversation started for our clients, for our prospects, and for those who listen to the show, our listeners, about the value, the history, and the value of Bitcoin as store value going forward. And so Eric Rungy is who we've chosen to serve as the ambassador for that on the Ideas by Mike podcast. So welcome to this week's show, and I'm looking forward to you taking something out of this. So don't forget to comment in this as you learn something so that we know What else to bring you on the Ideas by Mike podcast. Eric, welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast.

Thank you.

I'm really excited to have this conversation today because from our first conversation that we had when we were, you know, in the, in the introduction phase to see if this would make sense to our, even our pre-call today, I'm even more excited about what our listeners need to hear about your niche. Before we get there, let's, let's talk about how the world of financial planning has become institutionalized and what that looks like for the people you talk to.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here. What I've seen is what I think is common to institutions, the older and bigger they get, which is sort of from an incentive structure point of view. I think that institutions have more incentive to do and sell what has always worked rather than necessarily to be on the cutting edge of what's coming, new developments, that sort of thing. Because preservation of what I've built becomes the top priority, not front-running the next big thing.

Yeah. And what we're talking about, like institutionalized, we're talking about names, routine names you would know around the country. So, you know, just it's the Ideas by Mike podcast. So Merrill Lynch, Edward Jones, Fisher Investments, JP Morgan, any big brand name like that. that have become institutionalized. And I, and I, Eric, I tell this story a lot that I think this all began when Ray Kroc took McDonald's from the McDonald's brothers and he created 2 all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. But we see things like in the financial world when we're talking to clients, we see things that have been institutionalized. Like, so, so what are the things that you routinely see with people that you're just like, wow, that's not a modern approach to financial planning when you're meeting with somebody for the first time?

Well, I think the problem for the financial industry is that we are all caught selling commoditized products like the 60/40, for example, which I think may still have some merit, but it needs some attention and tweaking and love. But simply selling a straight 60/40, one advisor can't distinguish themselves from another advisor down the street selling a gold ETF or a particular set of stocks. It becomes very difficult in the industry where the industry's at right now to set yourself apart in a way that truly adds value and is truly unique. And I think that's a part of the history from the '60s onward of where the industry has come. But I just think it's sort of where the industry's at right now.

So you said the '60s, right? So let's walk back through a little bit of history because we're going to do this a little bit later in the show also. But, you know, financial advising was not a career until like almost 2000. Before that, you had stockbrokers, right? And the, the, the, you know, the whole world of financial planning didn't come into play. I just had Dr. Ives Matches on the podcast, episode 51, And in 1980, he's a professor at Arizona State right now, but in 1980, the mid-1980s, he set up a fee-only financial planning firm. I mean, could you imagine being a pioneer, setting up a fee-only financial firm in the middle '80s? Everybody's going to be like, nah, I don't need to pay for that. I got my stockbroker, right?

I got my tax preparer.

I got my attorney.

Yeah.

But, you know, the institutionalized is something that we who are independent fight against. And, you know, we're— so I want to talk about like you going the realm of independence, but there's something you do that you're doing for our listeners today that I just want to give our listeners a chance to talk to you. You're going to give away an article. It's the— tell me about that article now. Tell people how to get it real fast.

Yeah, it's an article that I wrote. I try to give out as much free value as I can if I think it's going to be helpful to people. And it's 7 questions every investor should be asking about Bitcoin. So a lot of times people will tell you what Bitcoin is, and that's great. I'd like to tell people what Bitcoin is, but There are, uh, maybe key unknown unknowns. And so I try to help people unlock the things that they don't know. So this article was written to that end. Not that they don't know, but that they don't know that they don't know.

So Eric, thanks for, thanks for having the conversation with me about the institutionalization of the financial world. Any Anything you want to say to cap that off before we get into independence?

I could tell a quick story. When I went to a Bitcoin event a couple of Februarys ago, Fidelity was there. And Fidelity is actually on the cutting edge of Bitcoin, uh, and digital asset adoption. But I spoke with the head of digital assets and talked to her about a product that I was developing in the space that helped— it was downside-protected, uh, ETF exposure, et cetera. And I was shocked at the response. And that's where I formulated this idea. The response wasn't, oh gosh, that's really interesting. Tell me more. The response was, why not just pop Bitcoin into your portfolio at 1 to 5%? And so I'd spent a lot of time thinking about that and I realized, oh, that's— Fidelity is saying that which is consistent with their incentive structure, even though they're on the cutting edge of Bitcoin adoption. They still have an incentive structure and I think we all do. So that's my understanding of it.

So tell me about that incentive structure because this goes into the institutionalization of financial planning. What is a big company? We don't have to necessarily call it Fidelity here, but just what's the incentive structure of a company when they actually put together, you know, like just some rules that maybe just aren't customized rules. They're just kind of, here you go, 1 to 5%, 4% safe withdrawal portfolio. What's that incentive structure really mean and what's it like?

I mean, I think it varies per institution and I'm not suggesting that I have done a deep dive on Goldman and Fidelity and Merrill to the degree that I could really speak from the inside, but I can say that I was curious as to why Fidelity for— and Fidelity's doing a great job in the space, by the way. Don't get me wrong. I would use Fidelity products and do, and I love their thought leadership. But I noticed that they weren't as open to my idea per se. And I can only speculate as to why, but the best evidence that I could, the best conclusion that I could come to was, is that the products that I was offering were not the products that they had. Now, I, again, I'm not trying to rip on Fidelity, but it just that this different type of thinking about a Bitcoin strategy, I just found it very curious as to Why not give that full consideration in addition to the products that you have as well?

No more waiting for some day to come. No more running from the things I've done. Write it down.

Make it.

So let's go to independence. So 2017, you decided to, you know, hang your shingles and, you know, do something that a lot of people who don't understand the level of risk it takes to start your own business, who are W-2 employees. They've not started their business because they want like something consistent. They're going somewhere different. But when you went independent in 2017, was it out of necessity? Was it out of frustration with the industry? Why did you go independent?

I think maybe because I am so entrepreneurial-minded. You mentioned that it's a big risk and people sort of underappreciate it. It didn't feel like a risk to me at all. And I think that's because I'm cut out to be independent and be entrepreneurial. It, for me, was I didn't like the restrictions of not being able to fully make a judgment about what I was selling as far as products and services, but also just in terms of if I wanted to try something new in terms of maybe put a new signature in my email. I found running into corporate compliance constraints really difficult, whether or not I agreed that they violated the law or the rule. I just found I was getting blocked, not because they said that this is bad, you'll get in trouble, but more because, well, we have to have a rule in place because if one person abuses it, then we have a problem. And so the blanket rule— I've never fit well under blanket rules. I fit under if the rule is truth and keeps me out of trouble and I'm doing the right thing. Great. I get the reason for the rule. And that was just a sort of taste of the corporate culture that I thought, I gotta, I just need to be able to make fully my own decisions and I'll take that risk on myself. That was kind of the foray into me becoming independent.

I can't for the life of me remember much about the year 2017. Like to me, like, you know, there's these point in times, like you remember, you always remember where you were 9/11. You always remember where you were in the 4th quarter. If you're in the financial industry, you always remember where you were when Bear Stearns fell and when Freddie and Fannie Mac, you just, you know those, right? But from a professional standpoint, I can't remember anything spectacular about 2017. Can you?

No, I just remember I moved and it was stressful and that was it.

Yeah. And so like that, but like, so here you are, 2017, almost celebrating the decade of true independence. If you could go back from where you're sitting right now to Eric in 2017, what would you say to him about that move of going independent?

I'd say it's definitely great. And I would just give him all of the stuff that I've learned in the last decade, because I answered negatively about why did I move, but there's more to the answer. The positive end of why I was moving is I was still trying to find my own identity as a financial advisor. And so I was trying to drill down into how do I set myself apart from every other advisor? And I didn't even know that I was trying to answer that question at the time. I just knew that it wasn't satisfactory and I needed to keep going layers deeper and layers deeper. And so that's what I was doing. So I would say, here's all the accumulated knowledge that I have learned, Eric. Here's a shortcut. This will get you where you're going much quicker.

Eric, what's your favorite fruit? What do you, what do you like? My favorite fruit?

Mangoes.

Mangoes.

Okay.

So if the industry is an orange and you're a mango, okay, what sets Eric apart from those big institutionalized firms now that he and Veritas are independent?

Well, what I could say is I am able to pivot a lot faster than a large institution. That takes me into Bitcoin, which we can talk about maybe later on, but I'm able to just move quicker, think on my feet quicker, and adapt quicker. Kind of like the difference between a Porsche and a semi-truck. Both have a good use, but I like to be able to move where things are moving.

Very nice. Very nice. So Eric is the Mango in the wealth management world. Right now versus all these institutional sides. And that's, and that's really what it is about. It's about creating identity, right? As an independent financial advisor building a firm, we don't need a million clients. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. We need, we need the right clients, the ones that fit our target. And so, um, that's, uh, that independent streak that you have as an entrepreneur, I'm sure has attracted a a select group of clients that you just wake up ready to serve every day. What is that? Um, before we go on to the next part of our conversation, what does that client look like in your world? Are you, are you focused on, uh, pre-retirees? Are you focused on Silicon Valley folks? Who, who gets— who, who do you just wake up ready to serve every day?

That's a fun question. Um, it's really a couple of categories. My legacy book of retail clients I just adore, and my favorite clients there are the most curious, the most proactive. They just save money really well. They try to figure out what it is that I'm saying and where I'm coming from when I talk about things like Bitcoin or risk-managed 60/40s or an AI hedge fund or just whatever. So they're just kind of constantly curious, which is why they've done so well in their financial lives. I think the other side is Kind of that same person on steroids. It's the high net worth person at, let's say, $5 million investible up to, say, a billion, the family office level. The reason that those folks are attracted to me is because, well, I'm pretty direct. I shoot straight, very transparent, and they pretty much know that what they see with me is what they're getting. But we also vibe because I think entrepreneurially. I'm from, I'm a third-generation business owner and business owners, I don't know, at least the kind I come from, tend to think quick, move quick, decide and, you know, no fluff. We don't have time for fluff. So that's the clients that I do love working with. I'm never offended by directness. I actually find it really refreshing, whereas maybe some people would find it offensive. And I end up offending people because I'm direct and I'm okay with that. I never mean offense, but, you know, you're just going to offend people.

I love the fact that you're a third-generation business owner. You want to take a minute and tell us about, you know, mom or dad's business and grandma or grandpa's business and how and what that means to you today?

Yeah, that's a, that's a, I'm honored to answer that question because where I'm sitting right now is in the building that my dad had built for his real estate business. And he's since sold and it's a different business, but I got an office here. But even more importantly to me, I can look out my window right now and look down where my grandpa's rental shop used to be. You could almost throw a rock and hit it. And he ran a heavy equipment rental shop when I was a kid. And that story in and of itself is a fun one because Because he found a blue ocean in this little town of Madras. There were no rental shops, but there was demand. And so he took a risk and just started one from the equipment that he already had in his shop, drills and jackhammers, and then he grew it from there. So that's the environment. Now, my mom forced me, to her credit, to go work at this rental shop when I was 14 years old, and I hated it. But I learned lessons there. And by the time I was 16, 18 years old, I could run the whole shop. My sister and I would run that whole shop on our own when my grandpa was out of town. That's the type of entrepreneurial, uh, entrepreneurial background that I come from.

Yeah. I remember like in my, you know, um, entrepreneurism kind of skipped the generation between me and my grandparents on all sides. Right. But like on my grandparents' side, like my, I often tell my grandmother's story, but on my grandfather's story, on the other side, I never tell that entrepreneur story a lot. Uh, but I always talk about the lessons I learned from like those folks. Um, Eric, the, the idea of you being independent, but also now understanding your kind of, kind of your founding story a little bit from heavy equipment rental all the way through your dad's real estate business to you is, is super impressive. But one of the things that brought us together, because it's very odd, right, for the founder of one financial planning firm to speak to the founder of another financial planning firm on a podcast and be in agreement without talking about the things that you don't, that I think you're wrong and I'm wrong, right? Cooperation with 2 independent offices is rare, but this is what caught my attention about you that I absolutely love. In your business, you have gone to a very niche market that I think is needed in the financial planning world. And as a true fiduciary, I want to make sure to give the pros and cons of everything that exists. out there to clients from an education standpoint first. But first of all, tell us about that niche and why did you go there?

My niche is Bitcoin and there's variations of Bitcoin inside of my firm. But why I went there, I had been studying economics in the 2010s for a long time. Authors like Gary North, Thomas Sowell, Murray Rothbard. And the problem for me that I found is that going off the gold standard, especially after reading Rothbard, the US dollar going off the gold standard was a huge problem. But I could also tell we weren't going back on the gold standard. And so I had to sort of put that problem away in the back of my mind and it created tension for me. But what are you going to do? You can't fix it. And I also couldn't figure out a way to incorporate my knowledge and understanding of economics into my business. Because all I'm doing is basically selling fee-based mutual fund or ETF accounts. You don't really need a lot of economics training to do that. But I didn't care because I had a passion for it. I found it fascinating. Well, sometime in the 2020s, I think it was around 2023, my wife sent me a video of somebody discussing Bitcoin as a thesis. And so my wife sends it, okay, I'll listen to it. I've heard of Bitcoin. And so in an hour, he articulates the thesis behind Bitcoin. And for me, it solved every single problem of going off the gold standard that fiat currency created. And I thought, there's the solution. Now, by solution, I have to be really careful and say, I don't know what the future holds and I don't know what the returns of Bitcoin are going to be. But what I do think is that it was designed to fix certain things. And so that became very appealing to me. The problem was there was no way to incorporate that into my business at the time, but I figured out ways to solve that problem as well.

So before we go to SOP, to how that problem was solved. Let's talk about, maybe dive a little bit deeper and talk about what, how Bitcoin solves the problem that, that video you watched, right? How does Bitcoin solve the problem of the gold standard for those who are really curious? Because I know I'm not the only person that is thinking that when I heard you say that. So give us, you know, give us 3, 4, or 5 reasons how, how, how it solves it.

So if we, if we go back to 1971, Nixon gets on TV, de-peggs gold from the US dollar. So you can no longer now go down to the bank or wherever, And redeem your dollar for a certain amount of gold. From there, significant things started to happen. US debt, government debt skyrockets. A whole host of cultural problems then followed. Whether or not they are caused by that is a good— is another argument, but they are certainly correlated. Too many problems caused across too many different areas and disciplines right at 1971 for us to totally say that there's no correlation, that there's no causation. There's definitely a correlation. Okay, so it creates this massive problem of value transfer from the money in my pocket over to the money in the government's pocket, who can now print dollars at will. That's a major problem because now I'm fighting inflation. I'm swimming upstream just when I go to the grocery store to buy a can of soup. And so everybody feels that inflation. Bitcoin was designed to be a sound money because Part of the problem of going off the, off the gold standard is now the government can print at will. Well, the more money exists out there, the more dollars chasing after the same goods that causes prices to rise. That's what we call inflation. Bitcoin cannot be printed. There's no more that can be created other than the 21 million that exist. So that's a very short-form answer to how Bitcoin is designed to solve that problem of massive inflation.

Just like, just like the, the currency of the Roman Empire can no longer be used in the world. One day the dollar will not be used. I don't think it's during our lifetime. Would you agree with that?

So tough to tell the future, but what I could tell you is empires always rise and fall. And being an American exceptionalist myself, love America. There's nobody more patriotic than me except for maybe Donald Trump. He's the most patriotic person in the whole world and, you know, et cetera. I'm just making fun of him. At some point, the American empire is going to start to look like every other empire in the history of the world. Just because we're America doesn't mean that we're not subject to the same laws of physics and economics. But it's very easy to put our blinders on. And if I say something like that, the immediate response can be, you're not patriotic, you don't love your country. It's not that. It's that I can zoom out and take a look at the, at where we're at in the process. So at some point, 10,000 years from now, will America exist? Will the dollar exist? Boy, tough to tell, but I know that England is no longer the empire upon which the sun never sets. England has had her heyday, and I think that may happen to America at some point too.

Yeah. And so Bitcoin is a modern-day version of that, right? There's a, most people don't know this about Bitcoin, but in 2010, there was this programmer who wanted to buy a couple pizzas and he bought 2 large pizzas, total value, $41 at the time. for 10,000 Bitcoin, right? Do you want to talk about a pizza chain if they kept that 10,000 Bitcoin, who's probably no longer in the pizza business anymore because of that? I mean, you want to talk about a great investment, $41 turning into, let's just say Bitcoin is, you know, $70 at the time of this recording. Who knows what it's going to be? Let's just say it's $70. Well, 10,000, $700,000. Nobody out there really turned $41 into $700,000 over a 15-year period. That's a tremendous return on investment. It just talks about like the value. Now, I say this about Bitcoin because you have gone super niche, right? It's amazing on what that means to become an expert on something. You know, it generally takes 10,000 hours to become a true expert on something, and you have devoted that time to become that expert, not only for you, but for your clients. What impact has that had on the people you speak with in their total investment portfolio? And, you know, specifically just the comfort level about this emerging way of investing/transacting that Bitcoin may have for us in the future?

I think Bitcoin is becoming known among higher-level institutional investors, family offices, high-net-worth investors, as something that is competing with gold as a store of value. And it's starting to gain traction as a serious asset. I think the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve combined with the launch of the Bitcoin ETFs has definitely helped. The way that I talk is I try to be the bridge for people where I can see they have unknown unknowns and as such make objections. So like one objection that I get is Bitcoin has no value. Well, it obviously has value. It's worth $65,000, but they don't mean it has no value. What they mean is it's not tangible.

Right.

Beneath that, they mean I can't understand it, therefore it feels unsafe. My job is to translate what they're saying into the actual human emotion behind it or the concern. So as I've spoken to people, the impact has been they get it. Like I spoke to a guy at a family office event in May of last year, then talked to him, I don't know, several months later. And he was a Harvard-trained guy, Harvard graduate, very smart guy. He gave the objection, it has no value. We spoke about that for a while. He remembered that 9 months later and he is like, yeah, I remember that. I get what you're saying now. He still wasn't a believer per se in Bitcoin, But that's the impact, is that somebody needs to be able to speak to these objections, which sort of naturally occur to people. But there are no advisors that I know of out there speaking to them. But if not, people are left to their own devices. They're, they're left to read the headline as they scroll. And those headlines create narratives and narratives create impact. And somebody has to counter that narrative. I believe a lot of times it's a false narrative about Bitcoin.

You know, the interesting part about what you're saying about somebody who's got to carry the banner and run with it is Our listeners know I live in Puerto Rico. It's also called Crypto Rico because a lot of folks who have moved to Puerto Rico have traded it because, are here trading crypto because of the tax laws here. And so there's, it's highly favorable to day traders who are trading that. But the interesting thing about those folks is they'll often, when they make some money in it, they'll start teaching courses on how to make money in it. And that's where they're, you know, so they, so they've created like 2 income streams, their, their investments there. But the number of investment folks, people registered with the SEC as investment advisor representatives, like you are, people who have the experience in the market, right? In the markets, helping clients, sitting across conference tables and dining rooms, the people that have the expertise level that you have, that you are obtaining, teaching, and then continuing to acquire more knowledge and pass on. is revolutionary. There's very few of you out there. There's a specialist, so there's somebody who just does that, but they don't go the extra mile to be registered with other entities. You have really taken this multifaceted approach, which that's why I believe like this super niche you have is so revolutionary. And one of the things I wanted to host, maybe if you don't mind, talk about that, the newsletter again that we're popping out to listeners who really want it, and I'll tell 'em how to get it.

Yeah, thank you. 7 Questions Every Investor Should Be Asking About Bitcoin. Where we're at in the trend is that We're so early to Bitcoin and so we, you know, nobody can see the back of their own head, myself included. And so people have unknown unknowns about Bitcoin. And so I try to bring those out, put light on 'em, help people to sort of have a foothold and some groundwork to understand Bitcoin. And so I'm always producing thought leadership stuff. This article in particular just gives you 7 questions that you ought to be asking to help you feel sort of better acquainted.

And if you want that newsletter from Eric, text To the number 600-700, the word news, N-E-W-S.

This is the Ideas by Mike podcast, where your future stops living in the past. Fear to faith, maybe to a plan.

Eric, when Henry Ford was, was in his payday as the innovator he was, he, he's been often attributed to saying this, although I don't think anybody really— he's not in his written work anywhere, but he says all The general public really wanted was a faster horse. They didn't want the car. And now here we are talking about in an investment conversation, Bitcoin as a strategic allocation is something that has attributes for investing. I think it'd probably be best to maybe give our listeners, as we wrap up the podcast, maybe like a crypto lesson, right? Talk about what crypto is and what the difference between Bitcoin and crypto actually is in today's market from someone who studied it before. So I'll give the floor to you and maybe ask a question or two, but I will tell you, I'm out of my league now when we go in this. So I'll give it over to the expert to talk about maybe the difference between crypto and Bitcoin.

Yeah, absolutely. So I always say Bitcoin, not crypto. When I say Bitcoin out there, people automatically often hear crypto, and so Bitcoin sort of gets lumped together. I don't view it that way. I view Bitcoin as a separate design entity and structure from all of the rest of crypto. I tend to link crypto into the fiat world more than Bitcoin. So what is crypto? What is cryptocurrency? Well, it's computer code at the end of the day. Every single crypto runs on its own blockchain, which is the way that transactions online are confirmed, and they all operate according to different rules. That begs the question, okay, gosh, now I'm overwhelmed. Which crypto do I buy? That question comes when we're not thinking in terms Bitcoin, not crypto, but rather we're thinking cryptocurrencies, there's 3,500 of them. That's a recipe for overwhelm. And also when we're thinking of it categorically as a way to make fiat money, a trading asset, I try to view it differently. I view Bitcoin as designed to be the solution to the problem of broken money. Money has been broken since the dawn of time, in my view. Money that is reproducible, that is not scarce, It's hard to find money that is not durable. And there are a host of other qualities that you want your money to have. Think of gold, for example, became favored as a reserve currency or a reserve asset because it's very hard to make more of it. You can do it, but it's difficult. You can recognize gold fairly easily. Gold is durable. It's not like oranges. You put it in the safe and 2 weeks later it's rotted. So gold has these certain characteristics. It didn't come into favor at random. It came in, the market chose it for reasons. And for a reason. And markets tend to be pretty smart over time. Collectively, groups of people are very, very smart. None of the other cryptocurrencies are designed to do what Bitcoin was designed to do. The first block that was ever released of Bitcoin had inscribed on it, Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks. So when Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin, he released it in '09, right in the middle of the housing crisis and the great financial crisis. He knew what he was doing and he knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying the system is broken. Bailouts for corporations that are too big to fail are a major problem and a feature, not a bug, of the current fiat system and debt-based system that we're in. So Bitcoin was designed to essentially become a viral source of money. Now, by viral, I don't mean it just gains massive celebrity popularity. What I mean by viral is it's under the radar, so to speak, of a physical asset. It can't be stopped in the sense that you cannot stop the internet. So it's physical money can be manipulated, right? A house itself can be burned down, so you can cause trouble to that as an asset. Bitcoin cannot be stopped in the sense that you would have to shut down every node on the internet worldwide and keep it shut down. So if you could shut down the internet, you can shut down Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a durability to it. And so with its particular features of scarcity, portability, durability, divisibility, Recognizability. It's designed to be a super— to be a different asset than any other asset that has ever come before it and to essentially replace money. And we need to define money, but it's essentially to replace fiat money and a system that has never really worked well for the past 5,000 to 6,000 years.

Wow.

And so that historical background there, Going from the financial crisis to where we are today, I want to, I do want to ask a question here about Bitcoin when it comes to the ETF and the indexing side. Most people don't realize that ETF, the first ETF index was actually introduced in 2021. Do you want to walk us through maybe some of the context of like when Bitcoin became an investible asset and regulated by the SEC and what that means for it going forward?

Yeah, I think it was January 2021. And here we are today, June 15th, 2026. So it's not been that long. The Bitcoin ETFs were the most successful launch of ETFs in ETF history. What that I think did in the minds of many, many people was it gave it legitimacy. And I think because we saw what the SEC was going to do, how they're going to handle this thing, are they going to try to prosecute Bitcoin holders? Well, no, probably not. Not after the inter— you know, if they're going to let an ETF come on, they're probably not moving anti-Bitcoin in terms of their sentiment and their direction. But then seeing that they are also, and the IRS as well, classifying on-chain Bitcoin, not the ETFs now, but Bitcoin itself as property, not a security, whether or not that's good, bad, right, or wrong, it gives us clarity. So what I've been seeing is that the trend is moving toward, look, we have to deal with this asset. We have to figure out some definitions around it. And so that helped a ton. Now, what's really important though is to note is that when you buy a Bitcoin ETF, you are not buying Bitcoin. You're buying somebody's shares of, and then they have bought Bitcoin. And there are some key important differences. I'm not anti-ETFs. I use ETFs for our downside protected portfolios, but it's just, that's what I try to educate people on is, hey, you gotta know what you're holding. That's what's most important.

Yeah. And so I, you know, as we kind of wrap up the show today, because I think there's been a to digest here that people are going to be like, wow, you know, we went from like institutional financial planning through your independence journey as a third-generation entrepreneur onto like your super niche of Bitcoin and now niche of Bitcoin. And now everybody hears that when you gave like, you know, Crypto 101 and what Bitcoin really is and its history, I think folks will agree that you really understand What Bitcoin is, where, without predicting the future, what do you see Bitcoin doing over the next 3, 5, 10 years with AI in the conversation?

I can say right now, I think we're in a capital rotation space where AI is the hot topic and the capital is flowing to AI. SpaceX just was released as well as an IPO. A lot of capital moving in that direction, and that's fine. That's what markets are going to Bitcoin has had sort of capital sucked away from it. And so price-wise, it's been suffering for quite a while, but that's actually not outside of what the 4-year cycle has done every previous 4 years. So in a weird way, Bitcoin is impervious to what's going on in the outside world. Now, where I see it going is if the trend line continues, Bitcoin will continue to have payment rails built for it so that you can go buy a sandwich with Bitcoin, which you currently can. Anybody who's a Square user as a merchant can in principle turn on Bitcoin payment. That bypasses credit card fees. And so there is massive incentive for merchants to adopt Bitcoin as a source of payment. These things are being built by the developer community. That's Bitcoin as currency. Bitcoin as store of value, that's a tough one. I think it's going to continue to be adopted, no doubt, And I think Cathie Wood agrees. I think she's predicting Bitcoin at a million by 2030. That's either a base or a bull case. I can't remember. Institutions, generally speaking, are saying, yes, we see positive things for Bitcoin in the future. And I think the reason why people are thinking that is when you look at Bitcoin's qualities, you start to see it is uniquely different from any other asset, even gold out there. And there literally is no other asset like it. In the world. So that deserves some, at least serious consideration.

Well, wow, Eric, this has been a thought-provoking conversation about the shape of, you know, the arc of the financial planning world, your movement through it as an advisor, and now where you're going over the rest of your career and where you're trying to take Veritas Wealth, your firm, to. And I appreciate you coming on the show. Just as a reminder, if anybody wants a copy of Eric's newsletter, You can text the word NEWS, N-E-W-S, to 600-700. Eric, I think we'll probably have more conversations as we go because we didn't get to talk about tokenization, about where assets are going in the future. And I think that's becoming more and more of a narrative. I think people are looking at that and we obviously didn't get to talk about even like specifics of like allocation. But I think as an educational framework, Mission accomplished today. And so I want to, you know, I want to thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mike. It's been a lot of fun.

Well, that was the Ideas by Mike podcast, and I thank you for being a part of today's episode. Again, if you want to get a copy of that white paper, we gave We'll give you those details throughout the podcast, and we'll put a link to that in the comments here. But again, if you want to have deeper conversations about what it takes to build a one-of-a-kind financial plan for your one-of-a-kind life, I will continue to bring more partners that can help fill, fill the spot of your financial plan that interests you because you are unique, you are one of a kind, and your financial plan should be also. Don't forget to visit our firm, One Oak Financial, at oneoakfinancial.com. You also can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, And Facebook for more information. As a reminder, this podcast is done for educational purposes only. Eric is an investment advisory representative with Veritas Wealth, registered investment advisory firm in the state of Oregon. Mike, I am a registered investment—an investment advisory representative with Advisory Alpha LLC. Ideas by Mike doing business at One Oak Financial is an unaffiliated entity of Advisory Alpha LLC. LLC. This has been for educational purposes only. Please consult with a financial professional before making any specific trades or financial changes to your life. This has been Mike. We'll see you on the next show.

The Ideas by Mike podcast.