Full Transcript
Dr James:
Fans of the Dennis who Invest podcast. If you feel like there was one particular episode in the back catalog in the anthology of Dentists Who Invest podcast episodes that really, really, really was massively valuable to you, feel free to share that with a fellow dental colleague who’s in a similar position, so their understanding of finance can be elevated and they can hit the next level of financial success in their life. Also, as well as that, if you could take two seconds to rate and review this podcast, it would mean the world. To me, what that would mean is that it drives this podcast further in terms of reach so that more dentists across the world can be able to benefit from the knowledge contained therein. Welcome, welcome to the Dennis who Invest podcast. What is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Dentists who Invest podcast. And I am Sat Opposite, a man who no less than owns his own crypto experience I’m cool with that and it is called Bittylicious. and his name is Mark One. We welcome Mark to the show. We’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Mark is so, so, so busy. Time is off the essence to him. You had to wait a long time for this spot, which is fine. I know how it is, mark Life of an entrepreneur, and we are so privileged to have you here today. How are you, my friends?
Marc:
Very good indeed. Yes, it’s been six months in the making this, but I’m very happy to finally have found some time to chat to you Totally cool and, as I say, very grateful, because I know that you’re a busy man.
Dr James:
We met at a crypto conference. What was that crypto conference called?
Marc:
I honestly forgot to add, but it was the best one I’ve been to in so many years. It was well you know what Point first. Point first. I’ll say it the best conferences are those that are free to get in there. I say you get the most interesting people. You don’t get the suits, you get actual geeks, actual people really wanting to learn about what this is and the new technologies even even newer than Bitcoin out there. It was a brilliant conference. I loved it. I hope you did too.
Dr James:
Oh no, I had lots of fun. Three takeaways from that conference. One was I met you, of course. Number two was I met CK, who also came onto the podcast to talk about NFTs, and you know what? Here’s the thing. Do you know what I learned about conferences when I was there? I learned that they are ripe, ripe and fertile grounds for finding podcast guests, because there’s just so many people out there who are embroiled and immersed in the crypto industry or whatever respective industry that the conference is set is orientated around. And that’s what I learned at that conference, because I’ve met so many interesting characters like yourself. And the third thing was that you can buy socks which are centered around cryptocurrency. They are called cryptos, and I became the proud owner of some Bitcoin socks out there.
Marc:
Those are my three memories, that’s good, they also got Bitcoin mug from us, I believe, so they got out of Fort memory to that. I think I gave you one.
Dr James:
Oh, I gave it to oh, this was why that was for someone else that I gave it to them. That was why, but you know what it made me happy and it made them happy, so that was a good thing.
Marc:
Well, you passed on love there. Well, money can’t buy those, so that’s absolutely nice present.
Dr James:
I love that. So, for the people who are listening to this podcast at present, it may be nice mark for you to give us a little bit of an intro about yourself, a little bit of a background and how you started Bitcoin, right so?
Marc:
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency exchange, essentially, so we essentially make it easy to buy Bitcoin. Simple problem Well, sounds simple, but it’s actually a very difficult problem. You know, buying a first Bitcoin is quite tricky. We are the oldest cryptocurrency exchange and all the British cryptocurrency exchange that are out since 2013. Order than Coinbase. Well, British Coinbase on British. Oh, I thought they were British. No, they’re American. I’m pretty sure they’re something on Nasdaq, I think.
Dr James:
I thought they were British, but put it on Nasdaq. Anyway, I’m interrupting, anyway don’t give me wrong.
Marc:
They are very old, similar time, I think blockchain are older than us. But they weren’t an exchange, probably kind of really just a bit of an exchange. Anyway, 2013 is still pretty old. Bitcoin back then was worth about 60 pounds or so and, of course, I wasn’t very wise and I decided to set up a company rather than just buy Bitcoin and be rich. So it’s been around. It’s been through all the peaks and troughs of Bitcoin prices going crazy, some crazy days, not so crazy and we still are here. If you want some Bitcoin, especially if you want to just buy little bits, where the place to go for? Yeah, we’ve seen it all. We haven’t been hacked, we’re good, we’re reliable, we’re regulated. What more do you need to know?
Dr James:
That’s awesome. So, in terms of exchanges, what gap in the market did you identify that you thought to yourself right, there needs to be a biddy licious on this earth. What do you guys bring to your table? What is your USP, so to speak?
Marc:
The USP is making it easy to buy some Bitcoin. We keep things really simple. We’re not talking about leverage or any kind of more fancy derivative type investments. We want you to buy a bit of Bitcoin, hold it yourself. We will not hold your Bitcoin for you and then basically, you’ve become part of this new revolution properly. It’s a symptom.
Dr James:
Oh, I see, so is it a decentralized exchange then?
Marc:
No, it’s not decentralized but we don’t have a wallet. So what you need to do on Bitlicious is to put in a wallet address and we will send you Bitcoin as soon as we receive your money. And that’s the real way to really understand the space. If you have Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency held on an exchange, that’s not your money, that’s the exchange. If anything happens to the exchange if it goes bust or if it gets raided, or if some government just puts a blacklist against you, it’s not yours. You need to hold your own crypto for it to be your money.
Dr James:
Well, it’s the saying. It harkens back to the saying, doesn’t it Not your keys, not your crypto?
Marc:
I see, it’s exactly the thing, and you’re missing half of the point if you’re not actually holding your Bitcoin yourself. Do you realise the magic that a little device or even a piece of paper or even 12 words in your mind are the keys to your Bitcoin? It’s important to get that set up right, and that’s why we encourage people to set up their own wallets before we even send you anything.
Dr James:
You see, this exact thing that we’re talking about. This is the duality of Bitcoin. That is its best feature, but also, some would say, the feature that makes people less well, it drives some people away, and that is the fact that there’s no guarantee. Code is law, and what that means is that as soon as somebody else possessed your Bitcoin, you can never get it back. There’s no third party guarantor, there’s no trust is peer to peer. Yeah, what that means is the second that somebody takes your crypto, you can never, ever get it back, because to do that would be to directly contravene the rules of the system, which there has to be to uphold the whole flipping mechanism in the first place, whereas when you obviously in the bank, up to 85K financial services compensation scheme will reimburse you should the bank go bust, should there be a loss, should there be an issue of that nature. But then, of course, the huge darn side to that system is that Bitcoin is a consistently appreciating asset because of how it’s designed. You measure it over any four year period and it is always worth more, always, always, always known who has bought Bitcoin and held it for four years has ever lost money. That’s the time frame that we should be going into it with, whereas anybody who’s held cash for over a year has lost value. Because guess what Cash depreciates? Cash is a depreciating asset. That’s the thing, that’s the first fundamental thing that people who are thinking about dabbling in the crypto space must understand, and that is the duality. That is the paradox. Okay, because it’s simultaneously the best feature, but also, some might say, the feature that drives people away from it as well, or certainly, if it doesn’t drive them away, it makes them less eager to move towards it.
Marc:
It is worth remembering absolutely. There is an inflation rate in Bitcoin, of course. In other words, bitcoin is created, but we know exactly what it is. We know what it will be in five years, know what will be in 20 years. You know exactly what you’re getting and also, frankly, as more people get interested in Bitcoin, it’s going to far outbeat this little tiny inflation rate that currently exists.
Dr James:
The thing, about Bitcoin is yeah it’s your Bitcoin, it’s your crypto.
Marc:
It’s also your responsibility If something goes wrong. If you send it to the wrong place, if you send it to a scammer, you’ve lost it. Someone is always a winner and a loser in this system. You know, with banks, they can sometimes give you your money back if you get you send it to the wrong place, but the reality is someone’s still going to be paying for that and I think it’s kind of the right place for you to be in control of your money, along with the responsibility that has. So you’ve got to think about it. You’ve got to research a lot before you buy Bitcoin. You’ve got to think about securing your wallet safely and you’ve got to have a head on at all times. If someone comes up to you and says, send Bitcoin to this address, you’ve got to know who you’re speaking to. It just requires you to really take some personal responsibility a little bit more. There’s, I think, a few, a few of us in this in the whole country really have been nannied a little bit. I need to realize you know this is your money. Take care of it.
Dr James:
Real quick guys. I’ve put together a special report for Dentist entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes that dentists make whenever it comes to their finances. Most of the time, dentists are going through these issues and they don’t even necessarily realize that they’re happening until they have their eyes opened, and that is the purpose of this report. You can go ahead and receive your free report by heading on over to wwwdentistinvestcom. Forward slash podcast report or, alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details these seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them. I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. It gets into a very interesting topic and the topic is risk, and we can go as deep as we like on risk, but here’s a little perspective and here’s an alternative way of looking at it. Basically, we’ve got two ways that you can broadly invest. One is you’re so steady, eddy, you buy the S&P 500, you let it appreciate by 10% every year and you compound your gains and you’ll get rich over 30 years. That way you’ve come across that right, of course, yeah, yeah, of course. That method, that’s your FA’s method. If you go to your FA, they’ll say to you listen, this is how you get wealthy. This is the way. That’s proven. You’ve stocks and bonds. There’s your portfolio. Let it appreciate with time. Now, that’s all well and good, because that way will virtually always work. It’s consistently what’s always worked historically. Will it work going forwards? Well, certainly, the odds are massively in its favor. Here’s the huge drawback. The drawback is in what I’ve already said. It takes 20 or 30 years to get there. Realistically, 20,000 pounds in an ISA for 20 years. You keep adding 20,000 pounds to an ISA every year. For 20 years. You let it appreciate at 12%. A year is 1.7 million pounds. Okay, we should all be theoretically retired in 20 years, if we can do that, because 12%, 10 to 12% is what you might expect from your stock portfolio. Okay, that’s the thing, right. Here’s the thing, though. What if you want an alternative? What if you don’t like your job? What if I said to you Mark, you have to do something, you flip and hit for 20 years in order to have a shot at being free? Yeah, yeah, we’re not like to do that. Exactly, and that might be the guaranteed way. That’s totally fine. Go and do that if you love your job. But not everybody out there is 10 out of 10 when they go to work every day. Virtually no one in the world will go to work and say I’d be here for free.
Marc:
Yeah there’s something Sorry. Yeah, I was going to say, it is a really tricky thing to think about. It’s slow and steady. What’s happened in the past? We don’t know if it’s going to happen in the future. The financial world is changing like crazy. Nothing like Bitcoin has existed before, and even if you don’t want to put all your eggs in the Bitcoin basket which you shouldn’t diversification is key. What if the little percent or two that you have of your net worth is the future of money and goes up 10,000 times it’s worth a? You know it’s diversification and all IFA’s will tell you diversification is good.
Dr James:
But, yeah, this, exactly exactly that. It’s almost as if you knew what was going to come out of my mind. You know what I mean, because it’s like, here’s the thing about risk. Right, we can go down that path, the path I’ve just described, or we can have a proportion of our wealth in something that is a little bit more volatile, but it’s something that is consistently well over time, since it’s been created, proven to give us greater returns. Not putting our house on it, like we say, but at least we have some skin in the game, and surely it’s worth rolling the dice for a little bit of uncertainty, for the opportunity or chance to bring that retirement date forwards. Okay, and that is the point of crypto. That is it. Don’t put your house on it, just have some skin in the game. If you ask me, personally, I think it’s going to work out. Yeah, and there’s not always necessarily because of the strength of crypto or any other asset, but because of the weakness of the alternative, which is the currency that you would otherwise hold. How crazy is that? I love it. It’s amazing.
Marc:
And it’s. How often in the history of finance does a totally new asset class suddenly materialize itself? This is a totally new way of thinking about money. It’s not physical, it’s just, it’s its own thing. It doesn’t. It’s not attached to be, it’s not attached to any physical objects, it’s. It doesn’t correlate to what I’m trying to say. It really is a little well, I mean, I think it’d be tough not to not to be interested in it, to do your research and have a little bit of diversification into it. It seems like common sense to me. But you got to hold because it’s so volatile. Listen, there’s not. There’s not lie about that. Yeah, if you buy it the wrong time which everyone does, frankly and it goes down a bit, don’t worry. Like the stock market, you’re thinking long term. I don’t think you’re thinking as long term as the stock market, but a year or two in this, in this space, is quite a long time. Yeah, don’t be worried about short term fluctuations. We’re thinking about the future of money and that’s a big deal.
Dr James:
Two things. If you take traditional investment methods and you put it in the crypto world, you can be wildly successful, not even trying to do the fancy stuff, just DCA and buying and hold, like you said, yeah. And then the second thing is just to build on top of what we were saying a second ago. Sometimes, when you don’t risk anything, you risk everything in a way.
Marc:
Yeah, not risking anything. It means having cash and you’ve got guaranteed what’s minus 7% per year right now with inflation. Yeah, you know, you’re better off having almost anything apart from cash right now.
Dr James:
Biggest lesson never confuse volatility for risk. There are two different things, two different things. So, leading into the next thing, I was going to ask you, of course, mark, you must be a Bitcoin hodler yourself, and for anybody who doesn’t know, hodler is crypto. Speak for somebody who holds Bitcoin long term with the idea that it’s going to appreciate, which it always has done over long enough period of time.
Marc:
Well, I mean, I’ve practiced what I’ve produced to an extent. Some of my net worth and the company’s net worth is in crypto, but we’re not talking massive amounts. If I didn’t bother setting up BitSlicious and I actually had a few thousand pounds to spare back in those days if I just put that into Bitcoin, I’d be much richer than I am now. I built a business that makes money on essentially every transaction that goes on BitSlicious. We take a little cut for ourselves on margin, so we make money when people buy Bitcoin or sell Bitcoin, whatever direction it goes in. So that’s a kind of stable approach of getting a little bit regularly. Maybe I should have just bought Bitcoin and be done with it, but it’s not as fun really. I like spreading the word. I like chatting to people like you, meeting people. It’s ridiculously enthusiastic people out there and it’s wonderful chatting to them. So I would have missed out on that. But yeah, it is true, I have some Bitcoin not much because it is volatile. You just got to think about the risks involved really.
Dr James:
But you’ve touched upon something awesome there and this is moving slightly outside of the whole crypto theme of this podcast. You know, when you start a business or when you have some sort of presence or profile online, do you know the number of awesome, cool conversations and exciting door to people that you meet? You never quite realize it until you’re on the other side, and that’s why I believe every single person should have a side business or a side gig or something of that nature. Or even if it’s not a business, it’s a platform, somewhere you can be known on social media, some sort of organization, something that you do. It’s really worthwhile, yeah.
Marc:
I think so. Otherwise you’re a small cog in a big business and you don’t get anything. There’s nothing that beats you having your own future dictated by yourself, even if it’s just as a little sign job.
Dr James:
It’s fun, it’s an effort. It’s fun, yeah, honestly, you know, when you go through life and you begin to prioritize fun, guess what Life starts being a lot more fun as well. Mark, what did you do before you ventured into the crypto world, before you started biglicious?
Marc:
Got made redundant. So that’s kind of how things work. I had a standard job in the city. I’m a financial well, I’m a co-worker. Really I’m a tech person. I’m working for a financial software company. After five, six years there, I’ve got made redundant. And then I had a little web hosting business on the side, so I was building that up a little bit. I was interested in Bitcoin. The web hosting business accepted Bitcoin. Someone bought a relatively big service for Bitcoin. Then the price went up tenfold and I was sitting on sort of £4,000 worth of Bitcoin. I was like how do I sell this? What do I do with this? There was no decent solution to that Hence. But delicious was born. But in my case it was the kind of shove to force myself to do something else in my life. I was looking for a few other jobs but decided to take a little risk and try and start up a business. It’s a risky thing. It requires a little bit of savings. That you’ve done because you don’t have a salary, essentially. But being kicked out of the real working world meant I was able to take this risk and I don’t regret it, and I could never work for anyone else anymore.
Dr James:
This is the thing about being self-employed You’re no longer employable, exactly. It’s not because you can’t get a job, you just never want to work for anyone else ever again, because it’s so flipping fun.
Marc:
Exactly. It’s so fun. Well, so many bosses are bad. Being your own boss, you don’t have to put up with anyone else. At the end of the day, you can make your own decisions, as long as you’re sensible enough to take your own wise risks. Yeah, I just couldn’t work for anyone else.
Dr James:
That’s awesome, man, Congrats. And when you say that, you’ve got a huge smile on your face as well, For anybody who’s listening to the podcast, you see this this is an advertisement for having your business right here. Mark’s face, which I can see in front of me, and his eyes are lighting up and he’s a happy man, and so is mine as well. And you know, when I said you can never be employable ever again, that’s because you’ll never take the same nonsense when you’re in a job, because you know you can do it on your own. There’s always part of you that thinks actually I could just be out there creating my own thing, which is way cooler than anything I see around me.
Marc:
Exactly, and you don’t have to put up, as I said, with bad bosses, with terrible people making terrible decisions. It’s a difficult one. I mean, obviously you’ve lost that safety net as well. So it’s difficult to start your own business without at least some kind of savings to back you up for six months or something on those lines. It certainly does give you the incentive to make the business work, because that’s the only way to get it back in the real world again. But I’m so happy to have been in this position to do it. As Bitcoin was taking off, I was obviously interested in tech quite early and, being in finance already, this was interesting, kind of naturally so a bit of good timing as well, can’t deny that. But I’ve now put my life into it and I still am, and it’s still as fun as it was in day one.
Dr James:
Awesome man, congrats. Quite often, these side gigs and these businesses that we start, they’re wrapped around a passion or they’re wrapped around a greater purpose. For you, your greater purpose is financial freedom and teaching people about Bitcoin. What did you see in crypto? What did you see in Bitcoin that made you think, actually, I need to create a platform that people are able to purchase this for a reasonable price, reasonable fees, easy, accessible. What was the thing that you spotted? The potential, the cool thing about it that you wanted to share with the world.
Marc:
I think it’s when you actually learn what quantitative easing is, when you realize that the government will just make every pound in your wallet be worth a little bit less and there is an alternative that essentially is free of the system, is dictated by code, can’t be changed and, as a computer scientist, it solves really interesting computer science problems as well. It’s just all of these things coming together at a magical time when the financial system is being turned on its head, when there’s massive corruption going on, when there’s all sorts of just madness in the world and a technical solution is in front of you. It just seems like it’s logically the future of money. Nothing can stop it.
Dr James:
Yeah, another thing that follows my brain is you know when people out there say how can you trust crypto, how can you trust Bitcoin? Does anybody know how a flipping bank works? Yeah, a normal bank, never mind a flipping central bank, because if you know how a normal bank works, it’s bad enough, but a central bank, it gets even crazier. Ok, dyor, on that one, everybody’s listening. It’s flipping bananas.
Marc:
Yeah, Absolutely yeah, and there’s an instruction manual on how Bitcoin works. It’s called the code. If you really want to just look at the code, there’s no secret society, there’s no money printing, there’s no governmental backhands you can figure it out very easily.
Dr James:
I love it. I love it. So you are, of course, a Bitcoin holder, long term holder.
Marc:
Yeah, definitely long term.
Dr James:
That’s awesome, man. We are presently in a little bit of a state of flux in the crypto world because we traditionally have the bull and bear cycles and everybody was waiting for that euphoric end to the bull market and it never really quite came. It still could come. It still could come because we’re in that state of flux. We haven’t seen the traditionally. There’s signs of a bear market that repeat every single time and that is the price crashes and it consistently holds it a low, whereas at the minute we’re kind of somewhere in between. I know this is hard to predict, but how do you feel at the minute? Bullish, bearish, short term, medium, long term.
Marc:
Bullish, I mean. Ok, so you’re right, we’ve got to talk short term, medium, long term, Long term. Obviously bullish. Look at what this technology is Medium term and short term, I think, bullish. I think we’ve gone out of the bear market. I think we hit almost $30K not too long ago, quite consistently hanging around $40K. If we’re going along psychological lines of thresholds, the generally $10,000, $20,000 range. I think people are quite happy to buy at $40K and stop prices going below that. We’re only at the beginning of getting big institutional investment into Bitcoin as well. Imagine when your pension fund eventually does allow you to invest in Bitcoin and other alternative assets like that. There’s so much inflow that could happen. We are at the beginning, so you’ve got to think long term. For somebody so volatile, you should really be thinking long term. Even more than a normal boring bank type asset, so massively bullish, I don’t care about short term or medium term. Frankly, it can do whatever For a bit delicious. Volatility is great. When prices are going up. Lots of people buy Bitcoin because they’re going to miss out. Prices go down lots of people buy Bitcoin because they think the price is low. So horizontal markets are bad for the company. Give me price movement, really. But in terms of personal investment I said I’m long term, so I’m bullish.
Dr James:
Love it. Here’s some stats. If you invest and you buy and hold Bitcoin for four years, historically 100% of the time you would have made money over that time frame. Over three years 97%. Over two years 76%. So those are your odds effectively. So, really, if you’re a three year person, you’d have to buy when it’s really obviously a bad time to buy. It’s that 3% of the time when flipping everybody’s hysterical about it and it’s can’t stare in the face that it’s not really a great time to buy. So, really, three to four years is your time frame. If you are someone who’s partaking in the crypto world and what you’ve got staring in front of you is an app that depreciates an asset consistently, which is cash versus the opportunity to grow your wealth. But, of course, eyor are always part of a more balanced and diversified portfolio. But, like I said, it goes back to what I was saying a minute ago. Are we accepting the fact that we want to take 20, 30 years to build our retirement or do we want to have a shot at pulling that date forwards? And for me, I’m always going to roll a dice, always, always, always, I’m going to roll a dice. And how’s it going to get?
Marc:
Yeah, why not both? You would not put your entire life savings into a fine ice. I never knew that. And let’s have a pun. It is volatile, but that means your little 1% of your assets could go up a ridiculous amount. I think, yeah, diversification, it comes down to that once again.
Dr James:
All about reframe and how we see risk Total reframe.
Marc:
Yeah, risk is not a bad thing. Risk can go up an awful lot. We wouldn’t be doing a risky asset if it was almost guaranteed to go down, would we? Risk is exciting.
Dr James:
Well, this is it. People say invest in bonds because they’re not risky. But actually how not risky is a 2% return every year, which is your average bond yield. Yeah, which means that actually you’re still losing money because of inflation. That’s the interest in whatever you’re looking at.
Marc:
Exactly these times. 7% inflation is the most recent thing in the UK, I think. I guarantee minus 5%. Yeah, no risk for that.
Dr James:
No risk, go for it. That’s the. It’s just a weird paradox, isn’t it? Yeah, so Bitcoin, crypto, the wider world of crypto. Are you a Bitcoin maximalist? Do you believe there’s any altcoins out there that have legs that you believe will grow in the future? What are you watching? What are your eyes on? Are you a solely dedicated, passionate Bitcoin enthusiast?
Marc:
I’m not a maximalist. I believe Bitcoin is the answer to money, and that’s a big deal. But let’s not forget there are really interesting other things in this space as well, and even if you’re just thinking about the classic Ethereum from a computer science perspective, you’ve just made an amazing global computer that’s totally decentralized. What can we do with computers? What would you have known you could do with computers in the 1960s? Having a child like this? People might not even thought about that back then. So who knows? There’s a lot, a lot of Extremely early days for Bitcoin, let alone some of the other coins out there. So I’m not a maximalist. I do believe Bitcoin is the one for money, but there are other really interesting topics for, for cryptocurrencies in general, and there are also stepping stones as well, such as stables coins. You know we all believe that pounds and dollars is often not the future, but you can get seven stones into this world, so you know, convert your pounds into virtual pounds and then actually decide how to go from there. So there’s lots of different time frames, also different technologies, but the thing we can take from this money is changing and Whether it’s a stable coin you’re interested in or not, it’s the bit bit coins probably the actual future, especially when you’re talking about Things built on top of Bitcoin, the Lightning Network enabling as many transactions as visa and mastercard have per second, and it works. You know people using this all the time here on the island man, people buy their ice cream Bitcoin. They’re about 20 or 30 shops that you just use Lightning Network here. It’s fantastic, it’s, it works. What can I say? No way, yeah, it’s. Yeah. I can go down by my crepe in like by lightning payments, by my beer, and lightning payments it’s only a few stalls. They can be wrong, but it works and it’s quick and then no one gets charged back, some things like that.
Dr James:
What do you think about El Salvador and their acceptance of Bitcoin as one of the Currencies of the country? Do you think that’s part of a wider thing? Do you think it’s a flash in the pan?
Marc:
I think it’s brilliant and I love the way it’s making the IMF quake in their boots. It’s turning everything on its head. I think it’s a very daring thing to do. But El Salvador is. Its currency is tied to the dollar. So when you get quantities in America, at least there possibly is a benefit for that for America, for Americans, in some way, even if it’s mostly, you know, you share holders and banks. They also don’t. People get nothing from this, so tying your currency to that of another country is really not useful. So they kind of didn’t have that much to lose. And what’s really interesting now is how the rest of the world is panicking. The international monetary foundation being really upset at them is Really telling. I think you know they realize that their time is coming. So massively daring option. But I think I’m very excited for the country and I do think it might be the beginning of a nice domino effect. What’s America’s?
Dr James:
biggest export. Yeah, that one too. Yeah, the dollar. You know. You know when there’s inflation in the dollar, because everything else is valued in terms of dollars across the world. The dollar is the global reserve currency. It’s how people trade. Okay, so if I want to buy some oil, I have to buy it in dollars on the international market. Okay. So what that means is if the price of the dollar, if there’s inflation in the dollar, it is the only currency in the world that will uniquely manifest as inflation in other currencies as well, because we have to exchange with the dollar to get commodities. Okay, if there’s inflation in the ruble, it doesn’t matter. If there’s inflation in the end, it doesn’t matter. There’s inflation in the dollar, because I have to obtain that dollar first of all, and it messes with the exchange rates In. What that means is their prices in British shops go up. Prices in El Salvadorian shops go up.
Marc:
Yep, we need. We need an kind of extraterritorial global reserve currency, which is what Bitcoin is. I mean, america doesn’t really deserve to be the global reserve currency. They just got the globalization first. There’s no actual, real logical reason. If we would start from scratch, it would be Bitcoin, because it doesn’t rely on any government, doesn’t benefit any government government and, more importantly, it doesn’t disadvantage other governments, which is what the dollar does compared to other countries, like El Salvador being a perfect example. Yeah, we need new global reserve currency, and slowly, I think it will happen.
Dr James:
The theory is that they twisted the screw on the rest of the world with Bretton Woods in 1944. They said that they would reserve their military power to help Europe if they didn’t agree to the dollar being the world reserve currency. That’s the theory. Wow, didn’t know that. That’s. That’s quite sinister. That’s the theory I mean. We’re getting into. You know all sorts of Illuminati stuff. I suppose no one knows for sure. That’s the theory. Interest in one now, bretton, bretton Woods. Good thing to check out, good thing to research. Everybody’s listening. So, aside from Bitcoin, we talked about the other cryptos. You believe they have utility purpose and they will grow in price. What other ones do you hold, apart from Bitcoin? We thought obviously the dipoles and as much as you’re comfortable with, we don’t skip that question, if you like, I don’t mind.
Marc:
I I haven’t had enough time to really be really look at what’s out there. To be honest, I have Bitcoin in a theory and then my two biggest holdings from my smaller out of crypto, tiny, tiny bits of other things. You know really old-school, boring stuff like Litecoin and stuff which doesn’t really add much to the pot. I wouldn’t hold she, we knew I wouldn’t hold pointless new coins because they should have died a long time ago. There are really exciting ones out there. I just don’t know enough about them. What ones are gonna last? But again, you can diversify in your diverse, in your kind of crypto world. You can be sensible and hold 70% of your crypto and Bitcoin, 10, 20 in the Ethereum, then 10 and other random things because they can go up they. I don’t think we’ll ever have anything upseating Bitcoin because I do think Bitcoin is. It’s the solution for money and I think it will scale just fine with lightning and things like that. But other things can have different utilities. So, yeah, look, just using basic research on some annoying sighting points out, I don’t fall for the ones that have no utility at all, like she really knew, and diversify little crypto pot.
Dr James:
There’s a lesson in there, in your words, in itself for the people that are listening. If you find that you’re very busy and preoccupied by other stuff, the best way to dabble and get some exposure to the space stick with the king and queen. Bitcoin in Ethereum buy and hold and that’s it, and you can have some exposure. Maybe you’re not going to be the same the person who gets quite the returns that somebody who’s trading it gets. But don’t forget those people had to go through a lot of hardy, a lot of struggle, a lot of learning so that they could get to that point with a profitable. If you don’t have that time in the first place, but you want some exposure Bitcoin in Ethereum Buy it, put it in your core storage wallet kickback and then let the profits come to you with time. That’s the theory anyway.
Marc:
Absolutely. I agree. The answers are there to you know, it’s pretty exciting stuff already. It’s still early. If you buy Bitcoin, let’s face it. You know I wouldn’t have time in the real world to find a small, tiny company that I think has an incredible future. You know, taking a nice risk there, similar to some of the exotic coins out there, but getting some kind of part of the crypto pie and obviously the big ones are still pretty exciting, pretty, pretty volatile. I’m pretty risky, but I think there’s so much more upside. I mean the downside is they fall to zero. The upside is I mean, how many zeros do I want to add to the end of your, to the end of your?
Dr James:
asset balance. That’s awesome, man. That’s cool. What exciting things are you looking forward to in the crypto space, on the front of Bitcoin, on the front of anything else, as a man with his finger on the pulse?
Marc:
Exciting things. I mean, I do think later today we all need to do lightning network. We do as well. We haven’t implemented it yet just due to lack of time, but I know I’ve read a lot about it. I’ve read a few books and it makes sense. It’s complicated but it makes sense. So I think scaling on Bitcoin is still really important. You know, exorcism Solving money is a pretty big deal already. I’m interested in. I’m interested in a lot of the experiments. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Ethereum as it goes to proof of stake, whether that’s going to be a good or bad thing. I think Bitcoin’s stigma of proof of work is the right thing. I find the. I find the battles between the media very interesting. Disinformation on energy use, weird things coming out of government saying you know we should ban Bitcoin because it’s bad for the environment, without missing that, without really forgetting that this is, this is new money, this is a whole massive thing. So I quite like some of the social aspects as well. Ah, the whole space is so interesting. You can go down so many rabbit holes. Um, I, I wouldn’t. I like the broad approach rather than digging deep into anything, but you can get lost whatever floats your boat in this world, you’ll find an analogy in the crypto space that you can just get passionate about. So quickly.
Dr James:
Awesome, my friend, mark, you’ve been so generous with your time. Today we’re coming up towards the 40 minute mark and I like to keep things these short, sweet, accessible, punctual, all of those things. So 40 minutes is a beautiful time to begin to think about wrapping things up. There will be lots of people listening to this podcast who are thinking of themselves Should I get involved? Should I buy Bitcoin? Should I become someone who holds crypto? What would you say to those people who are on the fence? What do you think the thing that might tip them over is? What was the greatest epiphany or revelation that made you think, actually I need to get involved in the crypto space? But, of course, caveat it with the safe, balanced message that we’re doing it with power of our portfolio and we’re doing it from a point of view that you genuinely want to help people and make sure that they can participate in potentially accessing financial freedom and pulling that date forwards.
Marc:
It’s the future of money, I mean. I don’t know how basic it can be made. This is new money. Have a little bit and play with it and you’ll see how revolutionary it is. And if you really want to realize why Bitcoin is good, get you know. Well, I’ve had a bank account shut because I’m too close to crypto. You realize when you have just a few banks and they can shut you out at any time, they can do whatever they want with your money. We need an alternative and you are early in the system. Just get a little bit involved. It doesn’t matter how much you buy. You can just buy 50 quid. You know that most people can kind of dabble those levels and you’ll start to kind of feel why it’s amazing. So just start small, have a play and take it from there.
Dr James:
You know, it’s so unfortunate that, because we still live in an area where Bitcoin and crypto is nascent and unregulated, that the message that you’ve just said, which is a responsible one, can sometimes get drawn out by the media and the gunslingers that are out there in the crypto world who say put your house on it, and stuff like that. No reasonable person would understand the finance would ever say that. But for me it is totally conceivable and of anything relatable and understandable there’s someone who does have an understanding of finance might say actually begin to dabble and then also maybe even think about allocating a small portion of your portfolio to it Because, like I say, you’ve got the certainty of the stocks and bonds portfolio, which is 30 years doing something you may not even enjoy and hit. Surely it’s worth having some skin in the game at another auction.
Marc:
To me it makes total sense, totally does, and you know, do it over time as well, say, if you can put 50 pounds a month into Bitcoin or something on those lines, you get that dollar cost averaging. Going on, you get, you manage to smooth out those put spikes a little bit. It’s just worth having a go. I love it, mark.
Dr James:
Thank you so much for coming on the Denton’s Invest podcast. Is there anything you’d like to say in conclusion? Today Buy Bitcoin. Buy Bitcoin, simple as I love it.
Marc:
I love it. Short and sweet.
Dr James:
And yeah, as I say, if people who did want to dabble in it and did think about it, then it’s all about the responsible message that Mark and I talked about earlier, which is not something that you always hear, especially on the internet and especially when you’ve got these jumped up high energy YouTube people who are propagating the fact that they’ve got everything on Bitcoin. That’s not always the message that we want to spread, or certainly it’s a boring message. It doesn’t sell newspapers.
Marc:
It doesn’t sell fare. It’s so. You know, the truth is somewhere, usually in the middle between the two extremes. This is it 100%.
Dr James:
The whole world wants us to think that we’re either red or blue in terms of we’re thinking. Actually, in reality, the answer is almost always purple, virtually always. Someone said I love that man. Guys, for anybody who’s was listening, mark’s exchange bidelicious, really cool website. Feel free to check it out in your own time. Mark has been so generous with his time today and we are so grateful to him for appearing on the Dennis Hume Invest podcast. I believe this is episode number 74. Wow, that is crazy 74 episodes in. We’re going for the century mark. We’re going for the century. It’s coming up soon. Well, I should be careful when I say number 74. Because sometimes the episodes get a little jiggled around whenever we release them. But it’ll be in that realm or in that ballpark. But how cool is that? The first hundred? The first hundred, yeah, exactly the first hundred, the first of many hundreds. I love that We’ll go for the millennial next, the millennium episode. That would be cool, mark. Thank you so much for your time being super generous, being so fun to chat, and we will catch up very soon.
Marc:
Perfect Bye If you enjoyed this podcast, please hit follow or subscribe so you can get a lot of notifications.
Dr James:
Please hit follow or subscribe so you can stay up to date with information on new podcasts which are released weekly. Please also feel free to leave a positive review so others can learn about this podcast and benefit from it. I would also encourage any fans of the podcast to sign up to the free Facebook community from which the podcast originated. Please search Dennis Hume Invest on Facebook and hit join to become part of a community of thousands of other dentists interested in improving their finances, well-being and investing knowledge. Looking forward to seeing you on there.v