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In personally, 30 million dollars spread evenly over the next 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know why I could be what I want to put my all in it. Like all Days on the Road, Less Traveled, never looking back. All right. What up, Sean here we got Sam and then we got special guest Dan held the Dan held from the Bitcoin space and on Twitter you probably seen him around. I told my brother-in-law that you were on the Pod. Say he was very excited. I've told him about every guest so far and you got one of the biggest reaction. He was a I think it's a paid subscriber to your newsletter.
Something like that. So he's very into you. And on the other hand, I think Sam has no fucking clue who you are. So I think it's the perfect mix. I know some stuff about you. Sam knows nothing about you and I think it'll
be fun. Yeah, I only know that Sean says that you're cool and you're in Bitcoin I know nothing about you,
we got an hour to figure it out whenever we whatever one of us, proposes a guest it's like you put that guest. It's like you have to go take the stand and have an oath that this person is going to be good and then you better be able to
To lawyer up and defend why this person is a guest. And so he'll every time he mentions the name to me, I'm like, why the fuck we having that person on and then he'll likely defend it and then same here. I was like, no, no, no. This is going to be going to be interesting because couple writing couple reasons. We should talk about crypto and then we should talk about I think like kind of like building your personal brand because you did a really good job of that. And so we'll do both of those during this during this convo. But I want to start with like give people the like what's the one-minute story of, who the heck you are? And yeah.
And I don't know, like, give us the wonderful story of Dan held the elevator pitch. Yeah, so I from Texas, originally a group of Dallas, 25 years in Dallas, I studied finance and undergrad, stumbled, and bumbled my way into Tech. I didn't know what I was doing when I first built my my first software products in the space. It was successful from their learned how to formalize some of my skills around product management and marketing worked at a couple different early-stage crypto companies. So, as a sum of the first crypto companies I worked at like boxing.com,
I've had two exits in the crypto space. So I sold two of my products. And then I've also worked at Uber where I was on right or growth led by Andrew Chen's was one of his directs and the growth marketing team. So I've had big company, classic Tech experience but also a lot of kind of that startup hustle in early-stage crypto which early stage crypto is kind of wild west. Yeah. Which I guess fits my Texas attitude. So until they tell people Source, you got to decrypt oh Bitcoin Bitcoin, specifically your a Bitcoin guys.
I shouldn't keep saying crypto too much Bitcoin back in I think, twenty twelve or so Bitcoin is maybe 10 bucks back then what you know what caught your interest. How did you hear about it? What's the origin story for you? Yeah so I got back in 2012, my buddy, paid me back for a beer with something called a Casillas coin. Like I say, she is coin. Are those gold coins that you see in all those news articles where they talk about Bitcoin? They were physical Bitcoins essentially and that was a good time in that 2012 Arabic.
- so new and weird and different. That that was like a good Bridge from the physical Fiat paper, money world to the, to the digital Bitcoin World. From there. My background is in finance, I really dug the 21 million hard cap, as a solution to bad Central Banking policies. I mean, I was in undergrad, during the 2008 financial crisis, studying finance, and I'm like my professors don't know shit, right? Neither do the people on TV and you need to do these books that I'm reading. And that's what kind of kind of shook my foundational trust and belief in the
Just in financial system and that's when Bitcoin came around. When I saw that, I was like, this is a good new way to be rebuild the financial system without having that trust these institutions and Sam. I don't know if you know there's some, do you know when Satoshi signed the first block? He put a put a message in there. Do you know, do you have you ever heard what this is?
No, but I love that guy's story's. I mean, are the myth or if it's real? I don't know what the truth is, but I love the story behind it
and then I don't know if you know it off the top of your head but do you know what it is? Yes.
So Satoshi was a really crazy character in terms of his expertise. Mean he understood like human games, he honest a game theory, encryption all sorts of different other topics and wove this all together to build Bitcoin Bitcoin isn't just software it wraps itself around, understanding human, levers to press, like greed of how the price Cycles as the price goes up, he will become more aware of it and by an expectation of the price going higher. So Satoshi, you know, really understood humans. Intimately and part of this that he wove into the first block was the Genesis block message.
And it said, UK Chancellor on the verge of second bailout for banks. So as the only message that Satoshi ever put into the Bitcoin blockchain. And so it's a very clear signal that Bitcoin wasn't here to disrupt a Visa or PayPal Bitcoin is here to disrupt the existing Financial system and Central Banking. Right. And so there's like a the mission. The mission was sort of like I don't know cleverly baked and which I
just I just love. I'm like you Sam where I'm like
the more I learn about the origins, the more this shit seems like it's out of a movie.
Gee, it doesn't seem like real life. It's like, oh, this Anonymous creators, like how is anything Anonymous nowadays, right? Like there's like way, you know, like the way they caught the Silk Road guy was like his the way he was typing or whatever. Match some review, he left on a movie Message
Board or so, you know, it's always some things like that. There's always a breadcrumb trail is almost fully. Is it still Anonymous? I mean obviously no one's about could have been the the guy who had ALS and died. I mean what what do you work? What is smart? People who know
what Sam, Let's Dance Theory the
Everyone's got their own favorite Satoshi tail already to. So one is Health. Any the one that you just described he had ALS and died. I think in 2012 or 2013, a halfpenny is a classic favorite because he goes through a pgp encryption and Bitcoins proof of work system is based on his early. Reusable proof of work system that he created earlier. Bitcoin wasn't a new innovation, it just kind of Frankenstein and all these other Innovations together and that's how Satoshi built Bitcoin halfpenny has the demeanor of Bitcoin. He was also the first recipient of a Bitcoin transaction or
He was sending it to himself. This is what, by the way, if you ever work with developers, that's what they do. They when they're testing shit out, the first thing they do is they send it to my account. A, to my account, to Shan Shan zhen Shan test the ghostwriting, pgp encryption back in that era, with Phil Zimmermann, pgp encryption was considered a weapon by the defense by the Department of Defense. So when he goes for a pgp, he knew that he was potentially going to be convicted for like illegal arms trafficking. Wow. So he understood what it meant to take on a government at this scale and so
He and when he, when I say ghostwrote, he goes further because we're his name isn't officially on it. So same with Bitcoin, he was one of the few people to their would have built Bitcoin in that fashion, you know, hiding behind the pseudonym of Satoshi and using that because that was critical that the project had no face to it. Had no Central weak point because you can find Satoshi, and he's sort of a weak point in the governance structure and in the ownership structure that could undermined the long-term success of the protocol.
So, yeah. How is a classic favorite almost died around the same time that Satoshi stopped doing anything? We haven't seen a mess of Flare from Satoshi sense. Right? That's where it's at. So she hasn't signed a message with his private key, which would concretely determine that that is Satoshi or give us a strong determination, that that is Satoshi. So that timeline makes sense. That's the theory. One, what's thirty-two? Thirty-two is the NSA. So 32 is of the it's the NSA because the NSA build weapons and Bitcoin is a financial weapon. It could destabilize.
Countries destabilize their currencies and so this is just a more fun, I mean, totally off-the-wall trafficking. But so let's say a group of could talk cryptographers with some of the best in the world. Work at the NSA. Come up with Bitcoin because they're tasked with building a weapon and after they build it, they go wait a second, maybe we should just release this into the wild because we do believe that this is good for humankind, right? And they release it as kind of like it's like a Frankenstein experiment, let out of the lab. So I think that one's kind of fun. I mean there's no there's no
Axe behind that, where the lab leak hypothesis for the pandemic, basically, that's what you're saying.
I think one more realistic than the other, maybe what, uh, would you put your money on one of those then
probably more of the help? Anyone, I feel that it's an individual. So that's always a question, too. Is it an individual or group of people Ice Cube or individual designed by committee is really hard to do with something as Niche and like incredible it like an incredible breakthrough like the coin, right? So I think that one person just had that genius to take all these elements and put them together to create.
Bitcoin versus a group of developer trying to figure out how to build this thing. And there's also the other thing which is like it's just somebody else. So if you were going to apply your percentages what percent is how thinny NSA or other Ivory, this is super tough but maybe like 50% Health Finney 30%, Nick Szabo and 20% NSA locks at. All right, I like that. Okay. So you discover Bitcoin because some guy gives you a coin
And and you don't you're not just like dude, what is this? Like can I have my 10 bucks please? And and so you go you read about it. What happens that night. So you go and you what you read the white paper you join the forums. You start reading about it online and then like, I guess like take us through the thought process of you going from where you were then to like, where you are now, where Bitcoin is, right? You know, a pretty major part of your life. Yeah. And I can kind of weave in my early entrepreneurship, like, in Tech, part of that too, because it's all kind of intertwined together.
So I start to read about it. The 21 million hard got the monetary policy. I see this as a huge breakthrough because if you remove the subjectivity of terms of choosing what an appropriate rate of inflation is you've solved the problem of monetary Theory. So like satoshi's solve the problem of like going hey we shouldn't constantly figure out what the rate of inflation should be. We should fix it in the economy, can reorient around that, genius breakthrough. So that got really hooked. I worked at a small investment firm in Dallas. It meant nothing to anyone, who would know. It's a really tiny one wasn't prestige.
Jess or anything like that. They relocated me to San Francisco to open up their West Coast portfolio out in San Francisco. I during the, it was the April Bitcoin run up from $10 to 260 back down to a hundred. I was going to the Bitcoin, meetups in San Francisco. This is where like, Brian and Fred from coinbase were hanging out and same with Jared, Kennedy from tradehill and Jesse Pal from cracking, Micah the company right now. I mean, it's only like those like, because we were just in Miami when the Bitcoin conference was happening and it was kind of like a
Like a bunch of fools acting the fool. I thought I didn't attend, but just through what you which what was coming out on social media? I guess and everything. Every Community changes from like when it's The Outsiders. And, you know, just the True Believers to like you know, Ten Years Later, 11 years later, what it looks like is very, very, very
Community changing. All of my friend, my roommate was by. I was mining and 11 and 12, and they were just hardcore, devs and nerds,
so we don't like. So I remember I was still working
In a small investment for him. So I'm rolling up in fucking business, casual to a developer matua. Tavella join me up here. Like, what the hell are you doing here? There's only a dozen of us. I mean it was Tiny and actually I put pictures on Twitter where you can see pictures from the old meet up. I mean it's just a it's a cooler pbrs and a bunch of people kind of geeking out on this thing called Bitcoin, right? March April 2013, hit price goes to 260. Boom, you've got like VC, slinging out, business cards, everyone's excited, there's a hundred and fifty people that
To the Meetup, you know, there's this energy, this palpable energy and then the May 2013 conference happens, the wing Covey announced. They've been home, they've been, they've bought Bitcoin. They're involved the conference had like a few hundred people, which was kind of wild. If you see coin basis Booth from videos from back, then they print it out like a knit hat eight and a half by eleven that just had coinbase on it. Like it is printed it off your computer in the office over there, pick different or in the office, and taped it on their booth and Brian and Fred were the guys Manning the booth. So like that's how early it was super, super early in the
Space. And during that moment, that's when I found a problem. A problem that needed to be solved which was finding the real time price of Bitcoin on your mobile device. At that time, there was no app in the app store that gave you real time Market data, which is crazy, because Bitcoin fluctuates a lot of people, you know, we're constantly opening up their phone to check the price of Bitcoin, all the other developers before then, just refresh the price, every 15 minutes or so. So me and a buddy put it together. Now I didn't know what I was doing. I was a finance guy.
You know, trying to figure out how to make a product. And so I just became really obsessed with solving this problem and so I knew enough in Photoshop, swear I can design the app so I just looked at apps that I liked took elements from that to design a zero block, which is this product and designed it and we designed it, really, really simply because I couldn't design anything more complex. Back in that day, skeuomorphism was the popular design aesthetic. And we did flat UI because I couldn't design bevels and stuff. So I just became obsessed with solving this problem for
Elf turns out a lot of other people had that problem too. And that's where it kind of like stumbled my way into some product fundamentals of. Like it's all about solving a problem for your customer and then I got into a tinge of growth marketing where I found how to hack my way to the number two spot for the word Bitcoin in the App Store. So we got most of our installs. You know. How'd you do that? What the heck? Yeah, so Apple at the time when they really originally built the App Store, they forked it from iTunes.
And so, there is an old character limit that they had four titles of songs, which is 255 characters, but they also allowed that character limit for app titles. It was truncated after 60 were basically, you can fill a shit ton of shit in words in the tub and the core title. Old-school keyword stuffing. Yeah, I learned old-school growth hacking technique or just, keyword stuffing, but it worked. Now it was sort of a crapshoot see if the App Store reviewers would approve it, but one out of five wood and if you did, he could clinch that spot, right? So that kind of started
My fascination with both products and with growth marketing, kind of other more hacky side of things. And yeah, that was my that was my initial foray into Tech and then we sold 300 block at the end of the year to blockchain.com watching the cam still around today. It's really popular while it was the first product manager there and so kind of that's what I mean by stumbled and bumbled my way into Tech is. Yeah, I don't have any formal bracket around. I just kind of was really empathetic was solving a problem from a customer wanted to propagate the message of my products, and that's how I learned those
two skills. All right, let's talk about some ideas.
Deshawn shall we?
Yeah, so Dan. I don't know if you know but this is the ideas podcast where we basically say, okay that like I'm interested in the past but to the extent that I learned cool things and then I'm like, all right, let's get to the Future. What's the future look like so? So ideas I think there's really like I guess like let's start in the Bitcoin and crypto space. What problems do you see today? That you think somebody needs to solve like back? Then there was no real time price data. That was a problem that needed solving sure. Do you seeing today as a problem that needs solving. Yeah, there's one idea that's particularly fascinating but it's not very
Be sexy. Now there's a lot of really good intersections there where you find Value. And like there's no idea because not a lot of people are looking at it it's around private wealth management for crypto holders. Imagine a current crypto billionaire walks into a family office, multi-family office and they're like, hey, I'd like you to help manage my portfolio and they sit down five suits in front of this guy with a hoodie. And they say, hey, well, first of all, we'd like to take, you know, a 2% management fee out o of all your Holdings in the, like, well I said, I self custody my coin, right?
Maybe like I don't even know what that means, right. You know then they would go well how much how much of your net worth is in crypto and they would say 90% and the first thing they would say is diversify, right? The existing private wealth managers in multifamily offices, have no idea of how to service crypto, wealthy crypto, folks,
I mean you are getting Min. You can I told my guy at the bank today, let's buy some etherium and they were like, oh, we're, we can't.
It's ridiculous. I mean, absolutely ridiculous. It's so Antiquated they just don't talk don't even talk the same language as all these crypto folks. Right. Like I'm a more Bitcoin guy but if you go down like the etherium rabbit hole, there's a whole I mean there's so much complexity and how those defy and smart contracts work it's where you need like a full tax team to solve that problem too. But these I mean I've been in the space for almost nine years. I know more billionaires on this planet than probably anyone else because of, because of crypto, because
Has created so many in that institutions, but individuals who have billions to where it needs to be. Probably Bitcoin is probably a Crip Bitcoin. Plus a theory of my probably created more individual billionaires and any other project, right? Exactly think that's got to be true, which is kind of insane, like, more than Microsoft more than Amazon more than any, of those projects. How many
crypto billionaires do you know? How many billionaires do you know?
I would say off the top my head, at least, at least 10.
How many of them?
How about a hundred million on a
I'm in. I mean I would assume I at least know a hundred or so folks that probably have that launched Outlook Bitcoin. People don't tell you how much they have but but you can kind of assume based on how long they've been in this space and what companies they worked at and how much their net worth was back then, and probably still. Yeah. I mean, it's a general assumption,
but how much of your personal money were you putting into this before, your Bitcoin started like making sense? Like, where you put in like a hundred grand into this in 2012, when it was like, who the fuck knows of this going to work as a hundred grand you at yours? I wish.
Well you could be right which? Yeah really young. That's ever been a lot of money.
Yeah, I didn't have that much money and I mean, look, I was like, 25 26 just out of and I was in, you know, my first job was in Dallas. I was making 45k a year, wasn't like a ton of money. Yeah. And then I got into Tech eventually and of course that went up quite a bit but that was in 2013-2014. Now my average cost basis was ten dollars to a hundred but there's a bunch of coins of God from in the hundreds to thousands, right? So I think a lot of people look at
Crypto, he's like myself and they assume we had like a million dollars in Iran that we all dumped in at $5, a Bitcoin. And also, I wasn't a perfect toddler. I'd be treated I traded Litecoin. I traded a bunch of other stuff, just for fun. Even mind Prime coin. So, I'm not, you know, I'm a big coin Journey. I've touched a bunch of other coins as well, so no one's a perfect cobbler. I don't watch, actually, are you able to buy the dip when the dip is like 30,000 and it's like, well, my cost basis is 192 and
You know, like whatever is five even, even if it's 3,000, even my cost basis is 3000, buying at 35 by the dip great. So are you able to psychologically do that? Or you just like hey, my position is set. I hope the rest of you suckers buy the dips so that you know, we keep use upward momentum. So technically, I'm over 100 percent of my net worth in Bitcoin because I took a small lever position back when Bitcoin, oh, seven thousand dollars at the bottom of the cycle, because I believe that Bitcoin, you know, in a bull run, obviously appreciates. So I technically over a hundred
My net worth is in Bitcoin. Also, I do something where I lend out my Bitcoin attorney yield. Yeah, that yield is like, kind of a day-to-day stacking mechanism to add more SATs to add more Decline and here using what, like cracking block 5, who do use them, so could crack. It doesn't, you're at cracking. Now if I put the first, but I don't think they offer this as a service. Appreciate the shout out. But no, we don't offer that yet. Yes, we've got like Block phyllite in and Genesis trading. I just is trading. You have to have like a minimum of 20 Bitcoin to be a customer. So, by the way, I bought some secondary and Kraken. So I'm
I'm with you on the first rain. Lets go, go, go all the way. The
tide. How the hell when you so crack? And how many people that crack and do you think have more than fifteen million dollars? How do you employ people when they're all fucking? Yeah, that's what I want to know. Like, how can I tell you? Like, go fuck yourself. It's like damn board. Got a spot for me.
Yeah, it's a particular challenge for crypto. I mean, crypto, it's the hardest industry to build a business and think about it this way to like you
Got monsoon season, the ballroom and you want to capture all of that Revenue potential. But if you start to spend and deploy Capital through hiring and building offices and whatnot, by the time that the bull runs over, like, when do you turn off the spigot? Like, when you turn off all that cash flow going out, and then how much do you cut back? And I think that's really, really tricky. Like, how do you predict these Cycles? No one knows if we did. We'd all be trillionaires. And so I think that's the most difficult part of this is like, how do you build a business with those fluctuations in demand? And how do you Magic?
Spence has to meet that. But yeah. I mean you know in terms of in terms of employee churn, it's super tricky. I actually put in my job descriptions for my growth marketing team, no crypto experience required. I first find it really for refreshing. When folks come in and challenge language that we use in our ads, homepage app store, Page, Etc, on how we describe crypto. Because I'm, I've been in too long. It's hard for me to zoom all the way out and see what it looks like from a newbie, right? And so one, I like that perspective and to to the motivational issue I think.
Now, folks who are new to crypto or much hungrier than ones, who haven't been there. Okay, so let's do this private wealth manager. So what would you actually build here? Would it be a Services Company? Would it be a software company? What would be the I how would you attack this problem? Yeah, it's a services company and you can't take bits on a, um, that's like, an old way to do it. You have to figure out some sort of new model, that's maybe more subscription, or something like that. The first and foremost problems, you're tackling taxes, taxes are incredibly complicated for crypto trades, especially if you need to defy things. Yeah, one would be taxes, too.
So attacks is not only cover trades, but also covers future Tax minimization Strategies. For example, there's a trust called a grat a grad is a great way to pass on your crypto, to your son, daughter Etc, a partner without any taxable event occurring. So there's all sorts of very Advanced structures that exist for very wealthy, Folks, at most crypto people have no idea, you know, that they're what this wasn't institutional wealth. They didn't they didn't work at Goldman, they were in their basement, mining Bitcoin, or my me a cerium, you know.
It's a whole different world, right? Right. And that's where in our trust different things, in fact, I think. Yeah, what you did? Where you build your brand and your like a build, a big audience, I think you have a few hundred thousand followers on Twitter for Bitcoin. I think that's what you would do. If you come out you're like, hey, I'm the Bitcoin tax guy and I'm going to talk every day about how to like deal with the tax problem with Bitcoin and wealth management for wealthy bitcoiners. And I'm going to my sales is all going to happen, through content, and then whoever, and then you'll probably get billionaires coming inbound saying, hey, will you manage my stuff?
That's how you would do this. I've known these billionaires personally for eight years. So actually, dm2 bunch of them and ask them if they used multi family, offices and know, I did right already know that. It's a problem, that they're not currently solving. They went, they went assistant traditional Financial folks and they talk to me about their experiences. And I was like, wow, that sounds terrible, right? So for me, I'm very happy, I crack and I love the team of working with. I love the team I've built. Also, they acquired my company, so I'm very incentivized to stick around. But I couldn't be more excited in terms of a rocket ship in the space Kraken.
Great spot to be a time. A girl's guy, so it's all about that. Like, hyper growth and Krakens like a perfect perfect spot. But this is more fun on the side of thinking, like what we're all, we're all able to jump, you have to tinker tinker with stuff and think their stuff. And this is kind of a recent
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So Sam. Do you know about the, like the tether question, mark? Have you heard this Sam? No. Okay, so I'll ask Dan to kind of explain it. So, Dan, I'm gonna ask you to do two things. One is explain. What people are. What some people are afraid of with tether and why that might be like you know people call it oh is this the Black Swan that's going to crash all of crypto etc? Etc. And then how you sleep at night being a hundred percent of your net worth in Bitcoin, knowing that this potential question, mark, it
This with tether. So so explain
the potential problem and then how you think about
it. Sure. So tether is called a stable coin. A stable coin is a representation of a fiat currency so tether represents US Dollars. It's called u.s. DT. So us DT is created by companies wiring money in to a Cayman Island entity and they wired in there and then tethers are minted in created and those are put on blockchains Tether, has existed on the Bitcoin blockchain, ethereum blockchain Antron, blockchain
amongst others, I think as well. So what that tether represents is a one-to-one backing of a dollar. Now, the company that issues these, which is like tether United, I've liked Heather limited plus bitfenix, which is an exchange. There were concerns over if they were truly backed 121 and there were moments when it wasn't. But they've recently reached a settlement with a pelleve. The New York district attorney I think is who the forget? Exactly who they sold with attorney. General, York attorney general. I think somebody regulars are forget who settled with who.
But yeah, they essentially settled in agreed to do audited, to perform Audits and come out with exactly how much they had in reserve. So the controversy and the worry is that tethers are so there's a couple worries. One is that tethers? You know, first and foremost aren't backed that could lead to a kind of like classic run on the bank situation where more people try to redeem to others and it done of tethers. None of dollars in the bank, to be able to redeem, to be able to be redeemed and that would cause a structural problems.
That the crypto ecosystem number two, I think is like, the idea that you s DT is being used in smart contracts and defy, and it's completely centralized because you sdt, like, USD, see, these stable coins that are centrally issued by companies like tether and circle, they can be reversed or, or frozen or paused and that truly decentralized. And a lot of this bait, a lot of the defy space, I think, a lot of the contracts, for example, like maker, Dow the most. So so maker Dow is like a, like a
Algorithmic, stable coin, almost. 50% of its collateral is centralized table coins. So it represents a systemic risk to defy and centralized Finance aka the exchange-based. So, the fear is basically, if the tether people are not being on the up-and-up. So you have to trust people, which is I kind of the anti crypto way if they're just they could just be printing tethers or be holding. Not one to one dollar assets. So they could be like a bank fractionally reserving saying oh for every dollar we
We have, we have five tethers and basically using that too and that's being used to buy Bitcoins. So it's like artificially, it's not that Bitcoin has any issue with it, but if that's what's driving up run-ups and price is, there's a huge amount of Bitcoin that's bought with tether and that's the question concern now, how legitimate is the concern? So, if we dig into it, I wrote about this in the Health Report. My my newsletter, if you dig into this there, it isn't as bad as people say, there's all sorts of moments when had to tether wasn't fully
Otherwise as in there wasn't enough Tethered to be redeemed. Two dollars in the industry was fine. Also we're talking about exchanges, don't hold tethers, the users, hold tethers. So tether is just like any other crypto asset. So there's been tons of times when multibillion-dollar crypto assets have gone to zero and the structural problems in the space have been, okay, we've also suffered much more egregious moments in the crypto space, like, now cocks now, gox represented. 90% of trading volume, this would be like, by Nancy coinbase and
Crack and all going down at the same time. You know these are hugely stressful moments for the for the marketplace and so Bitcoin has been through a lot worse. Bitcoin inherently doesn't need tether. Tether is being used to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but for example, like different, other government Fiat, currencies are used to buy Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is dependent on the dollar. It's not dependent on us DT. And then I think, you know, another concern that I forgot to bring up earlier people hypothesize like tethers being used.
Pump It coin. I think that's completely unfounded. It was based on a University of Texas research report, which I don't even know if you could call it fucking research, but it was like a research report, where they basically said that correlation is causation, right? Which is absurd. It's like saying that like, you know, umbrellas cause rain, right? Because are correlated, so is really ridiculous. That's where the core root of some of the concerns that like, oh, tethers being used to pump Bitcoin, come from completely unfounded. There's no data that supports that. And also there's moments when tethers are
Printed with Bitcoin goes down. But of course the people who buy into this whole Theory, ignore those moments, right? And okay, so so that's a great answer. So you want to switch to basically talking about other Bitcoin other other, let's say crypto ideas that you see that the average person is either not knowing about, you know it's interesting idea that you're not that that's not as well known yet or you see the opportunity for somebody to go build, do you see any other opportunities, besides the private Wealth Management?
Is
the private wealth management one for me is one that says really sticky. That one's like super, interesting. Other ones, it would be good as well. I just think Simplicity is the ultimate way to go build product. It means that folks find Value in your product, much more quickly, you can convey the value prop people discover the value prop, they could activate it at a higher rate. So I think like simplest a very, very simple, very very simple mobile experience for wallets. I think it's still like very underappreciated. I think the wall its base is still has
Horrid user experience. Like, for example, let's say when you send a Bitcoin transaction, the coin transactions have two states, one confirmed, and confirmed, and to a lame layperson, like, what does that even mean? Yeah, no and all wallets default to this language and I would disagree that they should even default to that language. I mean, you should add a layer in the layer above that and the gooey, something much more understandable while it's, our kind of fundamental to the core ethos of the system and there's a lot of things you can do now. We're you later.
Met treating capabilities built-in there. Etc. So I think the what the space still doesn't have great great to use wallet. I think like Exodus wallet is really good but other than them, I haven't seen like an experience around the core experience of holding your crypto. That was just mind-blowing Lee,
amazing. Do you have a security team like a physical security team?
Do we like bodyguards and shit now you well I'm in Texas, so obviously I own a few guns so it's a come and take it sort of attitude at conferences. I do have security. How do you hire
It's a in a provided to me by that's it. The company.
How much do they spend each year on on these stick on security guards?
You know, I'm not sure, but the Kraken is constantly focused about security. They're kind of nuts when it comes to security at cracking. It's in terms of like how you control like, where your laptop is and everything else. Is there an exchange right? Krakens been around for 10 years and has never been hacked. So for us, like they're constantly paranoid about that. And the human attack Vector is the week.
Points in any Tech system. So they're very conscious about like different Executives and high-profile individuals like where they are, you know, if they're at events with a lot of people, they got to think about physical security. So it's something that they think they think about all the time. I have no idea how much that cost, though.
I'd be curious to hear about that because whenever I see, I mean, I don't have, I'm a different friend group, as you maybe. I've got a few friends that have tens of millions of Bitcoin, but I am always curious as to, how like,
The actual security, because I would think that when it comes to hacking, I would think it would be just, like, stealing like kidnapping, someone stealing stealing the person as opposed to kind of like break into the
thing. Totally. Yeah, that's actually classically called the wrench attack in the Bitcoin world, is that someone can come to you and just black, you over the head, with a wrench right now. At the same time, you know, Sam, you done very well and it's a Michonne, like, you guys have both been very well. And we see you guys know billionaires that walk around the Streets of San Francisco. Hmm.
And they're not getting mugged and kidnapped for ransom. So in with Bitcoin, yeah, Bitcoin is easily transferable but let's say that, let's say this person is not into Bitcoin at all, but can easily take their liquid assets by Bitcoin and then transfer it to the kidnapper. So whether or not you hold Bitcoin, if that makes you more or less susceptible to getting attacked, I don't think it does.
Well, that doesn't necessarily seem fair like but that said I'm not.
I'm not entirely educated on it so I'm not staying sticking by this quite hardly. All right, I'm not sticking to this entirely but like when I when I have money in a variety of different places, there's a pretty large amount of checks, and balances that go into transferring it. So I just try to transfer money to a another bank today, and there was like a hard cutoff, whereas, with a lot of crypto stuff, you can literally have it in a, in like a store.
Some type of store like physically. I could fat-finger the
number I'm putting in and I could transfer, you know, instead of five. I could transfer 5,000.
Yeah. And I also and there's no getting it back and like credit cards. Do a pretty good job of doing fraud. Protection usually, is it what's it called? What's the the $250,000 of checking accounts are our insurer FBI? Yeah, big
problem of like death, right? So I think there's a start-up opportunity here to which is what happens to your big.
And when you die and and and how do you, how do you manage that? So on one hand, you can leave instructions to your spouse or whatever, which is like, hey to get all to get access to all of our private Keys. Here's what you do. But now you have instructions to get all your private Keys, that's, you know, somewhere we have to protect that. So you have to have multiple layers. You started to go down the rabbit hole. You starting to kind of get this circular logic Loop of like well I can't trust anyone else with my money so I need to manage my private key and it's like well if I want to pass it on if
To trust with them. Yeah, exactly. And then, and then you also have the, like, I do the problem of like, actually, like property, you know, property transfer when you dies, I could go through either probate or you have a will. And I just think that there's probably a lot there that if you if you look at this group of crypto wealthy as just a new customer that exists and they're going to its I have this framework is 2 by 2 which is like, you know. He's is it an old problem or a new problem and then is there an old solution or new solution, right? And so this is a case where it's a bunch of old.
But we need a new solution because it's a new type of customer, goes back to the private wealth management. Exactly. There's actually a way to solve this to it's called multi signature, which means that your Bitcoin isn't controlled by one key that opens up the Vault, there's three keys and you need two out of three keys to open up the Vault, and there's all sorts of like there's three out of five key structures. So those would be how you do this through time. As you give like your your CPA one, your wife, wife or husband, one you'll be learning. Yeah, and then you give the other two to whomever else, are you keep three on your own. So there's a lot of
Elegant ways to do that. And multisig, I think is the only way that's like, but the thing is that I have to educate your, there's no CPA in the world that knows private Key Management. Well right that's where this entity would. For example, be one of the key holders, they would know a very good, private key management practices and only sign as for under certain conditions which would also help against the kidnapping vector and where they would have like a velocity limit. You've DM me before about stuff that's in the Creator kind of like audience space I don't know where you want to go with that.
Kind of leave it open but you seem to have like a theory or framework of like where the puck is going when it comes to the Creator thing or like I don't know you've successfully built your personal brand and as you know, like I don't know how many years ago, nobody knew who the fuck Dan held Liz and today you're known by bunch of, you know, crypto nerd. So, like what is the, what is you? Give me your thought, process around it either one of those two, like generally where it's going are for you specifically. How you think about it? Yes. What am I gonna grow the product growth marketing guy. So, when I find like a vein of gold where I find like
Mentor, I find user acquisition, it just fascinates me, right? So, the Creator economy is about, you know, for the most folks on the show, I'd say up to speed with Creator commsta. Okay, cool. So, you know, I built an audience in the crypto space, in the Bitcoin space, my main message is just Bitcoin though. So I'm straight to the Bitcoin, ethos I've been in a long time. So in my last name is a pun on the favorite meme, hot oil, fry. So my last name actually is real though. My last name, truly is hell. It's actually a German last name.
Which and so with that has decided to lean into that. And I just started to write I wrote long-form articles, I started to tweet and those got traction and I found over time that, there's a certain way that these gain traction. It's not it's not by random circumstance. There are ways to understand the engagement algorithm and use that to propagate your message for me. I really love Bitcoin internal schema. Well it's an example of something you saw that was working sure. Well, you can do
Advanced search and search for the most popular tweets from any account filter though. But filter those by the most popular, and then actually take a format of what they've tweeted and just take an iteration of that, right? You already know. It's probably going to work and you just take a small tweak and that's that almost always works. Yep. You could also do a quote tweet, we're like, let's say, let's say like in a vault wheat, you can just copy paste, the Vols quote with quotes and tag Nepal and you'll get almost you're watching. You can revive all do even. If you're really tiny accounts a little things like that. There's
Whole bunch of those that have discovered because he again, I'm a Gorilla Marketing guy. So I'm digging in and I'm like, oh man, this this engagement tactic really worked, I've done some things. Like if you see auto-playing videos, you can build those in the media center in Twitter, which you have to have an ads account to do those, but they're not an ad, it's organic. That's a little little tips and tricks like that consistency, I think is the number one thing that people forget. I have not missed. It tweeting a day in three years. If you do, you lose your spot in the relevancy.
Engine with Twitter. So Twitter every day. There's like, 90% of consumers and 10% of us creators. Well, the Creator's create content for the board consumers. The consumer session in the product, and Twitter needs to figure out how to hook them immediately. And so Twitter goes to all their previous engage content, and they go. Well, who do they engage with every day. And if they've built up and habit of engaging with myself, then they like world's give them a Dan held sweet. But if I don't tweet that day, then there may be like, oh, let's give him a Chris tweet or someone else's tweet.
Because they need to go hook them immediately and then if that engagement Loop gets built with them over time, then I'll slowly start to lose relevancy with them. So, can consistency is absolutely the most important thing on Twitter. And most of these channels, I think that was like, the really big breakthroughs for me. It says not quality is quantity, it's about always having content there for them to consume and building that habit. And then you over time, you focus on quality where I think I've gotten a little bit more high quality over time. Especially like I stood up a YouTube channel. I've got 25 thousand subs and
in six months and I just shoot one continuous shot. I don't know. I don't even edit it. It is do one continuous shot, even if I like sneeze or something. That is kind of, like, keep going because I don't have enough time to spend in post-production and doing cuts. And you guys have great video content, I just don't have time to go do that. Now, the newly all about, like does my audience because my audience like, will they engage with the content? Well, it's an MVP rights, an MVP. If people like it, then you go spend time. You pay for an editor or something. To go help out. Yeah.
It's been a, it's been an incredible journey going down this rabbit hole and then, you know, monetization Wise to just seen all the different ways that folks, you know, tipping on on Twitch, you've got like tipping on Twitter. Now you've got subscription products. You've got swag, that's three years from now, audience keeps growing and the monitor. The monetization thing, skip bit more. Baked out for you. How much do you think an individual Creator in your Niche? Like how much you think you can make three years from now, just on the personal brand side of things? Forget the job
Job and investing and other stuff. Have you guys talked to pump yet? Yeah, we have a couple times. Yeah, and we
both know. Um, well, I don't lie,
I'm adding that's combat, but that quite,
yeah, but if I, we, I can, but we can guess
I would yeah before. Okay. How about y'all guess? Okay,
so out, not, let's not include investment Revenue which I think investment Revenue in the next hour. Talking about
like pave newsletter, sponsorships, recurring Revenue forward. I think we should throw in there because that's kind of like part of the personal brand stuff course.
Now course is his his investment Revenue. If you told me that it makes him personally, Thirty million dollars spread evenly over the next 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised. Is that crazy? Sean Burton here. Are you talk about 30 total? It's sorry. 30 total spread out evenly over 10 years. Yeah, I don't know how big is fun
days so I'm just gonna take that out for a second. I think I'm. Yeah, just a personal brand. So we're just going to
have to. Now,
I would say three and a half. What would you have guessed? An 224 million is my best guess as to how much revenue, he's making a
Him. And that's based on like my best knowledge.
Maybe five people on staff, so maybe half a million in costs. Yeah,
very very little overhead. So very high margins, right? These are all value accretive to like if someone gets a job through pomp they might be really inclined to sign up to a newsletter, right? These aren't like mutually exclusive sales, right? But by far, I think like so he's got that. So pump is the biggest pop is so this is our upper bound limit and that's why I chose pomp. Right is upon the biggest. What about
In the Bitcoin and crypto space. You're talking
about. What about my guy Ralph? How or is that a same brow
pole? Yeah real pal. He's more of like a macro, fine. I mean I guess we could call him crypto now because he's almost
like there are these even though like let's say like a guy who's kind of a troll, even though I love them, like a James Alta is like a James all teacher. I bet you makes 30 million dollars a year in crypto,
newsletters to. I don't, I don't think James all teachers in the guys from like 2017 Arrow because he's a,
he's a friend of mine, dude. He's sold his new Love and his crew.
Opto newsletter for 60 million dollars. Wow, wow. Yes.
Holy shit. I didn't even know that, you know, Motley
Fool. Yeah. Motley Fool, does close to a hundred million a month in Revenue? So I think that pump is the popular poppy one, but I think there are, I bet you, I'll guarantee you. There's guys who have newsletters that they charge 20,000 a year,
but you guys have you guys of the breakdown of Agoura, right? That, like crazy newsletter thing, they thought James. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. I mean I got the I got the you know after you guys have the breakdown of it, I actually talk to someone who work there. Yeah you got the breakdown. So like that back in newsletter the one that's a really high mark up like a thousand dollars a month. That's where they make all the money. Yeah. There's like it's like you got your 20 $30 a month up front one and you get the thousand dollar back and one I couldn't personally do it. I just feel kind of weird doing it.
Personally Wrong, by the way, what we wrong on our guesses for Agoura.
In terms of like the revenue would, I didn't do any Revenue back to the envelope brother and stuff. I just want to know tactically. Like how do they think about I'm with you? Dan there is something to that like oh this like weird slippery, slope where you end up with these like, you know, this small one percent of these like whales who you've just milked their whole life savings because they think they're getting this. The no no thanks longer-term. Brother, bit longer term value to like deliver something I think is truly worth that amount of money. That's why I've experimented with courses. So I've got my newsletter really newsletter. I've got ads
Which one of the best, the best combination of like, effort, fun, and money. Like, if you
combine those, right, you want a low effort, - hi
money. Like what is the best one? So far, you've experimented as a creator of these tools in your tool belt probably YouTube because I was kind of fun showing a product that you really like. So I only represent products that I personally use, right? And it's an ethical standard that I have for myself. So which means that I have eliminated, a lot of the potential advertisers, that would be a lot more. But for me, it's the only way that it feel like it would be appropriate for me to, you know, represent.
Is it this product? Then the YouTube is fun because I get to like have like a little skit with it, right? Like I bring it up, I talk about it. I represent it the newsletter. It's a lot of work that I mean writing an article a week, doesn't sound like a lot. It's a lot, it's a lot. It's a ton of work and you take pride in it and it's paid. There's a bar of these people paid for this information. So the information that would be different and unique and awesome every rotary I know I'm a I'm a you know, classic growth guys.
Have a survey at the end of each one to get like, a raw NPS score, I get feedback. And what the next article they want written, that. Way, I write the best most relevant content which means that they're satisfied. But it's tough, you know, like it's really hard to where I don't know. How pump does it daily. I must, I think he's
got a guy, I would imagine. He's got about two young guys. He says
he doesn't, he says he sits down. He writes it in one. Take,
try me and my wife and him, and his wife all went out to lunch, one day, and just hung out and Paulina, his wife was teasing them, like,
Like she was like it takes me forever to wipe, right? My weekly thing. He just sits down and he does it in 15 minutes and he's done.
I mean, I've had some that have like, cruise through like a straight like stream of Consciousness but it's tough, some of them I do a lot of research for like I wrote one on bitcoin defy. And that was a ton of like actually I tried it. Try out a couple different apps. There's a lot of work so fun and Roi would be YouTube channel where like I do these pre-roll mid-roll ads, they're kind of fun to do. I can visually show off the product in a more fun compelling way.
Like the products I'm representing versus like the newsletter which I have to sit down and really think through hard and it's something that, you know what I want to make sure I represent really, really well, by the way your growth guy, I've said that this Bitcoin laser eyes thing is one of the most genius kind of like decentralized marketing tactics I've ever seen. What is the origin story? Is there a
place where you
come from and who are the Geniuses that?
This. Yeah. So I wrote about Bitcoins decentralized marketing team before where like Bitcoin has no Central marketing orders. Not propaganda arm of Bitcoin. It's like me and Pomp, and everyone else who talks about Bitcoin. I don't know who originated it. It's like the origin of memes. I mean sometimes you can find where I mean came from, but sometimes it just kind of like it came from nowhere. I'm not sure who the first person wasn't no one, I know has cleaned it which is insane because it's somebody should. And and you could you could be the first person who did this, right? Let's not like it's not like a wild thing.
And it but it's genius. It is like Bitcoin in so many ways is a religion and and this is just yet another like you know religious Mark. Basically you know this is the yarmulke, this is this is there anywhere that says hey I'm a part of this religion and you know putting it in the profile picture having it be slightly mysterious. So people don't know what it's for and then they ask and then making it me Bubble where we could all do it. I think, is, it was just brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant brilliant. Yeah, the spaces I mean memes are
Such an incredible part of how stuff is communicated nowadays, right? Like we saw like elections. It can people can be elected based on memes. Like, memes aren't just these funny things on like fortune or read it anymore. Like memes. Are the names are like the main Trend like my mom uses memes. Now she does it on my Facebook but you know, it's it's crazy. Like its narrative compression at its finest. It's taken a whole narrative and compressing it into one image. And I think that's why it's so powerful as a transmission. Yes, it's the most shareable viral thing you
And ooh right on the internet. And so it's like what, you know, memes are the packaging for ideas if you want to most efficiently package and idea, I mean is the best way. So I've joked about, we saw this thing called I think it's called like meme University or Ela University or something like that. And it basically they took the website of Lambda school and they just remade it for a school that would teach you how to do memes. It was a joke website, then it's not like a real course behind it. But I was like, you know, if there really should be a course that somebody should take
This is it. People what people that, if you could learn this, it's learning, you know, the native tongue of the internet and, you know, it's pretty important to be fluent in Internet nowadays. And so, I think, I think that's one where I'm, like, somebody really should create this. I have this slack channel that me and Ben do where we basically put out a challenge where we said every day. For 50 days, we're going to make a new meme because, you know, it's easy to spread these. But it's the act of actually making one is hard, it's telling, you know, telling a story telling a joke and the most efficient
Form and it's been so challenging to just do this every day for 50 days. It was kind of fun is my buddies over. At etoro Brad mitchelson really, really smart marketing guy him and I are buddies and what they did is they started to create gifts on so on giphy and give, he like that that's good. That gets pulled into like Facebook Messenger search engine, what her gifts. So I started to make I saw their strategy for etoro and I made it for myself so I took like a most popular Bitcoin memes and then wrapped it in my own black and white design to work in service like Dan held and you'd see
It's a black-and-white gifts and I have my logo watermark on there. So, like, you can kind of create meme factories is what I learned from that. Like, you can create like a meme Factory to use that to propagate content, and giphy was a really great way of doing it because it's plugged into so many different platforms versus like if you know, each one individually, like trying to create like an emoji, Which social platform would be tough. But like, if he gets pulled into all of them. Yeah, that's smart guy like
that. All right, we're about at the top of the hour. We want to go over one more idea.
Or what Sean,
I don't know if you have, if you have one that's burning, you could do it. Otherwise, I think we should wrap it up. Cool. Well yeah, I mean just my I think like closing thought of like the Creator economy stuff. I've been in Bitcoin for nine years and I've been a huge Fascination for me. I would say the Creator. Economy is not an equal Fascination but quickly becoming something very interesting. I think about it as like the monetization of all inhuman information, right? Like creators are just taking whatever knowledge. They
Locally putting that on the internet Distributing it in the monetizing that and what is the value of all that combined? I mean it's tens of trillions a hundred trillion, I don't know what it's worth but like for me I just kind of see this huge. I mean there's so many nice things if someone could write about like the there's a million things and it's very low or very low effort to find your MVP verses before you had to go buy a warehouse and start producing things you just produce content and if their content resonates and people, click and want.
Figure out what products you'd recommend for them, then you can go build your own products. So, I see kind of like a whole economy. Can a reorientation around content marketing and that being the top of funnel in like idea, generation for all future
products. Great. Well, what do you think, Sean or we?
Yeah, let's wrap it up. I like that one. That's I like the way you explain that because I think it it aligns with something, I believe, which is, when, when there's never been more information, it's all about who actually has a tension and the
Can I have a tension is whoever is putting out great content, consistently so great content once will get your attention once and then great content. Consistently will build trust which just says, look, it's too noisy. I'm just going to go to my sources, I like and and then those people then hold the keys and you know up till now that's been captured by the platform. So that's been true but YouTube still captured way more value and which captured way more value and Twitter capture way more value than the people on it. And that seems to be flipping where we're either.
New platforms are going to come out with a creators own it or the values going to accrue off platform in a bigger way than it did. Originally when it was like I think the value of crude like 99 1 99 percent to the platform 1% to the creators and I think that's that's going to flip closer to 5050 over time. Maybe Twitter is recognize this right with the super follows. We can have like subscription followers or people subscribe to like a premium set of tweets. You have mean Twitter, I think sees this coming, they see The Exodus of folks building that audience on Twitter.
The Exodus of all that monetization going to sub stack different. Bring that back in. Yeah, I think that's sort of just trading one master for another though, in a way where it's like as long as Twitter will put super follows there and then they'll take the cut they want and then as long as they're there, the button to pay for stuff, they get they'll just inch that cut from 10% to 15% to 20% to 50% over time. And and so I think, you know, the real answer here is, how do you build this independently? And I think, basically, that's the part of crypto, I'm most excited about is
People who are building you know social network that is open source that if it can get adoption and this is why I was interested in bit cloud is if it can get adoption, then that ratio will flip the the all the value will accrue to the creators and not to the core platform or protocol underneath. So that's what I'm excited about is. Like, that's the real disruption there.
Well, we appreciate you coming on Dan. It's I've been following you on Twitter now for a couple weeks since
Been talking about you and he's been saying that you were the guy to speak to and we appreciate
it. Yeah. So go get my follow. He's at Dan held on Twitter and. Yeah. All right. We'll see you. I'll see you later.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it. Like all Days on the Road, Less Traveled never looking back.
