265 : Ask Buck and Ian!

Buck: Welcome back to the show everyone today my guest and Wealth Formula podcast is sort of an in-house player. His name is Ian Kurth he’s been on the show before. He’s a radiologist located in the state of Wisconsin. Ian is a part of our insider group Wealth Formula Network and if you don’t know what that is, it’s basically our private online community. You can go to wealthformularoadmap.com and figure it out but the whole thing started with me creating this course and the course is fine and great but what ended up happening was you know we had this ongoing community afterwards which includes bi-weekly zoom video calls and also this Facebook group and that’s really been I think a very surprisingly, I should say, I’ll be honest, completely surprisingly a very potent place for people who are interested in this stuff, to continue to sort of take it to the next level. And he ends up being sort of one of the all-stars of that group. One of the senior members of that group should we say. So Ian, welcome back to the show.

Ian: Thanks, Buck. Thanks for the invite. Glad to be back.

Buck: Well I’ll put you on the spot here right now. I’ve talked about Wealth Formula Network but how’s your view on this? I mean obviously, it’s a little bit of a plug for it but I mean who’s the right person for this? What are you getting out of it you know, that kind of thing?

Ian: Yeah no I think it’s important to look for mentorship groups, peer groups, where you can exchange ideas to make sure that you’re staying within your own guardrails. You know, be curious enough to listen to other people’s viewpoints figure out where your blind spots might be in terms of your own portfolio and your own education base. And I think you know this group, since I’ve been a part of it, has grown to serve that those needs and I think it’s been very impactful in my own education. It’s been very impactful in the way that I approach things and you know I applaud you for starting it for having the initiative to pursue it and to foster and provide a platform for people to participate.

Buck: It’s good I mean you know I think I’m always impressed at people who I think have made substantial like it came in knowing almost nothing, which is fine. That’s what you want and then but it ends up almost being like a residency, where everybody’s talking about things and the terminology just kind of keeps coming back and forth and before you know it you’re speaking the language. Well good, I don’t want to you know belabor that point but I just thought it’d be interesting to get your take on it one of the conversations and now I would say multiple conversations in that group have really, really focused I mean literally like we’d go for like an hour and a half a time and I end up having to leave and then everybody I don’t know how long you guys go but these conversations particularly lately that people have really I think gotten into are questions about bitcoin and cryptocurrency which I would say it has always been the peripheral part of what we do. We’ve always kind of seen it as a you know asymmetric risk type thing that you participate in and one of our last calls I think you had made a pretty substantial pivot that was pretty thought-provoking I think for a lot of people as a fairly you know as a fairly conservative investor a guy who’s not out there trying to figure out where to throw your money, next shiny objects. But you made a pretty interesting, I guess a challenge which was you know why not put 30 to 40 percent of your net worth into bitcoin right now? I think that’s what you said

Ian: It was a thought experiment sort of designed specifically for you and I think it’s relevant. I mean you know as you said, we put a lot of time and conversation many conversations about this and I think it’s relevant you know in our society these days because it’s all over the news. And you know sometimes it takes a certain number of touch points when you hear about a certain topic to internalize it to the point where you’re willing and curious enough to dig a little bit deeper. And that’s kind of where that conversation went. From my own perspective, I certainly don’t want to come across as a crypto expert by any means. If I could advocate for anything here today is to encourage people to be curious and to dig a little bit deeper and to educate yourself enough to make a rational decision one way or another. And there’s no judgment either way. But to flippantly disregard it, I think isn’t serving your own needs. And my experience over this has been you know frankly encouraged by some of our early conversations back in 2017 and it was sort of a trend or a movement that I felt at that point deserved at least some attention. You know in 2017, ’18, ’19 as you know the on-ramps to these type of investments were very challenging. It was to the point where it was obnoxious in my opinion and I refused to participate in many of those until I found a way to access it and which was sort of a private equity access point that solved some of those problems. So I’ve had skin in the game for a long time and long enough to actually experience a lot of the volatility that is inherent within this currently and then you know realized based on certain macro trends.

Buck: Well let’s back up for a second here because tell me one conversation we had in our Wealth Formula Network call yesterday. I think we were talking about you know back in 2014 or 15 whatever somebody looked at the date and said look bitcoin on this day this many was like 500 bucks or something like that I mean or 200 bucks who knows it was something in the hundred bucks thing and basically you said you know I wouldn’t have bought then so something happened even say three maybe four years ago in 2016. You wouldn’t care what the price was. What did you see then that was different from necessarily what you’re seeing now?

Ian: I think the resilience of bitcoin over the whatever 10 or 11 years that it’s been around is compelling to me. And so if you take that example and track back to when bitcoin was 100, I know myself I wouldn’t have been curious enough to figure that out. I wouldn’t have been compelled enough to put any sort of capital deployment that would move the needle in any way towards that at that point and I’m not in the space. I’m not a techno-geek, I’m not an economist, I’m not a financial analyst and I probably wouldn’t have done it. But to your point over the course of time, bitcoin’s resilience over these number of cycles has motivated me to dig in a little bit deeper about value.

Buck: So talk about that resilience because some people are looking at that 60,000 something to you know 30 something thousand that we’re seeing right now and saying but what are you talking about resilience that was a 50 drop in a week so, I know what you’re talking about, but explain what you mean by that.

Ian: Bitcoin this is you know most people would say this is kind of the fifth cycle and you know from peak to valley of each cycle it’s been commonly down 90/80 and within those cycles. There’s been extreme volatility and I say you know violent volatility. But if you zoom out, the overall trend for this whole sort of movement is positive and sustainably positive in my opinion. You know, it’s basically doubled every year for a decade in price and there’s a number of reasons for that but it’s a very unique asset. It can’t be manipulated, it’s algorithmic, it’s software, there’s all kinds of sort of you know descriptors that you can spew out. And most people will pair those back to you. But what I would say is that you need to sort of dig into each of those descriptors and understand why they are important to the asset and what makes it different and why you think that it has longevity moving forward. And that’s what I’ve done.

Buck: So we’ve talked about specifically obviously you have the price movement that is compelling over time. Philosophically though something’s changed for you. You’ve understood something that you didn’t understand before and I’m specifically talking about bitcoin because again, we’ll get into this in a bit, but there’s bitcoin and then there’s everything else right? So philosophically there is something that clicked for you as a non-tech guy, as a radiologist who’s you know going to work every day doing your thing and this is really valuable. But tell us what the aha moment is. I mean I know there’s a lot to it in your book, but try to summarize it like what went from damn this is an asymmetric risk play, is something where I’m going to put material amounts of my net worth into because it’s not just because of price movement. There’s an underlying thesis that you have believed in which a lot of people do believe in including myself. That’s another issue altogether. But talk about that pivot because this is really important and perhaps, I know you’ve sent out a number of resources you know maybe as part of our introductory email with your permission maybe just send out some of those resources.

Ian: Sure I mean I think for me, part of it came to when I realized that the way that it’s set up, the likelihood of it going to zero is very low in my opinion. And so you chop off the tail risk and the upside of it in terms of its potential for adoption is massive.

Buck: So explain why that you think, because I agree with you, but why do you think bitcoin going to zero, the chance of that is virtually zero?

Ian: I think because of its decentralized nature. Because it is a protocol that is immutable. Because it is international, and because of the number of people and entities that have already adopted it, and because of the overall market share that it has obtained so far. I think it has such a network effect advantage over any other potential competitor that it’s kind of like you know other examples of decentralized software where you just can’t kill it. And so that to me is very very compelling and I think it’s very unique in the way that it originated to that. So you have a designer who disappeared and there’s no centralized nature to its control right now.

Buck: So I would just add to that too in that there’s a couple of things I think that are important. One is that you know like you talked about, the size of it is at sort of a critical point right now. At a one trillion dollar market cap and with mass amounts of adoption through institutional players and you’ve got literally, I think it was Penn mutual or something like that about like 200 million dollars bitcoin, you know like something like that I probably am off by a company or a 50 million

Ian: You know the compelling case for me is that right now it’s basically a one trillion dollar asset. I n simple terms if you just compare bitcoin as a digital asset reserve versus gold which is an analog asset reserve and compare the market shares of the two, it’s still ten to one and so just on that trajectory you still have minimum in my opinion 10x potential.

Buck: Agreed. But then the other thing about the zero part is really important to understand. It was really important to process because if you have ruled out zero, there’s only one way for this to go right? And that’s million-dollar bitcoin someday, I mean that there’s only one way to go. So go ahead, I’m sorry to interrupt.

Ian: Yeah so you know if you just kind of go across the categories of what the world sort of agrees upon are descriptors of the value proposition for a reserve asset. Gold and bitcoin. You compare the two you know. Is it scarce? Is it storable? Is it decentralized? Is it durable? Is it fungible, verifiable, you know those kinds of attributes. And bitcoin outperforms gold in so many of those. And if you take that within the context of you know basically most things are becoming digitized in some way. The rate of change is never, in the future, will never be as slow as it is right now. Things are just rapidly evolving and you just sort of you know zoom out on that potential 10x at least equaling the market share of gold is very attainable now. Beyond that you know there’s estimated 400 trillion dollars of assets worldwide. Many of those are just seeking a reserve. They’re just trying to store your value. And so not that bitcoin is going to take over 400 trillion, but there’s upside potential beyond just that. That 10x, that’s compelling. So as you said if you chop off the tail, and you say that you’re convicted that it’s not going to go to zero, and you feel like the trajectory, and the momentum is carrying it towards that replacement of gold as a reserve asset, that’s the broad thesis now. There’s a lot of nuance beyond that.

Buck: So people will say, well gosh you know how can you have a reserve with volatility like this?

Ian: I think volatility is part of the transition from nothing to a worldwide reserve. You have to have volatility to make that transition and you know cognitively, if you can accept that, and if you know that before you deploy, then it’s much easier to tolerate. But if you don’t educate yourself and don’t understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and you’re just parroting and fomoing behind everybody else then you will be watching that and you’ll be getting sick to your stomach and you’ll be selling emotionally and you won’t stick to what the value proposition is, which is a long-term play. And you know people ask me, how can you handle this volatility? It’s easy. You don’t look at it and you basically deploy and at the very minimum you know it’s a four-year cycle like you just need to stick it out, you know make it similar to a real estate plan and say I’m in for a minimum of four years. But I think over the course of that four years your conviction that this has more potential will become stronger and stronger and that your timeline will extend.

Buck: Yeah I tend to agree with that you know one of the things I think that’s going on this is apropos that we actually have this conversation in the middle of a meltdown and I don’t know. I don’t know if this is the end of the bull or not it may or may not be/ But when you switch ] your paradigm to this, is not just playing for a few bucks now. Tou actually look at ] these massive pullbacks as a real opportunity and not worry about what the bitcoin that you have is worth today, but the fact that you can accumulate it. I mean one of the other things I’ll point out is I think that we’re also going to see in the next you know, with continued volatility, you’re also going to see a huge wealth transfer too. Because one of the great things I think about bitcoin wealth right now is so much of it disproportionately compared to other commodities is in the hands of the retail investor. But you know the smart money is not going to be scared off by the volatility short term. They’ve done their research on this and I think in situations like this where you have these big you know reductions of 50 percent at a time, the smart money’s going in and sweeping in what the retail investors are too scared about now and that’s something to think about. So you don’t go and sell. And you might consider buying, although I’m actually holding off because I think we’re you know I think we’re in capitulation right now and I think there’s some downside to be had now. But the one other thing I’ll add is the volatility is a product also of the fact that it is only a one trillion dollar market cap. This goes to one trillion dollars. If this goes to 10 trillion like gold or 20 trillion or whatever, that volatility essentially goes away. But in many ways, at that point, the opportunity goes away too.

Ian: Agreed. I mean to your point I think this is a unique asset class and frankly, it’s one of the few in probably modern history where the average joe basically has a shot at accessing it before the big money. And so you know as you look at the various cycles and the adoption that has occurred so far, it’s been sort of early techies and then there’s been some maybe group of whatever freedom libertarian guys and then you kind of get the early adopter retail investors and you get the hedge funds coming in. And now you’re getting entities and companies taking it on their balance sheet. And then you’re getting insurance companies. And pretty soon you may even get sovereign nations as it sort of goes across. But it only takes one or two in each of those categories to stimulate others in those categories to like pay attention and then they have either fomo or competitive motivations to learn about and potentially put it on their balance sheet. So all of that is in my opinion is part of the adoption process and it’s the price of being early with the potential as you mentioned of exponential returns over time.

Buck: So one of the other things that we talked about yesterday I think is something to think about on a practical level for people who in our space are figuring out how to allocate because I told you, your question was a good one. Why are you not ultimately in you know buying more bitcoin? Because I’m not buying a lot of bitcoin especially now, I’m not buying a lot of bitcoin at this price, but I’m looking at, I have some alt purchases that I’ve made recently. But one of the major reasons for me has been the tax issue, which is I am massively incentivized to invest in real estate. Literally, every time I invest that almost that full amount of money ends up being a deduction off my federal return because of my real estate professional status and because of bonus depreciation. So now granted not everybody has that level of impact from investing in real estate, but generally, that is one of the benefits a lot of people are looking for. So how have you navigated that situation and you know just as not as advice but as a potential template for other investors?

Ian: That’s a great question. I mean the there are no direct tax benefits towards investing in this. And in fact, there are pretty substantial tax consequences for every exchange between coins and for every sale, it creates a reportable and taxable event. But there’s a couple of ways around that. And one of those basically goes to one of my principles which is to have as much optionality as I can for my portfolio. And some of that is that I have optionality within qualified accounts. And so if you want to mitigate the tax consequences, those accounts or those sort of vehicles are very basically optimized in this situation, assuming that you acknowledge that you’re marrying the government and the government can screw you over at any time. And they love bitcoin by the way. So that’s one way. But then there’s another thesis that I was trying to poke you a little bit about which is you know even with the tax benefits of real estate and even with the sort of outpaced returns that you can get relative to say a 60 40 split, stocks, bonds, whatever your metric is, you may come out better by you know sort of increasing your allocation towards this. If you’re convicted, if you believe in it and capturing the exponential upside, not necessarily selling it at any point, but being able to borrow against it similar to some other vehicles you can use. And so you never sell it. You could borrow against it if you wanted to, which will presumably be tax-advantaged in the future. And then you could potentially continue to hold that and sort of ballast out the remainder of your portfolio and spend down some of your fiat. That’s just another strategy that I’ve been knocking around as well.

Buck: I’ll say that if I had qualified funds, which I don’t have any qualified funds right now, but they’d all be in cryptocurrency. I mean this is in many ways to me, you know in my opinion a perfect use. People have been complaining about well what do I do with these qualified funds and I can’t get all the taxes. Guess what? Here you go. This is a perfect thing.

Ian: You know and to that point, it’s been a challenge to be able to deploy into it. So these institutions, because of their charters and their regulations and their entity documents and so forth haven’t had access so they haven’t been able to offer to their clients have been clamoring for crypto access and haven’t been able to get it but those barriers are starting to melt there’s a few that you can do right now there’s inevitably going to be more and with that if you think about that. If people sort of wake up and say hey I have this tax-advantaged vehicle and I’m convicted in this arena. I’m going to put some money there. So what is that going to do to the network effect of bitcoin? I don’t know. Seems to support it.

Buck: Obviously, you’ve sort of drank the kool-aid and in the bitcoin space. I’m saying that as a joke, but I mean it, you know. I feel I’m completely on board with your sentiments on this. I just haven’t been able to figure out how to navigate putting more in given my lack of interest in paying the government. So let’s shift a little bit because we’ve really been talking about bitcoin per se. How do you look at everything else? Or I mean are you even interested in everything else outside of bitcoin? Are you a bitcoin maximalist?

Ian: I’m not a maximalist I have admittedly dedicated the majority of my time and attention towards really understanding bitcoin and I’m glad that I have because I am convicted in that area and for all of the sort of descriptors that we’ve discussed, I think that it is it’s a great asset. Now bitcoin gets mixed in with all the other coins and cryptocurrencies and I think while they do have some similar properties that are, in my opinion, not even close to being the same, and most of these other projects are not necessarily decentralized. They actually are centralized. And the way that I view them is that they are almost an egalitarian way to angel invest without needing accredited investor status. You can take positions in projects that could potentially change the world really. If you see some parallels between this you know sort of digital movement and the for instance the evolution of the internet and how that evolved, a lot of these projects may be flyers that really do change the world and you can access them at very responsible prices right now. But they’re not all the same. And you really owe it to yourself to dig into those projects and understand them before you invest. And so from my perspective, I have not done that work yet and I’ve thrown a few hundred bucks here and there just you know say I did, but I’m nowhere near as convicted nor do I have even remotely similar amount of capital in any of those.

Buck: The analogy I kind of use is you know I think there’s bitcoin and then there’s everything else. And that doesn’t make everything else less valuable. It makes it completely different. I think we used to put bitcoin in the category along with other asymmetric-risk type vehicles. I think what you and I are both saying is that we believe that that is no longer as much of an asymmetric risk play as something that I think if you believe and if it continues along its trajectory, it becomes a very attractive high percentage bet over the next you know several years. So I take bitcoin out of that and then there’s everything else and then everything else ultimately runs in just a few different categories. One is it’s some kind of an additional currency play like litecoin or some of the secret coins, the ones that you know are hard to figure out. I really don’t think those really have legs over the long long period, I mean basically, there’s just creating unless you’re truly a money launderer, you’re trying to do something illegal, I mean what’s the point right? So I really don’t think that those have a lot of legs. I’m not investing in a lot of those There is the complete bs stuff and there is a lot of that there’s a lot of it and you know there’s like, for example, dogecoin which stopped any sort of development over three years ago. Now, why is Elon Musk pumping it? Because he thinks this is a big freaking joke that’s why. Because he’s the puppet master and he’s just watching all these idiots move on everything he says and he’s like yeah doge is awesome you know and he just he amuses himself by seeing people go crazy on it. So there is a lot of this BS stuff that has nothing behind it. Then the third category and the one I’m actually very interested in is technology that could fundamentally change the world. That essentially I’m betting on in no different terms than early-phase tech startup companies that I believe in and, obviously, I’ve made no mystery of my interest in Hedera. HBAR is the native coin there and I might look at what they’ve done and they’re already this massive utility. They’re you know the protocol is being used to track the international space station they just released a paper on the fed coin concept. I mean there’s a tremendous amount of stuff that’s utility. It’s a startup and it’s real. It’s a real team. It’s doing things, it has plans, that kind of thing. There’s not that many of those but I think if you find those types of projects, then you’re really working almost like as a little mini venture capital person that also has the ability to keep liquidity. And you’re not holding something for 10 years. So I think that those are the asymmetric risk plays that I personally find very, very interesting. But I don’t see them in any way shape or form it’s the same as bitcoin.

Ian: Agreed. Yeah I agree. I mean, I think they’re curious and I think I think it’s a good exercise to know about them to a certain extent and to find something that might interest you, but they are in a completely separate category and I think your analogy to early tech startup is appropriate with the advantage of you can have some liquidity associated with it. And you know most cases with early tech startups, you’re locking in your money for a long time and you may or may not ever see it again. So to that effect, it might be a little bit better but extremely risky. If you look at the sort of historical at least over the last decade the altcoins and which ones have made it through one cycle if not two cycles it’s exceedingly rare that they do. Now, presumably, that’s all going to change. As you mentioned there is utility and adoption in that utility and they gain traction in that utility. Then presumably those trends will break and you will have some of those that continue to grow and to provide value. But it’s a needle in the needle stack.

Buck: Yeah I think that’s right, but I think you know even if you go back to 2017, virtually no projects were doing anything. It’s all white papers. It’s all, we’re going to do this, we think we should do this you know. So I do think there will be a little bit of a focus and change in going from ideas to you know focusing on investing in utility and what people are actually doing. It sort of becomes more of a real market and that’s interesting because what I’ll be curious to see happens in those situations is you know right now prices live and die with bitcoin. You go down bitcoin bull run, the alts follow and the bitcoin crashes well all the alts are crashing. And the question is, at some point, it would seem to me that if you’re starting to look at these projects as utility, they should become independent of bitcoin to a certain degree.

Ian: Yeah I don’t have any argument against the thesis that they will gain traction. The thing that I’ve been trying to contemplate and this applies to bitcoin to a certain extent, is that I feel like we’re right in that suspicion. But we may be right at the wrong time right, it may take a lot longer yeah it may take a lot longer than we actually think or hope and I haven’t reconciled that yet.

Buck: So let’s see. Just looking since this has turned into an Ask Ian shown an Ask Buck, I have one question here on stablecoin. So let’s read it up. From Aaron Finley. He says, Hi Buck. Long time lister. Greatly appreciate your perspectives. Here is a question I have. Stablecoins appear to be a great place to put idle cash with returns ranging as high as 12 or even more in a lot of cases trading in stable coins is usually free of fees and commissions and these are usually easily liquidated as this is a pretty new space with developing oversight and transparency. How does one go about assessing the risk of these investments? Clearly, diversification is a great way to minimize risk by leveraging a variety of coins and platforms. Are there other risk mitigation practices that one could use? Yeah I mean you know I have to tell you most of these platforms I’m very, very wary of. The ones especially ironically that are decentralized because I think that in not having centralization and some regulation, I think you are, in my opinion, I think you run a lot greater risk than you do with. You know frankly what I’ve been using for interest-bearing on my bitcoin and ethereum has been BlockFi. BlockFi is an American company with American regulations behind it, American investment. We’ve had the founder on multiple times early on when they were a small company and I use them but I’m you know you have to wonder too like how are you getting 15% or 20% and if you start asking these questions in the decentralized space, I think it might be a pretty risky thing to do. Ian, what do you think?

Ian: Yeah that’s an area that I haven’t done enough investigation on in terms of the lending environment. I do know that the opportunity to quote-unquote stake your coins provides additional liquidity for people who are trading with leverage. And you know for better for worse some of that trading is what triggers a lot of the near-term volatility. But in terms of the risk associated with it the term “not your keys, not your coin”, that’s something that you know Maximus will say like there’s some third-party risks of the platform. There’s the counterparty risks. There is you know sort of downward pressure on the interest rate risk. There’s tax consequences that need to be considered. But all in all, it’s not a bad thing to necessarily do with a portion of your bitcoin portfolio or altcoin portfolio to stake and get some yield on it. I can’t say that conceptually it’s bad, I’m just a little hesitant to sort of endorse many of these platforms currently.

Buck: Another question related to cryptocurrency from Mark. He says what do you think the net effect of negative government impact, basically what it comes down to is saying is what do you think that the negative view from the US government and Janet Yellen on bitcoin will do to it? Do you think it will destroy it? Well, I think both Ian and I would agree that governments, and this is one of the advantages of bitcoin, is that governments can’t destroy bitcoin. They just can’t. One of the reasons that Janet Yellen really hates bitcoin is the same reason that really governments generally for a long time really trying to dissociate from gold all together too. It’s not something that you could control and if it becomes part of you know the monetary system it’s part of it that you can’t necessarily control. You can’t tax it. It creates all sorts of problems. And you know one of the other things with bitcoin that make is the parallel here is by the way is gold in the early 20th century and then what happened obviously you know in the Roosevelt administration. Ultimately gold, it became illegal to own gold and they collected all that gold, set a price, and created Fort Knox. So that’s what government does when it feels like it’s not in control of the economy. And there’s commodities that are creating roadblocks for it. Although I’m convinced that she can’t confiscate it because you can’t confiscate it. You could potentially penalize people in various ways through taxation. Those things are also tough legislative issues to get through as well so I do think that in the next decade or so, as there’s this transition, as bitcoin goes from a 1 trillion dollar market cap to 10, well it still seems like the serpent can still be quashed that there probably will be some punitive tax legislation at least that there’s attempts to go through I think over time it becomes less of an issue as it gets absorbed into the system because I think the ironic part about bitcoin is that what is going to help it survive is the very thing that it was created to get away from which is government and wall street so I think as it gets absorbed into wall street gets absorbed into pensions into these you know you know mega-funds it will become something that has its own political strength and at that point you know it has protections from the very thing that it was created to avoid that

Ian: Yeah you’re right I mean it was created to get away from a centralized medium of exchange which is what you know sovereign national currencies are so it’s decentralized in that way. And it’s not confiscatable as you mentioned and it would be because of its network effect. Because of its multinational adoption, you can’t kill it, but you can regulate it. And you can tax it. And so if you project that out like there could be a very, very challenging time. And how long that lasts, who knows. But it could be very uncomfortable to hold bitcoin. I mean that’s one of the risks. It could be disadvantageous and they could make it so uncomfortable that you don’t want to hold it particularly in the US. I don’t think it’ll kill it, but what it may induce is sort of multinational competition and at some point, if you have a net worth that justifies it, you may vote with your feet and you may just go somewhere where it’s more embraced.

Buck: You mean you’re going to leave Wisconsin?

Ian: No I’m not in that category but think of the people that were early adopters who hold thousands and thousands. They live in Puerto Rico you’re right. Those are in tax-advantaged environments. I mean nobody would kind of give away unnecessarily half of that just for a sale. So they’re smart but they’re few and once more and more people have a stake in it, more and more people have you know holdings in it, then you know that creates political pressures and legislative change and so forth.

Buck: So you really are playing the long game with bitcoin and I think that’s the only way to look at it. We really do. I think if you’re if you’re looking at it as a trader or somebody who’s going to get in and try to make money then get out, don’t do it. It’s just going to be I mean you know if you can get yourself in a mindset with cryptocurrency in general, I feel like you know I’m really limiting my investments to projects I truly believe in. Every time they fall, I’m actually, well I’m broke right now because of buying a house, but I look at them as opportunities to add on to things that I have a lot of conviction in at a price that I would maybe not thought would have come back any time soon. And so I think if you can get into that mindset and again we in the real estate world, we’re used to holding things for five years and we don’t look at what the value is on a year and you know year-to-year basis. We know that at some point we have an exit years down the road if you do that kind of thing and have some firm beliefs in the companies that you’re investing in or this entire bitcoin concept then I think you’re going to do yourself a great service because I think if you’re looking at these, listen, this whole space, this digital currency space and distributed ledger technology is not going away just not it is the future right so don’t think of it as a flash in the pan.

Ian: Yeah absolutely long game. So very simply, buy and perhaps even dollar cost average in hold buy on the dips. Don’t use leverage and repeat.

Buck: Great. Well, Ian one last question for you. So right now where are we at now bitcoin is it under 40? It’s been possible and I’ll tell you what, it’s crazy to look at into like bitcoin’s under 40. It’s cheap. It’s a land grab. I mean it’s a scarce digital asset. They’re not making any more and so people right now we’re looking back at you know a year ago when it was 10 and wishing that they were in at 10 and back then. 10 was like who would pay 10 thousand for you know a bitcoin and then before that, it was who would pay a hundred dollars for a bitcoin. Pretty soon it’s gonna be you know man I wish I bought in at 150k right. So it’s a land grab and a scarce digital asset. So right now, you say your personal mentality is to double down right now as bitcoin is at 39,000?

Ian: So I’ve removed my head from this, just dollar cost average you know and so like if you want to take that another level you know you could say that the all-time high was whatever 65 and now it’s down almost 50 percent from that so maybe you put a little bit in on that but you don’t even need to get that fancy. You just pick a number that you’re comfortable and there are opportunities there are on-ramps now where you can dollar cost average daily if you want to. And remember that these digital assets are not nine to five Monday through Friday, they’re 24x7x365. So you can daily or twice daily if you wanted to dollar cost average just a small amount. It’s pretty simple.

Buck: Alright well obviously Ian this has been this was actually such an incredibly popular show you know like the discussion we had on Wealth Formula Network. We had to turn this into the show. Again, if you like these kinds of discussions, consider joining Wealth Formula Network. Go to wealthformularroadmap.com. You’ll see this whole cheesy page that was built for me. This sales page for the course and all that. But really it’s the course. It’s a good course, it sets the foundations. Then we get into the conversations like this on a bi-weekly basis. I mean this is fundamentally the kind of thing. This is what we talk about, these kinds of things at this level. And you know Ian is there most of the time sometimes. I can see him in the, I’m just obviously in the background with my skin. I won’t even say it. Anyway that’s it for me this weekend. Ian, thanks for coming on the show and we’ll be right back after these messages.