Do more together this holiday in a new Chevy. Take on more adventure in the strong and capable Chevy Silverado. More confidence in the Chevy Equinox. Winner of the J.D. Power Award for initial quality among compact SUVs two years running. And more value in the all-new Chevy Trax with an available 11-inch diagonal touchscreen.

Bring the holidays together in a new Chevy. Click to learn more. Chevrolet. Together, let's drive. For J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Initial Quality Study Award information, visit JDPower.com/awards. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets. I am your host. Today on the show, I want to share with you why I was wrong about Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been a subject that I've probably rather obviously avoided here on Radical Personal Finance. It was not my intention to avoid this subject. After all, in some ways, I'm the kind of person who is very well suited to be a Bitcoin enthusiast.

What is more radical in personal finance than pursuing new forms of monetary value, new markets, etc.? But it's something that I have generally avoided. I've answered a few questions here and there when people call in with Q&A shows. And there's a reason for that. And I want to articulate that reason for you, partly for my own personal accountability.

I believe that it's very important for me to be honest with you, but partly because I'm seeking to learn the lessons from my mistakes so that I don't repeat them in the future. I genuinely believe that sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. I genuinely believe that. I do not believe that there is any shame in being wrong, which is a little bit ironic as I elaborate on why I was wrong about Bitcoin.

I don't believe there's any shame in being wrong. However, if you're going to gain the most value from your mistakes, it's good to analyze them and try to figure out why you were wrong. So whenever you're wrong about something, try to pause for a moment and figure out why was I wrong?

Why did I get that wrong? Why did I miss that? And then, hopefully, the next time either the same circumstances present themselves or what's more likely a set of rhyming circumstances present themselves, you'll be ready to notice the patterns. You'll be able to identify the errors that you previously committed and keep yourself from committing those errors again.

So let's talk about Bitcoin. The reason I have often avoided talking about Bitcoin is that I'm not able to articulate firmly, clearly, and comprehensively how Bitcoin works, what Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency is, and give good arguments and reasons for my own predictions in the marketplace. Put simply, the reason that I have been wrong about Bitcoin is that I have been scared to be wrong publicly.

I take a great deal of pride, personal pride, and care with trying to get as close to being right on as many things as possible as I'm capable of being. And so I try not to simply shoot off my mouth without thought, without research, etc. And the whole phenomenon of cryptocurrencies generally, Bitcoin specifically, etc., is one that has been hard for me to trace.

And so I've pulled back. I've hesitated. I've hesitated in my own personal involvement in the marketplace, and I've hesitated to talk about it publicly. But I realized something this past weekend that has really impacted my thinking the more that I personally consider it. And it's a simple truth that I think is true, and it's brought me a little bit more personal freedom in my own thinking, and it's somewhat dramatic, or at least internally dramatic for me.

I struggle to talk about Bitcoin because I cannot comprehensively define, explain, and defend many of the core arguments of Bitcoin enthusiasts. I find myself arguing the point back and forth and back and forth and seeing both sides, or what is more common, multiple sides of an argument. But I was talking with somebody this last weekend.

I was in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, right next to Cancun, Mexico, at the Nomad Capitalist live event. We were talking about Bitcoin, currencies, etc. And by the way, I am specifically recording this episode of the podcast on May 20, 2021, a day after which Bitcoin, basically within a couple of days, a day, Bitcoin plummeted from something like $58,000 US dollars fiat per coin down to $30,000 fiat per coin at its lowest.

Dramatic decline in prices. And so we're talking about this. And the thing that makes me very nervous about talking about money is that so much in our world seems to be disconnected from arguments that make sense. And I was thinking about this this past weekend as I talked with a number of different people, but specifically I was talking with a man, my Czech is not good enough to pronounce his last name, but Vít is his name, President Vít, who is the president of a brand new country that he started called Liberland.

I have an interview with him recorded. I'll release it into the podcast feed soon. But I met him and I was talking with him about his new country. And I realized that I went through the same basic thinking on Liberland as I did about Bitcoin in my own thinking.

I first heard of the Liberland project a couple of years ago. Basically, the idea is can we start a new country where people who are interested in liberty come together and work together to build a new country? And Liberland, Vít, staked his claim on a little piece of land on the border between Serbia and Croatia, a very interesting little piece of land that's not claimed by either of those nations, basically a small piece of land that's available.

And I heard about the project and I laughed it off. I thought, I didn't, not overtly, but I just thought, come on, it's not going to work. Tiny little piece of land, island between Serbia and Croatia, you know, it's not going to work. And then all of a sudden I found myself this past Wednesday night sitting next to Vít and talking with him about Liberland.

And all of a sudden I found myself believing in the possibilities of a project like Liberland. And that change in belief was subtle but quite quick. And I realized that Vít believes in his project. And because he believes in his project, he has brought himself to a place of actually building a new country.

And I think there is more than a 50% chance that in the long term he could succeed. Now, it's of course a project in its infancy, but what struck me is that he believes in the idea that things could be different. And because he believes in the idea that things can be different, he's taking the actions that are going to make things different.

And in the fullness of time, there's a decent chance that things could actually be different. And what struck me was here I am in probably extraordinarily broad alignment with Vít's personal philosophies. I mean, the story is funny. He read The Law by Frederick Bastiat when he was younger and he thought, you know what, somebody should do this and somebody should build a country and he did it.

And so here I am deeply aligned with somebody ideologically and yet I didn't just rush to get involved a couple years ago when I first heard about the project. Instead, I've waited. Now, of course, it's a project still in its infancy, but I'm not going to wait any more.

But realize, like, here's somebody who actually believes it and like I'm starting to believe it too. And maybe it is possible. After all, why isn't, why couldn't it be possible? Why shouldn't it be possible? In yesterday's podcast, I spoke extensively about all the amazing attributes of the modern world and I realized, like, yeah, we live in this world.

Why shouldn't it be possible? The idea of starting a new country is not new to me. I've read a number of years ago, I read James Wesley Rawls' book called The Land of Promise. It wasn't a really well-written book, but it was a book with an interesting idea. It was basically a bunch of liberty-oriented, in his case, Christian religious conservatives come together and start a country.

And the concept fascinates me and I look at it and say, well, why not? Why not? So now back to Bitcoin. I have a certain ideological perspective, my personal opinions about the way that things like money should work. For example, they're fairly simple. They would reflect to some degree the Austrian position.

For example, I believe that currencies and money should compete. I believe that anybody who wants to create money should be able to create money. And what gives money its value is people's willingness to take it, to accept it, to accept a certain thing for the value of that money.

And so I – yeah, so there's no reason why I think there should be lots and lots of currencies that exist based on all kinds of different things. That would be kind of the free market position on money, more of the traditionally associated with the Austrian economics position on money.

And I believe that. And if you were to start describing certain components of money, things that I would find really interesting, Bitcoin solves a lot of those things really effectively. Really – it really does. It solves a lot of those things really effectively. And so why did I not jump on the bandwagon when I first heard about Bitcoin?

Well, two reasons, and I'm kind of skirting around these. I'll state them clearly in just a moment. But one of the reasons is simply that I didn't believe. I didn't believe that change was possible. And I don't know why I often don't believe that change is possible. Maybe it's cynical.

I try to think of myself as a positive person. I try to believe that change is possible. I genuinely do believe that change is possible in many components. But then there are some things that are just beyond your ability to believe that something different is possible. You look at it and you think, "Well, no, it's not possible for this to be different.

Change is not possible." Yesterday I talked about the prison bars that we build in our minds. And then once you realize it's all in your minds, all of a sudden you're set free. Well, it really is like that. Some of us believe that change is fundamentally not possible. And yet, why should it not be possible?

Why should it not be possible? Well, it's a matter of belief. It's a matter of transfer of belief, right? The ability of one person to influence another and say, "Yeah, it really is possible." Something really can change. There's a profound difference to the kind of person who believes that something can be different, something can change, versus the kind of person who draws back and cynically says, "No, it'll never be different.

It'll never change." So there are two reasons that I've identified thus far why I missed the massive growth of Bitcoin. And by the way, I think that this is the kind of question that you should ask financial advisors. I try to probe myself and then share with you what I learn.

But this is, I think, a really important thing because the second one is going to affect the financial industry broadly. You should ask people, "Why did you miss this particular growth? Were you involved?" Everyone says, "Oh, you should ask your financial advisor, 'What do you invest in? What do you do?'" Well, I think that you should pay a lot of attention to whether or not people missed the tremendous growth of Bitcoin.

One of the things that's making me extraordinarily happy is seeing how many ordinary, everyday people, without any particular special investment knowledge or expertise, have become multi-millionaires with Bitcoin. I have a number of them in the listening audience. I've done consulting work for a number of these individuals. And I am so thrilled that the people who have benefited the most from Bitcoin thus far are largely not institutional investors, are largely not big funds.

They're largely just ordinary individuals who saw something that they believed in and they put their money where their beliefs were. And it's so exciting to me. I have loved talking with some of my listeners who've gone from ordinary, modest net worth to becoming multi-millionaires in a very short period of time due to the dramatic rise in the value of Bitcoin.

It's just so exciting to see somebody's life transformed that way. It's so cool. But I think that most of us who have had some professional experience in the financial world probably missed out on that massive growth. I did. I would dare say the majority, I would say the vast majority of financial advisors missed out on that professional growth.

Now, there may be some good arguments for it, right? We can still argue and debate. Well, is there actually anything there? Is it a bubble? Is it a fad? Etc. I'm going to come to some of those questions in a minute. And forgive me if this is not perfectly structured.

I don't have perfect answers for all these questions. I don't have an argument that I'm trying to present about Bitcoin. I'm trying to figure out why did I miss what other people saw? And I've identified these two reasons that I want to articulate for you in case it's helpful to you.

And then I'll keep on working myself to try to figure out how to work through some of the various questions. So the first reason I've missed it is lack of belief, lack of belief that something could be different. The second reason, though, comes down to a sense of professional respectability.

The desire to be perceived by one's peers as part of the in crowd, as being someone who's acceptable, whose opinions are not outside of the realm of acceptable opinion. I think most of us have a desire to fit in, to fit in with people that we respect and that we admire.

And who knows why this is? Judge for yourself. I think it is true, however, that most of us want to fit in. It's a very unusual person that is such a contrarian that they're willing to go completely against everybody. And when you start talking about finance and money, you realize that the groupthink is very, very powerful.

The desire to have your opinions be respectable is very, very strong. And in the world of investments, I think this reflects the consensus view more than any fundamental reality does. We have, there is in the world of financial planning, investments, etc., there's a certain component of academic research. There are a few people who are actively doing active academic research.

They're studying something, they're analyzing something, etc. And those people sit down, they write their papers, they write their books, they write their position pieces, they get published. Those go to then the thinkers in the space. The thinkers in the space study something, they talk among themselves. Then it becomes the accepted dogma of the financial advice space.

And then most of the rest of us on the front line, those of us whose business cards say financial advisor or wealth management advisor, CFP professional, whatever your card says, we tend to wind up reflecting what that consensus opinion is. And we do that partly because of a sense of professional obligation and a true responsibility.

Our companies fire us if we don't toe the line. If they find out that we're recommending something that other people don't think is right, then they'll get rid of us. And also we do it because of simply the desire to fit in. It's hard to be the weirdo. It's really hard to be the weirdo.

You want to be accepted by your peers. This is made worse when you study more, when you become credentialed, experienced, etc. You want to be accepted by your peers. You want to reflect what they all think. You don't want to be the crazy man who has a totally different opinion.

So you take the arguments that are presented to you, you assume that they're correct, and you start parroting and repeating those arguments to other people. And then the more you do that, the more the consensus forms, more people believe what you're saying is right, and then it goes on.

And sometimes you are probably objectively right, and sometimes you're not objectively right. But in the end, it doesn't really matter because if you are accepted and if your opinions are acceptable, then it's a more comfortable personal and professional life for you than if you are the outcast. Even if you're right, if you're an outcast, it's very lonely to be an outcast.

I was thinking about this recently of this guy. I was listening to this story. I've been listening to this book called "Why the West Won". And the author of the book was talking about some amazing cave drawings that an old farmer, it was an amateur, basically a farmer back in the 1800s.

This is after Charles Darwin had gone and kind of bounced all around the world. And this guy found these old cave drawings in his farm, and all the indications seem to be that these drawings were extraordinarily old. But because of their artistic beauty, he went and he got like an amateur archaeologist.

He went and he presented at an archaeologist group. And because of their beauty, that nobody believed that cave drawings that were that old could actually be that well done, that beautiful, they all laughed at him. And what happened was very sad. This guy discovered the find of the century.

The literal dream of you walk into a cave, you look up and there's this spectacular archaeological site right there. He discovered it. And according to the current research, it is thought to be as old as he thought it was. And yet his peers didn't accept it. And that poor guy, wish I could cite his name, forgive me, I can't.

But that guy ended his life. He didn't commit suicide. He died a broken and depressed man because of the ridicule of his peers. Now it turned out, or at least it seems to have turned out thus far, that it was the peers who were wrong, it was not him.

He was right, his peers were wrong. But by the standards of the day, he was laughed out of his amateur archaeologist association. A very sad story. So this applies much more than I think you would imagine in probably every professional industry, but it definitely applies in the field of personal finance.

The best example that I have to draw on from my own professional life is the first time I bought a gold coin. Gold is a traditionally touchy subject in the world of investment planning. Gold is a very emotionally involved subject. And there is a tremendous gap between the professional opinion on gold and the average person's experience.

The accepted dogma, the accepted orthodox opinion to have on gold in mainstream financial planning in the United States is simply this. Okay, some portion of your investments can be invested in commodities which can help to smooth out your overall portfolio. But you should never buy gold coins, and anybody who says to buy gold coins is a wacko gold bug nut job, a kook.

And there's a lot of good evidence for this position, because a lot of gold bugs seem to come across pretty much as kooks. And by the time someone becomes convinced that they're going to invest in gold, invest in a significant amount of gold, then they often have accepted so many unorthodox opinions that they just don't make for good company and they don't fit well into polite society.

They become squeaky wheels that are kind of weird and everyone kind of pulls away from them. When I was a professional financial advisor, I'd spent my whole training being an amateur personal finance enthusiast and being a professional financial advisor. I'd never owned a gold coin. I'd never touched a gold coin.

I'd never held a gold coin. I'd never bought a gold coin. I'd never had any association with a gold coin in any way. So I was a few years into working as a financial advisor, and I was thinking this through. I was reading an article about gold investing, chatting with some people on the internet about gold investing.

And finally, somebody said, "Do you own any gold?" And my answer was, "No, I don't." I was like, "This is a stupid conversation. Go buy a gold coin." And so I looked up and I found a coin shop in my town, and I went down and I bought a 1/10 ounce gold American Eagle.

I felt so weird when I was doing it. I felt so dirty, so strange, like I'm sneaking into the coin shop to buy a gold coin. And I paid cash for it and didn't give my name. I didn't know how to do it. I had to ask questions. I just felt so weird.

And then when I walked out, I sat there and looked at it. I was like, "I paid," I forget, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks for it. I paid $100, $250, $300 for this 1/10 ounce gold coin. This is crazy. But then I started to think about it.

And once I owned that gold coin, I started to experience the world a little bit differently. I remember exactly the same thing happening when I bought my first gun. I'd never owned a gun. I firmly believed in the value of owning guns, but I'd never gone and got one.

And finally I went and bought a gun. And I felt so strange. It felt so weird. And then over time, it didn't anymore. I'm talking about the gold, though, more because it applies to money. So over time, I started to understand the gold arguments very differently because I actually knew what it was like to own gold.

And I became kind of the guy that people would ask questions about investing in gold. And I'm not a gold maximalist would be the term I think a lot of people would use. I don't think you should own 100% of gold, but I think if you don't own any gold, you're probably short-sighted.

Now let's go to Bitcoin. To my shame, I did not do what I should have done. I should have learned the lesson from that gold coin. And as soon as I heard about Bitcoin, I should have gone and bought one. I should have said, "Oh, that'd be cool. Let me go and buy some and just see what works." I should have taken a few hundred bucks and gone and purchased some.

But I didn't. Why not? Well, because it was unacceptable to talk about Bitcoin. Too many problems with Bitcoin. Where did this come from? Why is this? Oh, it's all made up. And all the arguments against Bitcoin are good arguments. They're compelling. I have wondered and repeated some of those arguments.

If I had done what I should have done, which was years ago when I first heard about Bitcoin, bought Bitcoin, I would have a very different experience of the Bitcoin marketplace over the last few years. And I would have a very different net worth than I do now. So that's not new to me.

In fact, I can't remember if I've even done this show. I have a whole outline I've just given you of a 10-minute show of like, "Listen, just buy something. Just buy money and just do it." And more and more I'm convinced that this is one of the major keys of success.

The more times in my life I just simply do it. I think about something. I wonder if it's a good idea and I go do it. Whether that's buying a gold coin or buying a Bitcoin or going and trying something new, grabbing a course, getting on an airplane and going visiting a country, opening an offshore bank account, going and establishing a residency program, whatever it winds up being, the more and more that I just do stuff, the better results I get.

And so I'm trying to get rid of the old things. Maybe sometime I will do that because I have the outline prepared of my excessive conservatism and whatnot. Those things have not been useful to me. So I've been discarding my excessive conservatism, financial conservatism, not physical, and just pressing forward and doing more things.

So if I'd done that, I would have a very different experience. But now that brings me to the insight of the last week. Remember I talked about belief. I talked about how those who believe that things could be different are inclined to actually take action. Those who believe that things can be different are willing to do something about it.

They see the world differently. But what's helped me with the second point, the point of professional respectability, is to realize that the professional respectability is itself a facade. It's an illusion. I made the statement a little bit ago. I said I like to know all about something. And what keeps me more from talking about Bitcoin?

Well, because I can't explain everything. I can't defend everything with these big, sweeping, strong arguments with .1234. You have ideas, hunches, etc. But at the end of the day, it's like, I don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody has a clue about what the future holds. But here's what's remarkable. Everything that we currently accept is all made up as well.

If you think it's hard to talk about where does Bitcoin come from, it's immeasurably harder to talk about where the US dollar comes from. You would think that somebody like me should be able to sit down and explain where a dollar comes from. And I kind of, sort of can, right?

You've got the Federal Reserve, and then the Federal Reserve makes the money, but then it goes, well, I get lost. And to think that someone like me, who should have the ability to articulate where a dollar comes from, has a very hard time actually doing it, is pretty sobering.

Pretty sobering. Now you can apply the same argument. So I'm recording this after a 20% drop in the value of Bitcoin over the last few days. In this conversation, you would say, well, this just proves how unstable Bitcoin is. This proves there's nothing behind it. Yeah, but the problem is that that exact same thing happens in every currency in the world.

One of the things that's maddening about something like Bitcoin is I cannot find any argument that would make sense as to how you could actually value Bitcoin. What is the value of Bitcoin? I don't have an answer for that. I haven't yet found an argument that makes sense to me about how you could value Bitcoin.

But here's what's wacky. How can you value the US dollar? What is the value of a dollar? That's also equally impossible to answer. Now there are good answers for it, right? The value of a dollar is what you can get for it, which means it has to be accepted by people.

And then there's a ratio that's spent, that's set as the economy works its way out between the US dollar and the goods and services that you can purchase for it. But what's wacky is exactly that same argument could then be taken back and applied to Bitcoin or some other currency that offers some other features.

And if you start thinking about the history of money, you start thinking about it, you realize that at the end of the day, it's all made up. There's not actually any firm place you can put your feet. You can have some ideas and some hunches, but let's go back, give an example that will cut a little closer to the bone.

What is the value of a stock? How do you figure out the value of a stock? Now what I've always been attracted to myself is things like value investing. Well, we figure out the value of a stock based upon the discounted earnings of the company, brought it back to today and we assign a valuation based upon how much money it can make.

But then you look around the world and you see that so many stocks on all sides do not seem to function by that same simple formula. The world is a different place. And those who believe in the opportunity for difference in the world have often been able to massively transform their money.

In some ways, the power of belief, the ability to get yourself to believe in the future of something seems to be an under discussed strategy of wealth. Somebody who believed in the power of a Facebook, a Tesla, an Amazon. These companies break many of the traditional metrics of valuing a company.

And so traditional stayed conservative investors often have somehow many times seem to have missed these opportunities. Whereas people who are more willing to say I believe in this have been able to make money just like in Bitcoin. There's the old saying that when the tide goes out you can see who is swimming naked.

It's kind of funny to me is more and more I look around at the world and it feels to me like just about everybody swimming naked in virtually every industry. Whether it's from finances to sometimes medical advice to how you run a pandemic, the shenanigans that have happened around the world of how to manage a pandemic and the crazy positions that so many people have taken on that.

Positions that change all the time without any actual connection to the much vaunted discipline of science. You look at things and you say does anybody have a clue what's going on? More and more my answer is no. Most people, even the experts don't have a clue what's going on.

We who are experts are so much more susceptible to groupthink to the desire to be liked by our peers and to be respected by our peers and not to be the wackos that we learn to parrot the opinions. And on virtually every subject it's like this. You hear about these with animal experiments.

You see videos, right? The most chilling videos with humans. First let's do the animals, right? You have these experiments. I've heard about this. I haven't verified. Maybe it's fake news. I don't know. But I've heard people give the example that you can put a bunch of chimpanzees in a cage and you can put a ladder in the middle of the cage with a big basket of beautiful yellow bananas on there.

And what happens is you'll have a bunch of yellow bananas up on that ladder and chimps will start going up there. And so one chimp will go up there and then the researcher will shoot him off the ladder with a blast from a fire hose. Then another will go up there and they'll shoot him off the ladder with a blast from a fire hose.

And they'll repeat the process again and again. And finally the chimps will stop going up there and they'll want to keep each other from doing it. Then the researcher will start taking chimps out of the cage and there will be one chimp, a new chimp, who sees the bananas like I want to go get them and the other chimps will pull him back.

And they'll drag him down the ladder and pull him back and say, "No, you can't go up there." And then they'll repeat. And what will happen is they'll take the chimps out of the cage until eventually maybe you had 10 chimps in the cage before who were all hit by the water hose.

And now you've got 10 chimps in the cage, none of whom have ever been hit by the water hose. And yet they still drag the new chimps down and don't let them go up and get the bananas because they're worried about the water hose. But they have no idea why they're actually doing it.

You can find this on YouTube. There's the example. They have a doctor's office. And you go into the doctor's office and there are 10 actors sitting in the waiting room of the doctor's office. Somebody comes in and the researchers ring a bell. When they ring the bell, the 10 actors stand up and the one person that's not involved looks around like, "Why are these people standing up?" But then, you know, he or she looks and says, "Oh, well, everyone else is standing up.

So I better stand up too." So he stands up. The bell rings. Everyone sits down. And so the new guy who's not the actor thinks it's a little bit strange, but okay. Maybe that's just what we do. A few minutes later, bell rings. 10 actors stand up. The 11th guy stands up too eventually and then sits down.

A few minutes later, bell rings, etc. Well, then what they do is they start taking the original actors out. The actors go in and then new people come in until eventually you're left with a room full of people in a waiting room standing up and sitting down when the bell rings, even though no one's ever told them, but because they're modeling the behavior of the group.

Now, I don't think that all people are susceptible to this, right? There are people who come in like, "I'm not standing up. That's dumb," right? They're individuals. And so who knows what the researchers, you know, do they select for people who are likely to be influenced by peer pressure or whatnot?

I don't know. But the point is more and more we pretty much parrot each other's opinions. You can go to a personal finance forum on the Internet and you can be pretty much convinced of what everyone is going to say in response to a question based upon the understanding of the philosophy of that forum.

You can go to a Bogleheads forum and you can know all the examples that you're going to get. You can go into an early retirement forum and you can know all of the answers that you're going to get. You can go into almost any forum, anywhere on the Internet, a group, and the group will have the range of acceptable opinions and the range of unacceptable opinions.

You go to a Bitcoin forum, people will talk extensively about Bitcoin. The same Bitcoiner goes into the Bogleheads forum, nobody will listen because we model the group. It's not actually based on all that much underlying science. It's not based on all that much stuff that you can lay your feet on.

And on the one hand, that's really frustrating. On the other hand, it should be to some degree somewhat liberating because if you can put these things together, if you can put together the kind of personality, the kind of person who can believe that things will be different, and the willingness to try stuff, even if it doesn't reflect the group, that seems to be a model for success.

That seems to be the kind of person who can shake things up, who can adjust things, who can see the world and cause the world to be different. Now, will they succeed in getting people to come along with them? I don't know. When you look at some of these questions like Bitcoin and the future of Bitcoin, you can have some technical arguments, and these are worthwhile conversations.

You've got Bitcoin maximalists who believe you should only buy Bitcoin. Then you've got people who say, well, Bitcoin is technologically inferior, and here's this other thing that we've created. Only time will tell. At the end of the day, though, about the only thing that can drive the value of Bitcoin or anything else is going to be supply and demand.

So if you're going to predict supply and demand, you have to figure out how to predict what happens to people, how many people want something. The price of Bitcoin, the price of gold, the value of US dollar fiat or of Canadian dollar fiat or of Mexican peso fiat or of Costa Rican cologne fiat or of euro fiat, these things are entirely driven by the usefulness, the utilitiness, and the supply and demand.

There actually is no science behind it. There is no valuation. You can't put a value on Bitcoin any more than you can put a value on the US dollar. So I guess to try to bring this down, I saw a clip. It's been a somewhat popular clip. There's a clip of Charlie Munger at the recent Q&A of the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting.

I think anybody who's involved at all in finance and investment would move very cautiously and respectfully around Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger. Tremendous track record, tremendous history. And not only should we be respectful of people who are older than us, we should honor them simply for their age, but we should be respectful of people who've accomplished tremendous things, who've gained tremendous results like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have as an investing partnership.

But it was this fascinating little clip, and Mr. Munger is asked about Bitcoin. And he doesn't talk extensively, doesn't give a 15-minute answer, but he's very anti-Bitcoin. He's very anti-Bitcoin, making a comment, "I don't particularly like something that is used by criminals." I forget what his other thing was.

But it's just this striking picture of here is this 97-year-old guy who is in as good a shape as most people would expect for 97 years old, sharp mentally, but he's a 97-year-old guy. He's past the prime of his career, opining on Bitcoin. And here you have the single best-performing investment, the single best-performing speculation that has existed in the last decade, and yet he doesn't give any indication of having been involved in that.

No harm, no foul, right? I missed most of it as well myself. But I think the question is why, right? That's what I've wrestled with, why did I miss it? And what is so striking about that video, here's Charlie Munger, a feeble old man, and you realize this guy belongs to the past.

He does not build the future. This guy is not going to build the future. He was very, very successful in a world that no longer exists. He is a legend, a titan of an economy that no longer exists, of a world order that no longer exists. He is going to be replaced by a whole different set of people.

And ultimately the same exact thing is going to happen to you and to me. But that future is going to be built not by those who look to the past and say, "Let's make the future just like the past." That future is going to be built by people who have a belief that the future can be different and have the willingness to go against the accepted order.

And that future is not set in stone. You and I are going to be involved in a new world order. The world is going to change and it's going to be ordered differently in the future than it has been in the past. When you try to think about the rules, the rules that govern any particular of these topics, there actually really in some ways aren't any rules.

Now you can do a number of different things, right? Whether that's modern monetary theory, whether it's Bitcoin and anything. But the point is that the world is actually very open to those who create it. And I know that sounds silly. It's taken me 45 minutes to say something that would probably be said really well in an Instagram post.

But I guess what I realize is that my personal belief is changing. I think in the past I've been too anchored to the old way of doing things. And yet in my frustration with people like me who say, "Well, no, the old way, the old way, the old way," you realize, it's like, this is what bugs me about conservatism.

Generally most people would describe me as some variation of a political conservative. And I believe that there is something very important about the conservative instinct. You want to conserve those things that are good. But the problem is the conservative instinct can sometimes lead people to conserving those things that are not good.

I love the G.K. Chesterton quote. He said, "The whole modern world has divided itself into conservatives and progressives. The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.

Thus we have two great types, the advanced person who rushes us into ruin and the retrospective person who admires the ruins." To me that quote accurately diagnoses it. I've watched this a lot with politics. If we see progressives do wacky stuff that messes everything up, then all of a sudden progressives will change their opinion and conservatives will step right up and defend the opinion the progressives did because that was conservative.

That was the way things were. You see this on immigration, right? Immigration used to be, like anti-immigration, that used to be a left-wing thing. Oh, we don't want immigrants. But then all of a sudden it switched and then being anti-immigration became a right-wing thing, a conservative thing in the United States.

Well, now we're opposed immigrants. You see this with regard to things like national ID cards, right? You see liberals are all of a sudden really for national ID cards and conservatives are against them because that puts too much power into them. Then all of a sudden we switch and, well, we've got to have voting ID laws.

And so now liberals are against identification requirements and conservatives are for it and they've forgotten about their previous thing. You see this on women's sports, right? Girls' sports. Traditionally, the conservative view was that girls and women should not generally be involved in sporting activities. But then, of course, that became kind of the old hat and everyone's – there's girls' and women's and boys' sports.

And so then you'll have the transgender revolution. And in the transgender revolution you'll have a guy who now identifies as a girl wrestling. And all of a sudden you'll see conservatives line up left and right and say, "We've got to get the guys out of the women's wrestling because women deserve to wrestle each other without males being involved." Wait a second.

What happened to girls not wrestling at all? Well, that's just – and so I guess I've watched this over the time with the political stuff. And you're like – you just – everyone just argues with each other, right? You'll see – I don't need to give any more examples.

On every single issue. I'll give one more example. The craziest thing to me about this pandemic has been watching how it has happened politically. I sat and I watched it happen from outside the United States just completely baffled at the political dynamics of the entire thing. In the beginning when the virus was first starting to be observed in China and there were potential problems, you had this tremendous – you had this – most people weren't paying attention to it.

Then you had some right-wing Republican conservative types that started to say, "Hey, this might be a problem. This might be something. We should pay attention to this." But then you had all these left-wing Democrat types saying, "Oh, no. It's just all fear-mongering. You go back," and I kept all the receipts, right, all the screenshots.

You had the mayor of New York City going and saying, "We're going to go and march in this parade and come – go out and don't listen to the conservative fear-mongering about the virus and about the pandemic." And so then all of a sudden, everything started to change. You had the borders closed down and everything started to change.

You had the stuff about the masks, right? In the beginning, you had everyone saying, "Oh, no. You shouldn't wear masks." You had Fauci coming out and lying through his teeth, "Oh, no. You shouldn't wear masks. You absolutely should not wear masks. Masks don't have any indication of efficacy whatsoever." And what was baffling to me is that generally, the conservative principle would be we don't know whether they have efficacy or not, so let's be conservative, right?

I stocked up on masks at the beginning of the pandemic. And you would think that generally wearing a mask is a relatively small thing that could potentially have some impact. But then politically, it all got turned on its head where now all of a sudden, wearing a mask was seen – first, it was seen as being unkind to other people because you're taking supplies away from the medical people who need them.

Then wearing a mask became this statement that if you're wearing a mask, you're submitting and your freedoms are being taken away. And so you had the conservatives take the liberal position and the liberals take the conservative position. Then things went on, and then it just – it goes from one to the next.

Now it's like wearing a mask – if I don't wear a mask, it makes me look like a Republican, but if I wear a mask, it makes me look like a Democrat. It's just – it's mind-boggling. And you see that there's not actual – the percentage of people who are actually thinking through things is exceedingly small compared to the percentage of people that are reacting to try to be in with the group, doing what the group is doing, and their group.

Their group that, of course, is right because it's their group. It's so wacky. And so how do you predict these things? Well, virtually any future is available. Virtually any future is there. And it's up to the people who create the future, who believe that things can be different, and spread the word, et cetera.

I see no fundamental reason why Bitcoin could not become a world reserve currency. I can also see no fundamental reason why Bitcoin could not become completely and totally worthless. There's fundamentally no more value in Bitcoin than there is in the US dollar than there is in a piece of gold.

None of these things have any tangible or useful value whatsoever. There's no innate value. There's no inherent value. There's no ability to predict anything. All we're doing is looking at it and saying, "Well, historically in the past, this certain thing has been the case." But historically in the past, the past is gone.

It doesn't exist. It's gone. We can study the past and try to get an idea of what people who have been through things kind of like what we're going through right now, what they've done. But the past is gone, and the future is coming. Don't get stuck in the past.

Be the kind of person who learns from the past, but yet be the kind of person who creates the future. Don't be a progressive whose business it is to go on making mistakes. And don't be a conservative whose business it is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Be the kind of person who thinks thoughtfully about what our forebearers have gone through and then works to implement the solutions in your own life.

So I was wrong on Bitcoin. If by wrong, I mean not an early adopter, somebody who grew their net worth by millions of dollars because they bought Bitcoin when they were $6 a coin. Why didn't I? Well, because, number one, I didn't believe that the future could change. I didn't believe that it could change.

And number two, because I was always a financial advisor and thus wanted to be respected, then I've often parroted the respected position. By the way, this is one of the things that leaving the United States has helped me immensely. I've become a better free thinker. I've become a better individualist by simply being out of that group, getting out of the group think.

It's made me a better investor. I've made more money. It's made me a better businessman. It's made me a more stable person. By recognizing that you can change your reference groups whenever you want to. Show topic for another day. Those are two reasons why I missed the Bitcoin run up, right?

The first episode of Radical Personal Finance was published on July 15, 2013. In July of 2013, Bitcoin was trading at about $84.61. As I record today's show, Bitcoin is trading at $40,000 per coin. I never told you to buy Bitcoin in 2013. I didn't tell you to buy Bitcoin in 2014.

I've never told you to buy Bitcoin. That's a pretty heavy glaring error for somebody whose business card used to say financial advisor. That's a pretty rough one. If you're a financial advisor and you didn't tell your clients to invest in Bitcoin, you owe it to yourself to think about why that is.

Now, I firmly believe that Bitcoin could plummet in value to $0 per coin. There's no fundamental intrinsic value to Bitcoin. Just like there's no fundamental intrinsic value to gold, just like there's no fundamental intrinsic value to Coca-Cola stock or to a US dollar. I don't know if Bitcoin goes to $400,000 per coin.

None of us do. But what I do know is that if you're a financial advisor and you didn't talk to anybody about being involved in that marketplace, don't let yourself off the hook too easily. The easy thing to say, "Well, it's all speculation and we're in the business of investing and it's time in the market, not speculative thing that makes a difference." Fair enough.

But over the last years, I've grappled with how wrong I was watching the dramatic rise in Bitcoin, watching the increasing mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin. And I thought, "How did I miss it? How did I miss it? Like, what did I get wrong? Why? Why did I not see that?

I'm the perfect person who should have seen that in 2013. I should have been a Bitcoin enthusiast in 2013." Think about, if you're like me, think about why you didn't get it. And by the way, there were other reasons too, and I've already gone longer than I intended. But I have a list.

One is not seeing the future. That was what was refreshed, not believing in the future of change. That's what has been refreshed upon me this weekend. Number two is not giving... Number two is groupthink. Number two is just being in a position where you give too much weight to the opinions of others.

Number three is excessive conservatism, not wanting to save money. That has hurt me. It's been a major error in my own financial life. Excessive conservatism, fear of losing money, fear of going bankrupt, fear of being thought foolishly of because I've lost money. Today I look at it and I was like, "Why?

Why have I often been so financially conservative?" That was dumb. Losing money is no big deal. You lose money. All right, you lose some. You go back and make it up. You can go get more. Bankruptcy, not a big deal. Go through bankruptcy, all right, it's going to affect some things, but on the whole it's not that big a deal.

And so I've been excessively conservative in the past. I've worked hard to change that. Other things as well, I'll leave those for another day. I guess in summary, what I want to convey to you is, first of all, of course, be accountable. Here you are listening to a podcast about money.

And when this podcast started, Bitcoin was, like I said, when this podcast started, Bitcoin was about $83 a coin. Here we are with Bitcoin at $40,000 a coin. That's a pretty sobering thing for a financial advisor to look at. Why was I not helping you get rich? I'm so glad that many of my listeners have gotten rich, but it was in spite of me, not thanks to me.

On this topic anyway. Second thing though is I want to communicate to you that the rules are much more malleable than you would ever think. The science is much less known than you want to believe. You want to believe that scientists have it figured out. But man, you study things a little bit and you realize pretty much all of us are making it up as we go along.

And there might be a few things that a few thousand years later have proven themselves to be true. Maybe calculus is right at this point. There might be a few things that were discovered a few hundred years ago that are true. But much of the world is far more subject to opinions, politics, groupthink, etc.

than you want to believe. You want to believe it's different, but it's not. And as a -- can I call myself a veteran? -- as a somewhat older participant in the world of financial advice, the majority of the financial advice is far less stable than you would imagine. So what can you do?

Well, I think you can do what makes sense to you. The people who have done well with Bitcoin are the people who said, "That makes sense to me, and I'm going to do it." I think you can rely on good personal financial planning. To me, whenever I get into one of these baffling swamps where you're like, "Ah, I could go here or I could go there," what do you do?

Well, principles like diversification come in. It's a good, useful principle. Principles like good financial planning, planning for your life, is a good principle. And so there are some principles that you can rely on. And then, of course, you can just trust yourself. Trust yourself. Educate yourself, but trust yourself.

Don't be scared to change and create a new future. You can think about one of the -- think about the United States of America. The United States of America was far from a foregone conclusion of a success story. When you go back and you study the history in the late 1700s, basically you had a few dozen men who came up with this wacky idea that they should somehow create a new country and disattach themselves from the biggest, most powerful, best country in the world.

And they did it. And there were so many times in which it was obvious that the smart money would never bet on those people, and yet they did it. And you could see it just grew and grew and grew and grew and grew until you had the biggest, most powerful empire in the world today.

The richest empire, the most powerful empire. What a crazy world in the last 200 years. Now, 200 years from now, what is going to exist? The answer is we have no idea. But what will exist is what you and I build. So, let's get busy and build something. Build something cool and shape the kind of future that you and I want to live in.

Let's learn from the Charlie Mungers of the world. He's got a lot to offer, a lot of value. But just because somebody has a lot of value to offer doesn't mean they're right in everything. You listen to me because I have a lot of value to offer, and I work really hard to offer it.

But that doesn't mean I'm right in everything. I just have talked about how I got Bitcoin wrong. So, learn from what people are good at, and then sift it, filter it, choose the different things that you like and that you believe in, and don't be a slave to what somebody else thinks.

Somebody can be very smart, like Charlie Munger, or like me. Somebody can be very well-informed, like Charlie Munger, or like me. Somebody can be very honest, like Charlie Munger, or like me, and still be wholeheartedly, unequivocally, horrifically, well-intentionally wrong. Now, who turns out to be right? Does Charlie Munger turn out to be right?

Or does the greatest Bitcoin maximalist turn out to be right? We don't know, because the future has not yet been written. So, you and I are going to write it. That said, one thing I have decided to do, is you're going to hear this, and I'm announcing it here.

Going forward, I'm going to try to learn less, maybe I decide to change my mind, but going forward, whenever I refer to a fiat currency, like the US dollar, I'm going to try to use the word fiat. So, you'll hear me do this going forward, because I realized this past weekend when I was talking to somebody and I heard them say that, I realized, number one, not only is that absolutely true.

The US dollar is a fiat currency. Actually, I shouldn't say that's absolutely true. There actually is a debate about whether the US dollar is a fiat currency, or whether the US dollar is a debt-backed currency, and there's an interesting debate. But I think that it's good enough, there are enough good arguments on the side of, okay, it's a fiat currency, even though it's not going to be the traditional fiat, where it's exclusively by fiat, by decree.

I think it's good enough that I'm going to refer to it. Because I realize this genuinely does, it tells the truth, and that's a truth that in our day and age needs to be told, needs to be understood. Traveling has been helpful to me to see this. When you live in one country, you get so used to your currency, and there's only people from a few corners of the world, right?

If you're from Argentina, if you're from Venezuela, if you're from Lebanon, if you're from Zimbabwe, then of course the reality of the fickleness or the flimsiness of your money, that goes a little deeper in you. But if you're from the United States, or from Canada, or from Great Britain, some of these places that have had these long-lived stable currencies, then you just understand it was just money is what we use.

And it's only in hindsight when you start looking and you realize how utterly devalued the money is, that you realize that things have changed and you didn't even realize it. So in the future, I'm going to start using these terms. I'm going to use the US fiat dollar. The US dollar fiat.

I got to figure out how to make it as smooth as possible. Because we need to be aware of that. We need to be aware of it. And I'm not going to sell all my dollars and convert them all into Bitcoin. I need dollars because those dollars perform a valuable service, a valuable function.

But just because that's the world that we live in today doesn't mean that that's the world that I have to live in 10 years from now. It doesn't mean that that's the world that you and I have to live in 20 years from now. We don't have to be beholden to the world's largest war power for the value of our money.

We can invent new things. We can create new things. And if past civilizations can use cowry shells as perfectly workable money, and if past civilizations can use gold coins as perfectly workable money, and if current past civilizations can use paper US dollars as perfectly workable money, and if current civilizations can use meaningless accounting metrics in a ledger, which is what US dollars are, just simply digits that exist in a computer screen as workable money, and there's no reason why you and I can't use some entirely new systems as workable money, as great investments, or whatever the situation is.

The world is not stuck. We don't have to be stuck. If I go on, I'll just be repeating the same concept. Learn from the past. Let's learn from the past. Let's admire the good things from the past. Let's be traditionalists to the extent that traditionalism was successful. Let's be those who honor and venerate the accomplishments of our forebears.

But let's not be those who keep ourselves stuck in broken systems just because that's the way it is. It doesn't have to be that way. Let's be those who believe that the future could be different. Let's make up that belief in our mind, whether or not it's true or not.

I believe it's one of those useful fictions where even if it weren't true, it's useful to live as if it were true, and what's wacky is that if you live as if it were true, it becomes true. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So let's be those that believe that the future could be different, and then those who intentionally create it thoughtfully.

I'm sorry that you didn't get rich because I told you to invest in Bitcoin. If you did get rich by investing in Bitcoin, I'm happy for you, but I'm sorry that I failed you in that sense. And I'll do my best in the future to do a better job of identifying those things.

I'll try to be more courageous and less influenced by groupthink, by the desire for professional respectability. I'll try to care less about whether I get invited to speak at the cool conferences, and I'll try to care less about what they say about me in the forums and the wacko that I am.

I'll do my best, and I'll try to be one who believes in the future, that the future can be better, that the future can be different, that the future can be more just, more honorable, more righteous, and I'll work with you to try to create the kind of future that I want to live in, that I want my children to live in, and that I want my great-great-great-great-grandchildren to live in.

Do more together this holiday in a new Chevy. Take on more adventure in the strong and capable Chevy Silverado. More confidence in the Chevy Equinox. Winner of the J.D. Power Award for initial quality among compact SUVs two years running. And more value in the all-new Chevy Trax with an available 11-inch diagonal touchscreen.

Bring the holidays together in the new Chevy. Click to learn more. Chevrolet. Together, let's drive. For J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Initial Quality Study Award information, visit JDPower.com/awards.