 Welcome to the last set news to get top stores in crypto and bring on a bite-sized piece of today Just the thumbnail suggests looks like there's some actual positivity out of Ukraine So we're going to take a look at what is going on at the border and if this means a positive a Christ price correlation with crypto. We're also going to take a look at what I call a crypto acceleration It seems like things are just accelerating at a rapid pace when there's when things happen They come in bunches. So we're going to take a look at what coinbase is doing also New York Stock Exchange and finally we're going to talk about some exit thinking because it's never too late to think about those exit strategies. So first let's just take a look at the big story. This just came across the desk. I thought it was pretty fascinating considering that we've had nothing but warmongering and rattle shaking for quite the longest time. This just came out and it talks about Ukraine. Russia says it is withdrawing some troops from the Ukrainian border. Here's what we got. Russia's defense minister confirmed on Tuesday that some of the troops stationed on the country's border with Ukraine are returning to their bases after completing quote unquote drills, Interfax News Agency reports. Before I need to read the next sense I just got to make myself very clear. If you're going to invade somebody and you have them positioned on one side of the border and you think that you may or may not go in even if you're just trying to fool somebody it would be kind of a little bit interesting play to say you know what we're just going to pull them back but we're going to stick around. Now Putin is a master as we know for international conflicts and things like that but it doesn't make any sense to me that on one side they just say yeah we're going to pull back people but then on the other side we're going to keep it going because this is what we're talking about. So in the next part Joe Biden's deputy principal press secretary said Russia has not moved to de-escalate its presence on Ukraine's border where some 100,000 troops are massed. Meanwhile German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived on Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and right now it is Tuesday February 15th so I know what the the press secretary said but to me it doesn't make much sense as to if you're going to invade somebody why pull everybody back and again this could be the ultimate 3D chess. So the question then is well what's going on with the prices? Well prices today are looking pretty good actually we're up 5% to almost 2.67 trillion trading volumes looking pretty good and then if we take a look at the price of Bitcoin hey we're at 44,000 in 24 hours that's 3.4% Ethereum's up 5.9% now the hour leaves a little bit off 0.3 whatnot but again I think that this could be some positive price correlation also because this news has been gathering steam around over the last couple hours so we take a look at traditional markets S&P 500 had a pretty darn good day let me refresh this just to make sure 44 wow okay even better then also for Nasdaq and refresh this just to make sure for the close looking pretty good so I think what's going on is positive I'm glad to see that there wasn't a full-scale invasion but again only time will tell but if it is this is good news let me just think about that in the comment section and let's move on to our next piece it's just crypto acceleration it just seems like as things are coming about just kind of it feels not there's any hard data well there is some some hard data out there total value lockup defy the different volume that's actually increasing people moving Ethereum and Bitcoin off exchanges whatever it just seems like there's a lot of good things happening in the crypto space and it feels like things might actually do pretty well and this is one of those examples this was an a story that came across the desk coinbase to hire 2,000 employees because it sees enormous web three opportunities before I go on just to remind everybody that because of that ad for Super Bowl Sunday within a very short amount of time under 30 minutes Coinbase had 20 million hits on their website just for that goofy ad where they have the QR code running about so it just seems that people on the right place the right time which is you watch this video okay here's what we got we believe this is a quote from L.J. Brock Coinbase's chief people officer I guess that would be will be called human resources back in the day he says that we believe our industry is in its infancy and that building on ramps for individuals to participate is critical to drive the next generation use case of crypto we're also expanding to include products that host user-generated contact like NFTs good not a second and we're excited about our ambitious plans to the future of Coinbase while enhancing security ease of use and accessibility hey I just hope that you guys keep things going up and it doesn't crash all the time that's would be a big win for me and then also just so you know for the stock because they are publicly listed company now Coinbase is up 6.1% almost $207 on Tuesday so this is just something to be aware of and just so you know that if you're looking at web three about you know what does that all mean what not web one was really decentralized is everything was just kind of built in people's own nose web two was essentially centralized and had everything that was kind of pushed to big conglomerates and big corporations such as Google Facebook and all the different places so now with web three we're trying to build it back and make it decentralized and if you're looking to see what what kind of play the play in my opinion is I don't know how big each ecosystem is but they're going to need to build that on some kind of layer one and that could be Ethereum that could be Solana that could be Cardano that could be near protocol that could be phantom that could be Avalanche that could be Tezos just look at those layer one solution I think in three four or five years time things will work out pretty well that's not investments a ambitious investment opinion but if I was looking at things the people they got rich and the gold rush weren't the speculators it was the people that sold them all those shovels and whatnot so let me just think about that and the comment section let's move on to our second to last piece another crypto accelerant the new york stock exchange the new york stock exchange just filed for a trademark app for an NFT marketplace now you're not you're reading that right here's what is going on so the new york stock exchange filed for a trademark focused on virtual goods and NFTs last week according to recent trademark application the trademark app filing date on February 10th is notable as one component refers to an online marketplace for NFTs and virtual goods here's the full section in full I'm not even going to read this but you will see some comparisons to this and the trademark application from walmart and really what it is is they're trying to hold intellectual property as they move down that road is this mean that they're going to have a marketplace the new york stock exchange probably not what they're trying to do is like look we're going to try to cover ourselves in case we want to get into that sector in any way shape or form so we're going to file the patent right now what does that mean it means that everything isn't going to happen tomorrow it's not going to happen in a week it's not going to happen a couple months but in the long term I think the future is extremely bright for crypto and digital assets just look around and see what you got and that is which would lead me to my next point which is exit thinking now I don't know where things are going I can't tell you I can't give you a price prediction I mean I can but it would be awful I just know that in time if you look historically how things have been going doing pretty good so the thing we have to think about now is even though the market is moving sideways it's time to think about what you want to do with all these crypto gains and digital assets and things you have as far as like exit strategies and things like that so when I think about that I think about this is my exit strategy and I've talked about this at length I've got I mean I trust is my IRA I'm putting 5% of cash 25% and stable coins 5% of masterworks 15% and you can't see it too well that's land let me move this a little bit 20% in houses 10% of my Amazon business and they're 15% and staking and just leaving everything in crypto because I think it's going to go up exponentially and the one I really want to focus on right now is the the masterworks masterworks if you don't know it's purchasing fractionalized shares of super expensive art like bank sees and basket yachts and things like that and then Vincent then going on stuff things that I have no business doing but I did a deep dive and purchasing fractionalized shares is a great way to hedge your bet because guess what the super rich will always buy crazy pieces of artwork I'm not big into it I don't care it's not my job as an investor so I talked about this company masterworks I also went through it and I personally own a bank see and basket yacht again I knew about a bank see that was about it and I don't own the whole bank see that's just that's the one I'm telling you it's a fractionalized share and these are securities that are registered with the SEC so don't have to worry about the security and want to security it is a security but what's great about it and I think is really good is that there is a 13 14% price appreciation year over year and I like to see those things especially with off-risk assets now I'm not telling you to do a ton of it and get into it but just like I talked about I've got 5% I think it's just good to de-risk yourself for a little bit and diversify a little bit and to that end I mean I'm gonna I'll point you to my deep dive that link in the description actually be the very end as well but I brought in this guy Scott Lynn is the CEO I'm gonna have him talk to you real quick about five minutes or so about what's new what's going on and how things are progressing as far as masterworks just take a listen so everybody as promised I brought in one of the founders of masterworks Scott Lynn and Scott if you take a look at the actual deep dive video we go through his history everything that has to do with masterworks I'll link that in the description so I brought Scott in just to tell us give it an update about what's going on Scott thanks for coming on the show thanks for having me yeah exactly I'm glad you're here I mean I've been talking about you guys forever this is great so the first thing I want to get into is just what's new because we talked about the different offerings all those things but what are you guys doing in this space that it's a little bit different as far as like what we've already talked about beforehand yeah I mean you know this year when I think about when I think about the business a lot of it is just all about scale right so we're launching a new painting roughly every four to five days in the platform we're projecting that this year we'll buy somewhere around a billion dollars in art we're hiring 20 to 30 new people a month so so that's really what what we're focused on is how do we take the the model that's been working over the past couple years and just just scale it to to to greater levels so that's that's mainly what what we're focused on yeah I got you and you know what's it's a it's a thing because when you talk about scaling I think that's one of the hardest parts for a business because I know you guys how many years has it been now that you guys have been in business yeah the business now is four and a half years old so it feels yeah it's a few months longer but but yeah I mean it's it's still a relatively relatively new business yeah you guys you guys at home will notice that I'm in a nice casual shirts and Scott over there is looks a little chilly because we're just talking about the difference cold weather differences so anyhow so Scott that's great I'm glad you guys are able to scale that's amazing that in that short amount of time you're buying a billion dollars worth of artwork so I'm glad you can get that let's talk about real quick as I see it when I take a look at this and we already talked about this with the crypto investors but it seems like for us there's a lot of risk out there so we like to some of us not everybody likes to offload some risks but the way that you see it our traditional investors finding this just as attractive as the crypto investors because I see a lot of people just like holding on to stocks forever yeah I mean we get a lot of qualitative kind of anecdotal feedback on this so uh one of the the things that that we we try to talk to investors a lot about to think of similar to your messaging is how do you build a portfolio of non-correlated asset classes right and we talk about correlation we're really talking about do do things do different investment types behave similarly in terms of price increases or or decreases so I think there's a lot of your your listeners probably know bitcoin is is fairly uh highly correlated to to public equities or the s&p specifically yes one of the one of the interesting things about art is that the correlation factor between art and the s&p is somewhere around 0.1 0.2 depending on the the time period that you measure so it really is a non-correlated asset class um we often get asked why that is I think I think today we probably think of two different explanations for that one is our prices are correlated to the the um the wealth increase in the top 1% on a global basis the second is that um you know we we tend to believe that art is a global asset class you can buy painting in new york and you can sell it in hong kong so it almost behaves as just an international currency on its own since these these paintings aren't really denominated in any any particular currency um and our buyers really live live around the world the u.s. I think now is 25 percent of the art market china is 25 percent um western europe is 25 percent of the rest of the world is sort of the remainder so it is this really interesting global global asset class so I think that's that's a long-winded way of saying that that finding ways to invest that are are non-correlated to other things in your portfolio is really important particularly when when we're living through that the volatility that that we are today yeah exactly I mean I see it like we do a daily show and when we're taking a look at the crypto market I mean it's it's wildly volatile then we take a look at the s&p 500 and nasdaq and some days even those markets are more volatile than than crypto and digital assets so when I sit back I think to myself where is there somewhere it's a little bit safe and this is I didn't put like for me I first of all thanks I got a nice banksy which always sounds good when I say I want to banksy but it's it's great when I can just see that okay that's what I appreciate because of the fact that the ultra wealthy people who are buying multi-million dollar pieces of artwork do not care so much about the overall global macro environment that's going on they want those our pieces they will get those our pieces and just after over you know covid we've seen a lot the top 10 people the richest people in the world have actually in one point doubled their wealth so I think there's this is a long time coming and this will actually speak to the last part here which my question was this in the beginning we talked about the AP wire there are the interest or the the appreciation for these pieces that usually beats the s&p 500 around 14.4 percent or 14.3 now there was two pieces the Mona Lisa and staring into space that I think the Mona Lisa was sold in 2019 staring into space with 2021 what was the price appreciation for those those pieces yeah the the annualized return on those two sales was in excess of 30 net of fees so those were those were very good deals for investors I think if you look at the if you look at the unrealized and realized performance of the portfolio overall across okay I can't recall specifically but I think roughly 100 investment vehicles that we've done that is averaged about 15 and a half percent net of fees on an annualized basis as of 1231 so we you know we feel very good about the portfolio and the performance of the asset class so far gotcha okay so that that was that was the main thing so just as a reminder for everybody else out there I know in the crypto space we're really worried about the sec coming down and saying this is security this is not a security great thing with masterworks is they registered everything as a security so you don't have to worry and jump to those hoop laws so Scott any last words of wisdom for the investors out there especially in our space about what you got yeah you know I I think what you said which is is diversification matters and you know we think about that a lot and we hear about that all the time but but qualitatively it does seem that a lot of crypto investors who who are signing up for masterworks do have relatively undiversified portfolios compared to what we would typically expect for for similar networks so I think you know exploring other alternative asset classes whether it's hard or or other things to be able to weather different market conditions over time makes makes sense for all investors yeah it makes sense and I just lastly I'll say that when I when I went through the process they actually said not physically but Matt sat down with me over the phone call and said what do you want to do what are you going on like I don't want to put everything in there it's like okay well you're different than the last guy in the last guy before that so let me formulate a plan for you and we'll make it work for you that was I think the biggest aha moment for me so thanks for putting together this yeah absolutely I mean we walk every every investor through suitability we talk about how they're investing what their risk tolerances are what their goals are and we we try to make sure that we make recommendations based on that awesome all right everybody so I want to make this quick Scott's a busy guy but there is a link in the description looks just like this and then from there you can pick yourself up and take a look at the different art pieces that are there and also skip the wait list so Scott thanks so much for coming on we really appreciate it thanks for having me all right so that's it so thanks for sticking with me I appreciate it so look that's it for tonight and what's going on if you like today's video give it a thumbs up also consider subscribing while you're talking about our time sensitive and that's it for today thanks so much for watching I appreciate it and I'll see you on the next one