Are they late to Bitcoin? Is it too late to buy Bitcoin
Fred and and benefit from it? I mean, we're super early.
We're very, very early. I mean, this is this is like
we're the beginning of a probably a 20 year journey of
massively high returns. It's, it's going to be, we're
going to have massively high returns for 20 or maybe even 30
years that that's basically, I think where we are.
So you know, you're, you're nowhere.
You're at the beginning, like you're in the first inning.
Hey Fred, how you doing long time.
No. Talk I really enjoyed our
conversation last time. I remember one of the things
that you told me, which is very, very impactful and I and you
said, Nico, your life's going to change and you know the way that
you've been kind of approaching it because been approaching it,
you know, as like for the last 8-9 years of my life now I've
just been, you know, putting specifically in the early years,
like 80 to 90% of my my what I was earning into Bitcoin and you
know been having this like very kind of live below your means
type of mentality and that's how I've been approaching it.
And one of the things that you told me when you came on the
show, you know, last time was like, Nico, your life's going to
change in 2025. And I've put a lot of thought
into that lately and had that conversation with my wife as
well. And she's been thinking about it
because again, I've been living this life, you know, of course,
simply Bitcoin has taken off. I have my own business, you
know, things have changed, right?
But I still have this like Bitcoiner esque mentality of,
you know, live below your means, you know, stay frugal, stay
disciplined, stay this. But again, I am coming up on 9
years of doing this, right? So anyone who's been in Bitcoin
nine years, you know, it's a long time.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Because I feel like there's a lot of people my age that got
in, you know, roughly around the same time I did, which was class
of 2016. Most people got in 2017, but
it's essentially the same thing. What changes, Fred?
Like what is this change that you were talking about last
time? Well, I think the big one is
real estate, right? That's, that's going to be the
biggest expense that you're going to make in your life is
going to be buying a house. And that is not a cheap thing to
do right now. You know, I have a friend who
was just saying, you know, you really can't buy in anything in
any major US city right now under $1,000,000.
You know, you can't buy it in Miami, you can't buy it in New
York, can't buy it in LA, can't buy it in San Francisco.
You know, maybe in the middle of the middle of the country
somewhere you can still get something for a million.
But you know, that's kind of your entry point right now.
And I think the biggest question you have to ask yourself is do
you want to take the plunge and, and actually have a mortgage and
real estate? And that's really the question.
And, you know, I think in many respects, in many cases, the
answer is, you know, for somebody like you who've been,
who's been in Bitcoin for a while, I think maybe the answer
is yes, you do want to get some real estate, you know, but I'd
say if you're just starting out and I would say the, I would
suggest stacking it be better idea right now than then jumping
into, you know, mortgage on, you know, what, what is kind of an
overpriced asset really. You know, I think, I think real
estate's not going to do very well relative to Bitcoin.
You know, I really don't think it will.
And so, you know, I think you have, you have to think about
yourself as 10 years from now on Bitcoins at $1,000,000.
How smart is that? Is that house or that condo
going to look? And I'd say probably not.
Not too smart. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean a. Guy, a guy that we both know,
you know Terrence Yang. Yes.
So Terrence Yang, Yeah, OK, so Terrence Yang posted something
and he said, well, I, I invested IN250K into this condo, nice
looking condo by the way, you know, apartment complex
somewhere. And he's like, but I invested
it. That would be worth about
2,000,000 today, right? And I said at Terrence, it could
be worth 10 million by the end of end of 2025.
You know, that's, and you know, you, you got like a, you got a
timeshare and a condo for $250,000 or you got a partial
ownership in this apartment complex or you could have $10
million worth of Bitcoin, you know, on its way to going to be
worth $100 million, right? So no, I, I, you know, I, I
really think, you know, you really got to balance these
things out. And you know, it's a, it's a
tough one because I don't think you're going to see another
thing like Bitcoin likely in your life.
You know, you're, you might, you might see it, but you're not
going to get it on the ground floor like you did with Bitcoin.
And you got lucky. You know, we all got lucky.
We, our, our eyes were opened at the right time.
But, you know, I just, you know, don't take that for granted.
You know, you're not, you're not going to go through life and
you're going to see three of these.
You know, I don't think so. You know, I just, you know, I
think if you can rent, you know, rent if you can, you know, our
friend, you know, I don't know if you know Thomas Young, but
like, Thomas Young was like, well, you know, whenever I look
at a car right now, it's a, you know, an $80,000 car.
I look at it as a $250,000 car, you know, and I'm like, you
should, but you should also not think about spending $80,000 on
a car. You should be thinking about
spending, you know, $600 a month on, on, on a lease.
Yeah. You got to resist the idea of
actually buying stuff. Yeah.
And and, you know, lease as much as lease as much as you want.
You know, I, I definitely think that's kind of the, from a
personal planning perspective, I think, you know, especially if
you're young, it makes sense to, you know, it, it makes sense to
potentially not buy right now, not buy now.
You know, you do get the leverage on, on real estate.
You know, you, you get, you're putting 20% down, but I got to
tell you, it's like you want leverage.
You can get leverage on Bitcoin too.
You know what I mean? You can get, you can buy 2X the
amount of Bitcoin that you have. You know you, I wouldn't, I, I
just think real estate's the loser here.
And so I think you, you have to figure out how can you increase
your lifestyle without increasing the amount of dollars
you're forking out for cars and, and boats, if you're so
inclined. And yeah, the boats are the
worst, right? They're, they're by that by far
the worst, right? Like the There's no worse
investment than a boat. It's setting money on fire,
straight up. It's pretty much setting money
up. I mean, I think arguably jet
planes are worse than boats, you know?
Yeah, yeah. But those things just go to the.
It's just like literally setting your money on fire but.
Yeah. But I think, I think with jets
it saves you time, right. So like you can make that
argument with a boat, like it's straight up leisure and it's and
you know you're not going to if and if you travel a lot, the jet
kind of justifies going through the pain of going commercial and
all that. Stuff, you know, I used to have
a jet 20 years ago. I was on, I mean, not my own,
but I had net jets, right? And I flew around for for four
years. I had net jets and you know,
I'll tell you it's it's good, but it's not as great as you
would think. And I'll tell you why, because
unless you got like the Super duper big net jets, you're not
going to Europe on with one-on-one hall.
You from Miami. You could, right, But like LA to
LA to New York, LA to Paris. No, you don't.
You're not doing that in one. So you have to stop and refuel,
and that's marginally not even as good as flying first class.
Yeah, yeah. You know, so you know, and then
you, you know, unless, unless you're Michael Saylor and you
own your plane and you know, you, you tell the guy just keep,
keep the, keep it running. You know, I'm, I'm going to be,
I'm going to be two hours late. You do have to kind of make
those appointments. You know those, you have those
slots and you know, you get charged an arm and a leg if you
miss them. So I don't know.
I don't regret, I don't regret necessarily my private jet days.
But but yeah, all these things are not are not really what they
cracked they're cracked up to be.
So one of the things that the, one of the things that really
stuck out to me, Fred, in this early part that you were, that
we were, that we've been speaking is in Lugano in
Switzerland. I went to the Plan B forum and I
I introduced this guy by the name of Marthi Malami.
Right. Oh yeah, of course, yeah.
And you know, this is someone who, you know, a Bitcoin OG, he
was one of the first people to talk to Satoshi.
And I didn't know who I was presenting.
I didn't know who was introducing because I was I'm
seeing one of the stages and I introduced him like this is
whatever and and his name of his talk was this is my Bitcoin
pizza story and Long story short, he said something along
the lines of I bought a flat. I bought my first flat, a one
bedroom apartment in Finland for 10,000 Bitcoin or something like
that. It was like a ridiculous amount.
And he was basically, he just kept talking about paying for
trips and paying for things. And he's like, if I have just
kept all that Bitcoin, I'd be the third richest man in Finland
right now. And it just kind of reminds me
with what you're saying, but it also puts you in a predicament,
right? So if it was up to me, I would
kind of keep living this, you know, this, this live below your
means lifestyle. But I am married.
I have a wife and I just had my first kid and and she's like
almost one year old and that changes the conversation, right.
So, you know, the, so we're thinking about probably leaving
Miami because it is, you know, and we we're for a multitude of
reasons, not only because real estate is so expensive, but I
was, I grew up on South Beach. I don't want to raise my
daughter here for the obvious reasons.
So we're probably going to, you know, go to a place a little bit
more quiet and obviously a lot more affordable.
But you know what, like what? At what point, you know this
push come to shove because Fred, like at at the end of the day,
you need a place to live. Like you need a, you need a roof
over your head. You need, you need to play.
Like what's the point of working and huddling for so long if
you're not going to enjoy it at one point?
We only have one life at the end of the day, right?
So what would your advice on that be?
Again, my advice would be step up your lifestyle.
Rent something crazily good, rent something great and just
don't buy it. You know what I mean?
Like just think about the rent. Like let's just say I don't know
what you're you're planning, would planning on spending for
place, but let's just take $1,000,000 as a number.
OK, Well, let's like take $2,000,000, OK, but I'll I'll
take kind of Lai think LA and Miami are probably pretty
similar. I'm not 100% sure, but like in
LA, if you want to kind of get a, a basic kind of house, it's
about $3,000,000. I'm not, we're not talking like
amazing great, you know, but this is like a basic stand alone
house in a kind of nice area is $3,000,000.
OK, so let's take that as our basis, right?
But let's say also you want to rent whatever you want in LA,
that same house or something, maybe it'll cost you 20 grand a
month. OK, Well, I would say the
difference between spending the $600,000 upfront in the in the,
in the cost to buy that, that 20% down and get all the
mortgage payments and everything else, I would say you're
probably better off spending 20 grand a month on on renting.
You'd have to do your own calculation, but do that for
just two years and then and then buy, you know what I mean?
Because those next two years, like I mean, you just do the
math on your Bitcoin. You know, if if Bitcoin goes to
500, let's just take 500,000, you're 5X from where you are
now, you know, that house becomes very, very expensive
looked on at, you know, and and sort of 2028 bitcoins.
So I would say resist the temptation rent, that's fine.
Burn some cash, live a little bit, live live it up on the
rental. And now the question is, are
you, you know, is your, the landlords and so on, are they
going to be OK with it? Well, you show them your hard
hardware wallet, you know, and you know, or maybe move it to
some place where you can, you can, you know, it's, it's
custody, like I don't know, river or somebody like that,
right? You know, part of it, you know,
or Fidelity digital assets or something, right, so that you're
not just saying, hey, this is my Ledger guy, you know, like this
is fine, you know, get an account with your name on it.
You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
You know, but and then and then I think, I think I think we're
getting to the point where you're going to be able to live
on that. You know, I think you're going
to be people will treat you like a first class human being.
If you've got, you know, if you got a bunch of Bitcoin.
I I really think we're getting to that point.
I just feel like the smart move is to rent a little bit longer.
Just resist the temptation. Maybe it's only two year a year,
maybe it's literally might be at 12 months, right?
Yeah, it might be 12 months. You know, so it's just like
these could be, this could be the worst timing of your life.
If you buy that, if you buy, if you buy that house like you know
in February, that could be the that you could, that could be
your Marty Balmy moment. Yeah, yeah, I, I'm, I'm going to
take that advice to heart now. I think you've been but.
I am, but I am saying you should, you should treat
yourself like, you know, look, you're not in grad school.
You, you huddled, you did well, great, you know, treat yourself
a little bit, you know? Yeah, but I, I example, I just
bought a 9/11 convertible, you know, top of the line, whatever,
you know, but I didn't, I didn't pay cash for it.
I just leased it, right. Doesn't matter.
Like, I don't care. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
I mean, obviously I could pay cash for it, but I, I'm very,
very cognizant now of I I don't want my cash.
I don't want to spend cash on like a big apartment.
Like I have a similar type of thing just for fun.
I'd like to buy an apartment in Paris.
But, you know, that would be 5,000,000 bucks.
Yep. And, you know, I'm just sort of
like, oh, do I really want to spend $20 million in apartment
in Paris? I'm thinking Bitcoin Wolf 4X,
you know, yeah, You know, so like, I'm pretty happy just
waiting and buying it for $1,000,000, you know what I
mean? Effectively.
Yep, exactly. It's just, that's the only thing
is it costs you time. Now, one of the one of the
threads that really stuck out to me, by the way, for anyone who
doesn't follow Fred, Fred's X account, it's fabulous and it's
one of the fastest growing in the industry.
He's really, really good at it and I'm a big fan of his YouTube
content as well. And one of the latest ones that
I really enjoyed. We're actually probably going to
cover it on the show 'cause it was really great, which is you
kind of broke down like how much Bitcoin you need to retire.
And that's a very popular subject on YouTube.
And a lot of people are thinking about this, you know, hauling it
easy, especially if you do it for long periods of times, is my
third cycle. You know, like it takes really
the life out of you. Like straight up, I don't know
how else to say it, but you know what, what is the answer to that
question? Like how much Bitcoin you need
to retire? And I'm assuming it's different
based on the age groups and the generations, right?
So the floor is yours, Fred. Yeah, so I would say look, if
you're very young, like if you're very young, I'd say I
consider under 30 very young, right.
I would say one Bitcoin, you know, if if you can get to 1
Bitcoin, that's great. You know, now that's easier said
than done. I mean, like I used to be a
starving Stanford grad student, you know, eating top ramen and
drinking wine from bottles with with screw tops, you know, and
and so, you know, 100 grand sounds sounds like a lot of
money when you're, you know, when you're poor.
But I would say one Bitcoin, if you're looking, if you're in
your under 30, you got 30 years to retire.
What one Bitcoin in 30 years will be enough for you to
retire? I think so I think just one, one
Bitcoin is the answer. And you know, by definition,
only 21 million people in this entire planet will ever get to 1
Bitcoin and probably a lot less than that, right?
So you know it, it may be as little as as 5 million people
will ever get to 1 Bitcoin. Right now you have about a
million people who have or at one Bitcoin.
But I think, I think the number the, the sort of the Max I would
say is five. There's I would say, yeah.
So I think if you're, if you're, you know, in your 40s or
something, you know, you don't have that kind of time frame.
So I think the number there is more like 10 Bitcoin.
You know, again, you still need to you still need to kind of
hold on to it for a while. And, and, and you know, if
you're in your 50s or 60s, I mean somewhere around 30-40
Bitcoin I think is kind of what you, you really need, you know
what I mean? It's not ten anymore, right?
10's, 10's a little, 10's a little cutting it, cutting a
little close, you know, if you're, if you're 50 or 60, I
think. And so even if you're talking
about borrowing against whatever, you know, I think, I
think those are sort of the, those are the ranges I would
say. Yeah, and.
Do you agree with that, Nico, or what?
Do you I, I 100% agree because you know with 30 years, let's
say Michael Saylor's base case, not even his bull case, right,
His 21 year prediction, well now 20 year prediction is $13
million per coin by the year 2045, you know and.
I mean, I just, I just like to think of it in, in, in broad
amounts. Bitcoin 1,000,000, Bitcoin 10
million, right? All right.
When are we going to get to Bitcoin 1,000,000?
I would say probably 10 years from now, somewhere between five
years from now. I mean, there's some people
saying this year, right, if possible, right, But somewhere I
would say, you know, somewhere in the five to 10 range, right?
I think that's kind of the likelihood for a million.
Where are we going to get to 10 million probably around 20 years
from now? You're going to get to 10
million, you know, maybe 30 years from now, right?
So that that kind of time range. And that's kind of what the
power law tells you, right? So the power law quantifies this
stuff very well for you. Absolutely, Yeah.
No, I I agree with that assessment 100%.
And so, but if you're, if you're, if you're under 30, you
got 30 years. So you know, you know, you
really need to think of it. The one thing you don't want to
do is sell is is touch that Bitcoin like you really you
really want to put that thing in a vault and have a time lock for
30 years almost. You know that that would almost
be the best scenario for you. Yeah.
And let me ask you something else, Fred, how much Bitcoin,
regardless of age today, if you wanted to retire and live a
upper class lifestyle and one of the, you know, global world
cities, how much Bitcoin do you think you would need to retire
today essentially to live that lifestyle 'cause you and I both
know, you know, the cost of living in LA, Miami is like, you
know, you go to a bar, it's $40 a drink, right?
That's the norm. I know it's very.
That's very. Going up and going up.
It's not, it's not going down. Yeah, that's the norm.
I've all I grew up with that when I was, you know, in my,
when I was growing out, when I was going out and you know, the
my early 20s, late teens, it was $25 per drink.
So nothing's really changed. It's just this, it's South
Beach, right? LA, I'm sure it's very something
very similar. I would say New York is similar
as well. I love New York City, favorite,
my favorite city in the world. And like my original question,
how much Bitcoin would you need to retire to live, in your
opinion, to live in one of those big cities?
And this isn't just the United States, like let's say, Europe,
you know, the great cities in Europe.
I love Madrid. No, I posted something on the
I'm trying to figure out because I, I sort of said, what if I
just decided to live in the absolute top of the line
lifestyle? OK, OK, what would that involve?
OK, I would say I sort of asked Chat GPTI said help me out here,
you know, and I said and I said great, OK, well that lifestyle
would involve staying at 5 star hotels like Four Seasons
equivalent 100 nights a year. Yeah, OK, 100 nights a year.
And then first class travel to, you know, to trips all over the
place 100, you know, equivalent of 1/3 of the time you so you're
flying to Paris, to Tokyo, you're staying in, you're
staying in the best hotels ever, right?
You've got like, you know, personal assistant, you got
somebody picking you up at the airport.
Everything right? That's the peak peak, peak
lifestyle, right? And ChatGPT came back and said,
you know, what was the number I should get the post, But it was
sort of like, you know, about a million a year, you know, bulb
or half a million, half a million to a million a year or a
million a year, right? Whatever, Let's just say
1,000,000 a year, right? So my point is, if you just
backtrack that, OK, well, you got, you got to spend a million
a year. Well, OK, it's actually next
year, which is the biggest problem to your thing, right?
Because if, if, if you say right now, let's say you start with
100 Bitcoin, right? Well, 100 Bitcoin is 10 million
bucks, right? OK.
And OK, well, you're going to peel off a 10th of it in year 1,
but how much are you going to peel off in year 2?
Well, potentially you're only going to peel off, you know, a
20 or 30th of it in year 2, right?
And you can borrow against it. So I mean, 100 bitcoins should
be more than it's sufficient for you to live pretty much at the
peak. You know, this is like within a
couple, right, and including like, you know, education for
your kids, private nanny, whatever you want right now.
You're not going to have sailor's yacht.
You're not you're not going to get the sailor house right.
You're not going to get the Palm Beach or the the Aspen, you
know, mountain chalet on top of it.
So you're not getting those things, but just from a pure
lifestyle, 100 Bitcoin, pretty much over 100 Bitcoin.
There is no hotel chain that that's going to give you a
better experience. The Four Seasons is it, you
know, that's it that that's the peak.
You know, I'm I say that The Four Seasons of Miami, beautiful
place. You know, I love and you know, I
stay there just just now. Great doesn't get any better
than that, you know, so I would say look, you know, if 100
Bitcoin gives you the absolute peak lifestyle forever starting
now, well, maybe you scale it down from there to like 30
Bitcoin or 25 Bitcoin, you should be able to live off that
today, right? And, and so, you know, now of
course, all this stuff is easier said than done because you have
to have this crazy belief in Bitcoin and not panic sell it at
the absolute worst point, which, you know, I think that's kind of
why we do these podcasts, I think is basically to persuade
ourselves, you know, that this kind of worldview that we have
is not complete insanity. I.
Mean. When I was talking to my
accountant, she's like, what? Fred, you are completely insane.
Why? It's like I get a heart
palpitations whenever I look at your portfolio and I'm like,
yeah, don't worry about it. Like.
We are we listen to Bitcoin content in order to reinforce
our beliefs and entertain along the way.
I wouldn't. That's a very good assessment.
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and bada Bing bada boom you're ready to buy Bitcoin now Fred
you know we're all expecting 2025 to be an amazing year and
I'll set the context a little bit right Biden administration
lost catastrophically. The Republicans have a trifecta
in government and they hold the house they hold the Senate.
They won the presidency. This is the first pro Bitcoin
president going into office and of course the talk of a
strategic Bitcoin reserve, which if that gets passed, I think the
Poly market odds give it like a 40%.
But if that somehow gets passed, we're going to 500 K guaranteed
next year. That's the way I'm looking at
it. And of course, you know the
nation state adoption with Naimbu Calais and then of course
Michael Saylor's amazing success with micro strategy on the kind
of Wall Street institutional level.
So just kind of aligning and given context.
So because we are going to go into kind of speculation type of
talk, sure, what are you expecting for 2025 And if you
want I can give my own kind of theories first.
Yeah, go ahead. Why don't you start?
Yeah. OK.
So I think 2021 was artificially cut short because of the China
mining ban. You see, there is a direct
correlation between the hash rate pump plummeting 50% and the
price going along with it. Why?
Because all those miners needed to sell Bitcoin to relocate to
more favorable jurisdictions. So I think 2021 we were actually
destined to hit 100K. Now what this caused was now
most of the Bitcoin community has this form of PTSD.
We have not experienced a blow off top in Bitcoin since 2017.
It's been a long time, right? So I think the general consensus
and the reason I'm bringing this up is Bitcoin tends to do the
exact opposite of what everybody thinks, right?
And it's just markets in general.
So the general consensus IS150K Bitcoin, 180 K Bitcoin.
I think we're going either much lower than that or much higher
than that because I see most people throwing this number in
that general vicinity. And then I think people are
underestimating how bullish it is for Bitcoin for Trump to have
won this election like it was a big deal, like people
underestimate this. And even if he doesn't pass
legislation through, the things that he can do via executive
order is a lot, right? So that's my general theory.
I think it's going to blow. I think it's on the upside, I
think it's going to blow past 200 K minimum.
That's my theory. I would love to hear yours.
OK. So my theory is less on the
number that we're going to hit this year that I'm that I think
we have a longer runway. So I, I don't know how much
we're going to go up this year. I think it could be 200,000 that
that might be it, right? I might be 500,000.
Like if it, if it was 200,000, I'd be very happy.
If it's 500,000, I'd be very happy.
Yeah, it doesn't matter to me, right?
I definitely don't think right now that 2026 will be a down
year. So I, I don't think that the,
the mining cycle or anything has anything to do with anything at
this point. You know, we, we are at the tail
end of that mining argument. You know, where or what the,
what the miners did mattered. I don't think it matters
anymore. So I think, I think we just have
to get rid of the cycles idea like that.
And I, I understand we've had it, we've had, we've had it for
the first 3 cycles, you know, really bad, you know that there,
there was, you know, this was, but I don't think it matters
right now. I just don't think it matters.
I, I really don't. So, you know, I don't think, I
think the real question is not how do we, how much do we get
next year? I think the real question is,
you know, how long does it take us to get to 500,000 or a
million? You know, and it may take us a
couple years and that's fine. It's, you know, it's perfect.
So my view is, I also kind of view that the Bitcoin strategic
reserve, like it may happen and there may be this, but look,
America has America's kind of broke right now.
So I don't see them, you know, kind of spent.
And we've got to refinance $7 trillion in Treasury bonds this
year. So I don't see us really
contributing a lot of money to this strategic Bitcoin reserve.
I you know, I Trump's got his, his, his, his, his.
He has work cut out for him on many, many different fronts,
right, to kind of curb immigration.
He's got to he's got to clean up some this excess government
waste. You know, he's got to do a lot
of stuff. And I don't think Bitcoin does
not need the bitcoins strategic reserve.
You know, we will do fine without it.
It's fine. Doesn't matter like all he the
only thing I really want or expect him to do is to label the
existing Bitcoin that he has as a Bitcoin strategic reserve and
stock. That's it.
You know, like I think fixing the United States is more
important than buying a lot of Bitcoin right now.
That that's my view. Like I feel like there's enough
problems with the United States. We got into enough problems with
the Biden administration and and even before, right, we've got,
we got, we got a broken house, a broken car.
Let's fix the car, you know, and let's give Bitcoin a room to run
because it's going to run all by itself.
Does not need training wheels at this point.
You know, and you know, I, I just feel like there's so much
money that wants to get into that.
We'll want to get into Bitcoin that we don't need to come up
with like, you know, Middle Eastern buyers or strategic
reserve or anything else. I think it's just naturally
we're going to have this mass of money want to find itself there,
and so I and it will in particular if America is Bitcoin
friendly and all it just needs to do is well, the most
important thing, I think is to solve this operation choke .2
point O, you know, like we need. We need to make banks be able to
hold Bitcoin. We need to stop cronalizing
people like you or me who bought Bitcoin a little earlier, you
know, than than the average dog. And you know, we and we should
be part of the financial system. That's it, you know, and so, you
know, and, and, and we should make it legitimate for
businesses to own Bitcoin. We shouldn't penalize them.
So we got to end this kind of crusading by the FDIC and
Elizabeth Warren and everybody else on Bitcoin, right?
That that's the most important thing.
Like let's end the crusade on against Bitcoin and Bitcoiners,
right? Let's stop that.
And yeah, if you want to, if we can buy some more Bitcoin,
great. We don't need to do it right
now. I it's not, I don't think that's
that's needed. There's so much money out there
that it will just naturally come into it.
It'll raise the price naturally. And so and I also, I also in a
way, I don't want to blow off top either, you know, I actually
don't want 1, you know, because blow off tops usually follow are
followed by nuclear winters. You know.
And I don't know, like I don't want another 2022 or 2018, you
know, I'd rather have just a mild, you know, correction like
we had when the Germans sold their Bitcoin.
Yeah. You know, down 30% whatever.
OK, like, you know, we don't need, we don't need, we just
don't need massive people going completely berserk on 100X
options and everything else. We don't need that.
That's not that's not good, right Yeah, and companies going
bankrupt and Sam bank run freeze and all the rest.
We we really don't need that. Like the best case forward be
you know, if we doubled this next year, we doubled again in
2026, like how great would that be?
You know that would. Be phenomenal.
Yeah, right. And everybody be a little bit
upset like, oh, we only, we only went up to 200 K.
We did a Bitcoin reserve, but we didn't put much on that.
And fine, I like absolutely fine.
I'm the happiest guy in the you know, so I just, you know, I,
you know, I'm just not, I just, I feel like we need to kind of
stop the like the hype of like the Dennis Porter kind of stuff,
you know, like Philadelphia, PA signing this and then, you know,
Ohio's going to do this. Like guys like it doesn't
matter. Like we're we're not, we're not
in this race. The hype to blow off this like
we're good. We already won.
Now with Trump in we have won. So we have won like we're going
to win, you know? So, you know, I think it's kind
of like, you know, smell the roses, enjoy life, and let's not
get bent out of shape because we don't do a 10X if we do.
And I'm with you, Nico. Look, human, human greed is such
that it's very possible that we get some completely insane blow
off top. It is possible, right?
Why? Because you know, it's not going
to be, but it won't be the same kind of people.
It won't be. It won't be the kind of the D
Gen. retail from, you know, 2020-2021, right or 2017.
It won't be. It won't be the same guys who
bought Tron and you know, and FTX and you know, Solana and
stuff in 2020. What I think it's going to be is
a bunch of extremely wealthy rich people who all of a sudden
sit there and go, wait a second. I, I only own 0.01% of my net
worth in I bit maybe I increase that to 2% and that if we get
that shifting, you know that that's that that'll just
completely, you know that that's what could do it, right?
Because there's so much to this money that's in real estate,
that's in bonds, that's in, in, in overpriced stocks.
And they just, they don't have enough allocation.
They, they have no allocation to Bitcoin.
So I'm to me, it's like complete and utter inevitability that
that happens. But you know, these people are
very, as you know, they're very, very that we're still at the
point where they're, they're bad mouthing Bitcoin.
They're like, yeah, then maybe not really an asset.
There's no value, no intrinsic value.
So it may take, it may take a little longer than one year for
them to completely come to, but I don't think it's going to take
longer than five years. I think, you know, to me, this
the horse race started a year ago with the ETF.
Yes, because before the ETF like you're some wealthy guy in
Miami, right? You're, I mean, are you going to
really, you're going to go buy a cold card or learn to use that
thing and then and then move some money, buy, buy Bitcoin and
Coinbase and then move it. You're not going to do that,
right? I mean, the amount of the amount
of wealthy people who do, who do that, it's like it's very small,
right? And you know, they're not going
to leave, they may have a Coinbase account or something,
but they're not going to leave $5,000,000 on Coinbase, 10
million, you know what I mean? Like you don't, that's not what
wealthy people do. You know, they have wealth
managers, they're conservative. They have places, brokers
accounts that they had money in for 3050 years, you know, and I
mean, I've had a I've had my Goldman Sachs account since
1998, you know what I mean? Or 95, you know.
So, you know, we're not people, you know, people are cautious
with their money. They're not, they're not like,
oh, new paradigm, I'm going to put all my money in Coinbase.
No, they're not going to do it. So I think it's going to change.
But all they need to do is just allocate now a very small amount
into I bet or FBTC and those guys are going to clean up.
They're just going to clean up. Yeah, all the ETFs.
But I mean, I think those two in particular are just going to be,
they're going, I bet is going to become bigger than the S&P SPY.
It's a. Very strong statement, Fred, but
I completely agree with you. I mean, it's become the number
one ETF of all ETFs, right? That's what the, it's just going
to become the I There's a reason, there's a reason Larry
Fink is now so bullish on this stuff, is he he probably has the
best view of where money is going of any person in this
planet, OK, including Michael Zaylor.
You know, I'm just saying like, he really he, he is at, he's
right on the catbird seat. You know, you can see everything
and he sees like, wait a second, there's all this money that
could go into ETFs. I want to go into my ETF, right?
And you know, he's making 20 basis points on, you know, on,
on $10 trillion. You know, that's $200 billion a
year. I mean like, you know, the he,
he's, he's this is, this is going to be.
And I think where we're headed is that I bet becomes kind of
like the IT, it is in everybody's growth portfolio.
Like every single everybody owns some S&P whether it's I bet or I
bet SPY or the the Vanguard 1, you know, everybody has.
You don't find an investor who doesn't, who has, does not have
some allocation to the standard and poor's that's it.
Everybody does, right. And I think 10 years from now,
every single investor will have some, I bet everybody, every
single one will have you know, and it's not going to be 0.1%,
it's going to be 5%. You know that'll be the norm,
so. Fred, let me ask you something
and I, by the way, I completely agree with you.
I and the reason I agree with you is because the Bitcoin is
going to outperform the SNP. So it's inevitable that people,
you know, if you're an investor, you want exposure to that.
Now, my, my question to you, Fred, is do you agree with
Sailor's stance that we're going to see a in the, in the early
days, he believes a 40% compound growth in Bitcoin at least for
the next 10 years and then it'll start to tail down to like 20%.
And I mean thing about compound interest, and if anyone is not
familiar with it, there's so many calculators online like
it's a reason that Warren Buffett is as wealthy as he is,
right? And especially like, you know,
if you do something for 1020 years, 30 years and you have a
compound interest of 20 percent, 30%, you can grow a great deal
of wealth, especially the well I'll.
Give you an example of that because I've been doing a lot of
kind of digging around in economic history and that, you
know, if you look back at the Medici's in, you know, in
Florence in the 13th century, you know, the highest interest
rate that they ever got was 20%. That's the look, I mean, if
you're getting double digit interest rates, those things
compound to massive amounts of money.
So 40%. I mean, this isn't insane,
right? It's you know, and obviously
last year we had 100 hundred and 20%.
Well, I can't even know 150% right, basically right.
So, you know, we, we've outperformed it, but all you
don't need to, you don't, all you need to know is anything
above 20%. It's amazing, right?
This is unbelievable. This is like these are wealth
makers. So I think that you're right.
The, the, it is the miracle. The, you know, they said it's
the seventh wonder of the world or the 8th wonder of the world
is compound interest. And it really is true.
If, if you can hold on to 20 something that's growing at 20
thirty 40% for 10 years, you're, you're, you're, you become
extremely wealthy in, in inside of a decade.
So I and I think investors are not stupid.
They're going to look at, I bet they're going to look at what it
did last year. If it does another good year,
they're going to just keep on going.
They're going to be like, OK, I, I like what I'm doing here.
I'm just keep keep more of this. So you know, I just to me, the
history of Bitcoin as an institutional investor product
started last year. So that's it.
That's when we we're one year in.
We had a great first year. We had a great first year.
Now we're going to have our second year.
If our second year is great, Oh man, that money is just going to
come in like, you know, it's still it's still like, well, we
got to still test. It's only a year old, but that,
you know, typically on Wall Street, if you're, let's say you
start a new fund or this is a good kind of good example.
If you start a fund and or you're a trader and somebody
gives you money, right, Your first year, you have a blowout
year, you'd do 100% OK, something like that.
You're going to get a lot more money the second year.
But if you do it for two years in a row that then people just
can be like, OK, give this guy all our money.
That's that's the human psychology, right?
Like, of course, that's the way things work.
And so I think, you know, you know, people are going to look
at the audited results of I bit they're not going to look at
what Bitcoin did before I bit, you know, they're going to look
at what happened after the ETF came out, after they could
finally buy, they could first buy it and that's it.
So I think we're in for for a very long ride, a really long
ride. And that's the the main thing I
want to say is like, you know, you've been in Bitcoin a long
time, but you know, you've only been in institutional Bitcoin
the same, same long time as anybody else one year because
everything you did before that, sort of like it's like AVC when
they invest in a company, they view that they the time starts
when they invest. Like whatever happened before
that, whatever the guys, the founders did before, it doesn't
matter. Clock starts when the
institutional money comes in. And I feel like that's where we
are with Bitcoin D The clock has started on this new thing.
And the last thing you want to do is use your models from the
previous era to kind of project the next era.
But those models are not going to work anymore.
Like you may think, Oh, well, it's going to do this.
The mining is the cycles. Oh great, you sold, you sold in
and you want to you want to kind of time it so better than
anybody else you're going to sell in August of this year
great, you're going to sell in August you're going to be up 60
percent, 70% and you're going to you're going to think you're
going to miss the crash of 2026, except there won't be a crash of
2026 and there won't be a crash of 2027 and you know it, it'll
just keep on going up. So, you know, I all I know is
I'm not smart enough to say that I think 2026 is going to be a
down year. So I'm definitely huddling
through from here on out. You know, now that's.
A good point. That's what I'm doing now on on
the other hand, will I sell a little bit just to spend it?
Not, not not for, you know, not for portfolio reason, but just
buy something, you know, maybe, yeah, probably, you know, you
know, I'll just I might peel off some money, do something.
I don't know, I don't know what, but you know, like you, but I
think I think money's meant to be spent.
But I think that I do think that we're in, we're in kind of now
for a long, a long, very positive route, similar to
buying Apple stock, you know, in 2010 or something, or Amazon
2010, you know, and you know those, I can tell you, look, I
owned Apple in 2008 and I bought it when they first came out with
the iPhone. I was like, oh man, this thing's
going to be great. The stock doubled.
It did bad and then it doubled and recouped after 2010.
I said I'm done. I've great trade, fantastic
stock went up 50 times after that 50 times.
OK, Apple has gone up 50 times from 2010 till now.
That's crazy. And, you know, do they have a
new product? Not really.
They have the watch. You know, they have the watch.
You know what I mean? The iPhone came out while I
still had Apple shares. I bought in a little bit along
the way, but I had a pretty big position in Apple.
And you know, Amazon, you know, you could, you know, you could
have avoided the crash of of 2000, but then afterwards, it's
afterwards that even in the last decade, Amazon just did
phenomenal, right? So it was a very mature company.
Nothing fantastically new or there was no, there was no
strategic reserve that moved Amazon up, right?
Just went up, just kept on going up, right.
So I think Bitcoin's going to be like that.
It's going to be, it's not going to be like we need this
strategic reserve. We need this Saudi Sheikh to buy
it. This thing's just going to work.
This thing will just work and it will work.
And really you got to, you got to just extend your time frame
to about a decade. And I think you got to figure
out, OK, how do I make sure that I have Bitcoin, my core position
throughout this decade? So whatever your plan is, you
got to make sure that you don't, do not sell more than 20% of
your Bitcoin for, for the next 10 years.
So you got, you got that 20%. You can play around with, you
can do, you know, do whatever you want, but keep 80.
As long as you keep 70 or 80%, the numbers are going to just
they're going to be amazing for you.
Yeah, all of us old timers are going to be really, I think are
going to really, really benefit from just the the pure growth
factor and that. And I think that the key is just
to kind of keep a level head and stay calm and understand there
will be volatility and fine, you know, we're OK with it.
And it's honestly it's volatility.
When you bought your you, you came in 2016, right?
So, but like $500 Bitcoin, right?
Yep, right. So first. 1st, 1st, 1st Bitcoin
was $670. OK, 670.
Yeah, I remember when it crossed 1000, man, that was that was a
crazy time. Yeah.
And that was like, again, right. Because, you know, of course it
was there in 2013. But you know, you know, but
yeah, the, but you know, if you bought Bitcoin at 500 and it
goes from 100,000 to 50,000, it hurts a little bit, but it's not
a panic attack, right? On the other hand, if you went
huge all in right now at 100,000 it goes and it sort of ticks
down to 50,000. That's kind of that, that's
where the you, you, you do have panic attacks at that point.
So I think it gets, it gets easier as you're older, as you,
you're further into this, right? It definitely gets easier.
Well, it's because like, you know, like I, you know, I've had
this conversation with with my wife's parents, you know, tried
to orange build them for a very long time and eventually they
listened to me. But you know, eventually, like
one of the questions that I get from my father-in-law, which is
like, are you going to sell? And, and I'm like, look like
unless Bitcoin is going to the below 10K region, like I'm OK,
I'm fine. You know, I'm, I'm going to be
up, right? So like, that's kind of like the
way I look at it. But again, you have to pay your
dues. You have to put in the, you have
to put in the work and go through the cycles.
Now you. Got to get, I think the main
thing. Look, Michael Saylor came in a
lot later than most of us did. I mean, yeah, he had a lot.
More capital, though. Yeah, yeah, but what I'm saying
is you and I were we predated Michael Saylor, right?
OK. And for me, it was 2019 when I
really saw the light, right. But and he was 2016, right?
So Sailor was 2020, you know, so I think the, the thing about
Saylor is though, he, it wasn't only the capital, it's just he
developed really strong conviction in a very, very early
and I think that's the difference, right?
The difference is what's your level of conviction?
How convinced are you that this thing called Bitcoin is actually
going to be probably the foundation of the, the world
financial economy 20 years from now?
You know, and I, I can, I basically talk to some
Bitcoiners and stuff and that's sort of the first thing I
internally try to figure out is, are they really as convinced as
me that we are talking about something that will, will 100%
be uniform, it'll have 100% penetration down the road?
Like, because I think a lot of people still don't, even if
they've made money, even if they were early, even if they got
another cycle, they still don't really think that they really
don't think people are going to be using Bitcoin and they don't,
they don't see the, you know, the end game of hyper
bitcoinization. But I think, I think a lot, you
know, there are a bunch of us who do, right, a bunch of us who
really can see this thing. And we, we were like, this is
going to, this is going to happen.
You know, I, I can't tell you exactly how it's going to happen
with what strategic reserve or this or that or I don't know,
like, you know, but I can just tell you that I think sailor's
geniuses that he realized, OK, this is definitely going to
happen. I, I'm 100% convinced this is
going to happen. You know, given that he has that
conviction, you know, how, how do you Orient your portfolio
given that conviction? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think he's done an amazing job at that, you know?
100% I mean, he just double s down.
He, he, he really believes and, and, and I think you, you hit
the nail on the, on the, you hit the, the nail on the head there,
Fred, where you pointed out his ability to learn Bitcoin in such
a short period of time. You know what, usually it takes
at least one or two years minimum.
Most people takes a little bit longer than that.
But his ability to grasp it from such a in such a short period of
time and then just double down and, you know, leverage his
company, borrow money, buy Bitcoin, rinse and repeat, is
definitely, you know, and This is why his stock outperformed
basically every company, including NVIDIA, which is
absolutely insane, right? But I have a question for you,
Fred, which is, and we are getting to the top of the hour,
and I do want to be respectful of your time.
Yeah. No.
Problem are we if people are listening to this now and
they're running into this podcast and they're they see you
on Twitter, they see you talking and they see simply talking and
they're like what is this Bitcoin thing Are they late to
Bitcoin? Is it too late to buy Bitcoin
Fred and and benefit from it well?
I mean, we're super early. We're very, very early.
I mean, this is, this is like we're the beginning of a
probably a 20 year journey of massively high returns.
It's it's going to be, we're going to have massively high
returns for 20 or maybe even 30 years.
That that's basically, I think where we are.
So you know, it, it's we're you're, you're nowhere.
You're at the beginning like you're in the first inning.
So I think you're not at all late.
And you know, there's something, there's something very fractally
about Bitcoin that it kind of like, you know, in a way 2024 is
Bitcoin was never cheap. Remember when you bought your
first Bitcoin, Nico? It was expensive.
I, I, I thought I lost the train and look I did.
I was very young at the time. I was very kind of desperate
point in my life. So I I for you.
Know what the same feeling you have about Oh my God is the am I
late it's 2016 this thing is this thing was discovered OK you
know seven years ago the the. Point I was trying to make,
Fred, is that like, so when I got in, it was again, it was
under 1000 bucks. And for the the first cycle, so
the first four years I did whatever humanly possible to put
as much as my income into Bitcoin and I was very desperate
and I wanted to get out of the situation that I was in.
However, I thought I was late because I met people that bought
Bitcoin under $100. I bought, I I met people that
bought Bitcoin at $100 or $200. If I knew where Bitcoin would be
today, instead of putting 80% of what I had, I think I would have
put 95 to 100. I think I would have.
Borrowed 9. Dixon bought Bitcoin at $0.10.
I would have borrowed. Wayne, Wayne bought, Wayne
bought. You know who I do the podcast
with? He bought Bitcoin at, you know,
a dollar, you know what I mean? Like.
So crazy. You know it.
But. Yeah, you just have to get it.
You have to get it doesn't matter like, but I'm what I'm
trying to say is that those feelings are all the feeling
that you had in 2016 is the same feeling that some new guy is
going to have in 202425 Excuse me now looking at $100,000
Bitcoin. You know it, it doesn't it
doesn't matter you're you're not you're you're you're very, very
early. This is less, less than 1% of
rich people even have any Bitcoin.
So it we're, we're, we're tremendously early.
There's going to be a lot of great gains.
But it it's going to be, you know, Bitcoin only just and,
and, and don't try to time it. I mean, that's, that's the main
thing. Everybody who's trying to time
it is going to screw up, in my opinion.
I don't know. Yeah.
My my, my gut feels they're going to screw up. 100% I, I, I
have met more, I've met so many people in this industry for so
long. And the general idea that I get
the general thing, and I completely agree with this is
don't trade and stay away from, from all coins.
And if I followed those two pieces of advice, I would
probably have more Bitcoin today than I did if I didn't do any of
those things, if I just stuck to DCA ING and staying humble
stacking SAT staying salt. So.
But anyways, we are getting to the top of the hour, Fred and I
do want to be respectful of your time, no?
Problem. Thank you so much for joining me
today. I think this is the second
one-on-one conversation that I've had with you.
Absolutely pleasure and huge fan of of the big Bitcoin book.
I totally bought myself a copy and big fan.
We had a lot of fun writing it. It was, it's, it's super, super
awesome. I'm really glad to see that it
succeeded. Can you tell everybody where to
follow you, what you're working on?
If they just want to stay on top of what Fred Krueger is doing,
where can they find you? Just go to my Twitter dot
Krueger and I have a link also to a website likefredkrueger.org
I think is this and I just have other links there.
I have links of everything from books I'm reading to articles,
videos about Bitcoin that I think are cool.
And what am I working on now? I'll tell you that we're we're
talking now about a potentially a an art project, an art book on
Bitcoin. We're we're thinking about it
where so that's that's something that's going to be pretty
interesting. Sort of we'll see if that how,
how that thing evolves. But I'm very, very exciting at
that. And yeah, and you know, I'm
primarily just a Bitcoin error, but I'm, I'm also looking at
investing in potentially some Bitcoin related things, you
know, not as a fund or anything, just just myself.
Fred Krueger. So yeah, I mean, I'm ultimately
just go to Doc Krueger. There's a link to my YouTube
there. You can see I put some videos up
on YouTube for you can see that you can go back and look at some
of them. And yeah, the other thing I was
going to say what I'm very, very kind of long term, you know, my
intellectual hobbies right now I'm really trying to research
the history of money and, you know, and figure out kind of
what, where, where, where, what does it look like when we're
hyper Bitcoin is what does lending look like in a world
where we're completely on a Bitcoin standard?
What do banks look like? You know, how what does the
world look like on a Bitcoin standard?
So these are sort of general questions I'm very interested
in. I've been doing a ton of reading
of, you know, very everything from the 19th century America
to, to, you know, medieval Italy.
So yeah. Yeah, and you can even make an
argument that, you know, a big reason as to why the Roman
Empire fell was because of inflation.
And that's just such a crazy rabbit hole, the history.
Of Roman was fascinating. That's true.
So yeah, I mean, look, I think it's as Bitcoiners, one of the
things we are, we're developed. We we have this.
We're not I would say macro guys, but we, we kind of go, OK,
well, there's this new there's new money that we're we're all
committed to. And then we're like, how do we
get into this mess? You know what, how did we evolve
here? You know, and I'm not trying to
say it's a conspiracy theory. I think it's more of a it's sort
of trial and error, right? We, we tried with gold.
Well, that's not not portable enough.
So we need notes and OK, then we need to put our gold in some
bank And but the bank needs a business model.
They're going to lend it out. Oh, they're going to go
bankrupt, you know that. So there's, you know, I think
we're sort of iterating on humans have been iterating on
kind of the use of money over the last couple 100 years in
particular. And I think Bitcoin is kind of
the ultimate net result of that, right.
I think, you know, we, we finally cracked the puzzle.
And I think Bitcoin's I I think Bitcoin's going to be the money
for the next 1000 years or 100 years or something, you know, I
think it will become the world. Money and I, I, I think it's
really interesting to see to think how do we get from there
to here and what does it look like 20 years from now?
Do we even have banks anymore? I mean, what do we do, you know,
how, how, how do, how do businesses get funding?
You know, how to, how does that work?
Like so there's all these really, you know, what does an
interest rate look like in a hyper bitcoinized world, right?
I, I love asking those kind of questions and a lot of people
don't know the answer to it. Like, you know, I've asked this
question on Twitter and people are like, it'll be negative or
it'll be positive, like it'll, it'll be really high.
It'll be not so high. So we're clearly there's no
consensus at all as to what, what, what that world looks
like, right? Because we've been in this Fiat
world for so long. What does the world after Fiat
look like? I find it fascinating.
Yeah, 100%. And it's going to completely
dramatically change the world. And I think it's going to make
the world's for like it's going to make the world a much better
place. I truly, truly believe that in
my heart. Anyways, Fred, thank you so much
for for joining us today. Appreciate it.