Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of
Simply Bitcoin IRL. Today we have a very special
guest. We have Fred Krueger.
But before we bring them up on stage, I do want to give a shout
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All right, ladies and gentlemen, no more delay.
I do want to bring Fred up on stage.
Fred, you have a quite, a very, very impressive CV.
You have a bachelor's from Cornell University in in
mathematics, and you have a PhD from Stanford and Operations
Research and statistics. So that's quite impressive.
How are you? And first of all, not only how
are you very, very great stuff and content that you're dropping
on Twitter, very, very valuable. Your account, your account grew
extremely quickly, which is not that hard that sorry, it's it's
not that easy to do. So obviously people are finding
value in your work and what you're contributing to the
community. Thanks a lot, Nico.
I appreciate it. Yeah.
So, so you know, this has been a a been a wild ride.
You you were not on my radar for a while, were you?
Were you looking at Bitcoin Twitter?
Where, when, when did you decide to jump into the fray, so to
speak? Well, OK, so I was I've been in
Bitcoin for for quite some time, and I've been in crypto before
Bitcoin even for longer, right? But I I haven't been.
I really haven't seen any kind of need to be on Bitcoin Twitter
per Southeast until I think it was December 1st of last year,
so about 2 1/2 months from ago, three months ago, right.
So December, January, February, 3 months ago.
So 90 days I've been on Bitcoin Twitter.
That's it. And the only reason I decided to
get on Bitcoin Twitter is that I kind of felt like I had a unique
point of view about this, you know, Bitcoin ETF.
It kind of needed to be kind of sad.
And so I sort of hopped on really just to talk about the
Bitcoin ETF, that that was the only thing I was sort of
interested in talking about. Now I've sort of talked a little
bit about a few other things, but I'm still mainly interested
in kind of this ETF story and how it's going to, you know,
really accelerate the the price adoption of Bitcoin that you
know, the adoption of Bitcoin is a savings tool.
Does that make sense? Yes, it absolutely makes sense.
But let's talk about that, right.
So for audience, you know it, it definitely, etcetera.
And again, from my perspective, right, Fred, I'm the 1/3 of my
life has been in Bitcoin, right? It's my, it's 8th year.
You know, I'm 30 years old, basically 30 years old,
literally 1/3 of my life. This is my career.
This is what I know. So, you know, when I've ever had
Foss or Lavish or Lapard, I always say the same thing.
They're incredible guys, incredibly smart.
I always told them the same thing.
Caitlyn Long. I always told them the same
thing. I'm like, look, I I I learned
Bitcoin 1st and then I learned traditional finance second,
right? So like looking backwards.
And I I started in, I well, I have.
I've sort of three. There's sort of three parts to
me. Like part of me is, is a tech
person. Right.
So I'm I have a PhD you know and and and really kind of three
subjects. But it was this way.
I have Donald Knuth from computer science.
I don't know if you've ever ever done any sort of theoretical
computer science but you probably run across the book The
Art of Computer Programming that was that was Donald Knuth who
was on my thesis advisor and then Tom Cover in the stats
department and Curtis Eves in the operations research
department. So, yeah, all all I did and then
I did a, you know, a thesis and that was just pure math, right.
I I just say it's pure math because it is.
It was just, you know, pretty hardcore math.
Then I went to work on Wall Street and you know, I was on
Wall Street for six years as a prop trader at Salomon Brothers.
And so, and that's a long time by the way, you know, like
spending six years kind of managing prop money on an
arbitrage desk that'll burn you out pretty quick.
I can imagine, I can imagine that in that in that type of
environment. So you know, you, you, you, you
have this very impressive background, right?
You know, educational, academic background.
Then I then I spent ten years or 20 years in tech and I've I'm
probably the most serial entrepreneurial ever.
Me in that I've I've I've have over 10 exits and that's
completely non crypto related right.
And I've all these exits are, you know, me, me at the company
and and an exit for me is something where you you sell for
more than $10 million, right. And my total kind of exit is
$500 million. So I've sold $500 million worth
of companies and you know you can obviously I had some
investors in BCS and so on in this, but you know I made a lot
of money in, I made a lot of money in finance, I've made a
lot of money in tech and I've made crypto, right.
So, so I that's kind of my background.
So I have I'm in a position where I can kind of look at
stuff and I saw some stuff that other people didn't see, people
like James Lavish who I like James's content a lot.
Right. And and Greg Foss they're more
focused on sort of the economic sort of like the the US debt
situation is is sort of unsustainable, right.
That's their thing. I'm not so much of A macro type
guy. I'm not not, not to say that I
don't like their stuff, but I just don't find it very useful
for trading to focus on those things.
But I the one thing I did focus on immediately was the CTF,
right? And I was just like, when I saw
the CTF come out, I was just sort of like, why aren't why
isn't everybody just screaming about this thing?
Because this is by far the biggest thing I've ever seen in
Bitcoin. Right.
And I just started saying guys like you don't understand, like
everything else you're saying doesn't matter.
This is going to be this is 10X whatever you, you, whatever you,
whatever you're talking about. Right.
So you know, you know I've, I've, I've, I've sort of ruffled
a few feathers along the way because you know some people
have been like well Fred you know it's not that interest.
There's other more interesting things like Nost or Fetty Mint
or things like that, whatever. And my my point is, look, those
are interesting intellectual ideas, but they have about that
much, they're going to have that much of an impact on the price
of Bitcoin and this ETF when it happens.
I said this in December. I said just mark my words, this
is going to be, this is this is the main event that you guys are
going to see, right? And you know, then the ETF came
out and it looked like a failure to some people initially, right
in the month of January, it looked kind of negative, right?
Like the, you know, GBTC was selling and then, you know, the
other, the other ones were barely keeping up with GBTC
selling. And it, you know, if you wanted
to say the glass was half empty, you could make the case the
glass was half empty. But I kept on saying I'd be like
this is crazy. I mean like this is going to be
this is unbelievable like this amount of the amount of demand
that we're seeing from Wall Street.
And so I I was very, very positive during that period and
I remain you know just obviously massively bullish on this whole
thing right now. And I just think you can't be,
you can't be bullish enough on this these ETFs you just, it's
just and it's just sort of like it's math, it's finance and it's
just like and it's finally we have a vehicle where people can
invest in this stuff. That's it.
That's the bottom line. So OK, it's the bottom line and
I'm, I'm glad that you gave me that backgrounds, you know,
tech, Wall Street, academia, you know, successful 10 exits, you
said. And what got you interested is
the ETFs. Right.
So and could you give a little bit of like a kind of like a
crash course elevator pitch so to speak to our audience, Our
audience is mostly, you know, bitcoiners, self custody.
You know that's that's the people who watch this show.
Why and? Me too.
I'm a self custody Bitcoin, right?
So. Yeah, why was the Bitcoin what,
what makes the Bitcoin ETF this major catalyst to take Bitcoin
to the next level price wise and from your perspective?
OK, So what drives Bitcoin price higher?
It's new money coming into the ecosystem, right?
And you know it's new people buying into sort of the idea
virus that Bitcoin is a is a good place to save your money.
But if you look back into, you know, 2017 time frame, that
cycle or the 2021 cycle, it wasn't sort of mainstream people
putting money into their four O1 KS that was buying into Bitcoin.
Why? Because those people couldn't
really invest very easily. They had to transfer money out.
They had to put it into Coinbase effectively, really Coinbase in
the US and then they had to buy Bitcoin with that and hold it in
Coinbase. Now some of them like did what
you did and what I did, which is, you know, self custody, your
Bitcoin, you have to learn all about self custody and all that.
And it it's a great thing. Look, self custody is a
fantastic thing, but it's a complicated thing and in
adoption of new technologies, any barrier that you put in
front of people really, really will stop that spread that
adoption. So it's amazing to me that
Bitcoin has has gotten to where it has without something like
the ETF. But now when you take the ETF,
all of a sudden you have 100 million plus Americans who have
money in their you know, Charles Schwab or Merrill Lynch.
Merrill Lynch made not really a great example, but let's say
Charles Schwab or Fidelity accounts, right?
And with just a few clicks you now have exposure to Bitcoin and
contrast that with the same person going to buy Bitcoin on
Coinbase. Much more difficult and even
more difficult, you know, signing up for a, you know, self
custody, single sig or multi sig platform like Casa or untrained.
So you have, it's really a maybe 100 times more less barriers to
entry. And when you cut these barriers
to entry down that much and you've just tapped into
effectively the largest capital market in the world.
You don't have to be a genius to realize that that's going to,
that's just going to move the market just tremendously.
And I I think we're just in the very beginning of that right
now, so. And and and and and let's talk
about that right because you've had you know a couple tweets,
you know in the recent, the recent past, one of the one of
the latest I'm reading is a 1 billion a day and new demand
should create 100 billion and new market cap daily that's
enough to move the price A to 117 K in 10 trading sessions.
So what did you mean by that? Well, OK, so there's this.
There's this concept that that people refer to as a multiplier
effect, right. So what that is, is, let's just
say there's a billion dollars that comes into the Bitcoin
market over a period of time, a short, relatively short period
of time. How much does that move the
price by? Well, it doesn't move the price.
It doesn't move the market cap up exactly 1 billion because
it's not like there's people are just saying, oh, I'll just
calmly sell you the exact 1 billion at the current price.
No, you're going to have to buy up, get that Bitcoin from
somebody, right? And there's not an infinite
amount of Bitcoin that's on these exchanges.
There's about 1.8 million Bitcoin that's sitting on all of
the exchanges and all of that is not even for sale, right.
So you're looking at you know hundreds of thousands of coins
that are really kind of actively for sale at any at any point in
time. And if you if you look at sort
of 10,000 Bitcoin a day or more, which is kind of where the
demand is right now from these funds, they're just, I mean this
thing can literally eat through the entire supply of Bitcoin and
all the exchanges in a matter of like 100 days at this rate.
So the, to use that exact analogy, you have a billion
dollars coming in in a day, right.
That's Adam Back just posted this this thing which he's
right. There's been about a billion
dollars a day of of kind of raw demand from Wall Street coming
in. But then there's been these
liquidations of GBTC from these bankruptcies, right, like FTX
and you know Genesis in particular, right.
And so there's this, there's been still a lot of selling.
So it's still muted relative to what it's going to be in say a
month once we've worked through all those numbers.
And if you look at $1 billion coming in, that has the impact
of raising the the market cap of Bitcoin by $100 billion.
So it's 100 X multiplier. Bank of America has estimated
that this multiplier is 118. Other people have said it may be
even as high as 200, but let's just say it's 100, right?
Well, that means you're going to increase the market cap by $100
billion. Well the the entire market cap
of Bitcoin is $1.3 trillion right now.
So it's a 7% increase in one day, right.
So you do that for 10 days and you're going to double the the
effectively or attempt rating sessions you you're more or less
double the the price of Bitcoin. Gotcha.
So.
Pretty amazing. So and OK, and and and I.
Mean you move from 67 to 100,110 thousand whatever the number is.
Gotcha. So and and let's talk about that
for a SEC. So like because I I think a lot
of people, you know, I think they misunderestimated how much
the ETF was going to influence it, right?
Never in Bitcoin's history have we hit an all time high before
the halving, right. That's never happened before.
You're basically saying that there's all this capital kind of
waiting on the sidelines. BlackRock is a fan.
Fidelity is a fan. Blackrock's holdings are about
to surpass Michael Sailor's holdings.
They're very, very close. I think the last time I checked,
BlackRock had 183,000 Bitcoin. Michael Sailor has 193,000.
Tomorrow they will they, will they.
Will increase they will. They will surpass it.
So where do we go from here? You know, where, where do you
see Bitcoin at the end of the year?
What's what's going to happen? And and and not to mention, I
kind of want to talk about the supply shock a little bit,
right. So the halving is right around
the corner. You know, last time I was
checking the figures, there's estimated to be about 10,000
Bitcoin being bought on the market every single day.
Only 900 are being mined in about a month or so month and
change, you know it's going to be 450 Bitcoin being mined.
So this is, you know, I don't think, I don't, I don't think
anything like this has ever happened before in the history
of financial markets. Would it be correct to say
something like that? No, I think, I mean, honestly,
you're going to underestimate the impact.
You can, you can say all those things and you're still
underestimating it, right? Because there's so many other
things that are going. So the only thing you
potentially are overestimating is the impact of the happening,
right. Because the happening is, you
know, as you said, it's the what is the impact?
The impact right now is, well, we know the right now and for
the rest of the next four years, there's going to be 450 Bitcoin
per day, right? Well, right now the demand for
Wall Street is 10,000 Bitcoin per day.
So it's 20 times the happening right now as Bitcoin price goes
up, it won't be 20 times this happening.
Let's say Bitcoin price double S well then it'll still be 10
times the happening. It's still just an enormous
number, right? It'll just an enormous number.
Even if Bitcoin quadruples, we're still going to be five
times the impact of the happening.
So I just actually don't think The Happening is going to make
any difference at all at this point relative to relative to
what we're seeing these flows from these CTFS, they're just so
much bigger than anybody ever thought.
So I don't think the happening is that the having is that much,
that much of a big deal and I and I actually don't think it's
going to be a big deal from here on out.
So I I think we've seen the last of the cycles.
I think it's it's over. So you don't, you don't believe
2026 comes around, you know we're going to have that 80%
drop that's done, that's done and dusted because of the ETFs?
Yeah, I don't think it's going to be a a 2026 one year drop
kind of like that. I think that's over, that
narrative is over. It doesn't mean that we won't
potentially see a big drop some point, right.
But I don't think it's going to be confined to a year.
I don't think you can pinpoint it at exactly this happening
because I just don't think the having are going to be that
important relevant in the future.
It's not to say that we can't have a bear market for Bitcoin.
I do think we we could absolutely have a bear market
for Bitcoin because every single financial asset that has been
known to man so far has had their markets, whether it's the
US stock market, the Japanese stock market, the bond market.
Yeah every asset class has bear markets and they all get ahead
of themselves and they all, they all crash and then they they
can, they can recover. But you know something like the
NASDAQ crash of in 2000 where it took till basically 2010 to
really come back, took a decade to get back to NASDAQ 5000, that
would not surprise me down the road with Bitcoin.
I think we're so far away from that point where that would
happen. You know, it may happen once we
get to 1,000,000 Bitcoin and we have a crash and we go from
1,000,000 to 300,000 and we it takes five years to get back to
1,000,000 for example, right. I see that as possibility.
I just don't think there's regularity with the cycles.
This going to be is going to continue much beyond I I think
we're that's my opinion. Interesting, Interesting.
Interesting. OK, so so no more, no more
cycles. The ETF, you know played a
played a big role in this. And then do you kind of there's
this other theory that's being kind of talked about a little
bit which is this idea of kind of this left shifted bull run
top in 2024. I think a lot of people you know
if the cycle theory is dead, we're are anticipating you know
a cycle top in 2025. You're making the case that you
know the that that theory is basically dead.
So are are you seeing a top potential top in 2024?
No, no, not at all. OK.
No, I think look this is I think we're on the beginning part.
I mean this is obviously this is just you know pure speculation
as a traitor. But my view is look, I think we
are on the beginning part of of quite a big bull run in Bitcoin.
And you know I would, I would an analogous thing would be like
the price of Facebook from the IP Facebook IPO till now, right.
We've got this huge, you know unless I think it'll outperform
that, but I'm just saying I think I think we're on the verge
of something quite big and quite long.
And I do think we may have some bear markets and in Bitcoin and
they could be also big and long. But I think we're think of this
as sort of the IPO of Bitcoin. This is like Bitcoin finally
coming to the financial markets. And you know, it's rare that a
company IPOs does great and then tanks a year later that that's
usually not what happens. If they do really well, they
usually continue and they continue to do well for a
decade. And that's kind of what I think
for Bitcoin. I think it's going to be a great
decade for Bitcoin, you know, or at least a great five years for
Bitcoin, great 5-6 years. And you know, I think we're at a
very relatively low price of Bitcoin relative to where I
think it's going to go. So I think it's got a lot of
room to the future, to upside and I think people should not be
looking to sell Bitcoin at all right now.
This is not something that that you should be.
You shouldn't be looking to trade it.
You shouldn't be looking to sell it.
You should absolutely. If you don't have it, you should
be looking to buy it right now, right here.
But I think you know, for you, for me, for most of the people
listening to your podcast, I would say there's nothing to do
at all in 2024, period. Nothing or 2025.
I would just, you know, you just hang tight, entertain yourself
with crypto Twitter, you know, but there's there's no trading
of this thing right now. This is, this is something that
we have seen, we are seeing. This is really the catalyst
you've been waiting for your entire Bitcoin life, right,
right here. It's just it doesn't get it and
there's not going to be a next one.
This is it. This is this is the main event
right now, right? Black Rock doesn't get any
bigger than Black Rock, right? Black Rock's the largest asset
manager on the planet. There's there's nothing bigger
than Black Rock. This is the ultimate boss in the
video game. Gotcha.
OK.
So no more cycles. This is the the catalyst.
What would you say to people that feel they're late to the
party? Is there still potential upside?
You know, there's this theory of diminishing returns.
Do you still think that there is major opportunity here for, you
know, the investors? Yeah, I I.
I think we're at, if I had to put where we are relative to
where we're going, I think we're on the road to going to 10 or
$20 million per Bitcoin. You know what's?
What's the timeline there? Yeah.
So I would say the timeline on that's a couple decades, right?
You know, a couple decades for for us to get to those kind of
prices. But you know, it wouldn't
surprise me if we could get to 1,000,000 within a decade,
right? Now we couldn't get to 1,000,000
in two years, right. But if I, if if you told me,
Fred, you're going to have to hold your Bitcoin for a decade
and you're going to get out on $1,000,000 per coin, I'd say
wow, what, what's a decade? I'll wait a decade.
No problem. You know, and you know I'm a
little older than you, so you know, I'm I've, I've held assets
for a decade, right. I've held gold bars for three
decades, you know, and they haven't done bad.
You know they've gone up 10X in in three decades by gold.
So I'm I'm prepared to hold Bitcoin for a decade.
It's not a problem. And if I think it's going to a
million, I you know, I I don't want to sell it at 300,000 or
200,000. I want to wait until it gets to
1,000,000. So I think that's sort of your,
the intermediate target. The target that you really need
to focus on is 1,000,000, right? I really think we're going to
get to Bitcoin 1,000,000. I I I don't have, I mean I would
say a 99% probability that we get there.
You know, how long does it take? I don't think it's going to take
much more than 10 years to get there.
So I think that's an enormous opportunity from here with
Bitcoin at, you know, 67,000, right?
I mean, nothing else is going to get you there.
You know, you buy a house, I don't know where you live.
Where do you live, Nico, what, what general area of the of the
university you live in? Miami, Miami, OK.
I don't think a Miami condo is going to go up, you know, 10X in
in the space of a decade. It might go up 2X, right, but
it's not going to go up 10X. So I think you have to look at
it over, let's say, a decade from here.
I think I think Bitcoin's going to be your best performing asset
over the next decade. So if you buy it right here,
right here today, so you don't need to have owned it early or
you don't need to have gotten in early, right here is a great
time to buy in my opinion. And and now the question is how
much of your net worth do you put in that, right.
And I would say, you know, I would do your own research and
figure out, you know what you think and you know relative to
your comfort zone and stuff. But you know, I would not.
I think that if you put 1%, that's not the right number,
right? Because you don't have, you
don't have ideas of you don't have 99 ideas that are
equivalent to Bitcoin. At least I don't, right.
You know, you might maybe think NVIDIA is going to be a great
buy. Maybe maybe you think Miami real
estate is going to be a good buy.
I don't know. But if I had to put a portfolio
together and I'm going to put, you know, 5% in Bitcoin and 95%
in Miami real estate and energy stocks, I think there's
something wrong with that portfolio construction.
I mean if I knew what Bitcoin was going to do, I I would move
those things around pretty much the exact opposite, you know, So
I I just think that people are under invested in this asset and
you know, I you can't talk people into getting to what they
have outside of their comfort zone.
But you know, I I do think that the more you own, the better of
this thing. And especially if you're young,
you know, like, you know, somebody your age should own, I
would say the majority of their, their net worth should be in
Bitcoin, in my opinion. You know, if I was, if I was
your age, I'd pretty much be 100% in Bitcoin and you probably
are 100% in Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean.
I've been 100% for eight years now.
There you. Go.
So all I'm saying is I agree with your allocation, right.
So that that's what I would have done.
You know, now when you get to be my age, you kind of you're like,
you know you you've got more dependencies and you know you
don't need, you don't need to grow the money that much, right.
Yeah. You know, it's it's all a
personal thing, but but I still think that, you know, when I see
people saying talking about 10% allocation, I'm like, OK, 10%'s
OK if you absolutely don't understand Bitcoin, but if you
understand Bitcoin, why? Why would you be doing 10% of
your portfolio in Bitcoin? Could you could?
You explain it real quick. Like, what do you mean?
So like if if someone told you again, they didn't understand
Bitcoin. They didn't come from your
background. It was just, but it's just like
I, I I'm gonna put 10% in it and and you know, and then you'd be
like, OK, but you don't understand Bitcoin.
They'd say, OK, explain it to me.
Pitch it to me. Why?
Why should I put more than 10%? Well it's just it's it's what do
you believe where do what do you think is the expected return
right. It's a if you if you're sitting
there and you go, OK great, I really do you think Bitcoin can
10X over the next decade and you're like, yeah, yeah, I do.
Great. Well, do you think you know
Exxon Mobil can 10X over the next decade?
Well, I think it can double. OK.
Well then you should be probably owning 0% of Exxon Mobil and
100% in Bitcoin. Now if you're not really sure
about the Bitcoin and you really want additional diversification,
OK, maybe I could see going you know 70% in Bitcoin and 20% or
30% in Exxon Mobil just if you had those two choices right.
But it's just mathematically you're doing you're you're
making a mistake if you're trying to diverse if your number
one goal is diversification as opposed to concentration in the
positions that you believe in. Now, I wouldn't recommend doing
this unless you completely believe in Bitcoin.
But if you do believe in Bitcoin, I would say you should
put your money where your mouth is.
That's all I'm saying, OK, OK and what you have done, right,
what you have done, you're not taking your money out and you're
not buying. I mean do you own any S&P 500?
Why would I? There.
You go right. So why would you?
Good. Good point.
Right. Now I'll tell you one reason you
would is maybe you're wrong, right?
Maybe you're wrong. Maybe Bitcoin isn't going to go
up, or maybe it's going to go down and maybe you're going to
need the money for something else.
You know you're going to get hit by a car and you know you're
going to need to pay for some life or death thing.
So that's a good reason why not. Yeah, but I could I.
Could I could sell Bitcoin to do that right, But except you
might. Be selling Bitcoin potentially
at the exact one time, right? Yeah, I know.
But you know, my entry was what, you know, six $700.00, but I
think I got maybe some of the 500 like you know.
So a little bit is OK, right. But I guess, I guess what I'm
trying to say is, yeah, fine, it's the best investment return,
but the way that I see it is really is freedom.
So if I own SMP, if I own stocks and all that stuff, again, it's
not that I'm a hater of stocks, it's I being a bitcoiner.
I don't really feel like I actually own them, right?
Like unless I have like these like certificates printed out in
my home, in my drawer, of which it's not liquid, you know,
you're going to what, send them back to the brokerage and then
they have to process them. That's going to take like 2
weeks in order for me to sell those immediately.
Not to mention the fact that I can't send them instantaneously
anywhere around the world. That's not the.
Way. OK.
So that's the way they worked in 1870.
OK. Like, I mean you're you're
thinking like Cornelius Vanderbilt, right?
Literally you have these like stock certificates.
No, no but the. Reason.
The reason I brought it up that way is because like that would
be like like if if I have stocks, you know, on my on my
Robin Hood account or my Charles Schwab account, that's not those
aren't in my possession A broker.
A broker's holding that for a custodian is holding that for me
and and that brings. Us back to the ETF, right?
Yeah, because a Bitcoin ETF is exactly that, right?
Yeah. Actively, your Bitcoin is being
held by Coinbase in the name of BlackRock, in the name of their
fund. And so you have, you have this
intermediary between you and your Bitcoin, right?
So you don't have access to the Bitcoin and and furthermore, you
can't actually get the actual Bitcoin out of that.
You can get the dollars, which you can then use to buy the
Bitcoin, but it's not actually the same as owning the Bitcoin,
right? Yeah, OK.
Now, what I would argue is, at the end of the day, what do you
care? Because if the Bitcoin really
goes up and you can sell it and you have reasonable conviction
that they're going to do a good job custodying your Bitcoin, you
don't really care. Now if the entire system goes to
hell in a handbasket, right? And we become, you know, this,
this ends up becoming like Blade Runner, right?
Or you're going to be walking around the streets of Los
Angeles, you know, with a Ledger on your neck.
Right. And you're basically going to go
buy gasoline by, you know, sending funds through your
samurai wallet to somebody else. Well, OK, then you kind of want
to have the Bitcoin. But in the other scenario,
right? Which is where the world looks a
lot more like the world today, except there are people who have
the Bitcoin and there are people who don't, I don't think you
care. Right.
So and for most people, they're just not gonna go this route of
self custody. They're just not.
That's just won't. They won't do it right.
Yeah, and by. The way.
By the way. I completely agree with you cuz
I see that with my parents for example, there is definitely a
they you know they take self custody and multi sig you know
kind of set up like collaborative custody with all
the different services on chain Casa blah blah blah.
So there, there, there. There's good ways to do it, but
I'm the de facto IT guy, basically.
But they got. They got they they got their son
OK, what happens to be A in Bitcoin B technical right and
they can call at any 10 minutes most most IT guy.
Have. A guy like you, but they can
help get advice on this stuff and and they just don't have the
time to learn about this stuff right.
They're just they're not gonna do it and.
I and I agree with you, but but my OK, so I agree with you, by
the way, but just to play devil's advocate for the sake of
the conversation, what about the infamous six one O 2 order?
You know, that's like one of the the talking points from the
bitcoiners are like, oh, you know, they've done this in the
past. They've just seized the money.
And, you know, there's this honeypot.
And the reason that they were able to get away with the six
one O 2 order is because of the centralization of the custody of
gold, right. So that's one of the, like the,
you know, And then of course, like, look at the predicament
that the US government is currently in.
You know, they're clearly on an unsustainable fiscal path,
something that Jerome Powell even himself has admitted.
So, like, you know, you're looking at that.
You're like, I don't know. I don't know if you know I I
trust, you know BlackRock and Coinbase to to custody of my
Bitcoin. Like if you have faith in you
know in the political situation in the United States, then
perhaps. But I, I, you know my
generation, the millennial generation, we lived through the
2008 financial crisis right. They bailed out Wall Street.
They F Main Street. I I I just don't trust, you
know, the federal government. I don't trust the banks we all
lived through. That that period, right, you you
might have been a little bit more young and impressionable
when when that happened, but we all lived through it, right?
And I think, look, I, I, I don't think there's a risk, but but at
the same time, I can see other benefits to self custody, right?
I can see a benefit of, oh, let's just say I wanted to pack
up and move to Iceland, right. It's a lot easier to have the
Bitcoin just with you in a, you know, some wallet and go to
Iceland than it is to wire money in the bank to convert it to
dollars and then wire the money to an Icelandic bank and all the
rest, right. So there's a, there's a freedom
element and that's a that's a big deal.
That's probably not as much of a big deal for somebody living in
America as it is somebody living, say, in Nigeria, right.
If you're living in Nigeria, you absolutely do not trust the
banks, right? The bank will 100% like rip you
off. So I'm I'm in favor of self
custody. Most people can't figure it out,
and I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to argue that you
shouldn't get into self custody. I'm just saying it is going to
be a fact that most people will not self custody right now
because this is just a much easier way to go, right?
And so, you know, if you can do it, it's great.
Has all kinds of advantages. Has some disadvantages too.
You can lose your keys. You can screw up yourself.
Custody you can. You can be not very good at
opsec. You can get a key logger on your
system. You can get SIM swap.
You know, there's lots and lots and lots of reasons why.
If you're not too careful, it can actually be a negative.
So you know I'm not trying to knock it for the you know your
generation millennial bitcoiners but not everybody is a
millennial book bitcoiner. There's most people are they're
not going to go first of all they're not going to go 100%
Bitcoin, number one, right. They're going to be I want to
buy maybe 5% Bitcoin and if they're going to do 5% Bitcoin,
they're they probably don't want to learn.
They want to do all this stuff just for 5% of their portfolio.
It's just too much work. So, and that's just sort of the
reality of it and. And I think that because you're
so immersed in this, that's where you, that's where you have
this blind spot about these ETFs, right?
And that's why I think many Bitcoiners, many hardcore
Bitcoiners and the voices of Bitcoin, up until December of
last year, they were sort of saying like, these ETF's are
kind of not that great. Whatever.
Bah Bah Bah, poo poo. But you know it's it's a blind
swap. That's that's all I can tell
you. It's a blind and it's clearly a
blind swap because right now who's buying Bitcoin right now
these ETFs are buying about 80% of all the Bitcoin.
That's that's where the the buying is coming from.
It's 80% his ETFs. It's not nowhere else.
OK? That's the future.
I mean whether you like it or
not, you know whether you choose to just to do self custody or
not, the bulk is buying through these ETFs that's where the it's
and I think it's going to be so much more going forward, I mean
the bulk. Of what they can get their hands
on right 'cause 11,000,000 Bitcoin are held already by
individuals. You know, the those the the ETFs
are going to have to convince those individuals to sell that
Bitcoin. They will like, I I don't know
about you, but I'm not telling, you know, I'm not like what am
I, what am I going to sell for? Like it's like sell Victoria,
sell this app. Something that has absolute
scarcity for something for for, for unlimited.
The the the keyword is not sell, it's spend, right?
So the. Keyword is this.
I mean, you probably most bit pointers that I know kind of
like you kind of amassed a stack by like being very careful and
getting it early and they're not big spenders right now, right?
But I guarantee you a Bitcoin 1,000,000, you're gonna start
spending, you know, everybody does, everybody makes money,
wants to spend the money, you know, because you can't take it
with you to the grave, right? I mean with technically.
OK, and I'm gonna be a kind of a pain in the ass here.
Technically, you totally can take your Bitcoin with the
grave. It's at the grave though.
Throw away. The seed.
That's what that's a sailor saying, right?
He's like, OK, I'm going to say, OK, great.
I don't know, I'm nitpicking. I'm nitpicking.
Yeah, that's.
Sort of the ultimate stupidity, really.
It's sort of like you're living life really poor.
You're counting your score by how much Bitcoin you have and
then you die and you don't spend any of it.
Let's really stupid, like, you know, like life is not finite,
you know you're doing this to enjoy more of it later.
At some point later is now, right?
So you know, I, for example, I, you know, if I travel, I always
stay in five star hotels. I always travel first class, OK
Why? Because I have a lot of money.
I don't care. I'm in the enjoyment phase of my
money, right? Of course.
And you will.
Too. I mean, it's like every person
I've seen who's made multiple millions of dollars, it changes
your life, right? You buy a nice car, you buy a
new house, you start traveling. Well, that that's what you do,
right? And you're going to do the same
thing. And other bitcoins are going to
do the same thing and they will start spending more, right?
It's not like they're going to sell it and necessarily put it
in S and PS or put it in the dollar and the savings bond,
right? But they're going to start
enjoying life a little bit more, right?
And that's what I think is going to happen.
And you will see a spending by all these people, and it's going
to be very noticeable from a societal standpoint, is the
people with the really big houses and the flashy cars and
everything, they're all going to be bitcoiners, right?
So what's going to happen? I think it's OK.
I have no problem with it, right.
It's like if you go to Palo Alto, right?
OK, who who was buying all the houses in Palo Alto?
The guys were like they were part of the Facebook IPO, right?
Part of the Google IPO before that, right?
You know, So, you know here in LA, you've got a bunch of snap
millionaires, right? So you've got this new money
that comes in, that new money has kids, builds houses, does
all this stuff with the new money and kind of lives large at
some point now they can wait a little bit before living quite
large. But I get this idea of the
people living on the mattress forever.
I don't buy it this, you know, I've just seen enough people
make money and they people always want to spend money and
they. Yeah, they and they all do.
So I I mean, I I. I agree.
I think that there's an element like Look, if you want to build
wealth specifically at an early age, there's an element of
delaying gratification. But I think that once you get
to, you know, once you get to a without being.
Without being. Without.
Without specifying any numbers.
Right. But once?
Yeah, 10 years. From now, Bitcoin's on a million
What do you do? What do I do specifically?
Yeah, I mean, I I keep any of your.
Your spending habits. Yeah, I.
Mean I you know I I'm, I'm very happy and I think that the I
think that I live you know I think the thing that makes the
the reason that I get up in the morning is is is I I enjoy
making content that's what I like to do.
But is it gonna change my spending habits?
I mean. Is it gonna change?
You know what, what I value more than than than actual wealth,
wealth I I would say is, is cash flow.
I think cash flow is king. I think you know net worth in
terms of it's just extremely painful.
It's very painful to spend Bitcoin that you know, you know,
coming from a guy, you know that.
OK, look, I bought Bitcoin at 500, bitcoins at $66,228.00.
It's very painful for me to spend Bitcoin because of exactly
the reason that you just said. I know for a fact this thing is
gonna hit $1,000,000, right? So a million.
Dollars, you're gonna start. You're gonna start feeling a
little less painful. Yeah.
I mean of. I mean, you know, you, you, you,
you splurge a little bit here and there.
I guess you could say for sure, right?
But you know, I I I'm, I'm a I'm a bit of a hoarder.
I'm not gonna lie. I'm a bit of a hoarder.
I I I I don't like spending my Bears people.
Look, even Warren Buffett like you lived in I, I.
I hope my wife does not listen to this podcast I'm telling.
Her OK, this is Niko. This is Niko.
You need to, like, get a plan together, right?
To start spending Nico's money, OK?
You need to start planning. It misses Nico because he's
going to be a very rich, young Miamian, right?
You're going to be a very rich. You know you're going to be
right up there with Pitbull, right?
Oh my God. You're going to be, you know.
Mr. What did he call it? Four O 5 till I die or whatever
that thing was. You know three O 5.
Till I die, Yeah. OK.
Right. So, you know, but look, your
generation are going to be very rich.
You really are. You're going to be very well off
relative to the average dude in Miami.
You didn't buy Bitcoin. I mean, just think about it,
right? You take you, you, For whatever
reason, you lucked into Bitcoin. OK, for whatever, it's pure
luck. I think it's like, why did I get
involved in luck? You know, I got, I got orange
peeled randomly by this guy, Tom Lee, right.
I think if if I hadn't taken that trip, you know this I went
to the Bermuda on this sort of crypto boondoggle to open a bank
right in Bermuda. And they invited me out and I,
you know, listened to Tom Lee and talked for three days and I
was just like, wow, yeah, I need to get serious with this
Bitcoin. But had I not done that, I don't
think I would have been orange peel.
If so, I don't know what orange peel do you and maybe it's a
show like this, that Lawrence pill you, you know, it doesn't
have to be in person. It can just be something that
clicks. But, but I do think that you
know you're probably going to end up becoming quite more,
quite a lot more wealthy than most of the people you know who
didn't who didn't buy Bitcoin. It's that simple, right?
It's sort of like taking that early job at Facebook or Google,
you know? Yeah, I I I.
You know it's it's it's it's it's definitely I it it's you
know I I think bit corners have a very humble kind of way of of
of looking at this and I think you know it's it's a it's a
topic that our community is just not used to kind of exploring.
But you know, for the sake of this conversation, I, I, I, I do
believe that bit corners in the next 10 years are going to be
the one of the wealthiest groups of people on the face of the
planet. I mean, if you break down the
numbers right, 50 to 60 million millionaires all around the
world, 21 million Bitcoin. If you have one Bitcoin, right?
You know, it's 66 K right now. If you have one Bitcoin.
Yeah. I I truly believe you're gonna
be in a in a an elite group of people that have the privilege
to be able to own just one. I really believe that.
So I, I, I I agree with your statement and you know in terms
of the the the wealth aspect. Yeah I think you know I think
it's very it's personality driven and you know I think it
kind of it it you know the really the way that what is it
that you want out of life. Like you know my wife could
probably have a different answer but I I love making content you
know I'm a I'm a pretty simple guy I've you know I've I've
travelled the I've been very privileged to travel the world
in in in my youth because of my parents and you know I, I, I, I
I know what I like to do right. Which is make content.
So as long as I'm making content and, you know, healthy, then
that's what makes me happy, right?
Well, the Bitcoin. Community is kind of, it's a
it's a really interesting group of people, right?
I mean, everything about Bitcoin is interesting, I think because
it's such an unusual thing, right?
The fact that that we have this piece of code, which was only
3000 lines of code at the at the origin, right, And that 3000
lines of code turned into this new monetary system without any
CEO, it's it's insane, right? It's just an insane thing.
So I do think it's, you know, it.
It really is one of the most interest, the most interesting
thing I've seen, you know, from a new technology perspective,
including the Internet, right. You know, and I, I remember very
much the world before the Internet and after the Internet,
right. The Internet was pretty much
already baked and done by the time you were like in diapers,
right? But, But, you know, but you
know, there are people like me who remember the world before an
Internet, and we remember also the world before cell phones,
right? And so if I had to, if I had to
kind of handicap these things, I would say Bitcoin will make a
more of a difference. It'll make more of a difference
than both cell phones and the Internet.
And I think those are the two big kind of, you know, tech
innovations really that I've seen, you know over the the that
have been present over the last 50 years, right.
And this, this is going to be the biggest, this will be the
biggest and because really we've reinvented money, right.
And it's it is there are some great side corollaries to that
because you know it's like you can hold your own money and you
don't have to you know the government just can't take your
money if you self custody it. Right.
Not only the US government but what from whatever country
you're in. Right.
So those are really good things right.
And I think and that's why I think why why Bitcoin was
invented for that purpose. Right.
But I think the you know the side aspect of this which is
number go up people get rich. You know, I I'm from Wall
Street, so I have no problem saying that's that's why I'm in
Bitcoin. You know, personally I don't.
I'm not here to you know make Nigeria better off.
I not that I don't care about Nigeria but it's just I I've
ever been to Nigeria. It's not on my mind.
I don't, you know, I don't know, I don't.
I'm not here to make the world a better place.
But I do think Bitcoin net net is a positive for the world.
But I think it's an incredible positive if you get in there
early, which is why it works, right.
So I think it's, you know it at the end of the day, you know
I'll, I'll be a little politically incorrect and say,
yeah, I'm interested in number go up.
I don't think that's. Politically correct at all.
I think that's like if we're being honest, I think that's the
vast majority you know the the the same.
I'm just. Trying to be to tell it like it
is, right. And you know, some people, some
people have said, oh, Fred's only interested in number go up.
And I'm like, yeah, just be. Honest guys.
And just. I just want to be honest.
Yeah, I mean, I. Think I think everyone's
interested I don't think. I don't think this would work
unless number go up. I think number go up is the
thing right? Like like you know I think it's
Taylor said. I've said this many times too
Bitcoin is binary. If this thing does not go up you
know it it dies. Like it either goes up forever
or it dies like that's that's maybe it's a simplistic way of a
fish. Can't swim.
If a fish doesn't swim, it dies, right?
Yeah. If Bitcoin doesn't go up, it
dies. Yeah, I mean.
I I I like. I agree.
I and you know I I came for. You know.
The personally, right, you know, I was 23 years old, 24 and you
know I was very kind of low point in my life and I saw
Bitcoin as you know, an opportunity.
I came for the money and then I ended up staying for the
revolution cause go down the rabbit hole and you know kind of
changes you. But again, right from my, let's
say, my parents perspective or my parents in law, I never
forget I I I was pitching it. It wasn't my parents when I was
now my parents are like fully orange peel.
But I was. I was pitching one of my
parents, one of, I think it was my mom.
Coming in the comments, number go up is the gateway drug, yeah,
there. You go, so that's exactly. 100%
I agree with that. I don't know but but.
But what they said was really interesting because they said
and it was one of my my mom's clients or something like that,
and and I was like pitching them and I was like whatever.
And he looks at me dead in the eye.
He's like Nico, I'm not interested in the revolution.
I'm. I'm.
Interested in the investment, You know, as an older, an older
gentleman made his fortune, already made his money, you
know, not really, not, doesn't really care.
And then this kind of all circles back to the very
beginning of the conversation, which is the ETFs, right?
And the case that you're making is that the ETFs are the
mechanism of which, you know, the older generation, which
happens to have the lion's share of the world's wealth, is gonna
finally get exposure to the best asset class that has ever
existed in the history of mankind.
They're going to get exposure. They're not necessarily going to
go all in. They're just going to take a
little exposure. They're going to get a little
slice of it right. So they're not going to get,
they're not going to benefit as much as you have, right?
Or you got your Bitcoin super cheap, OK?
And but they're going to get, they're going to get exposure.
They're going to, they're going to get benefit.
And moreover, they're going to, they're going to be on the bit,
the pro Bitcoin platform, right. So if you know, they tried to do
61-O twos, right, if we get 10 million people who own Bitcoin
in America, they're not going to be a six one O 2.
They won't, right. Because Fred's going to 100%
going to sell. No, but you know what I'm
saying? Like the the the you need to get
a a fair amount of people who are are on Team Bitcoin and the
best way to do that is to get people through the ETF because
they're going to be on Team Bitcoin, they're going to want
Bitcoin to to work, yeah. Yeah, I agree.
I agree. Anyways, we are getting to the
top of the hour, Fred. I I really enjoyed this
conversation. Really took a different turn and
and I I love when the conversations take a different
turn. You know, love what you're, you
know, tweeting out, what you're contributing to the community.
It seems like the community's liking it as well.
If you had any last message to our audience, what would it be?
Listen, I I think the one thing I would say is we're probably on
a gonna be on a very big roll for the next couple of years.
So I would sort of say just chill right now.
Don't try to be too cute. You know the one thing you don't
want to do right now is to try to sell and buy again, because I
think that's going to be just a disaster.
I think, you know, I huddling is by far the best strategy.
You should just hold on. But the worst possible thing you
could do would be to try to sell with the idea of buying it back
cheaper. Do not even.
Don't even think about doing that.
You know when, when, when the time's right for you to sell
part of your staff to spend part of your staff, do it.
But don't, don't try to time the market because you're going to
fail. And I listen, I was a pro
trader. I can't, I can't time Bitcoin.
I have no idea short term what Bitcoin's going to do.
Zero. I mean, I think it's going to go
up. But, you know, did I think it
was going to go down at 10% at one point yesterday?
No. You know what I mean?
I I don't know. Nobody can predict Bitcoin.
It has a mind of its own, so don't try to trade it and just
hold it. Get a good position and just
amuse yourself with Bitcoin, Twitter and whatever else and
models or whatever else just keeps the keeps you happy.
Play video games, do whatever you want with your time, but do
not sell. But that's what I would say.
I hope that helps no it. It it 100 million percent helps,
right? You know, stay humble, stack
Sats, huddle, don't try to trade.
And that's how you went. Anyways, Fred, thank you so much
for coming on the show. Really, really appreciate it and
thank you and hope to have you back on in a couple months or
so. Appreciate it.
See where we? Are in 3-4 months.
See ya. Sounds good.
All right guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Simply
Bitcoin IRL with our guest Fred Krueger.
We'll be back tomorrow with the live show at 12:15 PM Eastern
Standard Time for another episode of Whoa, I Just hit my
mic of Simply Bitcoin Live. Peace out, everybody.
Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
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