 Cryptocurrency isn't a dip or it's dead. It's gotten very quiet in the crypto world You remember when we was talking about dogecoin Especially when we had the president and CEO of Tesla mr. Elon Musk come out and say hey We're not gonna start taking dogecoin payment We've seen all type of thing when Bitcoin hit his all-time high about 60 to 69 thousand if I'm correct Everybody was on it. Everybody had them fear missing out. Everybody was talking about it. Now. It's gotten very quiet So it has the NFT market. So these markets gotten very quiet I think it's the best time to start talking about it because usually, you know, they say I can't remember who said I know James will probably know what I guess today when blood in the streets, right? That's when it's time to buy It's there's blood in the streets right now in the crypto world or it has the crypto world just been exposed For the scam that it is So what I further do ladies and gentlemen I got a special guest that you guys and girls can see coming in all the way live from New York Most like the New Jersey, you know how that tri-state area is He's a friend of the show is Uncle James. Some of you may know him as James Fortland, but James. How you doing today, sir? I'm doing excellent. It's great to see you Great to see you too. Great to see you. That's a nice shirt. You got on too James. Did you get a haircut? I did today Nice, so, you know, it's it's been a few months since you've been on I like to have you You know recurring every couple months to get that insight, you know, people love to have you on they love to see you First I want to say thank you for all you have done to support the book drive The Wesley learns book drive that has been going on things to everybody who's contributed to it to get children's books The Wesley learns children's book on investing credit insurance into kids hands around the globe So I definitely appreciate you and thank you for that. Let me give you a little round of applause Now let's get into it James what's going on, you know back in the day you was calling it Bitcoin, right? Yeah Oh, this is a dip. What's going on in the crypto world? What do you think? Well, you know like the way they talk about you're either a Crypto minimalist or a crypto maximalist and I was sort of a crypto. I don't know What's less than minimalist? I was kind of way out there I was Jamie Diamond kind of reminded me today of the other day he came out. He said That a lot of these tokens are just like a decentralized Ponzi scheme But but if you listen to his whole quote, there's about 90 seconds of it He talks about how blockchain is a significant technology that JP Morgan uses a lot of it But he was concerned he voiced concern about a lot of these At least the way I read it about a lot of these like alt coins and some of these things like huge coin that don't really have an underlying technology underneath them I would say right now. We're in a big era of uncertainty with with Bitcoin with with crypto You have you've had a lot of scams. You've had a lot of hacking You've had a lot of a lot of it's gotten found out like you said some of it Some of it really turned into Ponzi schemes. It may not have been planned that way, but it played out that way Um You have some big issues with some of the stable coins like tether. There's a lot of debate over whether they really have the assets or not There's you have big like a lot of lawsuits. You still have that XRP lawsuit with the with the the SEC going on Um, I you know, I broke out the yellow pad. So that's how serious I'm tonight I would say that like this. We have a big cloud of uncertainty. Um The other issue I like and you kind of pointed out a little bit at the beginning of the show is is maybe this whole person Presumption this whole idea that this decertified finance or decentralized finance And this this this system of decentralized Self-policing fact-checking system. Maybe it really doesn't work at all and I was thinking about it I would say before president Obama became before he was president Obama Around 2006 there was this big rave about something called crowd sourcing And as you you know, I have a I have a news blog that I run in northern New Jersey Which is basically like local news and with some finance and stuff like that, but it's mostly local news Uh, and in in general the crowdsourcing was the premise behind the blog We figured guys like you who live locally would go Hey, I know a lot about high school football and I want to tell you this one team is the best team I've ever seen in my entire life and you might submit an article or write a big comment And I can turn that comment into a post on the blog And if it it worked, but there was some shortfalls the idea between crowdsourcing is the theory is is that a group of Um Independent minded individuals who have some knowledge of a certain area Can probably come up with better solutions than say some very focused professional experts quote unquote Uh, and for somebody like me that sounds really great because I'm I'm always the guy who goes all these experts You see on tv they always seem to be wrong about everything, but they're always on over and over again I mean, so like we always we used to say on wall street even a broken clock is right twice a day But there's some guys who can't even match that they're they're just they're so consistently wrong. I can't get over it I can't believe they're still getting trotted out. Um But anyway, the problem with the crowdsourcing book becomes over time that group of of Independent minded individuals becomes partisan And they become kind of a conformist blob And they lose that flexibility and they lose the the chart kind of like you see the way facebook is kind of the falls like When facebook first started it was a lot of people talking about their kids and having fun and You know hanging out and meeting old friends and talking to high school their high school sweetheart and things like that And now it's all people screaming and yelling about everything arguing about Every stupid thing you can't even believe and it really turns a lot of people off And I and that seems to be the nature of the crowd um So i'm wondering if this same thing is with the blockchain. For example, this decentralized. Well, if you look at a lot of the cryptos Um much much of these cryptos are held by small groups of people I mean bitcoin is certainly held by a majority of it is held by a very small group of people And I want to say this James remember when everybody's like, oh Bitcoin and crypto currency is going to be the hedge to inflation It's going to be a head to the stock market and now it's time to put that rubber to the road You're like, hey look at inflation's up at nine percent. Yeah, the corn is not hedging. It's going down Yes, and the market is going down. There's no hedge. What's going on? Has he been exposed? You think about that? Interesting. I was just watching a video Uh with anthony scaramucci in it and he was talking about he runs Uh skybridge capital or something like that and they actually run sort of a of a small like an etf that's Has sort of crypto industry or digital asset industry companies in it Um, and he said that we he said that that that idea that bitcoin is an inflation hedge has now been tested and failed It's not it's clearly at least right now. It's not an inflation hedge. It may be someday, but right now it is not Um, and I I kind of agree. I think that was something that I kind of thought well, maybe because it Bitcoins seem to trade like a commodity and I thought well, maybe that will work, but it certainly has not worked um, I look at a we there's about four basic issues that I think Have maybe five that all have to be addressed that needed to be addressed five years ago That still need to be addressed. Um, the first one is we all see it What is the token price have to do with the underlying technology? That's the first problem. We there doesn't seem to be A link between often what the token price is and what the technology is that's under that token Or for that matter some of these tokens like these old coins don't have any technology under They're like poker chips. They're they're sort of for gamble So that's one issue. The second issue is this premise like maybe it Just decentralized finance is just or decentralized decision making and fact checking is it just doesn't really work Because crowdsourcing didn't really work at the end of the day. It doesn't really work Um, what's the other thing to be the third thing would be the slow adoption rate I've come I come from I still remember the dot com era And man there was like there were guys out there like this is going to make grandma's drugs cheaper This is going to do this for you. This is going to help joe six pack This is going to make his life a lot better. This is going to even the playing field But with crypto all you hear is a bunch of engineers talking about all this like obscure stuff That you have to be an engineer to understand Nobody's sitting there going this is going to help grandma buy her medicine better Like there were still not seeing that it's it's not converting for example I like that. I like that was the gym because you you you were here And you were you know, of course, I was here too in the dot com bomb the internet started become a thing In the mid late 90s when it's like, oh the internet the internet the internet, you know I was like a teenager at that time, but you as an adult and you saw how that people was kind of Adopting it and you say hey with cryptocurrency You know, but some people say hey, it's going to advance does we're going to be to do money transactions faster You know, it's going to turn the finance industry upside down on this head What do you got to say that when you compare that? Well, I think the problem that it's running into is is the regulatory And the the status quo problem I I think you're your biggest issue and and the problem is the people involved in crypto very much believe In one hand, they they love the government But on the second hand, they somehow think that that same government that's all powerful and all knowing um is going to let them Create the print their own money and have their own currency and do all these things that the government without government involvement and The government is not going to let you do that I I just I just this idea that we're going to be able to we're going to be making our own money and Like I it's I just don't think it's really going to happen And you saw the biden administration came out, I guess two days ago with their what did they call it? I had to write it down because I had this great name Uh the framework for responsible. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep digital assets Wow, that's a mouthful at the end of the day What was the focus maybe the most important thing is they once again said the treasury wants to make a digital dollar What does that mean? That means buy buy Crypto because the government wants to control it. They're not they're not going to let you run wild on your own I mean it may happen But they're they're not going to let this So easily happen and I I think that's That's what you're running into. I I think some there is some adoption like banks are certainly using Certain blockchain to transfer money around a lot faster Um There's a lot of there's a lot of high-end stuff that that's happening But for a lot of people in your life, you don't see the benefit really like regularly You and me like I get up every day. I I do the like I don't see how blockchain's doing anything fine I see how the internet is doing stuff for me every single minute But blockchain maybe not it's not as obvious Um So I I think I think we're running into a lot of that. Um, I think again going back to the adoption thing I think, you know, what do we get? We got the closest thing We got to something that everybody was kind of talking about a little bit was the nfts And that kind of died out as fast as it started and at the end of the day It was really a small group of people that was really involved in that it's just it's It's not getting disseminated. It's not being embraced by the public because the public you need You need to know too much to be able to use it. You know, there's there's just too many Steps to climb up to get to it Um, I can remember when Netscape when public the big joke was like even an idiot like you can go on the internet now And that no joke. That's what they were saying and I mean the people from Netscape Were basically saying you don't have to know how to read to use this thing and go on the internet And this is going to totally level the playing field There's you'll be able to compete with anybody with no money all you need is an internet connection at Netscape And you'll you'll know as much as anybody knows now That's not really true But you you you at one point you had access to certainly an awful lot of an awful lot more information that you would Normally then you were up to that point very rapidly So there's there's like these issues are floating around and I and I think They're the same issues you could go back five years and we weren't getting fast enough adoption There was the issue is big brother going to let all these little brothers take over I'm not so sure. I know I just I that's probably the biggest thing I have trouble with I just don't believe it And when you talk about the framework that Joe Biden put out, I mean it was something I saw Coming from a mile. I mean anybody can see that I did not think the government was going to go out and say, hey Let's get on to let's put our currency on to this system. We really don't even know who owns Or we don't know who's created from and let's just do business there That's what they're going to do is just going to take it. They're going to copy it They're going to figure out a way to reverse engineer. That's what that framework said is that We're going to find the biggest brains in the world and we're going to create our own system And we're going to run off our system. I knew that was going to happen But I said, well will that Make bitcoin more relevant Or will it just you know, it's just like for prime example I started this children's book series Seven eight years ago, right when I was when I came in and really was nobody in that Investing in insurance space, right? Right. Now you're seeing more people come along Does that catapult me or does that drown you out? That's the thing that I was kind of looking at with You know With me when it when it when you have more people doing something and you push more energy into a industry or a sector You know, it's kind of like what's that old saying all tides rise to boats or whatever the case may be Right, right rising tide lifts all boats It's exactly you know rising tide lifts all boats So it's like hey way we all get to go up with this wave or does it come in and and it just eliminates everybody else So that's what's my thing. That's I was like, well, yeah I I I agree with that's it. That's a great analogy. That's a that's a fantastic analogy I just think that's the that's the issue. I'm I'm way more scared having being a little older. I'm way more skeptical of You know, and it may not be some don't don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean the government is Like malicious in some way, but I think often they're they're When they when they address things they either make things worse or they address it in a way that works better for them Because if we're all using currency that they can't track, how are they gonna tax us? How are they gonna? They're not gonna let that happen. That's To me that's that always was like the biggest like people talk about that and like unless you believe the whole world Everything's just gonna collapse and the only thing that's gonna be left is crypto Um, but but then again the problem I have with that is then the internet's not gonna work. So what do you do with your crypto? Like you like the internet's unplugged. That's it. We're like, there's no, you know, crypto doesn't mean anything that so, uh, I I think that you know It's funny because a couple of people said that like this this thing from the Biden administration Was just kicking the can down the road again. It's the same old over and over again And it didn't really do anything and it didn't mean anything like kind of like you you said and and it I I I think that's a that's a big issue. I think some of the I mean banks can look at this as a threat Some people said I I read this thing on twitter the other day A guy said you're not going to ask a guy owns a taxi. How how great uber is You're not going to ask a hotel company to tell you about Airbnb So why would you ask a banker to tell you about bitcoin like that's there's not going to like that no matter what happens Oh, yeah, so I got asked this question right now If you are 30 years old You see in the state of crypto currencies right now Do you dollar cost average and buy it out the dip Start to put a little bit of money in every month or do you just strap it counter losses? What do you do? I'm see I'm still like and this goes probably with the stock market as well Remember whatever it was a couple months ago the last time I was on I told you I told everybody buy an e-bike Go sailing all summer. Just forget about the market come back after the election And because it's just going to be a really rough market It's going to drive everybody crazy And you're you're not going to get anywhere and you're probably going to lose a lot more money than you make And so here we are moving along and I think this goes for both crypto. I think I'd like to see a big wipeout yet Like I like like I always joke when Jim Kramer cries It's time to buy and so when he's on his knees on tv Crying in the middle of the total wipeout, you know, it's time to buy or you know, or it's just it We haven't quite gotten to that washout yet Where everybody's just like like I see when I see Like Bitcoin Bitcoin's been flooding around that $20,000 range like there for it's rallied up Then it's back down and it goes a little below then it goes back up It's kind of been stuck around there and I Usually you get you need like the bottom is going to be some like deeper loads and anybody expects And and and there's going to be a lot of screaming and crying And and that's we haven't quite seen that yet. We're we may be getting closer We may be getting real close here because we're running out of time the election's coming So it's got to be it's got to be before november That's the way I look at it. So you're looking at the turnaround the market is probably going to be at the midterms Yeah after the midterms and I think regardless what happens that things will change or you'll get better direction I think right now we have a lot of short-term issues That are impacting long-term views. For example People are nervous and there's a lot of uncertainty. So they're not going to buy assets like digital assets because they're scared So that plays in the role. Maybe in the long run They may prove to be really like bitcoin may be great because eventually they're going to they're not going to print anymore They're going to they're going to be capped out or whatever is 21 Million or something. I don't know what the number is but they're they're capped out and maybe at that point A bitcoin may move up a lot or may start to change the way of trades once it's capped out But right now we have all this this sort of short-term stuff like press Just like if you look at the yield curve the two-year treasury is higher than the 30 year Now a lot of people will tell you that's an inverted yield curve And that means our recession is right around the corner. Well, I'd say we're already in a recession to some degree Or at least a slowdown And but I'm not see I don't I don't think it's going to be like 2008 I don't think it's going to be some terrible recession. I just think it's going to be More like a nagging slow with certain sectors being disproportionately impacted. I think I think there's other stuff going on right now So I I'm looking at this and I say, you know, you could nibble I I mean if you're a long-term guy like it was it was barren Rothschild and he said buy when there's blood in the streets There it is. There it is. And the second part of that quote is Especially if that blood is your blood so Because he was a Frenchman in the front front and Napoleon had just lost the battle of Waterloo and people were like panicking in Paris and uh, he was he he decided to buy because that blood was his blood He just started buying And I I I I would say you're you're getting close I wouldn't try to time the bottom if you're I just keep averaging in And I think for most people who are long-term people investors at least in stocks. Anyway You should just be buying and and you should have this thing on automatic You should just buy every month and you know spend your time on your sailboat or your e-bike and Spending time with your kids are working not worry about trying to time the bottom. I think that's uh, You're probably not going to hit the dead bottom Hmm Okay, well Now we kind of tip-toed around this question James What are you doing? Are you buying it this time? Holding off I've been I've been sitting Right, you know, I've been sitting because I have a lot of oil stocks So i'm sitting because I know this winner is going to be really ugly And there is not the capacity out there There is not a lot of things and they're doing a lot of stuff right now to get oil prices down like Releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve And and those kind of events I mean the the head of armaco the so the arabian oil company said there's not enough capacity if the economy picks up at all We're going to be a huge trouble. There's just there's no way to make enough oil And it it it's I this this winner is going to be real tough in europe They're going to have a rough time. There's going to be a lot of shortages There's people talking 150 dollars a barrel on oil prices Meanwhile in the short run, it's going down That if you look at natural gas, it's the same thing. There's a huge shortage of natural gas yet the price is down Why is the price down because there's artificial short term events that are impacting it But in three months Or we it starts getting cold out. I think we're going to see a big these prices are going to skyrocket So Yeah, I'm just I'm just sitting waiting for you know, and you know, I'm I'm I'm like, you know But meanwhile I drive my e-bike because I'm not going to pay six dollars a day But I don't know oil stocks So I I got them both ways because I'm like I'm like there's no way I'm paying for all that stuff And uh, but you know, I think I think if you're looking a lot of technology stocks have really gotten beat up I think it's you could start averaging in I think I would I would dabble I'm actually I'm actually looking maybe thinking maybe not buying crypto directly But buying the companies that are involved in it Like, you know, like the coin bases and the things like that Whether I buy them directly or I buy them through some etf like, uh, mr. Scaramucci is running here He has one. It's called. Yeah, you feel Well, it's called the first trust skybridge crypto industry and digital economy Okay, that is a mouthful Yeah, that's the I think the first one was bi tco or bi. Oh or whatever something like that. Yeah Yeah, that's how you're trying to get everything get everything back. So yeah Well, I'm just thinking, you know, you buy the thing it's like at the low like the low is like 450 I think it's 550 right now that 52 week high is 27 I mean if the thing goes to 10, you're like, you're you know, you're in business I mean, I look I look for a big score. I'd be looking for a lot higher than 10 bucks, but So, you know, I mentioned, of course, James. So you only do ETFs. You wouldn't mess with the innovation You can hop on that Robin Hood app and just get those random ones that everybody's getting No, you know, I think that's crazy I unless you're really focused on something, you know, one in particular that somehow I think right now First of all the the last thing that I hadn't mentioned yet is the major problem for crypto for somebody like me Is crypto needs Like a button would agreement like you have In with the with the equity markets If you don't know what that is in 1792 A bunch of 24 traders got together in New York and signed an agreement From that agreement that created the New York Stock Exchange and basically laid the foundation for the entire modern financial system It's about a six line agreement. It's like six sentences Um and what crypto needs something because for example when you go on different exchanges The same crypto trades at different prices There's liquidity issues. Who in the world wants I like I like who wants to buy I get stuck with the crypto and then you can't sell it like they're like the exchange shuts you down and you're not A lot of get your money out or whatever Uh, like those kind of that that I can't deal with there's no way I would like I that's unacceptable to me um There's uh other other issues for example crypto has no regulation So you and I could open we could make our own crypto We could make the the prince the prince token And we could open between the two of us 300 accounts And trade between the two of us all those 300 accounts would trade this prince token like like 100 times a minute So it would run up this huge trading volume even though it's only two of us and it's really not worth any money Maybe we put $10 in this whole thing The exchanges would pick it up because it has a high volume They put it on exchange and then the greater fool theory would take over in other words to look they would be too Labania all over would run this thing way out Then you pay media you pay media to run articles about it like look at the prince token Absolutely, we plan it. We get we get we get we get musk to you know buy it We get we get whatever or some of those other who's who's the other guy the the guy who owns the mavericks Mark Cuban. Yeah mark Cuban. We got mark Cuban to buy it. Whatever. We're like, whatever the Yankee stadium like You could buy a hot dog for Yankee stadium or some crazy thing like that, you know hot dogs like 15 bucks so It's it's Whatever we promote it and it goes way up and then we get out way before anybody else does and then let the whole thing Tumble and uh, we just go. Well, you know what it's very speculative Yeah Sorry, you know, you know you have mortgage your house on that thing, but you know, that really wasn't a smart thing to do So, you know before we head out of here, you know, our time is up again, you know, definitely great having you on What do you want to leave everybody there with? Oh, I I first of all number one rule is is the markets have ups and downs Do not let a bad market dissuade you from continuing to invest If you really believe in this stuff, you know buy it but be really careful I would stay away from the individual tokens right now I would buy maybe maybe stuff like look at companies like like coinbase and anybody else involved in this sector that That's really involved I would look at buying the companies as a way to like buy the stocks of the companies that are involved in it As a way to play the sector to me That would be a lot safer just average in they're all creamed right now Just like a lot of technology is creamed Um, I remember 2000 if you started buying more technology after the meltdown in 2000 I want to tell you it was it was ugly for a long time But in 10 years you were you were a lot richer than you were you were a lot lot richer And you know, you can't fall off the floor when a $90 stock is two bucks after a while That's his lay even Bear Stearns only went to two bucks when it went out of business It's you know after a while there's only you can only you know, you can only go to zero You can't go to negative. So you sometimes you're you just get down there so low It it starts to like your your your loss is not that much if it does if it bombs out And if you stick with the equities a lot of these companies are going to survive no matter what they're gonna They're gonna do they'll do something out like micro strategies. They're big in crypto I remember they were big in the internet like, you know, they were you know, they'll they'll do something new Okay Well, that's our time ladies and gentlemen And to the next video podcast cartoon book or whatever that's crazy. You see me doing around the globe Y'all already know my name is prince tax. I'm the prince of investing peace be safe. I'm out and thank you Thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo You can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think.kawaii.com Mahalo