My First Million: #11 - Clawing Back From $250K Debt at 20

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

So you take $5,000 from textbooks, you invest it, you get a run-up up to $60,000.

What happens from there?

August the 16th, 2007 happened there.

The stock market is now down 21%.

43%.

What in the world is happening on Wall Street?

In the blink of an eye.

I have never seen a 600-point loss.

Who knows where this is going to end up?

Completely wiped out.

The Dow traders are standing there watching in amazement.

I don't blame them.

There's apples under pressure.

Yahoo down 8.5%, Cisco 6.5%.

Every day they're pounding it.

What started in America last year has now spread to every part of the world.

And I woke up that morning and everything was in the red, and my account was down about

70%, 80% some ridiculous.

It was the worst day on Wall Street since the crash of 1987, and that means life as

most Americans know it is about to change, in some cases dramatically.

Within four or five months, I was about a quarter of a million in the whole.

All right, I just sat down with Alex Svetsky, or angry Alex, as he's known, in the Bitcoin

world.

And we talked about a whole bunch of things ranging from Bitcoin itself, his story trading

stocks and ending up a quarter million dollars in debt, as well as how he got out of the whole

world, built himself back up, made his first million, and what he's doing in the crypto

space today.

It's a pretty fun conversation.

I think you'll enjoy it.

Thanks for coming, man.

I appreciate it.

You came a long way.

I like to think you just came for this podcast.

I did.

I know.

There was also that other little conference, the Bitcoin 2019 conference going on.

No, no, no, no, no.

I just came for this.

I swear.

This is going to be an interesting one, because so far, the people I've talked to are people

that I know super well, like we hang out on the weekends, blah, blah, blah.

I met you five minutes ago.

And you came highly recommended.

So I said, okay, let's do it.

Let's chat.

And the thing that I find interesting is I know that you're pretty heavy in the Bitcoin

space.

And so we'll talk about that, but I just want to know a little bit about you first.

What's the TLDR on your life story?

So give me the one minute version first, and then I know we'll go obviously into one.

We'll touch on.

Unless the one minute's good, and then we'll just end the podcast.

That can also work.

Easy.

Done.

Shortest podcast in history.

The TLDR went to uni, really academically strong, dropped out, thought I was a genius

on the stock market.

I got taught a few lessons in the GFC, dug my way out of that door knocking, built like

a successful business when I was 22, 23, made my first mill, then got taught another lesson

from government mismanagement of money, lost a lot of money there, sort of went on this

random sabbatical.

I said, they're never going to do business again.

I became a hippie.

Are we talking?

I have met at Silent Retreats yoga?

Yeah, that kind of stuff.

Exactly.

I went and did yoga.

I went and did all that stuff before it was kind of like cool.

Before Jack Dorsey did it?

Yeah.

Exactly.

So about seven, eight years ago.

And then while I was in the States, I spent a bit of time in Venice Beach and up in San

Francisco.

I ended up going to Singularity University for a couple of days for like a little short

course thing there.

Thought tech's the way to go, went back, muddled around in tech, built a few little software

things.

And yeah, and then I ended up down the Bitcoin rabbit hole about three and a half years ago

and never came back.

So we're going to go through each of those in order because I think that's the way to

do it.

But how old are you?

31.

I look younger.

I'm 31 as well.

Oh, really?

I look older, I think.

The last startup, when I started, I was fresh, 24 years old, baby-faced, and now I have this

like grizzly beard and gray hairs and all kinds of things.

The shit ages you, man.

If you think I've got a slight baby face now, if I show you my photo when I was 20 just

before I'd gotten down the path of running businesses, I look six.

Right.

Yeah, I saw a picture of Obama before and after and I was like, damn, they got to him.

Dude, it kills you, man.

No one gets out alive.

All right.

So you went to university, you said you dropped out, which university were you going to?

I went to University of Wollongong, so it was kind of like...

Oh, I've been to Wollongong.

I went to a party at the University of Wollongong.

It was an epic night.

So, Wollongong's like a party school, for my understanding.

I mean, that was my rationale, right?

So it was the one offering me the lowest scholarship, but it was the beach and it was girls.

Yeah, perfect.

Okay, cool.

So you had your priority straight.

So you go there, you're studying, what are you studying?

Civil engineering.

Civil engineering.

Okay, cool.

And you dropped out.

Why drop out?

Oh, this is going to sound arrogant, but I just thought everyone was an idiot.

I was like, they're not here to study engineering because they want to do engineering, they're

just here because they got the appropriate final year of school results and that was

sort of disillusioning.

So I was like, I want to do more, I want to be better.

So I took that money that I had for the scholarship that they gave me to buy textbooks.

I was like, fuck it, I'm going to do two things.

I'm going to beat everyone with no textbooks and I'm going to take that money and I'm going

to trade derivatives.

Your textbook money.

Yeah, basically.

And it wasn't much, it was like five grand, but within six months I turned it into like

60, so like from a percentage return standpoint, I thought I was the king.

And how do you even know what a derivative is at this point?

I didn't.

I was on ASX.com.au trying to learn how to trade shares and my family was like totally

anti that stuff, gambling this, that, so I kind of ran away from home and did my own

thing, right?

And yeah, I literally just self-taught myself.

The first trade I actually placed was not a derivative, it was this small company called

GYG, it was like some genetic bull crap that I got sold by this broker.

And this was back in the days before your online trading became mainstream.

And yeah, I lost money on that and I was like, this guy's an idiot, so I just went and did

my own thing and I was just trading options and warrants.

And what was the goal?

The goal was like, I want to get rich or what were you trying to do?

I'm going to make a million by the time I'm 20 and I'm going to go back to my family and

prove I had this vision in my head that I'd turn up on their front door with a Ferrari

and I'd be like, I told you so, you know, 19-year-old kid's dream.

It's kind of amazing how much motivation people have of proving other people wrong.

I know man.

I know.

What did your parents think you were going to do?

They thought you were just, you know, a fuck up or what did they think?

They all wanted me to be a civil engineer, they wanted me to, you know, because I didn't

live with my parents at the time either, so like my parents at Split when I was young,

so I sort of moved out and went and lived with my grandmother and my uncle.

So, and my uncle was very patriotic and he wanted me to be a civil engineer, so then

we'd go back to Eastern Europe to Macedonia where I'm from and then we would like sort

of build a town there and all this sort of stuff.

And I mean, it was really, yeah, I know, right?

And it was really appealing when I was young, but I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and some other

book when I was like 16, 17, sort of made me view the world a little bit broader.

I love that book.

Yeah.

It was a good book.

Okay, so if somebody hasn't read that book, what was the epiphany you had when you read

it?

I think that EBSI, the Square was really important and just figuring out which side

of the quadrant you wanted to be on.

Yeah, the way I understood it or the way, you know, just explaining it if you are lazy

and don't want to read the book is there's these four boxes that you can belong to.

E is like employee, which is everybody sort of knows and in fact society sort of steers

you to.

It's like, you know, go to school, get a degree so you can get a good job and you want to

go from a good job to a great job.

So that's the E bucket.

And then there's the sort of like self-employed, which is basically like doctors, lawyers,

that sort of thing.

Like civil engineers.

That's exactly where my family wanted me to be.

And so considered, you know, it's like a better version of a job.

Yep.

And then you get to sort of business owner, which is good because at that point you're

not trading hours for dollars.

You own some entity and but you still have to operate it and you still own it.

A better quadrant to be in.

And the last one, I, and this is the goal, you know, the story of Rich Dad, Poor Dad

is that his real dad, who he calls the poor dad, tells him, go get a job.

And his rich dad, which is his friend's dad, is making all this money and live in a different

lifestyle and doesn't seems to be working less and earning more.

And so he was looking at him like, how do you do that?

And basically it was you take the money from a business you own and you jump into the eye

bucket, you start investing and then your money makes you money, which is even better

than your, you know, your hours or your ideas making your money.

And so I think when you read that book, you sort of can't help but you put yourself one

of the buckets and ask yourself, you know, do I want to be here?

Correct.

And he paints a pretty good picture where you're like, hell no, I don't want to be in

any bucket, but the eye bucket, how do I get there?

And well, and that's why I think that was the, the thing that drove me down thinking

about the stock market.

I just wanted to, you know, exactly in my infinite wisdom at the time, right?

I'm an eye.

That's what I'm going to do.

Right.

And here we are.

So you take 5,000 bucks from textbooks, you invest it, you get a run up up to 60,000.

What happens from there?

August the 16th, 2007 happened there, I still remember the date because I woke up, it was

a week before my birthday, about a week before that I placed all these trades and I thought

I was, this is it, you know, I'm going to make, I lever the hell up, you know, if my

trades go the right way, I won't be a millionaire by the time I'm 20, but I'll have about a

quarter of a million.

And I woke up that morning and everything was in the red and my account was down about

70, 80% some ridiculous amount.

And I was like sitting there like refreshing the fucking page thinking there's something

wrong with that.

And what had gone wrong?

What was the issue?

I can't remember if it was best earns or layman or something like that, but one of those

collapses happened, right?

And then the entire market tanked and I was, I was levered long financials.

A kid sitting in Australia who's, you know, trading textbook money derivatives ends up

feeling the burn of something happened in Wall Street.

And I had no idea, right?

I had no idea because the way I was trading at the time was I was just, I didn't give

a shit about the companies or the macro situation or any of that or all I looked at was these

charts and I was just swing trading.

And I was just looking at things.

If they were too overextended, I'd go, I'd buy a put option.

If they were too under extended, I'd buy a call option.

And you know, if they were breaking out of a pattern or something, I'd go long or short

or whatever the case was.

And that's how I was.

And I mean, I'm listening to a book now called thinking in bets by I think Annie Duke or

whatever her name is.

Book a player.

Yeah.

That's it.

Exactly.

Really, really good book.

The idea of resulting, which is confusing a good decision with a good result.

And looking back on it, that's what I was doing.

I was thinking, I'm a genius, I know how to make money.

This is how it works.

So then on the way down, what did I do?

I just doubled down the whole way until I lost everything.

And then I got some loans because I had a, okay, history of trading.

So then, yeah, within four, five months, I was about a quarter of a million in the whole.

So I kind of went the wrong way.

How old are you at this point?

Well, I just turned 20.

Yeah.

So you're 20 years old, a quarter of a million dollars in the whole.

This is not the game plan.

This was not the game plan.

I wanted to drive up in my Ferrari to my parents house and tell them I made a million bucks

before 20 and instead I'm down a quarter of a million bucks.

What is that realization like when you wake up that day?

But thank God, knock on wood.

I have not felt that.

Yeah.

Felt a lot of things, but I haven't felt that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, that morning when the chaos started happening, I remember, you know, I

was walking around this because I was living in this little shitty apartment because I

was putting all the money in the trading account and I walked down and I kicked the

hole in the wall and I was like, oh, I need to pay for that as well and fix it.

So that's sort of my memory of it.

I was like, woke up and kicked the hole in the wall and felt worse and, yeah, I mean,

I just think I was in reactionary mode for the next three or four months.

Just trying to, like, you know, I couldn't fathom how.

And I mean, this is one of the downsides of paper wealth, right?

Is that you don't appreciate it as much and, you know, I was running around trying to figure

out how to get back to where it was, you know, and then, you know, I remember as I was going

below the zero mark, I was like, oh, I wish I could just get back to zero.

You know, like, I was thinking in my head, I don't want the 60, you know, the 60 grand

that I made, not even the 20 grand that I made, just give me back to zero.

And then when I, you know, got down to 100 grand, I'll be like, look, I'll be happy if

I just lost 50.

Right.

You know, all the way down until like, well, this is, have you ever, have you heard Chris

Saca tell his story about, you know, Chris Saca is sort of legendary investor now.

You know, he was, he has, I think probably the best early stage investment portfolio

of all time.

Like he has Uber, Instagram in there.

He has, oh my God, a whole bunch of companies, Kickstarter's in there.

He's got maybe eight of the billion dollar companies that came out during that era in

his portfolio.

Yeah.

But he tells a story where he did almost the same thing, went to law school, started

trading stocks.

And you know, at one point he had leveraged his way up to where he thought he was going

to be up about 12 million bucks.

And he had turned a few hundred thousand dollars into 12 million dollars.

And then in the course of about a week, swung down to negative four million dollars.

And from there, like clawed his way back and he has this great line, which you remind me

of, which was, I've never felt richer than when I had zero dollars of net worth.

Like when he got out of the debt and got back to zero, he's like, I've never felt richer.

Yeah.

He has a billionaire now.

So like, is that kind of the contrast, man?

There's nothing like that sort of contrast because it was the same.

So my reaction, you know, despite being initially very reactionary was, you know, I then dropped

out of uni and I looked for the first thing I could do to make some money and I got myself

what's called an ABN in Australia, which is kind of like, I went into the S bucket.

So I got myself my own little business number and I went and door knocked for any company

that would have me.

And I just went and there was one that I did all basically all the work for was selling

pay television in Australia, door to door sales, basically, door to door sales.

And maybe this was also inspired by Richard Portad.

I don't know.

But, you know, I was very introverted, but it was the only thing I'd get on short notice

that I could make some money straight away without having a skill, without having to

do anything.

So how does that work?

Because I've never met anyone who actually did door to door sales.

So what happens?

You wake up, you just drive to a neighborhood.

No, no, no.

How does it work?

You come to the office in the morning at about nine o'clock.

You've got...

So door to door companies are effectively two types of businesses.

They do sales and they do recruitment because they have the highest turnover of any kind

of business you can imagine because you can pay commission, right?

That's it.

It's not only you need more salespeople, but everyone leaves after the first two weeks,

basically.

It's only a rare few that actually stick it through because it's such a shit job.

If you go out and work all day and get nothing, but it's a really good primer for business.

And I think that's why Kiyosaki talks about it and his thing, which is you can go out

and you get paid for the result, not for the time you put in it.

And so you go to the office at nine o'clock, people are recruiting, and then you as...

If you've been there for long enough and you're a good enough salesperson, you become what's

called a leader and all this sort of stuff.

But when you started, what was it like?

You go there, what happens?

I went there, I'm like, fuck do we do now?

And then there's some dude coming and training salespeople in the morning and then sort of

revs everyone up by about 11 a.m., we go out, we get a map.

This was sort of before we had smartphones and GPS and shit.

And you draw out, you mark out with a texture sort of the blocks that each person has, and

then we all go out and you're not allowed to step on each other's turf.

So we all had our own turf and we'd go knock on doors and it was just luck of the drug.

And did you...

What's the sales pitch?

So knock, knock, I open up.

What would you say?

I think the reason I was successful was because I never had the same pitch.

So what they taught us there was there was this five steps, this eight steps principle

of smile and this and this and this and this is how you take people through it.

I threw all that shit out the window.

No smile.

Yeah, exactly.

But I spent some time really digging deep on like neurolinguistics, NLP and all that sort

of stuff.

I managed to go to a Robbins conference just around the time when, just before I lost everything,

like the last bit of money I had, I went to a Robbins conference and then I paid for an

NLP certification, some of my practitioners things.

So I use that and that is all about not...

So give us an example.

How do you use that in a sale?

I'd knock on the door and someone would say, get the fuck out of here.

And I'd be like, I'll get the fuck out of here in a minute.

And I would match their tonality, match the speed at which they said something.

And I'd say something that would shock them.

They'd be like, what?

And I'd be like, you heard me.

And then they'd come to the door and then I'd start a conversation that I used to use

a lot of body language.

So instead of standing face to face, I'd lean on the door to the side, so slightly more

on their side and then just ask them about themselves.

Or I'd pick something out about what they're wearing or the neighborhood that they were

in.

Exactly.

And I'd open up...

So it was all...

It had nothing to do with the product.

And I got to learn this in the early days about sales having very little to do with products.

I didn't have a TV.

I didn't know what was on the channels.

I didn't know any of that shit.

I just could pick things out and just talk really quickly and build...

The key thing was to build rapport inside 30 seconds.

So I'd match their body language, match...

Doing a lot of mirroring and matching at the door with whoever the person was and be

suggestive in the process of letting me inside the house.

And that was sort of the key.

As soon as you got inside the house, it was game over.

You could make the sale.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So what sort of thing gets you in the house?

Hey, you've got some water.

Yeah.

The water was a big one.

Fuck, it's cold out here.

It's hot out here.

It can use the bathroom.

So that was sort of like the sneaky tactics.

But then also, when I was younger now, I'm an old ugly fucker.

But when I was younger, I was kind of half good looking.

And that used to always work.

So most of the people ended up buying off me were mums.

Gotcha.

Okay, cool.

And I really played up the sort of the son sort of card.

Right.

It's like, hey, how you doing?

You know this stuff.

Okay.

So you start selling.

Were you good at it?

It sounds like you were pretty good at it.

Dude, within three weeks, I was the third best in the country.

And I was living on some dude's lounge, paying 20 bucks a week rent.

And my sort of motto was this, I'd carry two cans of tuna in each pocket.

So four cans of tuna, I would only eat if I sold something.

And I would sprint between doors because then I could get to doors faster.

Did you want to eat like warm tuna in your pocket?

Was that like a motivating thing?

I didn't give a fuck.

I was just like, I'm getting the sale, then I get to eat.

And yeah, my cost of food budget daily was $4 because it was a dollar a can of tuna.

And I just funneled everything towards paying the debts off.

And during the day, I would knock on doors.

And at nighttime, I would read and study economics, markets, and what the hell did

I do wrong?

And how was I so stupid to have lost so much money?

Right.

And so how much were you making during door to our sales?

Two grand a week.

Yeah.

And the average person would make about 4,500.

Right.

So like I was about four times above that.

So you start paying off the debts and you, sounds like you sort of, because you got humbled,

you started looking at the science of business and the, you know, how, how this thing works.

How do you actually make money reliably and repeatably?

Correct.

And what was, what came out of that?

So, so that period ends.

What happens after that?

Well, I, I ended up, so I, I do knock for my, for somebody else for a little while.

And then I was like, why am I building this guy's business?

So I kind of moved myself from the S to the B if we're going to use this mental model.

And then I set up my own sales company and then I got a lot of the people that were selling

under me that I would get a comm off if I train them.

They came and worked for me.

I gave them better commissions and all this sort of stuff.

And we started competing with that company.

And we did really well because I just had a different style, a different method of teaching

people to sell and all this sort of stuff.

And we got our hands on more products.

And, and yeah.

And then like I went from leaving that place with two or three people that came and followed

me to about, you know, within, within six months we had 30 people running around door

knocking for me.

And you're selling the same thing?

Pay TV or something?

We were selling like a little bit of pay TV, we were selling this car wax stuff.

And then, and then that was sort of the segue that I said, I want to sell things that are

more meaningful.

So we looked at renewable energy.

So selling solar systems, that was a real culture shock because, you know, going from

selling a $40 product at the door to like, Hey, do you want to give me 12 grand for

a solar system?

Yeah.

Who the fuck are you?

Get out of here.

And even the charming good looking son is not going to do a great job of selling that

one.

I remember the first couple of weeks of trying to do that zero sales, like, and I'd never

in my life gotten zero sales, like more than two or three days in a row, like, and I was

so disillusioned.

I was like, fuck, this ain't going to work.

We're going to be stuck selling.

Tuna's going bad.

Yeah, dude.

I was like, we're going to be stuck selling shit to people for the rest of my life.

And then it just happened over four, like four or five sales just came back through,

like, from people who were thinking about it all in one day.

And that was like 100 grand in turnover.

And I was like, holy shit.

And that sort of changed it for me.

And then from there, I transformed that sales company into actually, because the solar

companies that I was selling for, again, I have this recurring theme in my life.

I felt they were incompetent, you know, so I was like, I can do this better.

And so I went and met with different suppliers, with installers.

And because I also had an engineering background, I was able to design the systems like bespoke

for people's houses.

So we went for quality over quantity.

And we built a really good business.

So by the time I turned 22 and a half, 23, roughly that, everything was paid back.

I'd made my first million.

I had about 30 staff across three different states who were turning over maybe, you know,

in a really, really good week, maybe half a million a week at about a 10, 20% margin.

So we're making good money.

That's a really good business.

And so this answers the question of the podcast, right?

This podcast is a promise where I basically said, I'm going to go study the rich.

Because from a young age, I've wanted to be rich.

I know a lot of people want to be rich.

And I know that there's two things that come out of when you talk to rich people.

You do understand strategies, tactics, tips, those sorts of things.

But more than that, you hear the stories and the ups and downs and the started from not

knowing anything and just worked my way forward.

So I want those stories to come out and I appreciate you telling yours.

But this answers the question, right?

How did you make your first million?

And for you, it was, you were selling solar panels.

That's it.

Yeah.

Seriously.

And we got a really big boost from the government.

So they came in and they started handing out rebates to everybody.

And I mean, in typical government fashion, incentivizing the wrong layer of the stack,

like what they should have done in hindsight was they should have gone and incentivized

manufacturers or importers or whatever to bring the stuff in.

And as a result, that would have trickled down to the consumer via natural competition.

They instead gave the money to the consumer.

And then what ended up happening was all of these morons who had never been anywhere

near solar, didn't understand electronics, they were literally just either random electricians

or even roofers or even just morons had never had a job before, became solar companies.

And we went from being one of two companies in our entire region to being one of 30 in

hindsight, X amount of months.

And so I mean, that ate into margins and things like that.

But what the, you know, and this is what I call the next big lesson of my life is don't

trust the government.

Now we're getting to the crypto part.

Yeah.

Very, very shortly is they, it was June, I think, man, I think 2012, I can't remember

it was 11, 12, 13, it was one of those years.

And they sort of made an announcement in June that they realized that this thing had taken

off like way too, way too fast in terms of what they were anticipating.

And they said, all right, anyone who hasn't done their installation by the end of this

month, which was three weeks away, misses out on the rebate.

And so from a consumer perspective, they were going to miss out on all this money.

So everyone went ape shit.

Like, I mean, that day that they announced that, like I sold like, I think probably a

million and a half worth of systems on the phone in my fucking desk.

I didn't even get up.

Like, I just called through everybody and just close, close, close, close.

It was the best day I've ever had.

And I thought, fuck, we just made a killing.

Like, you know, we were high fiving each other, we're like, you know, all we got to do now

is install these over the next three to six months.

And I mean, whilst the sole industry wouldn't go away, like it'd be subdued, this would

give us enough to, you know, manage our way through.

So everything was all good.

So we went ahead and the way it worked was basically the customer would pay half the

money up front and the government would effectively pay the other half in about, you know, two,

three, four, five, six months later, whenever, you know, all the certification, all that

sort of stuff went through.

So we got the money up front.

We would basically carry the cash flow until we got that money in.

Margins were about, you know, say at that point in time because of the competition was probably

about a thousand bucks a system.

So we were waiting on all this money.

And then when it came time to pay the money, the government was like, we're going to give

you all 50 cents of the dollar.

And we were like, what, and like overnight every job that we'd done just became negative.

Yeah.

Became negative.

And like it was a fucking kick in the nuts.

Like I was lucky because I was like trying to build an empire here.

So I hadn't spent money on stupid shit.

So I was, um, I had enough money there to like pay everything out where I had made some mistakes

was I bought a half a container of LEDs, LED lighting, because I thought that was going

to be the next big thing.

I needed rebates and everything and that was sort of half paid for and it was sitting on

dock in China.

I didn't have the money to pay that off.

So I kind of burnt 150 grand there.

I had a half built gym because I was trying to sort of get into the 24 seven fitness

craze at that time as well.

And, um, and we couldn't finish the gym because we didn't have enough money.

And like, so I was lucky in some senses because I had enough sort of cash to, to sort of wind

up the solar business, but then I didn't have enough.

So I kind of had to make this decision of what I was going to keep, what I wasn't and

what I was going to try and do.

Anyway, about a year and a bit of torture, I, um, ended up shutting everything down and

I kind of had a little bit of money left.

Um, this is where you went on the sabbatical.

This is where I went on the sabbatical.

So just before I went on the sabbatical, I had, um, I put the balance of my money because

during this entire time of running this business and building this business, I didn't take

my off the ball with respect to the markets and what was going on there.

So I was very, very early in golden silver, um, you know, studying Austrian economics

and understanding how money works, inflation and QE and all this sort of stuff.

And so I could see that the US dollar was going to get pummeled and that, you know,

we needed something.

It was a prudent decision to invest into some more sound sort of money.

So I bought a shitload of gold and silver and my brother and I made a lot of money out

of that.

Like that, that sort of saved my ass during that period and that's sort of what funded

my sabbatical.

Um, and yeah, I, I came to California, um, spent some time here.

Uh, I was in Venice Beach, California for a little bit.

That was an experience, um,

saw some interesting things.

Yeah.

And I've said parts of bodies.

Yep.

Basically.

And, um, I was actually living right on the boardwalk for about a month and I couldn't

handle it after like that month.

Like it was this cool loft.

It was like funky and shit.

And it was, you know, when I got there, it was like typical tourists, you know, like

came to Venice.

I thought, oh yeah.

Muscle beach, gold gym around the corner.

I thought I was in heaven.

Um, and I realized it was such a shit hole.

One night I remember walking back in from the, um, from the boardwalk, there was some

dude inside my fucking apartment and he's like sitting there, like shaking on the floor.

I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?

He's like, oh, you got some money, man.

And I was like, get the fuck out of my apartment.

Like I was, it was like the weirdest thing because like that kind of stuff doesn't happen

in Australia.

Right.

Welcome to America.

I know man.

I was like, holy crap.

So yeah, man.

And that sabbatical was like an interesting period.

So you, you, when you came in, you handed me this.

I'm looking at this thing.

If you're listening, you can't see it obviously, but it says, it says,

breaking news, blockchain is dead.

And uh, it looks like this is a, is this real, is this a mock newspaper?

What is this?

Is this your business plan?

Like I see, I see an ad for your company at the end.

What am I looking at?

Cause this looks kind of genius, but I don't know what it is.

All right.

So, um, about,

Is this what you were giving away at the conference?

It is not, not this conference though, at another conference.

This conference, I gave it away to a couple of people because I had a few printouts left.

But basically at a conference earlier this year, um, I'm sort of known as either angry

Alex or contrarian Alex back, back in Sydney or back in Brisbane or Australia, whatever

you want to call it.

Um, and that's because I generally have a very contrarian viewpoint to, um, to norms

that I find stupid.

And one of the latest norms that I find stupid is this whole blockchain thing.

Um, the norm that I found stupid before that was a crypto and ICO.

So there's this, um, there's a capital raising conference called wholesale investor that

happens, uh, you know, that they did, they do multiple events and they basically get

investee companies who are looking to raise capital in front of, you know, wholesale high

net worth angels, et cetera, and funds, right?

So you get the opportunity to get up on stage and pitch your, your business.

Um, and as part of that, some of the more well known people in industry get to also

do it.

What's called an educational session.

So, you know, this, this little publication actually started the year before, which was

I got invited to speak at that event and it was right during the ICO craze, right?

Everyone was making money off ICOs and we consciously made a decision not to fucking

do an ICO with Amber because I just found it fraudulent, stupid, moronic and every other

word I could give it because people were effectively using the narrative of what Bitcoin is, which

is about creating symmetry in society and being the money of the people.

They were using that sort of narrative to print money and do what the bankers just did

and, you know, just to dump, you know, you worthless tokens on people and that pissed

me off so much.

So I was like, we are categorically not doing that.

So I got up at this conference.

Well, so I want to, I want to pause for a second because I want to have a, I want to

test the contrary in Alex or what was the first one, angry, angry Alex, I want to trust

it.

Okay.

So, so for people who are listening, I want to hear your views.

Okay.

On a couple of things.

I'm going to give you the prompt.

You give me the answer.

Promp is why should I care about Bitcoin?

The world needs a bit of form of money and fundamentally if money is the basis of society,

the current form within which we know it is this fucked up.

Okay.

Cool.

How's it fucked up?

What's wrong with money today?

Money is owned and controlled by a few.

And if we look at money as a form of communication, we all believe in freedom of speech.

We should all believe also in freedom of owning and doing, you know, what we want with money

because it is a fundamental form of human, it's a tool of human collaboration.

That's what money was designed for.

And you cannot have a collaborative, cooperative, complex society without having money.

And so in today's day and age, the way money works is it's owned and controlled by the

few.

Who are the few there?

The few is like the central banks and basically sovereign nations.

That's the lever that they use to basically run society.

And we all know that society has some fundamental problems.

You know, you don't have to walk fire in San Francisco to see some issues, right?

So in business, you and I know we go out and we set up a business, we do something.

If we fuck up or if we get it wrong, the consequences, you lose money, you go bankrupt, you have

a negative consequence.

If you get it right and you do well and the stars align and, you know, you're lucky and

all this sort of stuff, you get a nice payout.

Something good happens.

In government and central banking and, you know, that sort of side of the world, and

this is the asymmetry that you get when you own money, when you own the world's most

important resource.

If you make a good bet and you invest and you do the right thing, you make a bunch of

money.

If you fuck it all up and you do dumb shit like 2008 or if you're a government and you

just print your way, you know, into as much debt as you want, it doesn't matter.

Guess who pays for it?

Everybody else.

So it's all the power without the consequences.

Zero consequence.

So there's no, so what happens is you get this asymmetry in society where the very few,

the rent seekers effectively get to do whatever the fuck they want and there's zero consequence.

And the rest of us, we either pay for it in taxes or through a hidden tax of inflation.

You cannot do that in a sound money type society, something that would potentially be built

on Bitcoin.

And here in America, you know, inflation is not, we're not hyperinflation, right?

It's 3% a year, that sort of thing.

What, if I'm an American, I'm sitting here, I'm saying, what's the big deal?

Money seems fine.

Money's never did me wrong.

I don't have enough money, but money itself is not sort of a dreamer.

I think most people don't feel the consequences of what you're talking about, but in some

countries that's different.

So like, give us an example of a country where...

Well, I mean, Venezuela is the halfway, you know, people have heard about that.

I mean, I don't have my wallet here, but I've got like a Venezuelan, like I've got 100

million, you know, Bolivars or whatever it is.

So like...

Like a bill.

Yeah, yeah, it's a bill, exactly, right?

And what happened there?

A government...

That's, well, hyperinflation is a function of the loss of confidence in the currency of

a jurisdiction, whether that's a nation state, whether it's whatever, right?

Now, I mean, in the world we live in, the jurisdiction is always the nation state, effectively.

So money's supposed to be this thing that performs three functions, store of value, medium

of exchange, and a unit of account.

Now, when people lose confidence, it loses the first one, that idea that it's a representation

or a store of value.

And if it loses that, the fact that it's a medium of exchange or a unit of account basically

goes out the window and people don't trust it anymore, they don't want to hold it because

what it's supposed to do...

It's like you would rather than hold goods or you would rather hold anything else other

than this worthless paper.

And that happens more so in countries that have weak governments or a weak social system

or all that sort of stuff.

It hasn't happened in a place like the US, and I don't think it's likely to happen here

because of how entrenched the US dollar is.

I mean, maybe not for another 50 or 100 years, right?

So that's sort of not the argument, but I want to touch on the thing that you mentioned

how 3% inflation, right?

So I mean, I think M2 money supply inflation is like 6%, but irrespective, it's an amount

that not many people feel that much.

But a friend of mine puts it, he calls it crystallized life force.

It's like we in society as human beings, we perform work or we add value by inputting

energy of some sort into the world.

And what that's measured in is this unit, which we decide to call money.

And then we trade this unit around and that's how we build society, right?

That unit, it doesn't make sense for that unit to just depreciate for some nonsense

because if you go and work for 20 years and you've saved that money, the money that you

worked for at the beginning of that 20 years is now worth less in purchasing power if you

compound that 3%.

It's worth about 60% less than it was when you began.

But is your work technically worth less 60% than it was?

It's not.

And I was talking with this lady who was not a Bitcoin, and we were talking about all sorts

of stuff and she sort of brought up Trump and all this sort of stuff and I kind of got

me down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and she mentioned a show and I think it's Seth Rogen, you see

the dude that does those.

Funny guy?

Yeah, the funny guy.

I can't remember if it was him or someone else, but it's a Netflix show and it's like

a parody of Star Trek and they're all on this ship and they've got that machine that

can replicate anything, right?

And whether it's a wallet or this or that, whatever they want, so they have abundance.

But the only thing they cannot replicate is the value or the contribution to their mini-society

because that's the one thing that's unique, that's the one thing that's fundamentally

scarce.

So when she said that, I was like, holy shit, you have just basically described what money

is at its fundamental, the basis of what money is.

It's something that cannot be replicated, cannot be diluted, and it's a measurement of work.

It's a measurement of energy and what Bitcoin represents is this uninflatable unit that

cannot be compromised or confiscated or changed by any particular party with asymmetric power.

And as a result, we can map that directly to the input that human beings put into society.

So the only way in a sort of Bitcoin denominated system, let's say in the future, that's what

it looks like or at least a parallel economic system that's sort of run on Bitcoin, the

only way to get ahead in a world like that would be to add more value or to put more

time in.

That's it.

And that's how an economy should function exactly, not rent seeking.

Right.

Okay.

I'm with you on all those things.

Part of why I'm interested in Bitcoin, but I like hearing it from you.

And so you've got this app that's coming out or already out?

It's already out in Australia.

Already out.

Yeah.

And tell us about Amber, because I think it's pretty clever.

There's like an equivalent app like that for fiat currency, but it looks like you're

doing it for cryptocurrency for Bitcoin specifically.

But tell us what is Amber?

Really simply, I believe that everybody should be buying and holding some Bitcoin at the

moment because when a new asset emerges, there is incredible upside.

So and what you want to do is you want to, if you picture, I'll give you a really good

example to picture Bitcoin, there's going to be 21 million Bitcoin, and that's sort

of like a fixed upper limit.

It's infinitely divisible, which means everyone can hold some at some point in time, but the

upper limit is fixed.

So if you look at it kind of like the planet, there's so much land, it's kind of like holding

some territory in Bitcoin is like holding some territory in the physical world.

So you want to accumulate now while the fucking thing's cheap.

You don't want to hold minimal territory in 100 years from now when everyone's got a

large chunk.

What Amber does, it helps you dollar cost average into Bitcoin by, you know, you download

it, you link your bank account and you forget about it and you've got options, whether you

want to just do spare change or whether you just want to do a recurring sort of buy.

But it effectively just purchases an amount of Bitcoin, you know, from as little as five

bucks a day, whatever it is, and it stores it for you in cold storage.

This is for the person that says, I'm interested in Bitcoin, I don't have a ton of money to

go buy, you know, 10 Gs worth Bitcoin right now, which as of today's price gets you less

than one Bitcoin.

So don't have a ton of money to go invest in this, but I don't want to sit on the sidelines.

I'd like to be in the game.

Correct.

This is about accessibility.

And so you're trying to put people in the game by saying, do no work, download the app

and it will passively say the spare change use cases, I buy something, you know, let's

say for $5.60 and it can round up and take the last 40 cents and buy some Bitcoin with

it.

Correct.

So that's one thing you can tell it to do.

Cool.

You'll just accumulate little by little.

You'll be buying something just round up the spare change you kind of would have forgot

about anyways.

Correct.

The other thing you can do is set up a recurring buy, $5 every Monday type of thing.

That gets you in the game.

And so you're trying to help the person who is interested but on the sidelines today get

in the game.

Well, there's three main reasons.

It's too risky.

It's too volatile.

It's too hard.

So we alleviate all of those, you know, volatility is smoothened out via dollar cost averaging.

That's what it does.

So what happens is when you dollar cost averaging, when it's when the price is, you know, exorbitantly

high, you're buying a little bit less, when it's exorbitantly low, you're buying a little

bit more.

Right.

And particularly in emergent asset classes, they're all over the place.

So if you're not a financier, dollar cost averaging just means you don't have to time

when's the right time to buy.

Correct.

You're just always buying a little bit.

Exactly.

So as things swing, you're sort of, you're writing the ups and downs, it smooths out the problem

of trying to time the market which nobody can buy.

100%.

So it's about, so you named it there, so it's about time in the market instead of timing

the market.

So the only thing you got to do in that sense is you've got to look for opportunities which

have long-term upside and ideally you want to look at the opportunities with not only

long-term upside but with asymmetric upside.

So Bitcoin is the only asset that I know of today that is likely has an opportunity to

be worth 100X.

We don't have many of those today unless you're a Chris Sarko and you can get yourself into

a real estate.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the most you can lose is, you know, the five bucks you put in.

Correct.

So the gain is a thousand times the five bucks.

Exactly.

That's the asymmetry you're looking for.

Exactly.

Right.

And that's how most people should invest.

So after all the years of trading and all the years of stuff that I've done, if I just

dollar cost averaged into things that had some asymmetric upside, I would be 100 or

a thousand times further ahead than I am now instead of trying to be a genius and try and

fucking trade my way through.

Right.

Okay.

Well, that's the wisdom.

All right.

So how's the app doing?

Well, we actually, what's today?

Today's Friday.

So it's Saturday in Australia.

So we just finished our public beta yesterday, which is so we go like fully, fully live on

Monday next week.

And why only Australia?

Why not the rest of the world?

It's dealing with a product like Bitcoin, it's, you know, it's less a tech problem.

Well, there's the tech problem of connecting to the bank and getting direct debit services

because, you know, banks inherently don't like Bitcoin because you're pulling money out

of their system into a new economic system.

Right.

So it's not very friendly.

Number two is, you know, governments don't like it.

So they're like, you know, make it jurisdictionally difficult.

So, you know, compliance, licensing and all this bullshit is different in every single

place.

Like we might not even come to the U.S. because here you guys have a different set of rules

for every single state.

It's a complete nightmare.

So, you know, we might just like skip over to your friends in Canada and give them the

service.

They get all the nice stuff now.

I know, right?

So yeah, man, so it's, that's sort of the lay of the land.

Gotcha.

And so the price today is what?

Like we looked it up on our Uber ride over here as 12,000, I think 361.

I know you're not trying to time the market, but I'm curious what you think the price trajectory

looks like.

Do you think this is a temporary rally?

Do you even care about the price?

How do you think about the price?

Because everybody's focused on the price, price, price.

Yeah, correct.

Look, I try and be a little bit more long term in my viewpoints, right?

So everyone has this tendency to gamble.

So there's, there's a popular website called Bitmex, which lets you trade leveraged versions

of Bitcoin, you know, long and short and all that sort of stuff.

And I've had a play on Bitmex, you know, I started with one Bitcoin, got down to 0.2

Bitcoin, traded my way back to one Bitcoin and, you know, I've like been like, I ain't

touching that shit anymore because it's just unnecessary, right?

So, so short term, I don't think it matters.

Like if I had to take a guess, I'd say short term, we're probably a little bit overextended.

But hey, I could be wrong.

You know, I might, I personally think in the medium term or during this wave or during

this run up, we'll probably see Bitcoin peak somewhere between 150 to 200 K, maybe even

more US.

And then it'll probably correct from there.

So we're probably going to see another mania.

It'll correct from there, probably to 20.

And then it'll probably do another run up, you know, during the next cycle, four year

cycle that it hasn't, you know, might go to a million now.

Things are never that clean.

But if you can sort of anticipate like a broad brush of cycles, I think this round,

right now, Bitcoin is cheap as shit.

What's what percentage of your own personal net worth are you putting in Bitcoin?

I lost all my Bitcoin in a boating accident.

Okay.

All right, but, but it was traditionally, traditionally speaking, it was about, man doesn't listen

to this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was probably closer to 70%.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So I'm very bullish.

Yeah.

Somebody's got to be bullish about this, right?

Dude.

There's a lot of people out there who will, will, will say all the right things and then

they put, you know, 2% of the net worth and they're already rich.

And so it's sort of, uh, that's a nice to have sort of proposition and that might be

the correct conservative way to do it.

But for most people, that is correct.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, so I believe, so I think that the level of, um, so I don't look at Bitcoin as a risk

asset.

I actually look at it as a risk off asset.

So, so, but that just comes from my level of understanding of what's actually going

on here.

And, and that, that's the same as someone who might say, oh yeah, investing in Uber

in, you know, the first couple of years was a risky thing to do.

Whereas the people who understood it were close to it had a very different view and

a very different picture of that.

So those founders obviously had a much larger stake.

So to them, it was a, it was a risk not being a part of it.

So, so I think that the, the, the more you peel the onion and the closest to the core

of what you're involved in, you get the, um, the more that profile changes.

So if people don't understand it, one or two, 3%, that's enough, you know, but for

them, the more you understand it, the more you'll find that you want to put more into

it.

And what have you noticed Australia versus Silicon Valley, the opinions on Bitcoin, because

you spend time at both places.

Yeah.

Do you, do you feel like it's the same viewpoints or do you see anything drastically different?

Look, I haven't been back here for a while.

So, and, and this week was obviously skewed because of Bitcoin 2019 conference.

Who goes to that?

Is that guys like wearing a Bitcoin outfit?

Like is it the, is it the nuts or, or are there?

There was actually a really good turnout.

So there was, um, I mean, you know, you had like blockchain capital there, that was sort

of like one of the first funders, a coin base and things like that.

So, so you had everyone from VCs, they, they had Snowden telecast in, um, so that was really

cool.

Where is he living nowadays?

I don't know.

I mean, he's not going to kind of tell us what region of the world do you think he's

living in?

I know.

Isn't he still in Russia or something?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But I mean, that was really cool.

Um, so they had that.

They had, um, speakers from like, you know, all different startups in the, in the Bitcoin

space, people that are working on lightning and all this, there's so much happening there.

And it's, it's really interesting to be like, being in the Bitcoin space right now is like

being part of this cool club that very few people know about and sort of tying it back

to that little newspaper thing that I gave you is, um, you know, I, I got up and I opened

that talk.

So that, that little newspaper started off as a talk that I was supposed to give.

And that was the second talk at this wholesale investor thing.

Like it was a year after the first talk that I gave where I bashed the shit at ICOs.

Um, in the second talk, they were like, Oh, look, can you not do what you did last year

because you, you know, scared a bunch of people away telling people that ICOs were scams.

And I was like, well, was I right?

And they're like, well, you were, but can you not?

And I said, all right, this time I'll be nice.

So this time I got up and I said, blockchain was a load of shit that, you know, Bitcoin

is where it's at, not this term blockchain, which is just this ephemeral term that someone's

picked out of the fucking hat that has nothing to do with anything.

And they've sort of made it seem like blockchain can give you security and immutability when

those two functions come from something like Bitcoin, which is an amalgamation of the blockchain

architecture along with economics, game theory, incentive, disincentives, networks and all

this other stuff that you don't get.

So I got up and I said, um, you know, I had Peter Teal's quote on the screen and I said,

you know, uh, what truth do very few people agree with you on, um, and kind of, I told

the organizers that, um, the talk was going to be entitled, you know, how lightning is

going to deliver on what blockchain promised.

And, um, I got up and I said, um, the real name of my talk is blockchain is dead, the

future is on lightning.

And mind you, this is a blockchain conference where people are raising money for blockchain

companies.

Right.

So yeah, that, that's angry Alex and contrary and Alex at work.

But I think, and the contrarian bet, which I'm, I'm personally like sold that is going

to win is that Bitcoin and the layers built on Bitcoin, much like the internet and the

layers that were built on the internet are where the game is at, not in trying to build

and the analogy that I give to people is trying to compete with Bitcoin is like AOL trying

to compete with the internet.

The companies that succeeded were the ones like Google, Netscape, et cetera, who built

on the internet, which was this really dumb, basic packet routing network.

And it didn't do anything except for route packets of data and doesn't give a shit what

was on that data.

It was the value added services and the businesses and the layers that were built on top of that,

where everyone converged to use the internet.

Same things are going to happen with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is this really basic, basic is maybe not the right word, but this really robust

fundamental network that routes value and it's unstoppable at routing value.

You cannot stop it.

You can't turn it off.

You can't turn it on.

It's that that's what it does.

It's this autonomous network.

No one owns it.

No one controls it.

No one controls it.

Exactly.

So it routes value the same way as the internet routed data.

And what's going to happen is people are going to realize that, hey, I can provide the service

of what traditionally a bank with hundreds of millions of dollars of resources is required

to, like what a bank needs to do to provide a simple service of a fricking checking account

and the ability to send money to your friend requires hundreds of millions of billions

of dollars of infrastructure.

I could provide the same guarantee of funds and the same guarantee of send, store, receive

that a bank can with a little app that we can build with a couple hundred grand.

Love it.

Like tell me that's not revolutionary.

Like, and people are still here running around trying to look for the killer app on blockchain.

The killer app is here.

It's here.

It came back.

It came in the bundle.

That was the zero to one moment.

Yes.

And now, so, and that was sort of my argument.

And that's sort of in that paper there, I make this whole argument, I sort of display

what blockchain was, what's promised for blockchain.

And then I talk about how that's a broken promise and that, you know, out of all the stuff that

came out of the ICO craze, like 99% of it was all just bullshit, like, you know, autonomous

drone powered, you know, token that's going to wash your clothes and make you rich overnight.

Right.

All this shit.

But there might have been 1% of the stuff which made sense.

That stuff is going to be built on Bitcoin.

It ain't going to be built on its own blockchain.

Makes sense.

There's really, I'd say, three schools of thought.

There's the, let's give four schools of thought.

School of thought number one, what the hell is Bitcoin?

People who just don't understand yet, too fuzzy of a concept, cool.

That's where a lot of people live.

Number two, Bitcoin is snake oil.

This is everyone, you know, even Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger are out there saying this thing.

It makes no sense.

It's Ponzi scheme.

Stay away from it.

It's poison.

Number three is where I think you and I live, which is Bitcoin is the thing.

Bitcoin is the killer application of this technology breakthrough.

We have this computer science breakthrough, which enabled a really amazing thing, which

is like you said, we can route value as easily as we routed data and packets for the Internet.

Now we can route money the same way, and money can be something that's as open, secure, and

uncontrolled by a single entity in the way that the Internet is.

Then there's a group of people that say, blockchain, not Bitcoin.

I think that's where you stepped in and said, no.

I also feel like that's sort of the, it's the hedge stance.

It's the stance that says, I don't want to be anti this whole crypto thing, but I don't

want to be in on Bitcoin and the price and the money making side of it.

I'm going to just sit on this technology side, because that's safe.

Who can argue with the breakthrough technology?

That sounds smart and that sounds safe.

Those are the people who say it's all about blockchain, not Bitcoin.

I think that the two are paired together, they're bundled in, as you said, where blockchain

made something like Bitcoin possible and something like Bitcoin is a huge breakthrough and should

be sort of celebrated.

I'm actually going to push back on one of those things.

It's actually not blockchain that made Bitcoin possible.

It's Bitcoin that made blockchain possible, because the word blockchain never even existed.

It's not even in the white paper.

It's not even in there.

So Bitcoin is actually, and this is technically correct, it's actually a time chain.

It's got nothing to do with being a blockchain.

It's just that a group of bankers who missed out on Bitcoin and were bitter about it came

up with the name.

It was kind of, I think the R3 consortium, which sort of had a bunch of banks and all

this sort of stuff, came up with the term blockchain in 2012, about four years after

Bitcoin came out.

Is that right?

It doesn't even exist.

You're saying, forget all the noise, Bitcoin is the thing.

It's the thing.

There's nothing else here.

And if you were, I'll give you the last minute of the podcast to basically speak to, there's

a lot of people that are going to listen to this, some of which already are in the Bitcoin

game, some have heard of it and some have never heard of it.

I would say their ears are yours.

If you had a minute to just say anything to that group of people, what would you tell

them?

Because you have the chance to reach a lot of people and share a little bit of what

you believe to be true.

Whether you're as a fervent believer as me, that the system needs to get better and we

need to bring some more symmetries and whether you've gone down that rabbit hole and you

really believe in Bitcoin, whether you're on that side of the spectrum, or whether you

think it's okay and you don't really give a shit, or even if you're even further on

the spectrum, you like the current system the way it is, you should still buy some Bitcoin

because of the asymmetry that it represents, that contrarian bet.

I don't give a crap where you are holding some, buying and holding some is actually

game theoretically sound because if you don't, you're just going to end up in the bucket

of having been left behind.

If you do and you only do a little bit, so if you just manage that percentage depending

on which part of the spectrum you're on, you do it intelligently that the worst case is

not so bad.

You will have lost a little bit and life will go on depending on where you are in the spectrum.

If it does happen, this changes everything.

It's kind of like buying a domain name 20 years ago, just buy one.

Maybe the internet wasn't going to be anything.

Right.

All right.

This is not investment advice.

This is not investment advice, exactly.

All the normal disclaimers, listen man, I appreciate you coming in.

It's a pretty fascinating conversation.

Like I said, we had never met before and so for me, I liked hearing, I really liked hearing

the story of the ups and downs, trying to make a quick buck, got burned, learning sales

and building a real business the hard way and then getting burned at the mercy of the

government who changed their mind and how that led you to Bitcoin.

I think that's a pretty cool story and I think that for a lot of people, some of the stuff

that we talked about may go over their head, may not understand a lot of the terms and

for them, I would just ask you, what's a good starting point or resource or when you do

want to go down the rabbit hole, where's the door?

Where's the surface of that hole?

What's a good place for somebody to start?

There's a couple of good places.

If you're like listening to podcasts, one of my favorite ones is a dude called Marty

Bent and Matt O'Dell.

It's called TFTC, Tales from the Crypt.

It's a really, really cool, conversational podcast.

They do a show every week.

It's really, really cool.

They're based up in New York.

So that's one.

If you want to learn more about the economics element of it, particularly the extra Austrian

economics, there's a friend of mine called Stefan Lavera.

He runs a podcast there.

That's if you prefer podcasts.

If you prefer reading, I mean, I'm going to toot my own horn here.

I do a lot of writing on Medium.

I've got quite a decent following.

I write for Hack & Noon.

So I'm one of the top Bitcoin writers on Hack & Noon.

Where can people find you?

They just want to hear more from you.

Where do they find you?

Just find me on Twitter.

So at Alex Svetsky and my name's spelled different.

So it's A-L-E-K-S-S-V-E-T-S-K-I, so Alex Svetsky.

So on Twitter, you'll find me on Medium as well, or if you just Google my name, you'll

find me.

It pops up all over the place.

A lot of my resources, I've done a couple long form articles, and the probably two you

want to look for is Homo sapiens, evolution, money, and Bitcoin.

That sort of is a journey of how we started and sort of why it's important.

So that sort of sets a good foundation.

And then I'll do why Bitcoin matters.

And in there, I sort of talk about how, they have some similarities because I talk about

society, evolution, all that sort of stuff, but then I talk about the fundamental tenets

of money and why this is a better, a superior form of money.

So that's those two.

If you want to read that publication online, so we've got an online, Sean has the last

printed version that I ever did for that event, right?

So it's still a draft.

That's a three day job there.

But we fixed it up.

It's online.

It's bitcointimes.news.

Any WS.

Got it.

All right.

Don't do the WWW.

So, yeah.

So that's all the resources, I think.

I hope that all helps.

Great.

I appreciate you coming on the show, bro.

It's great.

Thanks, bro.

Really appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you all.

My story, would you share your dollar with me?

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.