MikeCrypto is just the beginning, Bitcoin is like AOL, We’re in the very first ages of blockchain, The story of money, and more.
Guest: Brad Hart
Brad Hart is an entrepreneur, an experienced investor, a cryptocurrency expert, a trader, an adviser, and mentor. He is also the founder of Make More Marbles, which “helps entrepreneurs, investors, and philanthropists like yourself get connected with the resources, network, opportunities, and systems you need to move your mission forward.”
Hart also founded Hartwood Capital, his own hedge fund, focused on high risk, high profitability options trading, which returned 106% in 2013. He has mentored thousands of entrepreneurs and investors, and has been featured multiple times in Forbes (as well as several popular blogs like The Four-Hour Workweek).
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Resources: Make More Marbles Webinar (Starts Feb 1st!)
4:00
How Hart got into cryptocurrency
A few years ago, Brad Hart was based in NYC, working on various app store applications, and even had one of his apps acquired for $5,000. He heard about bitcoin through a sharp developer he was working with, who told him about his passion to build a Bitcoin trading app (similar to what Coinbase is today).
Hart took interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and started investing in 2013 with the help of a few mentors. He was investing in bitcoin while running his own hedge fund, Hartwood Capital, and managed to get in before the bitcoin price was $100 per coin. To this day, Hart didn’t cash in on all of his crypto investments, and if he would cash in at the highest valuations, he would make HUGE returns: 190x on Bitcoin, 140x on Ethereum, and smaller returns on Litecoin and a bunch of other coins.
“Most of my successes really just come from getting really smart people around me, incentivizing them accordingly, making sure everybody has what they need to thrive, and getting the hell out of their way.” — Brad Hart
Did you know?
The first version of cryptocurrency was called bitcoin whitepaper, designed by Satoshi Nakamoto — A name used by the unknown person or people who created both bitcoin and the first blockchain database. It’s still a mystery to this day who is behind bitcoin.
Pro tip: Mike buys Bitcoin on Coinbase and uses The Ledger Nano S, a hardware bitcoin wallet that allows him to keep his coins offline, which is considered a much more secure way to keep your money.
9:00
One of the riskiest asset classes
The current crypto investing trend is done mostly by young people, who don’t understand cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology very well, and usually don’t have any other investments in their portfolio. Older people advise not to invest in crypto, claiming it’s one of the riskiest asset classes that exists, and they are right about that! But they are missing out on how revolutionary blockchain technology is:
“It’s a fundamental new way to interact with each other in the new economy… If you are prepared to handle the risk, and you are able to mitigate the risk, you are more likely to participate in the upside.” — Brad Hart
Currently, blockchain brings a lot of power, transparency and all kinds of other traits that are both positive and negative for transaction making. For example: If someone issues a chargeback to a transaction they made buying something from you through a credit card, you don’t have much to do about it, and it’s very unlikely you’ll see your money again. With blockchain, there is a trusted third party (which is all of the participants), and every single transaction is recorded and verified. The transaction history is there forever, and there is no option to take it back.
“When a transaction is over, it’s over.” — Brad Hart
12:45
Crypto is just the beginning
Blockchain is the real disruptor in the way we can distribute trust and decrease friction, and thereby decrease the middle man that makes a lot of transactions.
For example: Imagine real-estate would trade like stocks. Instead of one person or one company owning a house, blockchain allows you to distribute a piece of property between 100 people, who all have more transparency and liquidity. Blockchain lets buyers and sellers act more like a co-op, enabling you to eliminate interactions between brokers, lawyers, title companies, insurance companies, and banks. You’d still need property inspectors, but you’d be able to eliminate a lot of intermediary entities, which suck up cost, time and energy. Getting it closer to a buyer-seller transaction.
15:30
Bitcoin is like AOL
Compared to other crypto technologies, Bitcoin is already like AOL. It’s clunky, old, and already overloaded. It wasn’t meant to do what it does now. Hart believes bitcoin will still be valuable and serve a purpose in the future, but Ethereum and Litecoin are better contenders to win the market, as they have better tools for people to build on top of.
“It will take a while before a clear winner emergents.” — Brad Hart
20:00
We’re in the very first ages of blockchain
Blockchain was first introduced in 2009. Less than 10 years ago! It will probably take another 10–20 years before it’s adopted by the masses. It’s very hard to regulate or legislate blockchain because it’s built on the internet, where people interact with coins in a global market.
Currently, the market cap of all coins together is still under $1 trillion, which is very low. For reference, the federal bank sometimes prints $90 billion in new money per month!
22:30
Institutional money is getting into crypto
Even banks, which are set to suffer from blockchain spreading, are buying cryptocurrencies. Recently, Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase, called bitcoin a fraud, and then instructed Chase subsidiaries to bitcoin themselves.
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28:30
The story of money
“Money is a story we make up and decide to believe in. It’s long since it stopped being related to anything that is scarce, like a mineral, or resource, or even economic output, or anything like that. It’s just really like what’s an amount of money we can convince everybody is the right amount, and they’ll consider to trade that considered value. That’s really the story of money, whether it’s US dollars or euros or yen or whatever, it’s the same kind of story.
What’s really behind that story, is the power structures. Who had the bombs, the missiles, who has the nuclear submarines, and the aircraft carriers to back up the faith and credit of their government and their monetary system by extension. It’s one way in which we control and track value added society, taxes, income, outco, all that stuff that is important to understand in a scarce economy.”
If we move into a different type of economy, like for example, one day all of food, energy, water, and shelter is one day covered at a baseline whether through UBI or some other means… Universal basic incomes is one of the ways we can possibly move and transition past capitalism. In a sense that one day, no single individual economic actor will be able to make a living except through competing with AI and robotics, and that’s just not going to happen. Essentially nobody can have a job, well how to we provide for everybody. One way would be to produce so much and bring the cost of living so far down that a basic universal income everybody gets would be able to cover that.” — Brad Hart
31:15
From survival to abundance
Hart’s Make More Marbles philosophy is based on making enough marbles in the form of: food, energy, water, and shelter. Getting to a place where 80–90% of people’s time isn’t focused on surviving, by having basic needs met. A place where we can truly thrive and create abundance.
His mission is to help people understand what’s available to them to make new systems. We need to think about how the things we do affect people, the planet, and make a profit. Not only make a profit. If nature had a balance sheet, it would be in the red right now. People take stuff from the environment, put a spin on it and sell it without caring for our planet’s sustainability.
“The only thing that is constant is change, and the rate of change is increasing exponentially. Because changes will make changes go faster and faster.” — Brad Hart
38:30
Investing is like creating an orchard
In an orchard you don’t plant one tree, else plant 1,000, knowing some will live, and some won’t make it. Investing is similar. It’s not about one trade or decision, it’s about making good, high probability decisions over time. So over time, you can spot the ones that work and the ones that don’t. Allowing you to cut your losses early, and let the winners continue running to make up for the losers.
40:00
Make More Marbles
Make More Marbles has a course that teaches you about crypto investments, and the foundation and rules about investing in general. It helps you manage your risk more effectively by having a strategy consistently over time.Not just for bitcoin, but for blockchain. You will learn the meaning and purpose of each coin and its technology
Look out for: An automated trading bot that executes your investing strategy without emotion that they are going to release soon.
50:30
How to spot crypto scams
Recently, a great marketer named Justin Sun plagiarized a whitepaper and raised $11 billion on a coin called Tron! He plagiarized some stuff and added some of his own.
Make More Marbles made a cheat sheet on how to spot cryptocurrency scams.
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This article fails to mention key information such as the fact that some of these wallets don’t support the forks. That, besides security, is arguably the most important information.