The Future of Money with Gary Cardone
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If you go study MIT, Harvard, Brown, all the great schools, there is no one wanting to go into legacy. Hey, I want to go work for United Airlines or Ford Motor Company or the labor unions. They're going into AI, robotics, biogen.

and Bitcoin and crypto. My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I'm very excited today. I talk a lot about the future of marketing, the future of AI.

And we are now today here with Gary Cardone talking about the future of money. Welcome, buddy. Thank you, man. Good to see you. I'm excited. I saw you was in Miami, I think. It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were ping-ponging together. So the future of money is a very controversial topic, right? In the last few years, crypto's, you know, gone crazy, I think. And now it's like mass awareness, just like AI is becoming mass awareness. And I always get very interested when mass awareness hits, because to me, that's when the snowball affects.

So I would love for you just to intro, like how did you get into this space and what are you up to right now in this space? Yeah, great to see you. By the way, I've been following you. Your story is really, we were just having a chat just before this and this guy's really built a great business. I really commend you. I commend your parents too because they probably had something to do with it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know your parents, but I suspect they had something to do with your success.

Rudy, like I've always been involved in big industries and I tend to just kind of move every 10 or 12 years. I get a little bored and I move from industry to industry. I started in energy.

did 20 years there, then did 10 or 12 years in payments. And payments and all the problems in credit card, all the stuff we were just talking about, refunds, chargebacks, friction, declines. I think one of Grant's shows in Vegas, they declined like 23%. Yeah. Crazy. It's like third world nation processing credit card transactions in a world that

Those rails were built. They never imagined people buying microtransactions online, which is going to even get more microed once digital comes along. Seeing all the problems in payments that really led me to Bitcoin and blockchain and AI. It seems to me my thesis is the old legacy world of the 20th century where we had a

pencil and a piece of paper and we kept ledgers. And we sent each other letters and stuck it in the post office and then went in a car, went on a ship, whatever. Communication has compressed. We have the ability to transfer big files today that we were never able to transfer. We're transferring money.

knowledge, information, videos, music. I'm pretty sure we're never going back to the 8-track tape. You probably don't even remember the bloody 8-track tape squeaking. I'm very clear. So with that, if you really believe that you don't stop the evolution, or I actually think this is a revolution because the change is so substantial, this is like moving from

Never seeing or having a will to having a will. Yeah, I mean, it's like the internet buff again, right? Version two. Yeah. Well, you know, interesting you say that because the internet disrupted a lot. It hammered millions of merchants. Okay. It established a...

dominant position for about 12 huge, I would call them at least duopolies, if not monopolies, all made from really, really cheap money. Yeah. Like when you look at Google, like Google would not be here

if it wasn't for all that cheap money and the regulators allowed them to buy everything. Their technology has really been about acquiring. Facebook's the same or Meta. So I think the world's moving very radically. Now it's speeding up

argue with you a little bit. I don't think we're anywhere close to mass awareness yet. Interesting. Okay. I think for us, we're really aware. And I think it has grown. You have the SEC. Chairman talking about digital assets being sustainable. You now have Larry Fink at BlackRock talking about it. Fidelity's been in the game for a long time. There is a lot of money and more important...

intellectual capital moving into the space. And it's moving into, if you go study MIT, Harvard, Brown, all the great schools, there is no one wanting to go into legacy. Hey, I want to go work for United Airlines or Ford Motor Company or the labor unions. They're going into AI, robotics, biogen,

and Bitcoin and crypto. Well, what's crazy is I actually got a message the other week and I can't remember what college, but big college, their lecturer in marketing gives people my Instagram to go study. Really? Yeah. It's like crazy how like that ground level, because like you say, in five, 10 years, that's the ripple effect, right? Because they're starting to learn and go into these industries. And that's probably more when it gets into the mass awareness phase. And I show...

I host an AI event online a few times a month and I teach it. And one of my intro videos is a credit card clip from Burger King 30 years ago. And they announced on TV, Homer the Whopper now takes credit card. And they interviewed people coming in. And this businessman goes,

oh, I don't like it because I don't want people having to ring New York when they're trying to swipe it. And another guy goes, oh, I could see it working maybe occasionally for people on vacation, but it's never going to take off. Yeah. And I... You're going to slow the purchase. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that's probably where we are now with...

with the online currency side and then in 10 years we'll look back and laugh. I think that's true. And I think that probably the world you live in, the marketing advertising world, which has been, I think it gets grossly disrupted because it has been grossly inefficient. You know what I'm talking about. CPAs. So people forget it took MasterCard and Visa 52 years to get seven credit cards or

digital cards in your wallet. That's crazy. Okay. So the speed at which this is moving is actually very, very fast. Probably like five years instead of 50, right? Totally. I think three to five years from now, you're going to see a very, very different world. And I'm predicting that you're going to begin to see the canary in the coal mine when the gaming

the gaming and the adult business, gaming and gambling move off of credit cards. When those micro trends move from credit cards to digital, which it's perfectly situate, a game. Well, they want to, right? Yeah. No brainer for them. And it's consistent. Why do you want to have Fiat sitting on a commanding? Me and Grant used to, like I own a Hummer. Grant and I used to play Command and Conquer. I like gaming.

I was in London, he was in LA. We would play for four hours, dude, play for a hundred grand. And we were always like, "Hey, I would love a game that I could collect my winnings." Yeah. Peer to peer, gambling, peer to peer, right? Yeah. Well, they deal, as you know, so much BS with all the processing, right? So for them, they're just waiting, they're ready. Yeah. It's going to be a great world. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because that's going to move with AI.

like, you know, the digital money and AI, it's, yeah, five years. They're coalescing. Yeah. This is now all happening at one time. And I think that's why you're seeing the US government start to get more progressive with regulation because they can't hold it back now. They understand we're only hurting ourselves. So how does that, you know, everyone listening to this, entrepreneurs, how does that affect the entrepreneur? Well, I think if your timing's off, I mean,

Anybody that's been in Bitcoin for the last two years, your timing's been like you're early. I'm early. I'm a large Bitcoin holder. I believe I'm Bitcoin first. Also invested money into blockchain and the Bitcoin ecosphere through a business like a picks and shovels in accounting and tax business called Node40. The timing there, that's a very important timing. I have 10 competitors that raised money in 2021.

One company on $5 million raised $150 million in cash. Okay, so their valuation today, that seemed awesome at the time for management. That entire management team has now been dismissed. The founders were dismissed and some new persons running the business, they probably knocked off 30% of their staff.

And why would that be bad? Well, you raise money at a billion and a half dollars when you were really only worth 50. Well, I'm raising money at 50 and I'm literally the same size company. But what's crazy to me is how they were able to raise that money. Well, when money's free, everybody's chasing it. And it's like a tip and hop, right? Like that's, that's just crazy. Everybody was on crack. Okay. I mean, you might as well get crack Adderall and 2% money. Yeah. Uh,

I mean, what world is Michael Saylor able to borrow, you know, a billion dollars at half a percent? Yeah. That's a crazy world. Yeah. He was smart to take advantage of. Yeah, of course. So I think that's like,

My old business, I had $70 million offered to me at three and a quarter. This is when I decided to for sure exit that business. My partner, we didn't have good governance, which I could do a whole coaching program around. No, seriously, like it cost me $200 million.

just having governance fucked up. But I was like, "Hey, I've got a bank offering me $70 million for our company." And I think it was three and a quarter. We're taking it. And it was like, "No, no, we don't need all that money." It's like, that was a mistake. So when these markets are moving like this and you're an entrepreneur, there's a lot of things I think you have to understand if your business is... You got a big business now. It's

You're doing a real revenue that starts to open the eyes of everyone. How do you best manage that? And when you're expanding, can you make a mistake? Like we were talking about, you take care of a core piece of your business here. That's core. And then everything else is kind of an option. And so expanding and scaling, I think most companies, especially these young companies, they've never had the scale, man.

And so if you've never had a scale, you probably need to hire somebody, you know, to help you like Rudy to like, hey, you're getting ready to get hit. The ability to handle

a hundred transactions is completely different than a thousand. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, going on one day, it's easy. Going on 40 dates, you know, high quality, you get my point. I mean, there is a problem with volume. Yeah. And that people don't expect. Yeah. My first fitness business, I scaled to, this was seven, eight, nine years ago. We scaled to six, 700 sales a day of fitness products. Yeah. And yeah, it changes the game totally. And I think,

I mean, what's interesting for the entrepreneur is like I teach them a lot about there's this golden opportunity in AI right now. I think if you adopt now and build it into your business, there'll be a couple of years where not everyone else in your industry is doing it and you can get ahead. And I feel that window is coming and I'll leave your opinion on that.

in the crypto side, right? When do you think that window is for entrepreneurs to start integrating it into their business? Integrating crypto into their business? I personally think that's going to be a little longer than... Look, I would accept crypto. If you're a retailer and you're not accepting crypto, that is a huge... Well, that's what I'm asking. Yeah, most people aren't, right? I don't understand where the downside is because I walked into a car dealer once with

$20,000 or $30,000 in cash. My wife was pregnant at the time. I said, look, I'm going to buy a van in 20 minutes, showed him my cash, showed him the car. I said, here's my cash, here's my car. I'm not walking out with either one of these. You have 30 minutes to sell me that van right there. Guy couldn't do the deal. The system is so jammed up with process. Like he couldn't accept my cash and couldn't accept... So to me,

That guy should have grabbed my money, grabbed the car and said, dude, we're doing it. We're sending you home with a car, right? Like he should have gone and talked to the sales guy, something. Don't let the sale go. That's my point. Why would you let the sale go? Call a guy like me. Somebody wants to give you Bitcoin. Dude, call me instantly. I'll pay. I'll give you the fiat if you really want it. So I would never pass on sale. There are companies that will literally hedge out all the risk to a retailer.

Okay, Ferrori's taking crypto today. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah, and they're facilitators. They just announced it. And that's where this Bitcoin should really happen in big transactions. Well, they're doing that because they know a big part of their buyers now are becoming people like me, internet entrepreneurs, right? These guys in Dubai that are leaving for taxes. So they're like, hey, this is our audience now, right? Yeah.

I think then the question becomes, say, when does the entrepreneur start to receive money in fiat and invest his money

Right? Because this is where I would take the guy, "Hey, look, you can make money in dollars, but if the dollar's getting less and less valuable every year, you're going to have to run faster and faster, okay? And you're going to have to pay all your staff." And if you think margins are going up, in a digital world, margins don't go up. Margins collapse and volumes explode, right? And this is why the legacy guys will be terrified of this.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return.

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for a simple 30-second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review, and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys, and let's dive back in. Well, I see what's interesting too is

with entrepreneurs, one of their, most of them would get good at marketing, good at making money, but not how to use it, keep it or what to do with it. Right. So this is a whole new world too now is like, how do they, you know, how do they adopt their business or should they invest in crypto? What should they invest in? Should they do old school real estate? Should they put it back in their business?

And I think that's a big question we get in our mastermind, right? And we don't go that far in terms of showing them what to invest in. We're more on how to make all the money in the business. Yeah, I'd love to help you on the other side at any time if you see an opportunity. Because I think there's going to be a new paradigm to how money is made and invested. It's not going to be in the old equities, bonds, 60-40 split.

If you've had that model, it's really broken down. I could really see, I don't know if you've read the report by BlackRock, but they've done an allocation assessment of what they think is appropriate. It's staggering.

Well, give me the, what's the 86.4%. They think the proper allocation of Bitcoin based on its price performance is 86.4%. I'll send you that report. Yeah, that's correct. Like you actually probably need to see the report just to hear the number because you're like, come on, I need validation. Let's say that they're wrong by a factor of 400%.

It's still a much bigger allocation than anyone has right now. Yeah. Half a percent, no more than half a percent is allocated to high network people. Most of the, I think 75% of Coinbase is client base.

has a net worth of less than $100,000. Wow. I don't think anyone's in Bitcoin yet. Why do you think that is? There's a bunch of small players. But they just got hyped on the internet when COVID hit and stuff. Totally got hyped, right? Yeah, interesting. Totally. It is an immature market. So immature, I take the first eight years

I don't even look before 2018. Okay. Because I think looking at something that was trading at $7 is who cares? Yeah. Right? It was a old laboratory experiment at that point. Sure.

Now, the cool thing is I know really smart people that are, you know, CEO of a insurance company and a CEO of an accounting company, not as old as me, but slightly younger. They own Bitcoin at seven bucks and they own Ether at 35 cents. I was having dinner with her just the other night. I said, you're you being able to buy Bitcoin today at twenty seven thousand.

is a better risk-adjusted trade than when you did the $7. And she went, absolutely. Back then, it was a total... Yeah, because it was an anomaly, right? It's like buying a lottery ticket. It was a total lottery ticket. But now we're beyond that now. Yeah.

So what's next for you in your entrepreneur journey and then how are you going to capitalize on wealth? I'm going through like we're raising $12 million for Node40. And this is the poorest time in the world to raise money because you've got a bunch of venture funds and private equity that did deals.

two years ago. They're so underwater and VCs and PE go underwater. They go into contraction and they just want to fix everything behind them and then they'll go deploy money. So there's a tremendous amount of money on the sidelines. I think right now, we have now three new verticals that we didn't think we had when I bought into the company. One is the enforcement, IRS, Interpol, DOJ,

All of these firms are now looking at crypto going, hey, we have to be able to manage this. And then Treasury, as you may or may not know, 20 days ago came out with a 350-page document that said, you will be doing this and you will report to the U.S. government crypto and every transaction so they can collect tax and understand the financial context.

Like I'm really blessed because I was able to buy the company two years ago and then Treasury comes out with a, they should have just sent everyone my number. You will need Node40. What's crazy is because you were telling me this when we had dinner or whatever in Miami and

It didn't even occur to me how, yeah, none of these people buying any type of coin are tracking it, understanding how to track it. They're accountants. If they are tracking it, they're doing it wrong, right? Yeah, and their accountants don't even know. So that's like when we talk about the future of money and how it ties into business,

you're right at the right place right now because you're in a position where the pain eventually when people start getting audits is just going to go through the roof right and you're ahead because when that pain occurs and the aware you know you're almost in that pre-awareness phase like your first job yes is to create the awareness so when the awareness happens you're on the front lines collect all the winnings yeah right yeah yeah it's a fascinating because just break that down for the audience because they don't know what i'm on about like

if you can, in like 20, 30 seconds, super simple. What is it that most entrepreneurs don't understand now about the accounting side of buying crypto? Well, if you don't know the answer to this question, what is your cost base, then you already don't have the data. If you ask a crude oil trader what his cost base is, he knows exactly

instantly. Okay. My cost base is 2783. If I go to Anthony Scaramucci, he knows what his cost base is on a large position. I've never met anybody else that knows what their cost base is. This is not professional. Okay. So to have a tool software, to be able to collect all your wallets and all your exchanges and be able to give you and your professionals, if you have $12 in crypto, probably doesn't matter. Okay. Nobody's going to come after you. Yeah. But if you

have a Bitcoin and you think it's going to be worth a million dollars and you're never going to sell it, you need me worse. You need Node40 worse than if you were going to trade it in and out every day.

And most people are going to be like, huh? Why would I need an accounting firm? Because you're going to leave these to your kids one day or to your wife or your boyfriend or whatever. And they're going to get hammered. There's a $55 billion budget expansion for the IRS. 30,000 tax people are being hired to go what? To go find the 50 million people. There's 52 million people in the United States that own crypto.

Check the box in your IRS thing. Like you have to check the box. Yes or no, I own digital or do not. Once you say I've owned digital, your accounting firm, the IRS, your lawyers all gonna wanna know

What did you do? And if you can't tell someone, I plan on giving all of my Bitcoin to my children. It's an inheritance play for me. I do think at some point in their lives, it'll be worth a million dollars. So if I have three Bitcoin right now, most people go, well, I only have a $75,000 position. It doesn't really matter. No, do you have a $3 million position?

You believe you're holding Bitcoin for that really long run where the fiat system completely breaks. You're not selling ever. You just said that. You think it's worth a million. You have to look at the exit. The IRS will come after. What if I have 500 coins? Sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have $500 million. My daughters are going to get slaughtered by the lawyers, the accountants, the taxman. Okay. Even the guys...

I gave them. My professionalists will abuse my daughters and they're not going to have this story. Hey, this is where the money came from. Dad had the money. He paid taxes on the money. And it's all in a narrative. That's what these tax calculators are not doing. They're not creating a full accounting of this is what Rudy did. So then you can give it to Ernst & Young and Ernst & Young doesn't overcharge you. Going through like thousands of transactions and going, and then they too will make a mistake. Yeah.

Like we have clients that take 500 hours to look at a portfolio, a quarter of a million dollar portfolio. We do it in 20 minutes, but it was built for this, right? So these are the tools to me that that's the reason the crypto digital asset world is not moving rapidly because there's not the rails and the processes and the systems, the reporting and analytics that the old legacy world has always had and needed.

They also need those for the future world, okay? Because you're dealing with a different product doesn't mean the professionals don't need a similar report. Yeah. Without having to understand all this stuff. You can't ask 6 million accounting people to understand blockchain and ether. And then much less, you know, a swap or a staking protocol. So that's what it's there for. It's basically a very...

turbocharged dashboard so that when you're doing 150 miles an hour in your Ferrari, you know that you can actually navigate the pathway without getting into a train wreck. Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. So if you're listening to this and you're investing into digital currency, then obviously follow you and hit you up to learn the accounting side because

I think that's every entrepreneur's mistake, even mine when I started and probably yours and everyone's, right? We focus so much on the money, right? And getting the money and the marketing and all those. And then we get bit in the ass and realize, oh shit, we should have done all that other crap. The admin boring stuff. Yeah, the boring stuff. I ain't hiring a lawyer. There comes a time when you need to grow up and realize that your business...

Once you hire the lawyers and the proper accountants, you're actually respecting your business much more. Don't you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, I talk on my...

Life calls, we pay 400 grand a year in between our attorney and our accounting team, right? And that's a decent amount for a company our size. But I've always been like, if that's bulletproof or in a good position, then it's the mental clarity and freedom to go keep doing the big stuff. I build that foundation. Well done, by the way, because I will say that I have been cheap in that area.

for too long. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it caught up with me too. Like this FTC thing that I met. I would have still been FTC, but I think our, had we had some really cool lawyers on post, we probably would have handled it differently. We probably took it too seriously

And then the husband and wife thing, you know, you're not treating it professionally. But you learn, right? That's what I was going to go with that. $7 million learning lesson for $100,000 penalty. Yeah, you get bit in the ass and you got a big bite, but you learn, right? And that's the point of podcasts like this is also younger entrepreneurs and not from an age perspective, just an experience perspective can hopefully learn from people experience. So, yeah, I love...

I love your take on how the money side is changing because, you know, I'm not crazy involved in that side, but it's funny in the AI marketing side, it's very similar. And like you say, they're going to come to this intersect. So if people want to dive deeper into, you know, all of this that you've talked about today, especially AI,

you know, the company you now have and what you're focused on, where do they find you? How do they connect? Reach out to me on the Node40 piece. In fact, if you're a client of Rudy's and you want to... I'll do some free analysis now the tax year is done. Well, contact me at gary.cardone at node40.com. N-O-D-E-4-0.com. At Gary Cardone, Twitter spaces is really easy or LinkedIn. But if you guys have...

a crypto position and you like it analyzed, send it to me and put Rudy on it and I'll get the team in New York to do it. And what's a good, just to finish that, what's a good amount? Like if they have... I think if you have a quarter of a million dollars, you know, 100 grand, 100, 250 grand. If you have a Bitcoin and you think it's worth

A million dollars. Really, if you're a long-term holder, you should most certainly contact me. Because you're basically preparing the documents now, so you're predicted for whatever happens. So, well, like we had a guy in Puerto Rico, and he was using somebody really cheap, and he knew my reputation. Like I guarantee everything. The cool thing about my business is I guarantee everything. So-

I guarantee the results and whatever we promise. And he wanted me to do something I could not guarantee. I said, no, I don't want your business for eight grand to harm my relationship. And he, oh, no, I got to do it. I hate these other guys anyway. So we did a deal with him. And when he saw the report, like he didn't even read all the numbers. These spreadsheets are massive.

What he read was a 20 page report on, hey, this is what you did, son. This is what you did in Puerto Rico. This is where the money came. This is where you made your money. This is where you lost money. And he's able to give that to his professional and go, this is what happened. It's a full quality of earning on digital asset investment. So you become smarter. Like I learned, oh shit, I've been commingling.

I didn't know that I should never commingle one year into another year with this volatility. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about, it's because you don't have full clarity on what you're doing. I'm not making fun of you. It's just you just don't have the dashboard. And most certainly the professionals around you. And if you're in a tax haven.

you better have some professionals because there's a 20% ARP. And you have a red dot here and a red dot here. The government knows you're over there and they want to make sure that, you know, for those guys, it's a must-have. Well, and they're the ones making a ton of cash, moving there because they're making a ton of cash and then buying. Correct. So they're your perfect client, right? Absolutely.

But very few, less than a million people have done anything in this space. Yeah. There's 52 million investors here and no one's paid their taxes. So that, you know, the government's going to get their piece. You should just run a geotargeting ads of like the rich area of Puerto Rico. You know, those houses. That's just a good idea. I think I might have already done that. Cool. Well, Alan's.

Well, any final comments? So, you know, the whole podcast is living the red life and the core root is building your dream life with the internet, making money, building a life for your freedom. So what would you say to that more general advice to someone trying to do that? Live the red life. I mean, live from here. I never think about how much am I going to make from this. Actually, am I doing something that feels good that I can get behind? When I get behind an idea because it's right here,

People go, oh, you're a great salesman. No, I'm not. I'm not actually a salesman. I am a great storyteller about my passion. That's what I am. What I'm really excited about. And I'm always going to be taking more risk on any of these investments than anyone else anyway. So those are the, I like investing with people that are not only passionate, but they're intelligent. Yeah. And there's a mix there, right? You can't, some people get a little, some founders get a little too overly passionate

And then they make the other guy feel like they're idiots. Yeah. Yeah. You know, cause they're not, they don't understand, but, and then surround yourself with great people like you really. I mean, I was glad to come out here cause I'm going to feel better and be better. We'll get connected. Our teams, you know,

Good. And looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night. Makes sense. Yeah, yeah. That's why I'm here. I'm excited to see you. Marty, I was supposed to be in England. I changed my flight to come tomorrow. So I'm excited. We'll have to up the stakes just to make it worth it. I'm bringing a few of my business partners and friends too. So it's going to be a good blast. All right. Last question. Instagram, Twitter, you said is the best place. At Gary Cordon. Cool. And we'll put it in the show notes too. Perfect.

All right. Appreciate you guys. Guys, until next time, keep living the red life and understand how the future of money is coming around and then how to protect that money and account for it properly. So thanks for coming on, buddy, and I'll see you soon. Take care. Ciao. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.