3 Stories of Crazy Geniuses: Fenn’s Treasure, Michael Saylor’s Infinite Money Glitch + Ralph Lauren’s Bold Bet
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So I think the theme of this episode is rich guys crazy or genius. We've got the big coin guys doing the treasure hunt and he's either crazy is a genius, but he's crazy or is the awesome rafn crazy or genius looks like he came down on the side of genius. I have another one for you feel like.

Have you heard about this guy who's doing the two million dollar treasured hunt?

No, I have no idea.

Time out. okay. Well, can I find you in a tress hunt story?

Yeah, two million dollars. That sounds good to me.

There's a guy named john Collins black and there's not a lot of info about this guy, but he has easily hit in somewhere in between two and three million dollars across amErica right now and different treasure chest. We've got five treasure chest out there. Eat with a bunch of treasure inside.

And specifically, it's not just like cash, it's things that are valuable. So he spent the last five years buying valuable kind of artifacts. One of them has rare pokemon cards are two thousand and two holographic channel art card.

He's got one with George washington s of jelly e glass that he bought out of an auction. There's things from end for an old shiraz, and in total the stuff is or two to three million dollars. He split IT between five treasure chest in his hid net in physical locations across america. And then he released a book that was that's called there's a called there's a treasure .

or something like that is a pressure inside .

and it's basically just clues to find his treasure. And so there's maps and clues, and you can buy this book right now and go find this treasure way.

but it's say this is see a potier, it's on amazon. It's a book on amazon called there's a treasure inside and the book is thirty five dollars. So he's going to recoup a little bit .

of a little bit of IT, a little bit a bit, but probably not as much. So he's got like, you know, I didn't a colombian Green m roll in all all kinds of stuff inside, and I find this kind of facility that this guy's stories is interesting. He was like a musician and lay, and I didn't really work out.

And then he was like, okay, ay, he started creating websites for helping people find jobs, and that started going to go to use that to buy bitcoin earlier. Early ish on. I guess the story is he's a bit coin multi millionaire who was also fascinated by adventure. And so there's this thing called the fan treasure.

Have you ever heard of this? okay. Ah n treasure is a cash of golden jewels that force fan in art dealer, a hit in the rocky mounds. Yes, I actually do think i've heard of this. I believe that crock zc crock he used for me at the hustle, or a big article where he spent a week trying to find this treasures.

How did you do? I don't think anyone .

has found IT. so.

So five people died trying to find the treasure because he IT was, like up in the mountains, whatever they're climbing. So five confirmed deaths chasing the treasure then he announced somebody found IT I think this is in twenty twenty two, twenty two he says that um somebody found IT and then he dies months later he was revealed that that former journalists and medical student jack Steve found IT and then he auctioned off for what for a total of one point three million dollars of what he found it's a this guy, john or whatever Collins black was searching for that in twenty twenty and so he was like during kova he he had searched for the treasure.

He thought this was really cool, and when he, when we were all in locked down, he decided i'm going to do one of two things, either was like going to create a children's book publisher or create a treasured hun. He did both. So he created, he started accumulating assets for this treasure.

hard. So when I ran my company, the hustle, I think we had something like two million subscribers, and we made money through advertising. We didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model.

And so remember sitting down and i'm like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off the hostel that aren't advertising? And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake, shown me in the husband team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. And we put IT all together in a really cool document where we laid all out along with our research, and we call IT very appropriately.

We call IT the business ammonite's ation playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're going to see a link to that. Uh, business motivation ation playbook is completely free. You just click the link and you can see back to the episode.

I have a friend named chip for size. Chip for size is a crazy person. I've been for years than for ten years.

His brother is A J four side who started eyes rack. If you remember eyes rack. yeah. And chip will go out. His friends with these guys who raise funding to go find ship breaks that they think have, I guess, some of them more valuable just because they're ship breaks.

But some of them are valuable because they were like ships that had gold or other like valuable stuff in the in the ship, and they raise money to go out and fine. These ship breaks. And he tells me all about IT. And it's like the type of story where the people who are into this is the only drug that feels that need, do you know? I mean, it's like, IT is an intoxicating define this like, is romantic.

The romantic idea is right. yeah. Like, it's awesome.

And so like, I understand why it's not my obsession, but I understand why IT is other people's obsession.

The other thing I think interesting is choosing to release a book for this. I feel like there's a missed opportunity, feel like he should have done something with tiktok or social media where I feel like there was a more viral way to least the clues or to let people unlock the clues or search for this thing together like a weekly or monthly .

announcement yeah you know I don't .

know you've seen there's these things that go really, really violon. Tiktok would be like some women say, telling the thirteen nine part story of how her husband cheated on her and these things just a it's like a true crime. They are the mass, like tens of millions of followers, that are trying to just follow that they wearing for the next piece of the story to drop.

And I do think that there was probably a way to do this that somebody could do, which would be to let do a bit of a treasured hunt, but use, use social media, use tiktok as a way to uncover the clues as they go, and then people go in the real world using those clips rather than a book. Steve ballet, who's the podcast house of what's got div. CEO?

Before that he had like an ad age of team, whatever. Before that he worked for me vast back when he was maybe nineteen and twenty years old, twenty one years old, something like that. He was just like a Young guy that we had, just like a growth marketer.

And his job has come up with a great growth ideas. One of things that he did at the time that I remember was he grew his twitter and instagram accounts like crazy by doing a very simple thing. He was doing these like cash drops, where he d put just two hundred and books in an envelope, and he would say, at a college town, I think he was, he would be like, we've dropped IT here, he would post a video, him hiding IT.

And then they would be videos s that people going, trying to search for IT. And maybe basically they would tweet where they hit IT in some way. And then there were tweet people going and finding that.

But I member him that did this for somebody else is doing this protective raw. That's IT was a great idea. I was like, two box IT wasn't even that much money that they were doing, and they were doing these mystery cash shops as a way to just generate hype.

But the genius of IT was the content that they created kind of before the drop. And then after the drop of people searching. IT made IT feel like a big deal and then they would do the next one and the next one, I think I was just an account called like mystery cash drop that I was doing this that was working, getting really big. This is I had like ten years ago.

I'm trying to remember the guy who ran that account. Message me, he listens to the pot like IT. You never had this guy mystery cash shop. Uh.

he made four years.

start the park a long time.

but still does IT IT was hidden cash.

I think he was cash just message just you don't remember this and um for some reason I came into our world where I forget what happened someone tagged us on his twitter thing and he was like, I love those guys. Have any dm mean to say, hey.

something like that so maybe I got the wrong. Maybe Steve wasn't the right doing IT. Maybe Steve showed me this and we were going to like copy this strategy.

I don't remember the links. Steve definitely put me on on this because he was happening both in the insect is going also in the U. K.

The account now is suspended for hidden cash, which I remember happened back then. They have got suspended. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but why? But I ve just read this article.

This was back in twenty fourteen. So this is literally ten years ago as an anonymous benefactors, and leaving cash hid, not crossed emphasis to inviting strangers to find IT view a series of clues. They left money under chairs, in public parks, in stairways or in public bathrooms.

And they basically post a picture of them holding the cash. And then, like a zoom in thing of where they put IT, like it's like under a toilet, but you don't know which toilet. And then the quote was, i've made millions of dollars last few years more than I could ever imagine.

And yet many friends of mine cannot afford to buy home in the bay area. This caused me quite a bit reflection, and i'm determined to give away some of the money I make to charity and and to do fun, creative things like this. And that here, or he will leave at once or twice a week. Did somebody should just do this again? This IT would work today.

I think this is awesome. I think i'm going to start doing this the other day.

the other day. Hobby, it's like running. We just were jogging. We're talking about like, I think something I pick up the hobby.

it's like I want to play real life really wka like, I just want to like that. Could I just want to like controlling people's lives one hundred dollars at a time and just seem like if I can like make up monkey's dance, that's kind of like what this is. You're just like going to be a puppeteer, a hundred dollar gist at a time, a lot of IT, but IT is like kind of fine.

I think one of the problems is like you get that initial hit of like excitement and attention and everyone loves IT, then it's going to fade away and then you're going to keep pie in the cash, but you're not going to get that same hit. So you're have synthetic, you have to do more and already get this. So then you like, hum, you know would be a shame if somebody got hurt, find again, but that would make for a whole another news cycle around this. And then he sort of x you just keep escalating the prizes.

And the weird, after a while, it's like, hey, willa anka, why do you have a chocolate river and invite children over all the time? Like, it's just dangerous, do you know? Like, what's up point? Hey, could you can we go? Does IT Better. And you not like high twitter for walking into the restaurant?

The funny is, were so old that like everybody who's listen this, that's like, under the age of twenty five yeah you know this is however, youtube, you know tries .

to get the exact thing.

I think maybe they take away, you know, what's old is new for some of these things like what the hidden cash is. Guy was doing not really all that different than what vista bees does and has done to great effect.

Can I tell you a story about a different way to look at adventure, about someone who is like, i've ssed over a little bit and I think you know this person, you know of them, and I think out, i'll tell you a few facts that can I like shock you? But also, I think you're going to be into this person more the before. So the stories is about a guy named rough lift shit.

He was a jewish kid from new york city. Grew up, I believe, in the thirties. And the story is basically that he wanted to be an actor.

He grew up poor, but he loved like seeing all these movie stars, uh, on T, V, and was like, you know, I love that you can dress up and pretend to be another person. And if you pretend hard enough, people kind of start treating you seriously and start treating you like that person. And I love that.

I love, and I also love the idea that you can write a story and make IT a movie. And I can live my life through that lens. The lens of that movie and IT gives me hope.

So he was like, toxicity by this, but he success acting and so is like, I can't go to holy, but I can be becoming actor. However, what I can do as I can shape these movies and direct these movies, not with a camera, but with clothing. And so we get super into clothing.

What kind of leave a faith is that I can shape these movies, not the writing, reacting, but through clothing? yes. So a pretty ult statement.

No, it's I an example. So he was like, he's got this quote where he was like, I love how like these actors, like, I like, you could dress up as like a military person, and you kind of feel a little bit tougher sometimes. Or I could dress up like a farmer and like, I actually want to go outside and like, get dirty a little bit like a cowboy, and I want to go and like, do cowboy shit.

Like, if you dress up with the suit, people kind of take you seriously. And I think that's cool, that you can like, pretend. But A, I don't like, what's the different?

The dream, pretending in reality, if you do IT long and off like a kind of, becomes like the same thing. And so he was like, I can't really act, but like, I could dress up like these characters. And I kinda little bit start actually feeling like these characters.

And eventually, rough lip shits. He got made fun of a lot because his name, even like the jewish kids, were like, your name has the word shit IT. Like, that's like like you dark and so he changed his name to raf Lawrence.

And so he starts, um that is rough lawing the collie but he start selling clothes for Brooks brothers like in their store and then eventually at the age of twenty eight, he starts his own business and he's like, my first thing that i'm gona sell is ties he like ties and he goes and he pitches something like blooming dales and he's like, hey, can you guys sell my ties? And the guys like these are great times. I would love to sell them.

But IT has this name, raf, in on the back of the thai. Like no one once that should do like none. No, so you are. I don't give a shit about raft or and you ve got to take that off there and he had a kind of a soberest.

So one moment where he was like like i'm a nobody, but I need my name to be on these ties like this is A A deal break er and the blooding deals is like, right well, no, when I going to do this deal. And so eventually he keeps on hosting and he gets his ties and to like mac or something like that in the first year business, he does a half million dollars in revenue, which is a home run. He did this in the sixties that the equipment, like three half million dollars today, home run.

After year three or four, he starts coming up with different ideas. And he comes up with this idea of polo. So the polo brand, the college shirt that you see everywhere.

any part lays the way. What's what's the back story of that? What was his info do .

you know for the the ino was basically, like I said, he group as this poor jewish kid in york.

But what he loved with this idea of my class and all the money, this idea of like boss, you even though he's not a boss, like love, the idea of like sophistication and to him, the sport Apollo, that like screamed like both utility because it's a sport, but also like so hister cation because it's like those billion or rich people who play IT and the color that polo players were, they would always wear a color, and in particular they would button down the color. So in oxford, button down cloth, short that comes from the sport apolo. And so do like certain style boots, certain style pants.

And so there was a little bit where IT was like, already considered like a fashionable sport, so says, like, i'm to name my brand polo. And so he builds polo. And this should over like the course of a handful of years, IT takes off.

So now roughly n he's worth something like ten billion dollars. He's still owns, I think, eighty percent of the company and is a great business man. But that's not what I actually am impressed by him. What i'm impressed by him is two things. The first he has this idea of, like, you are the director of your own life, and your life is basically a movie.

And he has this idea where he was like, I would wear clothes that would I almost, I think tony Robin said this, or you told me that tony Robin said this where he was like, if I want to act tough or confident, I make my body tough or confidence. So what do you call that thing where you like, like, like how positive really like flex your chest when you're not feel feel comfortable and you put your body til like a confident position in your brain kind of follows your body. He thought IT was saying the same thing, but with clothing where he was like, you know, if I wanted to feel a bit more sophisticated than I actually felt at the moment, I would dress a certain way, and like, my brain would follow.

And I find that to be like a really idea. And the second thing that he did that was really interesting is, I don't know if you remember this because we were kids, but do remember rafer in advertisements. Do do you remember any of those like the photos and magazines? Now what was that? What was interesting is that what he would do is he would, he had, he used a lot of the same models, and the models, often times they were not professional models. But what he would do is if he wanted to like, he would set the stage. So basically he would act like he's filming an entire movie.

And so they would rent a home in the hamptons and say, it's like a the ad is for some type of summer, summer where for the beach he would rent to hamptons house and he would be like, well, if i'm a like a wealthy family in the hampton so as just like beautiful home, like what would you guys be doing right now? Maybe be playing portal, maybe you'll be sitting on in the parents bed in the morning as if like the kids, just like woke you up. But he would create this like elaborate sets, or he would like, make you live like your in a movie on set.

And so it's like we're gonna like pretend that this is like a real, and they would do this whole a elaborate thing just for a handful of photos. But if you look at a lot of the ads, they're really like in depth. And IT maybe started talking a lot about like with startups.

So what you I do, we sometimes they are just reactive to like, to like, whenever like, customers are saying not more so like how do we set the stage for what? What do we want the world to be? And I think amazon used to do the small thing where they were like before we launched any product.

I want you to write the press release like tell me, what do you want a customer to feel about this or how do you want this to be described? What it's all said and done. And because the internet has such a lobert entry and it's really easy to adapt and change things, rarely do we sort of think ahead. And like this is like my vision for the world, and at least everyone in my small world, how I want them to feel, how I want my customers to think, how I want them to appreciate us.

right. So while back we had gary ten. He is the president of White comedy, which is the most successful incubator of all time we had on the podcast.

And he said that the future of businesses is creator LED. And that's why i'm interested in the podcast creators, our brands and creators, our brands explores how storytellers are building brands online. They're going to cover the entire creative process.

They are going to talk about navigating brand partnerships. They're time about what you need to know about growing your social media platforms, everything you need to know this topic. Our brands is the pot.

So check IT out wherever you get your post. Again, it's called traitors. Our brands with tomboy. All right, back to the.

I do think there's something cool, but i'm looking up vintage rar and ads and I see what you're saying, which is like a really heavy lean til like yeah a true lifestyle shoots rather than studio or sort of framed you know just like let's go here, let's get the single shot you in front of the water boom now that is turn burn.

It's like, well, this is somebody's house in the hamptons wearing these clothes, doing what they do with all of the little, you know, family photos in the background and what not like. IT looks a lot more authentic. And this is one of those things interesting because as a business person, IT never pencils out on a sprayed sheet to do this, right? Like up up front.

There is no way to sit here and justify this. But then there's things that you're gut and there's the the people who do who actually do make the bet and do pull IT off. And then in retrospect, IT sounds obvious.

You i'll give you an example. There is a brand um e commerce print and they were talking about influencers. IT was like, well, what's the what's the time about influencing? They were going to spend a million dollars on an influencer campaign with these instagram mom's. And I said, what's the return on ad spend of that? You put a billion dollars in how much you gonna get back directly and they're like, I might be fifty percent, meaning we might put a dollar in like .

a fifty cents back.

That's way to what's your the facebook ads return on. Add a dollar forty, but a in a dollar forty out. Why are you spending a million dollars on these influencers? And, uh, are you are you able to measure the halo of fact, i'm not using all this jargon.

And he goes, he does your wife like, does SHE follow like any these people? And I ask her, my wife and he, she's like that all people you got asked them like a quite couple of questions about these people. Like, hey, do you know like how many kids they have? What's their names? What products do they use?

What's the last product you bought that you heard them mentioned? And like, my wife could just rattle these from memory always. Memory is like, I could we watch all the game of terms of entities.

Y aster today, what's a lanison? SHE would have no idea if he thinks it's a part of a staircase. And so i'm like, she's knows exactly what's going on with these influencers and he goes that's why we're spending a million dollars with influencers.

And um as like, okay, you know there's these things that if the result is not easy to measure, but IT is true, right? It's going to be both. It's going to be actually actually work and not be easy to measure. Those things are usually pretty this pressed, meaning that not as many people are willing to do them because most of us want the safety and comfort of things that are prove in measurable. And I can spread cheat my way to conviction.

Well, it's basically alerted in can I justify this if I want to get fired?

Yeah I or just even my own self doubt, right? Even like my up is i'm not in the and on the company. I don't want to be an idiot and I don't want to lose that.

I don't want to fail, and I don't want to lose money. And IT takes courage to make bets. And courage is easier when you can, when you, when the logic, when you can logic your way there, when you can spread, cheat your way there. Do you do any of these courageous bets that are non spread sheep? Because I think you I think partners and you utilize these is that you didn't typically do that.

I didn't typically do that and and I still struggling IT. But I have to like when I watch some of these things, like we talked about martijn t recently, another time about raft, and like when you taught, like and when you talk about some of these like culture changing brands or companies, are people us internet or start to beat people, there's like we think we are above the fault. We were like, logical and we are like, well, as easy.

You put this much money, money and you get this much money out like why would anyone do anything? Others SE. But then there's one step above that, which is it's the right thing.

It's the right thing. Like, I want to be like it's like it's a like you know I can't measure this thing but like I know it's awesome, right? Do is awesome.

Yeah and so there's .

like we try to act like we are some like santy internet nerds or like the math says x wine z but there's always there's one above that yeah but IT IT just makes sense and so in Peter till who's like the seventy s of servants has said like there's a fit tet poll of this equation which is called brand and he goes I don't understand brand no um but like I don't exist but I don't understand that and that's what we're talking about here which is like I just feels right .

yeah yeah exactly .

so so long sorry sure I don't do this but I I respect and I know that's necessary and I want to do more of IT.

Are you doing any of IT with hamptons because there one you can think of .

that you do yeah like we had we on this podcast called myself SE. And like, I like the only way that we think that IT returns on our lives. If someone joints, and they say they heard about IT through us, but that that's like the low end of the tony pole of like is IT easily tracked, able, but not know, like, I don't do enough, but I do need to do certain things like this.

The the the problem with this is you get caught the data a and you also get caught in the bills. And there's also a lot of stories of rough the end where like him has lost the company many, many, many times where he like just didn't pay attention. And in one hand, you need a visionary who doesn't pay attention to the profit, because sometimes the shit that makes the most profit doesn't make sense right off the bat.

right? So I think the theme of this episode is rich guys, crazy or genius. We've got the bitcoin guy. He's doing the treasure hunt and he's either crazy or is a genius but he's crazy or is the awesome rafer in crazy or genius looks like he came down on the side of genius. I have another one for you.

Alright.

and it's Michael sailor. Have you seen what Michael sailor is currently doing with the market and bitcoin in the stock?

I don't understand IT exactly, but I understand that is always up to something like I always I know that he's like the berry bonds of business or like there's always an astrid s next everything .

he does good explore。 Um okay. So can I explain what's going on? Microstrip gy is a software company. They sell soft day that the time they are selling software products and the software business might make like seventy five million a year property was like a small cap stock.

IT had been doing great for like ever like IT was a great like he'd been reached for a long time.

right? Yeah the business had been I think he's the longest tenured CEO of a public company. Mean, he's been the C E.

Of this company for like twenty four plus years or something like that. And but the stock had a flat. If you look go if you just give out on the chart, IT looks like a very flat line. And when he came on the pog, he was because at the time he was doing something very interesting, he had taken his companies 的 cash reserves， like the treasury, which Normally you either keep in cash, maybe treasury bills, or you use IT to buy back the stock. And instead he used IT to buy back point.

So basically, microstrip gy was a software company. The software company had hundreds of millions dollars in their bank account, which there's just to just hold in case they need IT. His plan was i'm going to invest that money in bitcoin.

Yeah, we're going to switch our treasury strategy to being bitcoin. So september four hundred and twenty twenty bitcoins Prices at ten thousand dollars a coin, and he buys one hundred and seventy five million dollars worth of IT. And then the months later or so, he buys another two hundred hundred and fifty million dollars of IT.

which looking back at IT, that sounds great.

Yeah, at ten thousand dollars, one thousand dollars a coin. And he has since been buying a more and more bitt coin. He now holds thirty seven billion dollars of bitcoin .

microstrip gy. Microstrip gy.

Does he himself also, I think, personally owns, like hundreds of billions, are not a billion dollars bitcoin. They are up fifteen billion dollars on their bitcoin position in four years. So he's generated for fifteen billion dollars of value doing this strategy.

So he starts out by saying i'm going to convert my step one, convert our companies is idle cash into bitcoin. Okay, did that. But now the company doesn't generate and the idea was every year when we generate more free cash flow, we're going to do the same.

We're going to break seventy five, five box. We're gna buy more. But over the time, he starts doing more aggressive bets.

So what he starts doing, he starts issuing this convertible bonds now. So he goes the market. So hey, r, here's a corporate bond.

You can buy the bond. We're going to take the proceeds from the bond sale and we're going to go buy big coin. And he does that over and over and over again. And on top of that, if you look at microstrip gy stock today, so when he was last on the podcast.

well, let's just actually is in march of the stock was ten dollars. In march of twenty one, the stock was seventy eight dollars and today is four hundred and ten dollars .

create and IT is so it's up in the last five years by two thousand and six hundred percent. okay? So it's shot up.

It's if you compare IT to even in video stock this year, it's all performed in video, which is pretty insect. And so what is going on here? Um you know his company is now worth eighty billion dollars as of as of .

today and how much revenue and profit is the actual business.

The actual software business is declining ten percent a year and is something like a couple hundred million in revenue and under one hundred million of netting come. So IT is rounding her. IT is not IT is no longer relevant to .

the stock Price. And does he have employees who like work there?

Yeah, they still have employees that just keep running that software business. But the stated strategy is her job is to a acquire bitcoin in the most effective ways possible and hold forever.

That's what I want. That's influent a that's that's like inspiring talk every friday at your all heads, right? Like Prices up.

Great job, everybody. We did no jump. And you know who is credit? He's been buying throughout all the depth. So like bitcoin, Price went up to sixty thousand and IT goes down to sixteen thousand. And even during that process, bitcoin and december twenty, twenty two, because in Price to seventeen thousand and he buys another fifty million, he buys another fourteen million, he buys another hundred fifty million. He is continue to buy throughout the whole process he and because at an all time high and um as of today, he just bought another five point four billion dollars a bitcoin at the all time high Price.

How did they have the money to do that?

Again, he's raising money in these bonds. And so there's okay. So what's interesting about this, here's what I want to talk about is genius or crazy.

I guess I hesitated to even bring this up because a this is outside of ized zone of competence, meaning like I don't know corporate bond strategies, I don't know why, I don't know how option traders look at this. I don't know what the bond market is like. That is not something that i've spent twenty years of my career and I em started that.

okay. So on one hand, unqualified to talk others, on the other hand i've been a cyp to holder and believers since far before mcMichael sailor. And i've seen throughout each cycle how new players come in with new strategies and build you know massive profiles and success on the upswing.

And i've seen things you know very, very badly. Um you know last cycle there was camp and freed with F, T, X. There was done.

There were three hours capital. There were several people that for a moment in time looks like absolute genius. They were hailed by everybody.

They were on the cover of magazines to cos investing in in fg x. And everything looks incredible. And a general comes crashing down either due to bad acting or bad risk management.

I don't know anything about crypto u, and I can give you an example of a red flag that was on air on our podcast. So I don't remember exactly. I think IT was thirty or forty five minutes, and I asked him a question.

I go. So I cle you're buying off this big coin with your company's money call. One of the downsides um because like IT appears as though like one of the downsides could potentially be you are losing focus on your main money making software. But and I think you think that's worth IT.

But what is mother downsides? And his answer was, there are no downsides. And I was like, well, I mean, like every decision has a downside. Like the downside of being healthy is that you have to go to Better early when you want to go to help out your friends. Like, but it's worth IT like there are downsides and you get insisting there are no downsides. And in my head, I thought, if you can't be honest to me about this like pretty strait forward thing, is there anything else that you're being dishonest about?

Yeah there are no downside, said every charleton ever, right? That is a IT. This could be a red flag.

That doesn't an it's damming. Now let me know, let me but is a red flag. Let me give you the generous interpretation of this. So I actually agree with Michael sailor in one weird way when he said there's no downsides, which that for him personally, there were really no downsize at the time.

At that time that if you go back and you listen carefully to microsoft interviews, most of the interviews, he just talks about how he had the epiphany, and he realized that bitcoin is the way, and he started doing IT. The true story is that there's one like precursor to that epiphany, which was that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had this software business that was successful.

He was profitable. And I think at the time, I was even had shown growth or had been showing growth of the last ten years. And he was getting zero credit in the stock market for IT. And he's like, what am I supposed .

to do like your company?

We've been Operating successfully for, you know, fifteen plus years and the market is basically saying give us back the cash. We don't we will not value you for any of the cash you have on hand. You should just give IT back to us.

We we're going to give you no stock credit for how you might invest, how you might use that cash, how you might grow your business. We are going to give you zero credit or and so here, this problem, which was no matter what do you did to this company at the time, he couldn't get the stock Price to go up. He couldn't increase shareholder value.

And so he had, in some ways, nothing to lose because he was stuck and he had been stuck in this plateau for so long. And the market, he had said, he says in some interviews like the market was giving me a very clear message. We don't believe that you can invest this cash in any way that's going to grow your business.

Well, that is like, well, through that, I don't know to do something else with IT. If I can't grow microstrip gy with that, maybe I can grow IT through investment. And he went to, looked at real estate, he looked at gold, looked at all the different ways that he could do IT. And he basically, at that point, to duced the bitcoin was his best bet to invest the money to actually grow the start.

And he like a cypher guy. So two thousand and twenty, for a lot of the hard course, was late in the game for cyp to was he like he was? He was skeptical.

He he did not believe in bitcoin, and somebody had told about he didn't believe he was.

One of these, like early hack.

is learning when wash a bunch of pop interviews, and he started reading about and start learning about IT. The other thing that was true was that he looked at the amount of a inflation, and he realized that the kind of stated goal of two, three percent inflation was misleading, that I didn't count a bunch of other things. They also didn't take in to account the fact that if you were an investors, put the money in, the S P. Five hundred was growing at, you know, ten, fifteen percent year.

And he was like, look, if I can't beat that, there's really no reason to invest in my company if I don't have the ability to beat that rate and so what he wanted to do was, ah you like most bitcoin maximus, they just at the end of the day, they look at the currency and they believe that here you have a um a weak currency and if you can ever if you can borrow a weak currency zero percent interest way and use IT to buy a hard currency like IT going, that's a good trade. That's the the two things that he wanted to do was he wanted to get out of fight because he didn't like the direction that fio t was going with inflation. And um and secondly, he knew his stock restock.

okay. So I was that part back then, but at that time, he wasn't doing the thing. He's borrowing billions of dollars to buy bitcoin.

And so let me just like kind of walk you through the model of what he's doing now. okay. So basically microstrip gy issues debt. They use that the comfortable bond, corporate bond. And so that like today, there is a five billion dollars.

whatever corporate bond of who they raise .

IT from bond buyers, the bond market. So there's trillions of dollars that to get invested in bonds. And one of the things you know you might say, why, why do why do people buy a microstrip gy bond is because the underlying .

business buying IT coin themselves.

orders by bit on the selves, the the, the arbitration that he realized this, you know, a trillion dollar plus market of people, of people who buy bonds that because of their structure, they're not allowed to buy security. So they can't buy stocks. They can't buy real state.

They can't buy a bitcoin directly. They can buy the bitcoin etf. So the bond market cannot access bitcoin unless they access IT through a bond. The Mandate of those funds is that they can only buy bonds. That's why people gave them the money was you're gna buy bonds IT is zero percent of interesting.

But if you can convert the bond into microstrip gy stock at a certain Price of three hundred, four hundred, five hundred, six hundred dollars a share higher than the current Price of the things, 所以 才 可以 long term call option on microstrip gy。 okay. So if you were in the bond market as you wanted access to bittorrent, but your buy laws and your Mandate does not allow you to buy bitcoin directly, then is a crazy looper that's a crazy looper.

Supply demand. So he's the only supply on the market to absorb this this demand that's there to to get access to bit coin type of yield by by issuing these these things. Okay, that's the first heart. So then he buys bitcoin and he goes and he tells the whole market i'm a forever buyer of bitcoin. I will increasingly be buying billions and billions of dollars a bitcoin.

I'm doing IT at the market Price and I will enjoy doing that that instead of a bunch of confidence in the bitcoin market because bitcoins as well, there's as well who says I don't give a damn. I'm doing this. I'm deposit ted and i'm going to keep doing this.

And so he takes supply off the market. He signals to the market that i'm a forever holder and he says i'm going to keep buying bigger and bigger amounts as we get up. So the bitcoin Price goes up.

So that our bitcoin Price goes up, which then causes his stock to go up because his stock is based on the fact that they have thirty billion dollars a bitcoin sitting there and the stock goes up and then he sells more equity at a premium and he buys even or bitcoin. Now he selling shit equity shares to buy bitcoin. Recent repeat.

is he selling any of his equity in the company?

I don't know. I'm not sure .

that is he libel for any of these uh, comfortable bonds?

Or this one is not like a person. Al care, no, it's a copper bond. This goes out and this collapses. And his no network, which is highly based on his holdings of microstrip gy, you're going to go down, right?

And reputation and everything else. And what network.

how much is microsys? He owns nine point nine percent uh microstrip gy.

so as of today, just off microstrip gy, he's worth a eight billion dollars. Okay, in two thousand and twenty, the company is worth one point four billion. So he was worth amazingly hundred and forty million dollars. So is grown from a hot and forty million dollar network, assuming ing that this is only money, which is probably isn't all the way up to close to ten billion.

So they definite had asem tric upside verses downside for him, right? like. Hitching his wagon to the bitcoin rocketship represented away for him to like you go explode up in a good way in a way that he was never going to be able to do with just microstrip gy, the declining software business at the same time.

You know their obviously is reputational risk. There's capital rest now. okay.

So how is that going? They acquired almost four hundred thousand bitcoin. Um they have outperformed every company in the S P.

Five hundred. And last week alone I saw one hundred and thirty six billion dollars of trading volume. To put that in perspective, even game stop during the game stop, the game stop never saw this. So he's basically created he's intentionally turned him turn microstrip gy into a meme stock, meaning he's detached IT from the underlying business in the way that game stopped and and created a product that the option traders want, that the bond trades want, that the bitcoin maximus want, that the bitcoin skeptics hate and want to go short now what what could go wrong? Let's go let's go to there. Um and by the way, let's also say the craziness of not only doing this but then spending the last four years just on tour being a bitcoin of Angels st is also like a really extreme step to take right? Like there were no half measures and what he did this is a you know sort of elon must style all in reputation's all in, financially all in.

And he has that personality. He's got the type of, I don't know him, other than the sixty minutes we spent virtually with him. But he seemed like he had the personality where he's super high I Q, super low, like emotional, Normal or human emotions where he's like, right? But he makes sense.

The bat says this. Therefore I do that, even if that is a ridiculous thing to most people. Standards.

hi, I Q, I T count.

Yeah, like, yeah, like, he, he ponies up.

So i'm obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high network people. The reason being is that there is not a lot of information on this demographic. And so because I own hamp ton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of Young and incredibly high network people.

We are people worth hundreds, millions and sometimes billions of dollars inside of hampton. And so every year we do this thing called the hampton wealth report, where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs, and we asked them all types of information about their personal finances. We ask them about how they're investing their money, what their portfolio looks like.

We ask them about their month spend habits. We ask him how they've set up there a state, how much of money they're to lead to charity, how much money do they keep in ash, how much money they're paying themselves from their businesses. Basically, every question that you wants to ask a rich person, we were, and we do IT for you, and we do IT with hundreds and hundreds of people.

So if you want to check out, the report is called the hampton wealth report, just go to join hampton that com, click our menu and you're going to see a section called the reports and you're going to at all right? There is very easy. So again, it's called the hampton wealth report. Got to join hampton dot com, click the menu, and then click the report button and let me know you think.

Okay so that what's the right at the same time? Maybe i'm just uh like uh P T S D from pascal pt cycles, but like I mention every cyp to cycle this happens. Somebody gets overaggressive.

They're seen as a genius. They over extend or the commit male practice, and they come crashing down when the cycle inevitable. These things are all cynical.

Ico, when IT goes down last cycle, IT was F T X. IT was to kon. IT was three hours capital.

These were multibillion or vehicles. They were created very quickly. They they burn bright and then they fizz out due to one of those two reasons.

So i'm on the look out right now because it's at all time high. Instead of just jubilation, i'm just keeping an I out you know, for me once, shame on you. For me twice, shame on me type thing.

So just keeping eyes. What what might not be the cycle? On the other side, he has made a couple of genius calls. So back in, I want to say when was IT took us to seven each time frame, there's a bunch of interviews of microsys or talking about apple, maybe two thousand and twelve and he basically talking about he's on a thing. He's like apples going to go to two thousand dollars to share and he's like that you don't understand what's happening.

Apple l is invent and he the same way they talking about bitcoin, how bitcoin is this the greatest invention ever, how it's going to be millions of dollars a coin. He was talking about apple the same way he's like, you have a supercomputer in your pocket. Do you understand what this means? You know? You know that four billion people are going to be Carrying this thing around and that apples going to be making x all the numbers are sounded insane to people at the time. And everybody was talking about IT and IT all come true like his his entire bet on apple. He think I don't know why you would know any stock besides apple and I give you a listed a bike sale at that time.

So he always he always had this like, you always stupid. This is obvious and he's right sometimes yeah I mean.

I don't know these are over supplications but yeah like I guess the guys is fascinating. He is a fascinating guy. I think he's described and well, he's extremely high I Q. He's extremely high coon's.

And when he gets conviction on something, he sounds insane and so okay, so I think the main thing is, uh, where does this go wrong? So I think the main of place goes wrong. Obviously a big point, Price starts to crash.

The problem will be if, for whatever reason, microstrip gy stuck wed today, trades at like a two and a half times multiple of nap. You know that is, is that asset values like the underlying asset that he holds, right? And thirty three billion dollars IT coins. So the question, why is that eighty three billion dollar company.

which is what you think I should be if if you oh me.

whenever .

the acid is soft.

it's a bitcoin holding an acquisition company. And so maybe you say, okay, here's the holdings. great. And then on top of that, maybe there's some premium for the fact that is able to acquire them on leverage. IT could do things that a bitcoin etf cat, right, a bitcoin etf can issue a bond. IT is different.

But the question is, is two and a half x the right multiple? And the question is, the downstairs looks like this, the unwinding looks like this, which is microstrip gy, for whatever reason, either because bit line Price was down or the stock market just changes. Its two on IT starts to not trade at such a premium to the nav.

And now all this money that is borrowed, these bonds pie, twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, if those were to convert, he would be forced into selling bitcoin. And once he becomes a force seller now, the whole market, the whole bitcoin market, will start to crash. Because I will say, oh my god, microstrip gy is going to have to unwind its entire bitcoin position. It's gonna thirty five billion dollars or more of bitcoin hitting the mark.

How much is bitcoin worth? About what percentage uh uh of a players .

he he owns about one percent of the bitcoin flop today and he's trying to .

get to two percent basically the guys in tense yeah .

I guess my short story is I don't know what's going to happen. I for I guess my disclaimers, I do not know what's going to happen more than that. I'm a novice when IT comes to this.

However, i've been in a few cypher cycles before, and i've seen in every every single crypto cycle, when cypher to goes up, somebody starts being very aggressive acquiring, buying big, buying crypto to using leverage like he's doing right now. IT hasn't ended well in previous cycles. And right now everybody is calling this the infinite money glitch.

You go on youtube search microstrip infinite money glitch. He's a god. He's the best.

And IT always makes you wonder, what is the scenario where this unravels? And do I believe that could come true here? There is no strategy that is risk free.

There is no free lunch. And I think that right now, the entire narrative is about how this is a free lunch, how this is a free money glitch. And I don't believe that I don't know enough to know the specifics about this but of my spider senses tiggy.

who's the the most conservative bitcoin so could serve of being um like the rational and they could explain the pros and the cons without being overly emotional. Who's that in the bitcoin world?

So it's a good question. Who do I trust the most to have a rational opinion about the icon that .

there there's this a .

guy like under this onto open who I believe is that but he's a technologist so you don't you you listen to him about how bitcoin as a technology um has has great potential. So you know you read his book which is called a the internet of money and he's extremely rational and he's a good faith actor.

Who's who's the person that's like, you know, if we all buy into this and if that works, you know the upside is this, but if we don't, the downside is this and this is like who's just is like like, here's all potentially a lot of people say that.

I think a lot of people understand. A lot of people say, like, look, bitcoin has these properties. IT could become x IT could become the next goal.

Actually, most people follow into the bucket of, they don't Price that as one hundred percent of certainty, right? They say, right, it's possible and there is a potential for that. That's why I on some of IT, but I don't put my entire networks in IT.

And that is also possible that IT doesn't doesn't get adopted or that there's a technical flaw or that governments beat down in these ways or that IT becomes, uh, unpopular for these reasons. And that's the risk in this right? Those vocal .

thought leader, rationalist, what do they say about Michael sailor?

They don't take a position like right now, even as i'm saying this, i'm thinking to myself, i'm going to go cut this in post because why take a position? What's the upside? The upside is predicting things and there's also .

the upside of like just doing what's right and tell everyone don't wait your fucking and money on this thing yeah but I .

guess it's um you have to be a smart enough to understand IT b. You have to have the desire to like look right by putting your neck on the line with .

the prediction yeah the bitcoin community has doesn't seem like typically has the like .

the moral fiber.

No, no, I was to say that I was like to say they don't mind express IT, they don't they're very vocal. You know if someone thinks you're full.

they very wishful about their bags that I think that was back to your question of who could you trust to not speak just hopefully about their bag, right? They just they wanted to be true so much that they convince .

themselves it's true and what to is whose the person who I can trust to find out what the opinion of microsys or is I have searched .

long and hard because before this bad guess, I did research to say, and I literally tweet this out. So if you think i'm in IT, I also think i'm an idea. My tweet today was, can someone with a Better brain than me explain what sailor is doing? A no strategies without risk.

What are the risk? What is the math? If bitcoin dropped to x dollars, IT becomes a problem.

And b, why is the stock trading at such a premium to nap? That post has, you know, maybe a hundred plus replies. I read every single one of them.

I read other threads that people have put out about this. If there was one great explanation, I would have just pointed you to IT, and I would have read IT out loud. I have not found one, one myself that I doesn't, an IT doesn't. I have not found myself that I can read. And I can say, oh, in simple terms, I understand why he's doing this, why it's working today, what the riis star, how I would unravel if IT unraveled.

I'm only recently at the age where I don't trust everyone a like, like, like episode recently like biologic was constantly like, well, the institutions are buying into this. Therefore I must be safe. Or like, you don't like whoever is raising the money for this guy, like surely they know what they're talking about.

So now i've just two years ago, got to the age where it's like, you know, their flawed humans, just like me. And so I don't know who to trust with them with these sets of situations because i'm so uneducated on the topic. But I have my study senses singling I with my own money. I wouldn't touch any of us.

Yeah, yeah.

I would say I have. I have no proof and other that I just doesn't feel good you know, like the I think I think the supreme core or someone like that like defined pornography, like they said, like it's hard to like, it's hard to define. But you know IT when you see IT, you know, let's there is a train pornography and like a new dd national geographic T V show. You know, IT when you see that, I know exactly, know IT what? I see this situation with him, but I know that something doesn't feel right, and I can't explain why.

Okay, here here is my commitment. Um I brought this up today half and I admit that um i'm going to go and try to find the smartest people I can to explain this to me until I am satisfied with the simple explanation of what's going on and then i'll share that if I leave this in, i'm saying that as a bookmark to say let's hold opinions to part two. I might just take this whole part out because i'm uncomfortable with the level of half informed speculation that was in the section.

Uh, I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting. but. You know that like shockingly people look to you for like this like you are simply I asked you that question um of like who's rational that people look to there are many people who would say shine I am rational .

that you had two criterial who's rational and intelligent a lot of people more that I falled .

little short on in time. And I I think that you like vocally like i'm still working through this problem. I think that's actually quite valuable yeah guess i've just .

like only ten percent of I working through IT and i'm just thinking maybe I you've gone to fifty percent before come on the part of talk about IT. But I will say this, a lot of IT, a lot of the people have done well with bitcoin. And the people who understand bitcoin, IT is the middle team like they.

They look at bitcoin and they look at all the information and then they reduce IT down into a very simple way of looking at things. And you know the simple way of looking at things, which is either this is uh is a Better version of gold and so I will be no, it's it's a take improvement on gold. Um there's people who reduce IT down and basically just say, would I rather have would I rather have hard money or soft money making what I rather save wealth in a what I rather store wealth in a currency that can inflame mathematically or uh a currency that will inflame.

And if you just widdle things down like that to level of simply ity, you can be right without even doing all the details. And so I think one of the chAllenges of the question who are the smart, intelligent people is that the smart st most ratio people I know about bitcoin a long time ago, you know eight years ago told me a very simple thing, bought IT, put in cold cold storage and moved on with their life um and they don't follow all the twisting terms and they don't try to hop on the next wave in the next trend and they don't do crazy options trading or hundred x levers, they don't do any other things. And they they made a simple opinion based on a very simple assessment, and they prove them to be right and not overcomplicating giving.

This has been the signal of who's actually intelligent about this verse. To somebody who's everyday on the news has an opinion on every single thing, is trying to outsmart everybody. Those tend to not be the people that I actually, you know, trust their opinion on this stuff that .

have you seen that show love on the metro?

I have actually show .

about autistic .

people dating, right?

Yeah and there's this one episode where these two, a guys dating this girl and he was like, do you like takers and chick's? Yeah, I like chicken and cheese and he was like, I don't have anything else to say, but I want to let you know i'm having a good time. And I want to Normal lize that in both dating and on this podcast, which is.

And that sort of how I feel right now, which is I don't have anything else to say, but I want let you know I really enjoy this time.

That's that's what. I. Want to. Travel, never looking back.

Everyone, a quick break. My favorite podcast guests on my first million is darmon. Darmon founded hub spot. He's a billionaire. He's one of my favorite entrepreneurs on earth.

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I starting and selling a couple for tens of millions of dollars and copy writing with the skill that made all of that happen. And the way that I learned how to copyright is by using a technique called copy work, which is basically taking the best sales letters. And I would write a word for word, and I would make notes as to why each phrase was impacted and effective.

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