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Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | Hey everyone, since recording this episode, a lot has happened with crypto and specifically
00:00:05.520 | BlockFi.
00:00:06.520 | I'm recording this on the morning of November 15, 2022, and after the downfall of the crypto
00:00:11.720 | exchange FTX, BlockFi put a hold on all customer withdrawals, leaving many people, myself included,
00:00:18.920 | with a lot of crypto on the platform.
00:00:21.120 | I am angry about the way this was all handled and communicated, and certainly not happy
00:00:26.400 | about the financial situation they've put me and many others in.
00:00:30.080 | I truly hope that they're able to find a way through all of this that results in everyone
00:00:34.480 | getting back their money, so obviously any recommendation you might hear for BlockFi
00:00:38.920 | in this episode should be ignored and considered outdated.
00:00:42.320 | A quick word from our sponsor today.
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00:02:16.920 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All the Hacks, a show about upgrading your
00:02:29.200 | life, money, and travel, all while spending less and saving more.
00:02:33.720 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and today I'm talking to Zach Prince, the co-founder and CEO of
00:02:38.920 | BlockFi.
00:02:39.920 | If you don't know BlockFi, they're a crypto-first banking platform where you can earn interest,
00:02:44.800 | borrow cash, and trade crypto all in one place.
00:02:48.020 | In our conversation, we not only discuss crypto things like earning 8.6% on your cash and
00:02:53.480 | how to think about holding crypto in your overall investment portfolio, but we also
00:02:57.480 | discuss Zach's favorite investing hacks, like how to use options to generate income.
00:03:03.160 | And before we jump in, if you're enjoying the show, I'd really love your help.
00:03:07.120 | If you could either pick your favorite episode and share it with a friend or leave a five-star
00:03:11.480 | review in the podcast app, I would really appreciate it.
00:03:14.820 | All right, let's get to it.
00:03:16.640 | Well, after one more quick thing.
00:03:18.600 | Chris Hutchins works at Wealthfront.
00:03:20.560 | All opinions expressed by Chris and his guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect
00:03:24.800 | the opinion of Wealthfront.
00:03:26.640 | This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment
00:03:30.680 | decisions.
00:03:31.680 | Zach, thanks for joining.
00:03:34.680 | Chris, pumped to be here, man.
00:03:36.320 | I'm excited to talk about hacks.
00:03:38.320 | Yeah.
00:03:39.320 | So before we jump in, could you give everyone a little background on yourself?
00:03:43.440 | How did you end up running BlockFi?
00:03:45.000 | Yeah, sure.
00:03:46.000 | I grew up in Texas and moved to New York City after I finished school.
00:03:51.200 | I've always worked at venture-backed technology companies.
00:03:53.880 | I was originally in the advertising technology sector and more recently, I've been in the
00:03:59.680 | fintech sector at a couple of online lending businesses prior to starting BlockFi.
00:04:06.120 | While I was at one of those online lending businesses, I got a ton of exposure to all
00:04:11.280 | things fintech.
00:04:12.280 | We were kind of like a data aggregator and technology provider and so I just saw so many
00:04:16.680 | interesting things happening in the ecosystem and I started writing a blog about whether
00:04:22.720 | or not people should be using robo-advisors or whether or not you should be investing
00:04:27.080 | in fractionalized real estate and nobody ever read it and podcasts weren't a thing yet,
00:04:32.360 | so I didn't have a cool podcast platform.
00:04:36.080 | But that experience led me to Bitcoin for the first time and I was basically yelling
00:04:43.880 | on this blog back in 2014 that just from a risk-return perspective, you should be buying
00:04:50.440 | a little bit of Bitcoin if you were young and had any amount of risk tolerance because
00:04:54.160 | it could potentially do 100x.
00:04:55.800 | And unfortunately, that kind of came true in early 2017 on the momentum of excitement
00:05:01.800 | from the price appreciation, I decided that I really wanted to get involved in the crypto
00:05:05.440 | space full-time and that desire led me to the idea for BlockFi, which originally was
00:05:12.540 | to build debt and credit products for the crypto ecosystem.
00:05:17.360 | And we've, from that starting point, expanded to where we are today, which I would describe
00:05:21.320 | as crypto-first banking solutions or crypto-first wealth management solutions, but yeah, that's
00:05:27.960 | how we got here.
00:05:28.960 | Yeah.
00:05:29.960 | So what made me reach out was I opened up a BlockFi interest account and right now,
00:05:34.960 | interest rates are kind of at all-time lows and kind of give people an idea of what it
00:05:39.360 | Yeah, sure.
00:05:40.360 | And it's 8.6% in an account that's liquid.
00:05:42.760 | So you can go in and out in a 48-hour window if you want, which is very different than
00:05:48.480 | a lot of other kind of online lending or private credit opportunities where sure, you might
00:05:53.440 | be able to get high single-digit yields, but you're dealing with something that's illiquid
00:05:56.860 | or on a much longer duration than the BlockFi interest account.
00:06:00.760 | But the way it came about is we started originally with our first product, which is enabling
00:06:07.120 | people to borrow dollars secured by the value of their cryptocurrency.
00:06:11.560 | And launching and starting to scale that product led us to the realization that there was a
00:06:15.720 | lot of borrowing demand for cryptocurrencies in the marketplace because prime brokers weren't
00:06:22.320 | supporting big trading firms that were getting active in the crypto market.
00:06:26.680 | And so we started lending cryptocurrencies to these big institutions and then we needed
00:06:32.200 | more and so we launched the interest account, initially just offering a yield on Bitcoin,
00:06:37.160 | Ethereum, and a couple of other cryptocurrencies.
00:06:40.200 | But then we quickly expanded that to include stablecoins, which are one-to-one interchangeable
00:06:44.420 | with dollars in a bank account.
00:06:45.960 | And now using the interest account, folks can get a high yield on all of those assets.
00:06:51.560 | So it's a 5% on Bitcoin, 4.5% on Ethereum, 8.6% on stablecoins, which are interchangeable
00:06:58.760 | one-to-one with dollars in a bank account.
00:07:02.160 | And the reason, often, the first question we get from folks who are like, "You're paying
00:07:06.600 | me 8.6% on cash, this is insane, why is this even possible?"
00:07:09.800 | Well, the fundamental reason why this is possible is that banks aren't active in the crypto
00:07:16.080 | space yet.
00:07:17.080 | The crypto space has experienced a ton of growth, there's been a ton of wealth creation,
00:07:22.600 | and there's also a lot of volatility.
00:07:24.920 | And all of those things combine to create a pretty large market of borrowing demand.
00:07:31.040 | And because banks are not actively lending into this space, and in general, the crypto
00:07:36.280 | world doesn't have access to traditional sources of capital, the cost of borrowing is high.
00:07:41.760 | And what we're doing with the BlockFi interest account is basically giving folks a really
00:07:45.720 | easy, seamless way to take advantage of that market dynamic and earn 8.6% on your cash,
00:07:55.360 | even if you don't want to buy Bitcoin.
00:07:56.360 | And then you can also, of course, buy Bitcoin on our platform and earn interest on that
00:08:00.000 | as well.
00:08:01.000 | But that's how it works.
00:08:02.000 | If anyone's used a fintech platform, they'll feel very familiar with how things work at
00:08:06.520 | BlockFi.
00:08:07.520 | You go through a quick KYC process, connect your bank account using Plaid, transfer some
00:08:11.080 | money in, and then the next morning you'll see your accrued interest, and once a month
00:08:15.160 | the interest becomes part of your balance.
00:08:17.160 | And it's a relatively straightforward user experience.
00:08:19.520 | There's a lot of fancy stuff that goes on in the background in terms of how the lending
00:08:23.200 | works and the risk management.
00:08:24.720 | I'm really happy to say that we've never lost a penny across any of the lending that we
00:08:28.880 | do at BlockFi.
00:08:29.880 | It's a very low risk type of lending where we're getting collateral for every loan that
00:08:35.200 | we're making on the platform.
00:08:36.320 | Yeah, that's the interest account.
00:08:37.960 | Yeah, I can attest to an easy process.
00:08:40.400 | I've signed up, I've put cash in there, and I've earned interest each month at a much
00:08:45.200 | higher rate.
00:08:46.200 | I think in the finance industry, there's always this trade-off that everyone talks about of
00:08:50.960 | risk and reward.
00:08:51.960 | 8.6% is a lot.
00:08:53.200 | Can you talk about the risks that someone might take putting money here versus leaving
00:08:57.720 | it in a bank account earning almost nothing?
00:09:00.240 | Yeah, there is a very important disclaimer, which is this is not a bank account, and as
00:09:05.560 | a result, it does not come with FDIC insurance.
00:09:10.840 | It's also not a securities account with CIPIC insurance.
00:09:15.800 | This is really from a, where does this fit in the spectrum of investing?
00:09:20.600 | I think it's closest to private credit opportunities or maybe real estate financing platforms.
00:09:28.320 | But the risk, in my mind, is much lower because similar to real estate, you're participating
00:09:35.040 | in something where there's an asset that's being provided as collateral for the loan.
00:09:40.120 | The big difference is just that the asset that we're financing at BlockFi and folks
00:09:43.940 | who are holding dollars on our platform are financing is a liquid asset.
00:09:48.920 | So you're basically taking part in a system that lends folks 50 cents on the dollar secured
00:09:53.320 | by their Bitcoin, and then BlockFi manages all of the risk management related to that
00:09:58.000 | in terms of if the Bitcoin price goes down, we're issuing margin calls or selling a little
00:10:02.140 | bit of the Bitcoin to make sure that there aren't any losses.
00:10:05.080 | Yeah.
00:10:06.080 | So can you just dive one level deeper?
00:10:07.720 | So if I'm putting money in my BlockFi interest account, you're loaning that money out, you
00:10:12.520 | said it's collateralized, like 50 cents on the dollar, somewhere in that ballpark.
00:10:16.500 | That means that someone borrowing has to put more money in than they're actually borrowing
00:10:21.960 | in dollars or in stablecoin?
00:10:24.000 | Yeah.
00:10:25.000 | And you can actually see this dynamic within your BlockFi account.
00:10:28.600 | So in the same account where you can earn 8.6%, if you're holding dollars in the account
00:10:35.040 | as stablecoins, you can also access our loans product where if you borrow dollars at a 50%
00:10:40.680 | LTV relative to your Bitcoin, so let's say you have one Bitcoin, it's around $55,000.
00:10:46.640 | So you could borrow up to $27,500 secured by that one Bitcoin.
00:10:52.840 | You would pay roughly 10% for that.
00:10:54.800 | What we're doing is charging one side 10, paying the other side 8.6, and then also managing
00:11:00.720 | a lot of just liquidity and kind of portfolio level risk.
00:11:05.240 | So for every $100 that comes in and is held in an interest account, we're not lending
00:11:10.440 | out 100, we're lending out 70 or 80.
00:11:14.960 | And the reason for that is that you want to make sure that you always have ample liquidity
00:11:18.560 | in the system to process withdrawals or originate new loans.
00:11:22.480 | And so there's a bit of, you know, complexity behind the scenes, but fundamentally that's
00:11:26.480 | how it works.
00:11:27.480 | And is your system fully automated such that if Bitcoin at three in the morning starts
00:11:32.840 | going down and the interest account holders are all worried, what's going to happen?
00:11:36.740 | Are you able to sell the assets that you have on collateral in real time or as things are
00:11:42.080 | falling if you need to, obviously you don't want to, but if you need to protect the people
00:11:46.840 | that have interest accounts?
00:11:47.840 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:48.840 | I mean, that's one of the unique things about the crypto market.
00:11:53.000 | I think one of the products that's relatively analogous to our loan product would be a margin
00:11:59.360 | account for securities or a securities backed loan where you have a bunch of shares of Amazon
00:12:05.280 | stock and you don't want to sell them.
00:12:07.120 | You borrow against the value of those shares.
00:12:10.040 | If Amazon stock goes down in value at a certain point, you're going to get a margin call from
00:12:14.720 | that broker that gave you the loan.
00:12:17.480 | The big difference is that in crypto, the market trades 24/7.
00:12:21.560 | So our system runs 24/7 and in that scenario where the price is falling at 3am, our system's
00:12:27.940 | working at 3am and it can issue margin calls and sell Bitcoin if it needs to.
00:12:32.920 | In the traditional market scenario, it's a little bit more risky in some ways because
00:12:38.240 | what happens is the market closes, Amazon releases earnings and whether those based
00:12:44.180 | on how those earnings do, and Amazon's a really large cap stock, so probably not the
00:12:47.920 | best example, but it releases earnings after hours, liquidity's thin.
00:12:51.920 | Let's say there's a big surprise up or down.
00:12:53.880 | By the time the market opens the next day, you might have gapped down pretty significantly
00:12:58.140 | by the time you can actually sell or do anything again.
00:13:01.080 | In crypto, it just runs 24/7.
00:13:03.080 | Yeah, that's cool.
00:13:04.720 | Now, in part of my diligence, and again, full disclosure, I'm a BlockFi customer, I noticed
00:13:09.960 | there are lots of other companies out there doing various versions of taking a stablecoin
00:13:15.200 | and earning return.
00:13:16.480 | Is there something different that BlockFi does that people should keep in mind if they're
00:13:20.200 | considering all of the alternatives?
00:13:22.440 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:23.960 | BlockFi is the only company that offers this type of functionality in the crypto ecosystem
00:13:30.800 | that is available to retail investors, domiciled and regulated in the US.
00:13:36.420 | So we're regulated like a fintech company, we have numerous licenses across the US.
00:13:42.320 | And that is led by a team of financial services professionals who come from precisely the
00:13:49.320 | backgrounds that you would want folks to come from if they're managing a platform like ours.
00:13:54.280 | If you get into the crypto world, there can be spectrums of shadiness, for lack of a better
00:14:00.080 | term.
00:14:01.080 | And there are some folks out there who cosmetically might look the same as BlockFi, offering you
00:14:06.780 | an interest rate on a certain asset.
00:14:09.220 | But they did an ICO, which was effectively an illegal securities offering, and they're
00:14:13.380 | domiciled in some foreign jurisdiction that doesn't have as strong of a rule of laws as
00:14:18.620 | the US.
00:14:19.620 | And then the last thing I would say is just our track record, we really invented a lot
00:14:23.940 | of this stuff in this market, we've been doing it the longest, and we've had perfect performance
00:14:28.860 | for our clients throughout our entire history.
00:14:31.660 | Within the crypto lending world, I would say that it's a very reasonable assessment to
00:14:37.500 | make that BlockFi is the safest bet for this type of activity.
00:14:42.620 | And then the last thing I would add is that we really pride ourselves on providing world-class
00:14:48.780 | client service.
00:14:49.780 | And so there'll never be a scenario with BlockFi where if you have a question or a concern,
00:14:57.180 | or you want to get in touch with us about anything, that you won't be able to really
00:15:00.260 | quickly.
00:15:01.260 | We have a phone number and really great response times on chat and email as well.
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00:18:11.300 | Yeah, I've heard people talking about how, "Oh, the rate might be higher with all these
00:18:16.260 | DeFi platforms."
00:18:17.260 | I assume that none of those come with customer service and liquidity and the structure and
00:18:21.760 | security of a company that's regulated in a modern first-world country.
00:18:26.100 | Yeah, that's right.
00:18:27.100 | And the rate is actually not higher unless you prescribe value to the tokens that are
00:18:32.900 | created by the DeFi protocol.
00:18:35.260 | The actual yield on your stablecoin will be much lower than 8.6%, but then these protocols
00:18:40.740 | created their own token, and they give you some of that token as rewards.
00:18:44.620 | And if you go and sell that, then maybe your all-in yield becomes higher.
00:18:49.060 | And I'm a big fan of DeFi.
00:18:50.460 | I wouldn't want to say anything negative about DeFi whatsoever, but there are some big differences,
00:18:55.380 | especially in times of market stress.
00:18:58.100 | And in times of market stress, companies like BlockFi have the ability to do things with
00:19:02.520 | our customers' interests at heart.
00:19:05.100 | We're structured in a way where our equity capital, which is very substantial, would
00:19:09.660 | take the first loss if there ever were any losses.
00:19:12.940 | And that's very different than a DeFi protocol.
00:19:15.900 | What's happened in times of market volatilities with some of these DeFi protocols is, whoops,
00:19:19.940 | the smart contract failed and everybody with a loan got liquidated, or people that were
00:19:23.780 | depositing had to take a haircut, and nobody cares.
00:19:27.300 | That sucks for you, Mr. Customer.
00:19:30.420 | That's just the polar opposite of how we view the world at BlockFi.
00:19:34.340 | Yeah.
00:19:35.340 | And you said you guys have a lot of equity capital.
00:19:36.740 | Can you give me a sense of how big is BlockFi the company right now, either from a fundraising,
00:19:41.660 | valuation, employees perspective?
00:19:43.540 | Yeah.
00:19:44.540 | So we're actually over 700 people now at the company.
00:19:47.820 | The most recent round of funding that we did was a $350 million Series D that was led by
00:19:53.980 | Tiger Global and DST and Bain Capital Ventures.
00:19:58.420 | And that round was done about six months after our Series C, which was a $150 million round
00:20:07.020 | that closed in Q3 of last year.
00:20:09.620 | So we've been on a great fundraising trajectory.
00:20:12.940 | We haven't had anyone tell us we're wrong.
00:20:15.000 | My co-founder has claimed that we're the fastest in-tech company to go from zero to a $3 billion
00:20:22.220 | valuation.
00:20:23.220 | So we're very fortunate and we've done really well in capital markets and just in terms
00:20:27.420 | of being able to build a large business really quickly.
00:20:30.580 | We talked a lot about the interest on stablecoin, something that's dollar-denominated and easily
00:20:35.740 | liquid, but holding another asset is part of an investment strategy.
00:20:41.140 | And I think it, while it might not seem like a hack, putting my money to work over the
00:20:45.180 | last 10, 15 years of savings has been how I saved all the money I have.
00:20:50.820 | And that's my investment portfolio.
00:20:52.300 | That's a big hack for me is just putting money in a market that earns.
00:20:56.120 | Given the state of crypto, an emerging asset class, how do you think about that as part
00:21:00.300 | of someone's investment portfolio?
00:21:01.620 | I mean, look, obviously it's a very personal question and it depends a lot on where folks
00:21:07.680 | are in their life and what their risk tolerance is and all of those typical kind of personal
00:21:12.860 | finance factors.
00:21:14.980 | But for me as someone that is relatively young, fortunate to be successful in my day job and
00:21:21.460 | have enough discretionary kind of income to invest in things like crypto has been the
00:21:27.380 | best investment that I've ever made.
00:21:29.580 | And it started out as 5% of my personal asset allocation, but because of the performance
00:21:38.440 | and also increasing conviction that I've had in the asset class, especially after I got
00:21:43.760 | involved in it full time, it's around 50% of my asset allocation now.
00:21:48.680 | And I think there are these kind of underlying trends in the crypto market that are, regardless
00:21:57.400 | of the day to day volatility of the market, Bitcoin can go up or down 10, 20% in a single
00:22:04.960 | But if you put that to the side for a second and you zoom out a little bit, this market
00:22:09.440 | has so much potential and I don't think that's changing anytime soon.
00:22:14.880 | And so what I tell folks that I recommend with crypto is invest an amount that you're
00:22:19.920 | comfortable with.
00:22:21.920 | Understand that you're making an investment for the long term.
00:22:25.240 | You're not turning into a day trader that's going to buy more or sell it tomorrow, depending
00:22:30.320 | on which way the wind is blowing in the crypto market.
00:22:33.940 | And you're probably going to be pretty happy.
00:22:35.440 | I think there's a very small number of days that someone could have possibly invested
00:22:40.840 | in Bitcoin and they're all probably in the last 45 days where you'd be down on it.
00:22:45.840 | If you bought it six months ago, you're up.
00:22:47.280 | If you bought it a year ago, you're up.
00:22:48.680 | If you bought it two or three or four years ago, you're up a lot.
00:22:52.560 | And Bitcoin in particular is one of these, in my opinion, genuinely unique assets because
00:22:58.880 | it is both a kind of store of value hedge against inflation like gold and a venture
00:23:06.660 | capital type growth play on a network.
00:23:09.240 | And this is a network that is attracting new users, making more connections into traditional
00:23:15.360 | systems and garnering more adoption every single day.
00:23:20.160 | And then there's a lot of other exciting things happening in crypto beyond Bitcoin.
00:23:26.240 | But I think that thesis and then when you take that thesis and you just compare it to
00:23:29.880 | the TAM of some of the things that could be disrupted, it becomes clear that this is still
00:23:34.520 | very early innings.
00:23:36.760 | And for me, those are the types of investments that I like.
00:23:39.800 | Ultimately, I think what you want in an investment is something that has a really big upside
00:23:43.440 | and not too much downside.
00:23:45.280 | I think Bitcoin kind of fits that mold perfectly.
00:23:48.000 | Yeah, my day job, I work at Wealthfront.
00:23:50.640 | We have an automated portfolio that we offer people to help them build their wealth.
00:23:55.800 | And we recently announced that cryptocurrency is something we're exploring bringing onto
00:23:59.640 | the platform.
00:24:00.640 | But when I talk to traditional financial planners and financial advisors, it seems like crypto
00:24:06.080 | is not something they're considering putting in the portfolios for their clients.
00:24:10.440 | How far out are we from mainstream investment kind of practice being including this asset
00:24:17.840 | class?
00:24:18.840 | I think the key qualifier there is investment practice.
00:24:22.240 | We're already well along the S-curve, I think, in terms of adoption of crypto.
00:24:28.760 | It's hard to get perfect data, but there's estimates that 10 to 15 percent of Americans
00:24:34.440 | own cryptocurrency.
00:24:35.440 | Well, only about half of Americans own investments.
00:24:39.340 | So out of your population that owns investments, you're already at 20 to 30 percent in the
00:24:46.960 | And so that's not nothing.
00:24:47.960 | That's not like a fringe thing off to the side that can just be completely written off.
00:24:54.840 | The establishment of financial management infrastructure, whether you're talking about banks or private
00:25:00.480 | wealth groups or financial advisors, these things take time.
00:25:04.560 | And I think that in 2017, we had a big run up, we had a lot of retail adoption, which
00:25:09.760 | is really cool because this thing really came about driven by retail, which is pretty unique.
00:25:16.320 | And then it cooled off and everyone was like, oh, yeah, maybe it's dead.
00:25:19.720 | Then COVID hit and Bitcoin went down a little bit.
00:25:23.180 | But then COVID highlighted for us how everything that's digital is preferred to its analog
00:25:29.080 | counterpart and how stores of value that can potentially retain or increase in times where
00:25:38.560 | we have a rapidly expanding money supply are important to have in a diversified investment
00:25:42.900 | portfolio.
00:25:43.900 | And Bitcoin just nails it on both of those points.
00:25:46.360 | So we come out of the financial craziness caused by COVID and Bitcoin does a 5x in six
00:25:53.560 | months and then everyone's like, OK, it's actually here.
00:25:56.480 | This is very real.
00:25:57.480 | So this is the first time that big institutions and the establishment is starting to say it's
00:26:02.640 | actually real.
00:26:03.640 | And they're all in the process of figuring out how to integrate it into what they do.
00:26:09.280 | You're seeing it with fintech companies like Square and PayPal and others.
00:26:14.480 | I'm a Wealthfront user and I'm really excited for the day that I can either just automatically
00:26:19.320 | or based on some configuration have Bitcoin as part of my portfolio on Wealthfront.
00:26:23.600 | I think we're going to get tremendous adoption on that.
00:26:27.440 | And that's part of the underlying trend that's going to drive the ecosystem forward.
00:26:33.440 | And ultimately, when you're dealing with something like Bitcoin, there's a finite supply.
00:26:37.080 | And if you get more adoption, there's only one kind of market impact that can have, which
00:26:41.840 | is that the price will likely be higher in the future than it is today.
00:26:46.240 | Do you think there's any truth to the idea that establishment finances, the traditional
00:26:51.640 | banks, they're not hyping and pushing and talking about crypto being part of everyone's
00:26:56.400 | portfolio because they're still a few years behind and being able to tap into the ecosystem
00:27:00.360 | themselves from a technology or infrastructure standpoint?
00:27:03.520 | I think that's the entirety of it.
00:27:05.400 | It's like a switch flipped.
00:27:06.400 | And as soon as there was a decision within some of the big banks that, yes, we are going
00:27:12.960 | to develop a crypto strategy, then the messaging flipped from, "Oh, this is a fraud and a scam.
00:27:18.560 | Don't pay attention.
00:27:19.560 | It's a bubble."
00:27:20.560 | The price target on Bitcoin is $400,000.
00:27:23.480 | We're working on a product to put it in our private wealth management portfolios.
00:27:27.720 | Come talk to us in six months.
00:27:29.720 | And that's literally happening in front of our eyes today.
00:27:32.480 | No, that's it.
00:27:33.480 | So, yeah, I think a hack is that you have these institutions that aren't necessarily
00:27:39.260 | publicly embracing it as much as they want to, but if you hear them in industry conversations,
00:27:46.080 | they're all in on it.
00:27:47.080 | They have huge desks working on it.
00:27:48.880 | So by the time they're tapped into the ecosystem, I have to assume they're going to be talking
00:27:54.480 | about it a lot more.
00:27:56.200 | And if you're a part of something before that kind of a moment happens, it usually is good
00:28:01.880 | for the people that were in early.
00:28:03.280 | Absolutely.
00:28:04.280 | Yeah.
00:28:05.280 | So we're talking about traditional finance, traditional investing.
00:28:07.240 | I'll deviate for a moment from crypto and ask, you've been in this industry.
00:28:11.440 | Are there things, hacks, optimizations when it comes to investing that you think people
00:28:16.460 | should be thinking about outside of crypto?
00:28:18.680 | I'm a big fan of Wealthfront.
00:28:21.160 | I basically, outside of crypto, have a part of my portfolio that's just diversified across
00:28:28.360 | stocks and bonds and auto rebalanced, and I do all of that on Wealthfront.
00:28:32.360 | I have a part of it where I more actively invest in tech stocks and do other things,
00:28:37.840 | which I'll talk about.
00:28:38.840 | And then I do a little bit in private equity and real estate.
00:28:42.600 | One of the things that I think, if people have the time and the inclination, can be
00:28:47.840 | really valuable and is a total hack, is just getting comfortable with options and learning
00:28:53.620 | how you can increase your returns from a position, either before you get into it or while you
00:29:04.480 | have it, just by selling options.
00:29:07.700 | So I'll give you two examples.
00:29:10.300 | If you've said to yourself, "I'd like to buy XYZ stock," one thing you could do is just
00:29:16.160 | go buy it.
00:29:17.160 | Another thing you could do is you could sell a put at or above the current price that the
00:29:22.720 | stock is trading at, and then you collect a premium.
00:29:26.840 | So you're basically decreasing your cost basis on the stock by getting into owning it that
00:29:32.480 | way instead of just buying it outright.
00:29:34.960 | Similarly...
00:29:35.960 | And just for someone who doesn't know what a put is, when you're selling a put, what
00:29:39.200 | are you doing?
00:29:40.200 | When you're selling a put, you are selling the right to someone else to deliver a stock
00:29:48.520 | to you at the price on the put.
00:29:51.700 | So I can say, "I want to buy Amazon stock."
00:29:55.960 | And I could say, "I want to buy it at this price."
00:29:58.880 | And someone will actually pay me to say, "In the future, I want to buy it."
00:30:04.000 | Exactly.
00:30:05.000 | Instead of me buying it, I can get paid and then buy it later.
00:30:09.000 | Do you always get to buy it?
00:30:10.120 | Is it only if the price goes up or down or what are you giving up?
00:30:15.760 | You're giving up the certainty of owning it now.
00:30:19.480 | That's basically what you're giving up.
00:30:22.620 | So let's say Amazon is trading at $100 and you want to sell the put at $105.
00:30:29.520 | So there's probably a pretty good chance that as long as Amazon doesn't go up above $105
00:30:35.800 | between today and the expiration of the option, that you're going to end up buying it.
00:30:42.040 | And you might get paid for selling that Amazon put at $105, $7.
00:30:46.520 | Your effective cost basis on the Amazon stock, assuming you get ownership of it, would be
00:30:52.640 | like $98 instead of $100.
00:30:54.640 | So you got a deal just by giving up the need to get it right now.
00:30:58.760 | Exactly.
00:30:59.760 | You're basically using time and volatility and your willingness as a market participant
00:31:03.760 | to be a certain kind of way for a long period of time up.
00:31:10.800 | And someone else who might be more, they might be looking to hedge or they might be a little
00:31:15.360 | bit of a faster mover in the markets, they're paying you for that optionality that you're
00:31:20.040 | giving them.
00:31:21.040 | And then similarly, once you own stocks, you can sell out of the money calls on them and
00:31:24.560 | you give up a little bit of the upside, but you also create some income.
00:31:27.280 | And as long as you do these things in the right way, based on your objectives, I think
00:31:33.840 | people can pick up an extra 5% to 15% a year on top of whatever their general portfolio
00:31:39.760 | performance would have been.
00:31:41.480 | And for the second example, that would be, "I own a stock.
00:31:45.320 | I want to sell it, but I'm not going to sell it today.
00:31:48.080 | I'm going to sell a call that means somebody can buy it from me in the future.
00:31:52.400 | And by letting that time go on, I get a better price, or at least I get income now.
00:31:57.960 | I might not get a better price in the future, but I'll get income now."
00:32:02.040 | Exactly.
00:32:03.040 | So let's say you work at a company that went public and you're holding a ton of company
00:32:07.160 | stock and you're like, "I want to get rid of this over the next 12 months or some of
00:32:11.280 | You could just be earning money while you're waiting.
00:32:13.360 | And unless you have an urgent need to sell it today, this could just be like a passive
00:32:17.000 | income stream.
00:32:18.120 | Sell the calls all day.
00:32:19.320 | Yeah, that's great.
00:32:21.560 | Anything else in that space?
00:32:22.840 | Wealthfront's a great hack.
00:32:23.840 | I used to play the points game.
00:32:25.220 | There's so much stuff you can do with a good credit score.
00:32:27.120 | Maybe the big hack is just focus on getting a good credit score if you don't have one
00:32:31.840 | And then you can monetize that in all kinds of ways over time.
00:32:34.800 | Yeah.
00:32:35.800 | I was blown away.
00:32:36.800 | I drove a car that was a 2003 for almost 12, 15 years, and then I was like, "Oh, I got
00:32:41.240 | to buy a new car."
00:32:42.240 | And things had changed.
00:32:43.360 | I was like, "Wow, if you have a good credit score, maybe the car manufacturer has a great
00:32:47.760 | deal right now where it's 0% financing if you have a good credit score."
00:32:51.400 | And not, I shopped all these local credit unions, and I want to say three, four years
00:32:56.200 | ago, we ended up getting 0.99% APR, which is an interest rate that I don't even know
00:33:02.600 | how that's possible, but I know that they had credit score tiers, and if you didn't
00:33:06.120 | get the right credit score, you were getting a much worse rate.
00:33:09.160 | Focus on your credit score.
00:33:10.160 | If you're out there, you're under the age of 25, and you haven't figured this one out
00:33:13.400 | yet, just create a Credit Karma account, know what your credit score is, and do the stuff
00:33:16.960 | you need to do to get north of 680.
00:33:19.920 | Yeah.
00:33:20.920 | Let's do it.
00:33:22.280 | Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact, and Trade Coffee is a great addition
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00:33:53.040 | Sign up for a subscription or try one of their starter packs today.
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00:34:06.520 | from Drink Coffee Do Stuff in Tahoe, it's called Bark the Moon, and it's so delicious.
00:34:12.600 | So jumpstart this year by signing up for a Trade subscription.
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00:34:23.600 | That's allthehacks.com/trade for a free bag with select subscription plans, allthehacks.com/trade.
00:34:33.440 | Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to Chef David Chang about leveling up your
00:34:38.320 | cooking at home?
00:34:39.700 | If not, definitely go back and give it a listen, but one of his top hacks was using the microwave
00:34:44.720 | more.
00:34:45.720 | I have to admit, I was a skeptic at first, but after getting a full set of microwave
00:34:49.840 | cookware from Anyday, I'm a total convert, and I'm excited to partner with them for this
00:34:54.440 | episode.
00:34:55.440 | Anyday is glass cookware specifically designed to make delicious food from scratch in the
00:34:59.920 | microwave, and honestly, using it feels like a kitchen cheat code because it speeds up
00:35:05.280 | and simplifies the process so much.
00:35:07.880 | The cookware is 100% plastic-free, and you can cook, serve, store, and reheat all in
00:35:13.440 | the same dish that happens to be dishwasher, freezer, and oven safe too.
00:35:18.200 | If you need a recipe suggestion to kick off your Anyday adventure, I highly recommend
00:35:22.680 | David Chang's Salmon Rice.
00:35:24.440 | It is so good.
00:35:26.640 | If you haven't checked out the Matte Black Ayo collection they launched last year, you
00:35:31.000 | have to check it out.
00:35:33.000 | To get 15% off our new favorite cookware, go to allthehacks.com/anyday.
00:35:38.800 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/anyday for 15% off.
00:35:46.160 | I just want to thank you, Quick, for listening to and supporting the show.
00:35:49.980 | Your support is what keeps this show going.
00:35:52.740 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to
00:35:57.800 | allthehacks.com/deals, so please consider supporting those who support us.
00:36:04.000 | You mentioned earlier you had this blog where you were sharing all these ideas before you
00:36:07.800 | started BlockFi, things like fractional real estate.
00:36:11.280 | Anything back then that you thought was really interesting that you ever thought, "Gosh,
00:36:14.520 | why is no one picking up on this?
00:36:15.640 | This is so cool"?
00:36:16.640 | I mean, buying crypto was a big one.
00:36:18.760 | This was back in 2014, so I was like, "Phew, more people should be buying Bitcoin."
00:36:22.480 | I also wrote about a thing on there.
00:36:24.360 | This is kind of more of a novelty at this point, but it was called Billshark.
00:36:27.720 | Yeah.
00:36:28.720 | Basically, it's these people that you could pay to call the phone and cable company on
00:36:33.560 | your behalf and just tell them you needed a better deal, and they would take 20% of
00:36:38.060 | however much they saved you or something.
00:36:39.760 | I thought that was hilarious.
00:36:40.760 | I don't think it's around anymore.
00:36:41.760 | It's probably not around.
00:36:42.760 | No, no.
00:36:43.760 | There's a company out there.
00:36:45.280 | I think Billshark might still be around.
00:36:46.680 | Really?
00:36:47.680 | I think there's a company called Trim that does this.
00:36:49.120 | I'll put a link to whatever the right company is in the show notes and everything else we've
00:36:52.600 | talked about.
00:36:53.600 | But this is a thing, and if you want to take the time to do it, you can call Comcast every
00:36:57.280 | 12 months and say, "Hey, I'm going to leave if you don't give me a better price," and
00:37:01.560 | you could do that.
00:37:02.680 | Or there's companies that will do it, and not only will they save you the time, but
00:37:06.640 | you have to assume that someone who's living is calling Comcast to get a better deal, knows
00:37:10.840 | how to do it better than you do.
00:37:12.320 | So it's just what do you want to spend time in your life, and what do you want to outsource
00:37:15.320 | so you don't have to think about it?
00:37:16.360 | I think that's it.
00:37:17.360 | I think those are the biggest things.
00:37:19.240 | To come back briefly to crypto, you mentioned you used to play the points game, and you
00:37:25.160 | guys have a credit card coming out.
00:37:26.480 | I know because I've been doing everything I can to move up the list.
00:37:29.600 | Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:37:31.560 | Yeah, sure.
00:37:32.560 | We're launching the world's first Bitcoin rewards credit card.
00:37:34.720 | It's going to start rolling out this quarter to folks on the waiting list.
00:37:39.680 | The card has a 1.5% base cash back rate on every purchase, which we automatically convert
00:37:47.120 | to Bitcoin and move into your BlockFi account where you can earn interest on a trade, get
00:37:51.960 | a loan secured by it, et cetera.
00:37:54.000 | In addition to that base cash back rate, we're giving folks a 3.5% cash back rate for one
00:38:00.600 | quarter in their first year, and there are other benefits on our platform for cardholders.
00:38:06.600 | So cardholders will earn an extra 2% on their stable coin balances at BlockFi.
00:38:12.640 | They'll get a rebate on any trading volume that they do of 25 bips, and they also get
00:38:18.040 | a higher refer a friend bonus of $50 instead of the normal 20 for anyone that they tell
00:38:23.760 | about BlockFi.
00:38:24.760 | So we're really excited about it.
00:38:26.480 | We think that there's a lot of folks that have bought Bitcoin and become very excited
00:38:32.960 | by it, who just want ways to earn more all the time and integrate.
00:38:38.200 | That's the thesis for this show is I'm on this quest.
00:38:41.320 | All I want is more.
00:38:42.520 | How do I get the most out of spending?
00:38:44.040 | How do I get the most out of savings?
00:38:47.040 | And look, if this card would have been out at any point in time in the past and you were
00:38:51.200 | earning Bitcoin, you would have earned way more in rewards at the end of the day by just
00:38:56.020 | auto-converting it into Bitcoin, and then on top of that, getting interest on the Bitcoin
00:39:00.160 | in your BlockFi account than any other rewards card.
00:39:02.960 | It would blow everything else completely out of the water in terms of value that you get.
00:39:07.800 | But we also think it's an exciting moment for the industry.
00:39:11.720 | Another part of this mega trend of integration into the traditional financial system and
00:39:15.840 | more people getting access.
00:39:17.120 | And we think it's a product that will hopefully reduce the risk and complexity of someone
00:39:22.320 | that hasn't bought any Bitcoin yet, getting their hands on Bitcoin for the first time
00:39:27.040 | in a way that they're familiar with.
00:39:29.040 | Everyone, just about everyone, if you don't, you're living under a rock.
00:39:32.200 | Everyone knows how to earn rewards on a credit card.
00:39:34.800 | And so it's a really familiar and unintimidating way to get some Bitcoin.
00:39:39.080 | Yeah.
00:39:40.080 | I think one thing I regret, I searched my history before this for all my emails from
00:39:44.600 | Coinbase, and I looked back and I was like, "Man, in 2013, I bought 30 Bitcoins?"
00:39:51.200 | And then I'm like, "Ooh, in 2014, I also sold 29 Bitcoins."
00:39:56.300 | And I felt like a hero making 30% return in one year.
00:40:00.200 | And then throughout the years, I found random ways to buy things for fun with Bitcoin, and
00:40:05.040 | I never replenished it.
00:40:06.800 | And so it just seemed like it never made sense to go buy $5 of Bitcoin today, $50 of Bitcoin
00:40:12.320 | tomorrow.
00:40:13.320 | The other thing I'm really interested in this card is it automates something that you want
00:40:17.040 | to do, but you don't want to think about every day.
00:40:19.280 | And I think it would be really cool, whatever you want to save in.
00:40:21.960 | Obviously, this isn't what you're building, but if you could just automatically have all
00:40:26.440 | of your excess cash, excess savings, credit card points, go into some predetermined formula
00:40:32.320 | that, "I want to every month buy $100 of Bitcoin.
00:40:35.600 | I want to save $20 towards this vacation.
00:40:39.040 | I want to put $200 towards my kid's college fund.
00:40:42.280 | I recently launched a service at Wealthfront called Autopilot where you can automatically
00:40:46.560 | save to all these destinations."
00:40:48.440 | It would be so cool if you could tap that in, do it over the blockchain, save to whatever
00:40:52.960 | you want, whether it's crypto or a college fund.
00:40:55.440 | That's my dream credit card.
00:40:57.120 | But this seems to be the first credit card that comes close, and I'm very excited to
00:41:00.960 | be high on the wait list.
00:41:02.240 | Yeah.
00:41:03.240 | Hearing you talk, it made me think of that expression from Dollar Shave Club, "Shave
00:41:08.580 | money, shave time."
00:41:10.320 | I think at the end of the day, that's what it's ultimately all about.
00:41:13.040 | There's stuff you can do in the financial world and with hacks for fun, but I think
00:41:18.160 | we all hit certain points in our life or just in general have a desire to reduce complexity
00:41:26.000 | and just set things up, know that it's running, and not have to think about it or take action
00:41:34.040 | to keep whatever plan you're doing in motion.
00:41:37.120 | And I think that that type of tool that you just described is fantastic.
00:41:40.440 | It's clearly a big hack.
00:41:43.320 | You just got to get the Bitcoin allocation in there.
00:41:45.040 | I know.
00:41:46.040 | But automation is such a hack.
00:41:47.400 | The more people that have to wait every month and decide to save versus set it on recurring
00:41:51.880 | transfers.
00:41:52.880 | I know that's something you guys support.
00:41:53.880 | I can make recurring buys.
00:41:55.700 | And if you want to invest in Bitcoin and you don't want to think about it, you could just
00:41:58.360 | set that up.
00:42:00.000 | Precisely.
00:42:01.000 | So we talked about Bitcoin a lot.
00:42:03.760 | We talked about crypto as a category.
00:42:05.840 | There's all these other things outside of stablecoin.
00:42:08.560 | There's Ethereum and there's just millions of other coins with totally different names.
00:42:12.960 | Some that sound like toys, some that sound like a kid's game, some that sound more serious.
00:42:17.320 | Dogecoin's been wild in the news.
00:42:19.760 | People have been talking about it like it's the craziest thing.
00:42:22.800 | When you talk about crypto and you talk about investing in the market, are you talking about
00:42:26.680 | Bitcoin?
00:42:27.680 | Are you talking about everything else?
00:42:28.720 | How should someone think about all the things as they're thinking about it as a place to
00:42:32.840 | invest, as a place to explore?
00:42:34.800 | Yeah, look, there's a lot going on in the crypto world.
00:42:37.960 | The mental model that I have for things is that you've got the store value kind of Bitcoin
00:42:44.360 | category of crypto, and there's Bitcoin, which is the clear leader in a couple copycats.
00:42:50.480 | You've got a category of protocols, which was really started by Ethereum, and the idea
00:42:55.880 | there is that you can make a blockchain a little bit more like an iPhone, where there's
00:43:01.080 | also a capacity to build apps on top of it.
00:43:04.480 | And you've got a whole category of folks like that.
00:43:07.080 | And then you're also starting to see as a subcategory, some of the first applications
00:43:11.560 | that are really catching on.
00:43:12.720 | And that's where things like NFTs are coming from.
00:43:15.480 | But when I think of crypto and the investment opportunities that come from it, I would think
00:43:18.480 | of buying Ethereum tokens as a play on that adoption that these applications that are
00:43:25.000 | built on top of Ethereum are going to get.
00:43:27.040 | And then you have a third category, which is like traditional assets being tokenized.
00:43:32.160 | And in that third category, the big thing today is stable coins.
00:43:35.960 | There's really two interesting things you can do with stable coins.
00:43:38.840 | One is use them as a vehicle to earn a yield, a really safe yield in this crypto world that
00:43:43.600 | doesn't have access to bank financing yet.
00:43:45.800 | And then the other thing is you can make cross-border payments dramatically more easily than you
00:43:52.280 | can using the traditional system, because in crypto land, there's no concept of, oh,
00:43:57.680 | there's a border here in between the US and Mexico.
00:44:00.200 | It's just like the email just goes through, you know, just goes through when you send
00:44:03.240 | it to someone else.
00:44:04.280 | So those are the three buckets.
00:44:05.840 | My personal crypto portfolio is as follows.
00:44:09.640 | I have 90% Bitcoin, seven, maybe 8% Ethereum, and then I own a little bit of Solana, which
00:44:20.640 | is basically the up-and-coming Ethereum competitor.
00:44:24.800 | So if you-
00:44:25.800 | Kind of hedge.
00:44:26.800 | If Ethereum doesn't work out, you've got the backup.
00:44:29.080 | It's a little bit of a hedge, but it's all about risk tolerance.
00:44:32.320 | I haven't done anything with Dogecoin or NFTs because I'm not really a meme stock, time
00:44:39.800 | the markets kind of person.
00:44:41.640 | I like buying stuff-
00:44:42.640 | Me either.
00:44:43.640 | I like buying stuff that I can have a long-term view on and not put myself in a position where
00:44:47.840 | I might feel like I need to day trade it.
00:44:49.760 | That's what I do.
00:44:50.760 | Yeah.
00:44:51.760 | And I think one interesting thing was if you were around 20 years ago and saw what was
00:44:56.320 | going on with the internet and you're like, "Wow, this is the future.
00:44:59.320 | I think everything will be online," there was not an easy way to make an obvious bet
00:45:04.000 | on, "I'm going to invest in the internet."
00:45:06.240 | There wasn't an option.
00:45:07.400 | What's happening on Ethereum, the kinds of software getting built on top of it and programs,
00:45:12.240 | is buying Ethereum, the token, effectively a way to bet on that whole network being the
00:45:19.600 | way we do lots of things on the internet?
00:45:22.560 | Similar to how mobile brought about this whole world of apps and everything, and can the
00:45:27.300 | blockchain with Ethereum do that?
00:45:29.640 | And if so, is buying Ethereum tokens the way to bet on things in the future happening on
00:45:34.840 | the blockchain?
00:45:35.840 | I think so.
00:45:36.840 | I think it's the best way I can think of.
00:45:39.640 | I don't know of a better way to holistically express that view than buying Ethereum.
00:45:45.600 | Ethereum is like oil meets stock in the company that makes the network, but it's definitely
00:45:52.840 | not stock and it's also not precisely oil.
00:45:55.960 | So it's like in between those two things, but I do think it would be the thing to buy
00:46:01.800 | if you want to express a view with an investment that, yes, these applications built on top
00:46:08.240 | of blockchain networks are going to continue to expand and gain adoption.
00:46:12.980 | I think Ethereum is the way to play that.
00:46:15.800 | And I think that's something that a lot of trends people see, there's not an easy way
00:46:19.840 | to bet on them.
00:46:20.840 | If you thought mobile was cool, yeah, you could bet on Apple, but who knew that there'd
00:46:24.920 | be all these companies that are monetizing these apps and Instagram would be huge and
00:46:29.080 | WhatsApp would be huge.
00:46:30.280 | There's too many things to bet on.
00:46:31.600 | And this is one of the first times in my kind of career/life that I've said, wow, this thing
00:46:36.560 | I think could be really powerful.
00:46:38.440 | And there's actually a way that a regular person could invest $1 in, and you don't have
00:46:43.800 | to be a venture capitalist to invest in the company.
00:46:46.200 | And I think who knows what the future holds, but the sheer fact that you can participate
00:46:50.960 | in it with any amount of money, I think is something that hasn't happened in the past
00:46:54.680 | and I'm pretty excited about.
00:46:55.680 | It's really, really powerful.
00:46:56.760 | And I would add globally, it's not just America, China, Europe, Africa, like literally this
00:47:04.140 | thing is open like the internet.
00:47:06.080 | And so I think that's also really powerful and frequently underestimated because we're
00:47:10.640 | so used to just thinking of things in our U.S. centric view or folks in other countries
00:47:16.600 | are used to thinking about their market, but this is really a global market and so that's
00:47:20.440 | pretty powerful.
00:47:21.440 | Yeah.
00:47:22.440 | I think that's amazing.
00:47:23.440 | Thank you so much for joining me.
00:47:25.300 | Where can people find out more about you and BlockFi online?
00:47:29.240 | Thanks for having me, Chris.
00:47:30.240 | We're pretty easy to find, blockfi.com is our website.
00:47:32.720 | Like I mentioned earlier, we really love hearing from folks, so don't hesitate to reach out
00:47:36.720 | to us or give us a call.
00:47:38.320 | I'm on Twitter.
00:47:39.380 | My handle is @BlockFiZach.
00:47:41.240 | I'm usually pretty good about responding to DMs and I also like hearing from folks personally,
00:47:47.200 | so don't hesitate to follow me or shoot me a note on Twitter.
00:47:50.760 | Cool.
00:47:51.760 | Thank you so much and have a great day.
00:47:53.240 | Thanks, Chris.
00:47:54.240 | I'm a big fan of BlockFi, so I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.
00:47:59.960 | And thank you so much for listening.
00:48:02.220 | As always, you can reach me at Chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.
00:48:07.200 | And if you're enjoying this show, please consider sharing it to anyone else you think might
00:48:11.600 | enjoy it or leave us a rating and review in the podcast app.
00:48:15.680 | That's all for now, see you next time.
00:48:31.640 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.
00:48:36.220 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.
00:48:40.040 | It's called the Personal Finance Podcast, and it's much more about building generational
00:48:44.380 | wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is about clipping coupons
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