Jason Hartman hosts Mark Moss, as they discuss diversification of investments. Mark gives us his strategy on investing in commodities, real estate, and cryptocurrency. He ties this all up to cashflow. Mark doesn’t believe Bitcoin needs to be a global currency to have an impact as a global currency. They end with a conversation on game-theory.
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Announcer 0:12
Welcome to the American monetary associations podcast where we explore how monetary policy impacts the real lives of real people and the action steps necessary to preserve wealth and enhance one’s lifestyle.
Jason Hartman 0:29
Hey, it’s my pleasure to welcome Mark moss. He is a strategic financial analyst. He’s a full time investor. He has a fantastic YouTube channel. I’ve learned a lot from him. Over the time I’ve been following his work and I am really happy to bring him to you today. He was one of the early people in the cryptocurrency space. So maybe we’ll talk about that a little bit and some other things namely what to expect next. Mark, welcome. How you doing, buddy? I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Always a pleasure. Talk to you. It’s good to have you on. So, um, everybody wants to know, you know what’s next. Right? And you really focus on a lot of strategy. In fact, you know, one of your handles is strategic mark, and asset allocation and things like that. I mean, you know, maybe. So let’s start off by talking about, what do you think the best strategy is for people nowadays and with all that’s going on in the world?
Mark Moss 1:23
Well, I think the best strategy for people is to recognize that nobody knows.
Jason Hartman 1:29
Yeah, right answer smart.
Mark Moss 1:30
The smartest people in the world know that they don’t know. Right. And so I think as Porter Stansberry says, it’s the things and it wasn’t him. It was like Mark Twain. Anyway, I have so many quotes on him, but he said that it’s the things that you know, absolutely. 100% for certain are the things that get you in trouble. Mm hmm. And so we always have to kind of like have strong conviction but also be quick to pivot. So as far as people know, they don’t know and so what that means is the best, the best strategy is something that kind of spreads out your risk gives you better upside by participate in some of these things, but also limits the amount of risk that you’re giving yourself. So for example, I’m sure we’ll get into bitcoin. Bitcoin, I believe, is probably the most explosive asset. It’s the it’s been the best performing asset for the last 11 years. I believe it’s the best risk risk adjusted asset that we have today. And so many people call it’s way too risky, I would never buy it. And that’s fine. And nobody should go 100% in, but like one of the best investors in the world, Paul Tudor Jones just said that he put 2% of his portfolio towards it. So it’s about like, Hey, you know, this has a chance. And so let me put one or 2% towards it.
Jason Hartman 2:39
It’s a small bet, and they might be a big payoff. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Versus, you know, people that put, you know, 20% plus, plus plus, they’re taking a big risk. Right, right.
Mark Moss 2:50
Yeah. And so I think the biggest mistake that I see people make is always trying to guess what the right asset to invest into. No, no, no. No don’t buy bitcoin only buy gold. No, don’t buy bitcoin don’t buy gold only buy bitcoin. Why? Why not buy both? Only in real estate? Well, why just real estate? Why real estate? Why not real estate and gold and big, right? Like, why do you have to choose only one you don’t have to? And so I think that would probably be the biggest mistake that people make. The other thing if we’re just talking like big overarching kind of thesis is my biggest thesis, my investing thesis I pound the table on is always investing for cash flow. And you say, Well, Mark, you were just talking about investing for Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn’t have cash flow. You’re absolutely right. Part of my portfolio, of course, is for growth. But I take that growth, I take those profits from growth, and I always invest them back into cash flow. So cash flow is always the name of the game for me. I think the lie that we’ve been told for whatever 4050 years of, you know, go to school, get a good job, save for 4050 years and live off your savings is ridiculous. And we know it doesn’t work because half the baby boomers today don’t have any savings. That doesn’t work. So rather than live off savings, I think we live off cash flow, and it’s much easier to obtain than people think.
Jason Hartman 4:04
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s very good. And I think that’s what true investing is. It’s investing for yield for cash flow. Absolutely. Right on that, but I see your point about, you know, taking, you know, 2% of your net worth, and, and putting it into a swing for the fences type of thing. You probably know, Jason Calacanis. And, you know, he talks about investing in startups and so forth. And you know, most of those are just total losers, you’re gonna lose your money, just get ready, but you hit on one, and that one could have a multiple, that’s really extreme if it’s Facebook, for example, right. And so, so Peter teal would probably concur with that kind of thing. So, so I agree. That’s interesting. So let’s talk about that allocation. Like, is there a specific percentage I know we talked about, you know, maybe like Tudor Jones 2% in Bitcoin, but how do you how do you allocate everything like that whole pie
Mark Moss 5:00
I wish I wish there was like a one size fits all. It’s not. So everybody kind of has their own what I like to call investor DNA. And so we have to figure out what’s right for us. All right, one thing that I would say back to Paul Tudor Jones, and like you talked about the guy investing in these startup companies, most of them don’t make it, one does. And so that’s an important thing to pick out right there. So if you’re going to invest in these risky pipe assets, like startup companies, for example, like a venture capitalist would, a venture capitalist is going to take their total amount they’re allocating towards venture capital, and then divide that between, you know, 15 to 20 different positions, because they know just as you said, most are not going to make it but a couple of hit. And so if you’re just going to go for this one, your chance of success is very, very low. And so you really need to go with a plan. And so like Paul Tudor Jones, or like these venture capitalists, I’m going to take 20% of my total portfolio and put it towards startups and of that 20% I’m going to divide that because Between 10 different positions in that venture capital allocation, that’s the way that we do it. So overall, just from a super high level, and we all need to find out what it is for us. And the reason why it’s important to find out what it is for you is because it changes my allocation is different today than it was a year ago and is way different than it was 10 years ago. And so, we need to understand how that works. And so, ultimately, I I teach something that I call the four pillar blueprint. And basically what that is, is taking your total investable assets and breaking it down into four different categories which is one investing for growth and depending on how you feel your risk tolerance, your you know, time horizon, how much money you have your sophistication, level, etc. You might put anywhere from 20% up to 80% of your portfolio in growth and then of course growth would be all these things like venture capital, Bitcoin, equity stocks, etc. Part another one of the pillars is investing for cash flow, which we just talked about. I think that should be a big piece of someone’s portfolio in the beginning. If you only have a Little bit of money, maybe you’re only putting five or 10% of your portfolio towards cash flow. But as you get, as you get more money as your portfolio gets bigger, I try to put about 40 to 50% of my portfolio towards cash flow. So the old saying, you know, it risk what you can afford to lose, right. So
Jason Hartman 7:16
as you become more wealthy, the allocation switches, were you Well, I don’t know, you know, it’s sort of interesting mark, because some people, they say, well, when you’ve already kind of made it, you want to get really conservative and diversification preserves wealth, concentration, grows wealth, right. But, you know, you can also afford to lose more, it’s not gonna affect your lifestyle, necessarily. If you’re wealthy and you lose, you know, whatever you consider to be a lot of money, right? your lifestyle won’t change, right? Because of it, you’ll be depressed about it. And bummed out but but it won’t really matter, you know, directly. So how do you reconcile that, you know,
Mark Moss 7:57
it all comes back down to your own personal Circumstances and mentality. So for example, before we started recording, we were talking about how I grew up racing dirt bikes, and I have a TV show where we ride your bikes. I do it a lot. And just the other day I crashed and I’m hurt right now and I am a little bit banged up cracked ribs separated shoulder. And so the reason why I bring that up is that my risk tolerance is obviously very high. Mm hmm. Yeah, most people might be like, heck no, and getting on a dirt bike, I could get hurt. Yeah, they say yes, of course, you’re gonna get hurt. It’s not a matter if it’s a matter of when, right so what I mean by that is that my risk tolerance is high. And so also that carries through into my investing. Mm hmm. I’m not afraid to lose some money because I know evitable I know I’m gonna lose money and that’s okay, cuz I’m gonna make it back where some people are not okay with that. Right? And so it really comes down to your own personal perspective. And you and I are not the same. Nobody’s the same. And even like I said, and you mentioned age, age is one of those things where as I get older, I need to be less risky than I was when I was younger. So Why are buying them less risky than it was when I was younger? My investing is less risky than I was, you know. So it changes person to person, it changes over time and each person needs to find their own tolerance.
Jason Hartman 9:09
Okay. Makes sense. Good stuff. So in terms of what’s coming next, I mean, just maybe the general economic question. inflation or deflation like that’s always the easy Well, it’s not easy, but it’s only it’s only two choices. There are some variations like stagflation in there. And by the way, that’s what I think is coming. But you know, what do you think Mark? I mean, we’ve got all of this money creation. It’s insane. We’ve never seen this before. You know, I was looking at an interesting chart this morning, by the way, I wish I had it handy. Maybe I’ll find it during the talk. But it was the percentage of GDP for various countries, you know, for Coronavirus, you know, what they’ve dedicated to battling the pandemic and and the economic devastation from it and so forth. And, man, it’s huge. I mean, these countries are spending a huge portion of their entire productivity, their GDP on this, this pandemic, you know, is that going to be inflationary?
Mark Moss 10:09
So technically, Yes, right. So you have to understand kind of money creation. So money is created through debt. And so as they create more money as they create more debt, it’s like a balloon, inflating the balloon and and just like anything, the more the more money they create, the less the existing money is worth. And so I tried to really boil this down to something super, super basic, and people want to get all complex. And I think these economic PhDs, they get so smart, they forget the basics, and the basic is supply and demand. Mm hmm. Everything in life comes down to supply and demand. scarcity, scarcity, that’s it. So when there’s more supply than there is demand, the prices drop, nobody wants it. There’s too much of it. Nobody wants it, right. But if there’s more demand than supply, prices go up. And so when you think about it, when you have money, inflation, It’s inflating like a balloon, we’re creating more money supply, but demand, the demand hasn’t changed. And so it’s just going to affect that. I guess to answer your question, what’s going to happen? We’re in this interesting, really the whole world change from 1971, which is when we got off the gold standard, right? And so for 5000 years value wealth, and this kind of leads us into bitcoin a little bit, but it’s about money, right? So for 5000 years, money and wealth was related to gold, we have a standard unit of measure. Everything in the world has a standard unit of measure. We both know what an inches we both know what a foot is a mile as a gallon as a pound is of whatever right? I mean, I know what a what a what a degree is, like, we all have standard units of measure. And for 5000 years, we had a standard unit of measure for money for wealth value, and today we don’t in 1971 that got severed And what happened is that allowed us to create unlimited amount of debt so since 1971, we’ve created like several hundred trillion dollars of wealth out of debt, I’m sorry, debt out of nowhere. The reason why it’s under important understand is since 1971 1987 2000 2008, etc, the markets keep trying to contract meaning that debt is the leveraging. So they’ve leveraged up the debt, they’ve inflated the bubble, and it keeps trying to contract down and deflate. Right? And here’s your asking what comes first inflation or deflation. But the problem is, every time we see deflation, they re inflate it with more debt. But the problem is the debt gets bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, and it gets harder and harder and harder to fill that balloon back up. And so you’re asking the question, do we see inflation or deflation? Well, we already know that, you know, in the US, they’ve committed what $6 trillion to reinflating this at this bubble, this this balloon. And to compare that to 2008, it was 700 billion, which sounds like a lot of money, but it was 700 billion, and now it’s 6 trillion. So that’s how much harder it gets. And you already just said, like all these countries, you’ve seen how much GDP they’re putting towards this. The problem is, we have all this debt and debt disappears in an instant. Mm hmm. So when the airlines or let’s say like the oil industry right now the air the oil industry is defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of debt in an instant, it’s gone. It’s just gone. So that’s demarcation. And the feds trying to fight that with with re inflation. Right, that makes sense.
Jason Hartman 13:23
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, one of the, you know, we can all just this is like a super simplistic idea, right. But we can all understand this relate to it. And we’ve certainly seen it in our own lives. Debt makes people look richer than they really are. And it makes countries look richer than they really are. Yeah. So since 1971, when Nixon took us off the gold standard, you know, there was no no tether anymore. There was no more measuring stick, and the US, the US citizens, other countries around the world because everything became Fiat, then in theory, Just means by authority. Right? You know, money has value because the government says so. Right. Right. And, and there’s been this wealth effect, but a lot of it is just smoke and mirrors. It wasn’t really there ever, you know, the way wealth is created is through capital formation and produce production, productivity, right? That those are the real things that actually create real wealth. But you can create fake wealth by financial icing the economy, and you know, a lot of financial instruments financial innovation, whenever I hear a wall street guy say that I’m like, run for the hills. You know, but but temporarily, it will make you seem rich, right? You know, it just doesn’t last forever. Yeah.
Mark Moss 14:40
And that’s exactly where we’re at. So the Euro 100%, right, that money is our wealth is created through producing producing goods and services and when I produce a good service I get compensated with with wealth. And so you’re right. What we’ve done over the last especially 50 years, is we’ve outsourced all the reduction. Hmm. And instead we’ve become a financialized economy.
Jason Hartman 15:04
Yeah. And now you’re, you’re speaking of the like the US outsourcing to Japan or to China mostly, but formerly Japan. That’s what you’re talking about. Right? And then finance realizing its own economy, right. So
Mark Moss 15:15
just Yeah, I was just kind of adding on to what you were saying, right. So we’ve financialized the economy. So we’ve created hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt, which is basically fake wealth, as you’re calling it, right? Where it’s like this illusion of wealth. In addition, I mean, there’s like, over a quadrillion dollars of derivatives, whatever that means. Yeah. Derivatives those are bets on the financial system. I’m just to break it down super simple. Their bets again, you know, it’s it’s gambling on the financial system. So, yeah, it makes everybody seem richer. But the problem is, like I said, that debt can go away in the blink of an eye with real estate, for example, is a real tangible asset that’s wealth, its land, it’s building, etc. And maybe that house could lose 50% value. Yeah. But like it doesn’t disappear right there. The house is there but with debt, it’s just gone. It’s gone. Gone. Yeah.
Jason Hartman 16:09
Good stuff. Okay. I found that chart I was talking about just to give you and the listeners and viewers a point of reference. I just thought I’d share this with you. So Japan has spent the most in terms of Coronavirus stimulus packages 21% of its GDP us is number 213 percent, Sweden 12%, Germany 10% and on down from there, but Japan 21% and Japan of any developed country has more depth and anybody they’re like, their debt to GDP ratio is like 230% or some insane number like that. It’s
Mark Moss 16:43
what’s on the low end?
Jason Hartman 16:45
Well, on this chart, it doesn’t do every country, but it does like the top point is that 10 maybe South Korea 2.2%
Mark Moss 16:52
Yeah, so not bad, and they’ve done really well with it.
Jason Hartman 16:54
Yeah. And then a lot of people have really applauded South Korea’s response to Coronavirus They did a really good job with it. So
Mark Moss 17:01
yeah, it only took 2%. Amazing. Yep. Yeah. That’s a whole nother subject for another conversation. But ultimately, I guess it does tie in a little bit in a sense, where as you’re saying, which is absolutely right, which is all this financialized economy, this debt, it gives the illusion of wealth. what it also does is because it wasn’t money that you had to earn, Mm hmm. You treat it differently, right, you’re spending other people’s money. So if I worked my butt off, like, I got kids that I’m trying to get the kids to, like, hey, work a little bit because you’ll value it more. Right? I work hard for that money, you treat it different. But when you’re spending someone else’s debt that create money creation that came out of thin air, you’re much more likely to just squander it. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 17:41
yeah, no, that’s a that’s a very good point. Very good point. You know, when you when you got to earn it yourself, you’re gonna treat it better. And like the old saying, money always goes where it’s treated best. Yeah, yeah. And we’ll see if that happens between this huge war between California And Tesla right now.
Mark Moss 18:02
That that was a that’s interesting. So I live in California. Yeah. And, you know, it’s super interesting. And one of the most there’s there’s a lot of facets we could talk about. But the one most interesting facet that I found was back to your point when he goes was treated best, right? So Elan musk thinks that Tesla isn’t being treated right. And it should move. Well, I live in California, like I said, so we’ve lost all the car manufacturers. They’ve already they’ve already been gone. They’re the last one left if they leave California who stands to lose billions and billions of dollars, but Tesla could make billions of dollars from working in a cheaper state. What’s interesting though, is he says I should move and one of the representatives I forget what her name is. She basically tweeted f Trump or Yeah, that’s right.
Jason Hartman 18:44
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If Ilan musk and that was like Loretta Gonzalo, something like that.
Mark Moss 18:50
I think she’s an assembly woman for the great state of California. But But look at the contrast is what I want to bring out. So she says fpu Mm hmm. Nevada and Texas say say you come here we will roll out the red carpet. We will get you tax incentives we will get you employee So, I mean, are you gonna stay in a place that says FSU or you know a place that rolls out the red carpet and so yeah that right like it’s just amazing.
Jason Hartman 19:17
Yeah, it’s really a you know, California is my home state to live there the vast majority of my life and I’ve never seen a state try so hard to commit suicide. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s like they want to ruin their economy. It’s Yeah, it’s it’s it’s just weird. But you know, there’s a lot a lot of welfare there’s a lot of people that came there many years ago and just won’t leave that easily. You know, it’s sticky, right? It’s not that easy to move. It’s It’s a hard, it’s a hard decision. It’s hard to do, you know, so, so it’s really interesting. He talked to us a little bit about cryptocurrencies, if you will, I haven’t talked about that much on the show lately, and I used to talk about it a lot. You know, and this is something that I say to my listeners mark, I would love to be wrong about this, you know, I’m not a Bitcoin bull. But I’d love to be wrong. I really would. I’d love nothing more than to see a decentralized, like democratized currency. I just think the Fed and the government, they’re just too powerful, you know, and other central banks and I kind of view it as that, like, the Chief Product of any government is literally their currency, like the dollar is the product they produce, right. Tesla makes cars, you know, other companies make widgets. Well, governments make currency, right? That’s their product.
Mark Moss 20:34
So a couple of couple things I’d say about that. One, you. You mentioned earlier that Fiat means it’s like government mandated. Right, right. Well, that means it’s fake money. And yeah, and what what and the thing is, is that people think that the government has the military and they’re going to force people to use the dollar, but that’s not how it works. There has to be trust. Without trust, nobody will use it. That’s why in Venezuela right now it’s lined with with paper. dollars and nobody will even bother to pick them up. Right? Nobody cares, doesn’t matter how much the government mandates you to use it if nobody wants it, nobody wants it. And that’s just the end of the story. Zimbabwe. We can talk about this all day, Zimbabwe has 100 trillion dollar banknotes. And so when there’s no trust, no one’s going to use it. I don’t care how big the military is. So that being said, the government has a monopoly on it, because they did this slightly tricky thing where all dollars were backed by gold in 1971. They removed that, but the dollar didn’t really change. And most people don’t really even understand what happened there. And that’s all fine and good, as long as things continue to work as they are, but at some point that may fail. But what I would also do is I would roll things back a little bit, and I would say, like, if you looked at, you know, maybe in the 14 1500s, really like the Catholic Church and the government were like, together as one right? And the people weren’t allowed to read the Bible. And then we came we got the printing press and the Bibles were mass produced and eventually the information Got spread. So the information the point that I want to make is information was centralized. Hmm. And you had to go to the church, you got to go to the Catholic Church to get the information and they told you what they wanted you to know. It wasn’t available for you to think on your own. the printing press came out it decentralized the information attached to the Bible. And the Catholic Church broke this last the stranglehold. And eventually we got the separation of church and state. Mm hmm.
Jason Hartman 22:24
Yeah, yeah. Things become democratized.
Mark Moss 22:27
Guys Today, as you’re saying that there’s a monopoly centralization of money of value. And the government holds a monopoly on that, as you’re saying, and you’re and you’re accurate in saying that, but things can become decentralized. And so eventually, I believe we’re on a very short path to seeing a separation of money and state, and I believe we need to go. And so really, if you look at what did you have a question about that?
Jason Hartman 22:53
Well, yeah, look at every law and every government mandate comes down to being at the wrong end of the point of a gun. You know, that’s the bottom line, you know, if you don’t pay your taxes, First you’ll get some letters, then, you know, you’ll get some phone calls, then you’ll get, you know, police battering down your door and coming in and putting you in a cage. Right. So that’s the result of any law. Right? So, you know, I look at it like, you know, cocaine, right? It’s an illegal drug, but it has a market and a value and people do trade in it as they trade and other illegal substances, but not many, you know, it’s never gonna be a big thing. It’s never gonna compete with the dollar because it’s illegal.
Mark Moss 23:35
You haven’t seen the cartels 100 trillion dollars a
Jason Hartman 23:39
vague got a lot, but compared to the GDP of the US economy, it’s a drop in the bucket. Right. But
Mark Moss 23:45
yeah, it’s a lot for Pablo Escobar, right? Or whatever. Right? Well, what I’d say to that a couple things I’ll say to that first is that one, it doesn’t have to be necessary. It depends on what you consider a success. And I guess it depends on what we’re trying Talk about here, meaning, first of all, like the gold market is $10 trillion. And not everybody uses gold most right? You know, an angle. Good point, but yet it’s $10 trillion. The offshore banking sector is about $40 trillion. Not everybody has offshore bank accounts based right there at the statement that’s not even the standard but yet it’s $50 trillion. So good Bitcoin capture a little bit of data for banking. Could it capture a little bit of the gold market? If so, it could easily get to 510 trillion dollars which puts it at a couple hundred thousand dollars per Bitcoin. And that’s
Jason Hartman 24:31
that’s an interesting point. Yeah, that’s an interesting point. Do you know the size that like the market cap of Bitcoin now that’s available bitcoins because there’s only like 2 million left or something right?
Mark Moss 24:40
Um, the market cap as of today is changes radically is 160 $3 billion. Okay, so it’s timing.
Mark Moss 24:53
So I have a video on my channel, how Bitcoin gets to $100,000 and basically $100,000 per coin, as simple as that. All I have to do is capture two or 3% of the gold market, two or 3% of the offshore banking sector, and like it can be there and like offshore banking is not mainstream. Mm hmm. Yeah. So it depends, like, are we talking about like, will it go from, you know, $10,000 to $100,000? Or will it become the reserve currency of the world? Those are different conversations, of course, I believe so as an investor, I believe it’s the single best investment we have today, I think there’s a very probable chance. So we think about things in probabilities, I think there’s a very probable chance we could see it get to $100,000, which is from 10,000 to 100,000 is an amazing game. Or it could lose 100 it could lose 100%. So you could lose 100% or you have an upside of 1,000% those are odds I life
Jason Hartman 25:45
in that equation is a pretty good equation. You’re right. And by the way, we should tell the audience because they don’t know you yet. You know, you’re a real estate guy like you love real estate investing, and you talk about it a lot. And you know, this is something you do with a small portion. your portfolio for that possible homerun swing, right.
Mark Moss 26:04
Yeah, I mean, I also I also invest into gold, and I also invest into stocks and all that. So but I, all of that is put together into, like I said, my growth allocation. And then when I take profits from there, I take those profits, and I put them over into cash flow and into real estate. Mm hmm. So there’s a quote that I can’t remember who said it, and I have some, I think it was fa hyack, who’s one of the great Austrian economics Oh, yeah. And he said that there shall never be a sound money again, until it is taken from the hands of the government. But it can’t be done by force, but rather through a sly roundabout way that they don’t know until it’s too late. Which is basically interestingly what they’ve been doing tell us for years through inflation, the sly roundabout way. Exactly. Why are well yeah, so Bitcoin fits that narrative perfectly, because it’s this sly roundabout way. If The if the government and the Fed whoever you want to say would have seen what was going on 10 years ago, they would have stopped it. At this point, it’s too big. It’s too prevalent. So I’m not saying that all the governments of the world can’t come together and make it illegal, they’ll kill you if they catch you with it. And that would definitely limit the ability. I’m not saying that won’t happen, there’s that there’s a chance that could happen. There is a chance, but there’s also a chance that doesn’t happen, right? And when you look at it, so like representative Brad Sherman from California, another great California guy, he spoke to the Senate committee and said, We need to outlaw cryptocurrency, because it undermines our monopoly on money. And what it does as the US is it takes away our ability to slap sanctions on countries like Iran. Mm hmm. That’s what he said. But I was sitting there listening going, Oh, really? Well, then I think we shouldn’t use it. Right. And so all of a sudden now, the fact that the US would want to make it illegal makes other countries want to adopt it and what it creates game theory and so now The US, I’m not saying the US makes it illegal, and then all of a sudden they go lives in that free part of the world. So that’s one. That’s one thing. The other thing that I would say is that we know that that policy is set by lobby right now people lobby the government and they get their way with the government. Right, right. And I would say that, I don’t know who’s bigger, but probably the two biggest lobby are pharma, and finance. So finance is definitely one of the biggest lobby arms in there. And we know that Goldman Sachs fidelity, TD Ameritrade and yc backed all these companies have spent collectively billions of dollars to start building out Bitcoin products. And so they’re not gonna be happy to see the government change policy and make that illegal after they’ve already spent billions of dollars to bring those products and I would bet they’re going to spend a lot of money lobbying to keep that active so they can make that money. Mm hmm. How do
Jason Hartman 28:55
you recommend buying Bitcoin?
Mark Moss 28:57
How do I recommend buying it?
Jason Hartman 28:58
Yeah, I mean, on online for common exchanges, or do you know do you recommend doing it some other way or,
Mark Moss 29:04
I mean, the easiest way, maybe not the most ideal way, but the easiest way is go to Coinbase comm set up an account. I mean, they’re they’re a US based company, fully legit, fully transparent. You link up your account and you just click by and it is by jack Dorsey from Twitter has a company called square and there’s a company and they have what’s called the cash app. And then you can just download this cash app on your phone. And it’s kind of like a banking app. And I can request money send money, kind of like a Venmo kind of type Dale and I buy bitcoin right into cash app.
Jason Hartman 29:38
Okay, got it. Got it. So he’s, he’s selling it to that’s interesting. And tell us about the having that just happened.
Mark Moss 29:46
So I want to tell you about the halving, but I want to tell you just back to Well, let’s talk about having first so basically what happened this is a very interesting thing and actually have a video dropping on my YouTube channel here in one minute. Talking about the having somebody wants to know more they can go watch it on the channel. But basically what happens is it’s very interesting. So the Bitcoin Bitcoin was created as a direct response to the 2008 great financial crash. So in the very first line of code, the programmers Toshi Nakamoto, whoever it is, but the programmer wrote a line in the code, and he’s quoted that headline of a newspaper article, the Chancellor is on the brink of a second bailout. And it was in response to this endless money printing that Bitcoin was created in Bitcoin was created to be deflationary. So we talked about money and there’s there’s no end to how much they make. And of course, the more they make them less it’s worth the dollars lost 90% of its purchasing power over the last hundred years. Well, Bitcoin was created as a response to that and it’s made deflationary, it has a hard cap never be more than 21 million Bitcoin ever. And what happens is, over time they’re released. So there’s a new block you’ve heard blockchain. So as the transactions get started, It’s blocked by block by block and it gets added every 10 minutes a new block, and every 10 minutes a new block releases bitcoins into the system. And if you have, if you buy a computer and you hook into the network, which is permission list, everybody is able to do this, anyone can hook a computer in and start helping the network with security. If you participate in that when coins are released, you get a share of that depending on how much share you’re putting in on work. Now, in the beginning, it was 50 coins 50 Bitcoin every, every block every 10 minutes. But what happens is that that schedule goes down every four years, it gets cut in half, so then it was 25 bitcoins every 10 minutes. Right now we’ve been 12.5 Bitcoin every 10 minutes. And as of as of yesterday, it became 6.25 Bitcoin every 10 minutes. And so back to what I said about supply and demand, right things are super simple. Right now as of yet before yesterday, we were creating 1800 new Bitcoin were created every single day 1800 bitcoins about today’s price roughly $16 million, right? So the market, the demand and the supply, the supply is 1800 new Bitcoin every day, the demand is absorbing that and the price is stable with that supply and demand. If the demand stays the same, but you cut the supply in half, what happens? The price should go up. Right, right. Yeah. So so that’s the big deal with the halving. So we’re on this supply schedule, this fixed supply schedule every four years the the amount, the inflation, I even call it the inflation of Bitcoin gets cut in half every four years. And basically all the way we have about 120 more years until it runs out and we maxed out the 21 million Bitcoin, there’s no more.
Jason Hartman 32:50
So Mark. I know, I know. We got to wrap it up here. But this is fascinating. And you know, one more thing I hear from the skeptics as they will say well, okay, Bitcoin is limited. You’ve got like 21 million allowed or something like that. Right. But the market for cryptocurrency in general is totally unlimited. I mean, you’ve got all these others out there, right? A cerium and a zillion others. What do you say to that? Like, is it is it just a, you know, a cryptocurrency thing or is it all about Bitcoin?
Mark Moss 33:27
And in my mind, it’s all about Bitcoin and what I would say to that is, you have one Mona Lisa, that’s worth a lot of money. You have two paintings right behind you. Do those two paintings diminish the Mona Lisa?
Jason Hartman 33:38
Oh, no, they don’t
Mark Moss 33:40
know. There’s there’s thousands of paintings. There’s millions of paintings in the world. Those millions of paintings diminish the value of the Mona Lisa. Yeah, no, they don’t. And the reason why is because Mona Lisa has characteristics that are unique to the Mona Lisa. And Bitcoin has characteristics that are unique to Bitcoin that no one else has no one else can do. No one else. No other coin. No other crypto So you could ever replicate or duplicate, I don’t want to say ever but have not so far been able and I would, I would almost say never probably never could ever duplicate what Bitcoin has. And so what what does Bitcoin have? It has immutability, it has scarcity, and it has censorship resistant and this is the big thing, right? So you’ve seen in Weimar Republic you’ve seen in Cyprus in 2015. Australia has bail in laws, the government goes broke, they just take your money they seize go to us gold in 1933. Right, so the government just takes your money when they want it. Bitcoin is censorship resistant, nobody can seize it, steal it, nobody can manipulate it, prevent it. We saw like in Wikileaks, we saw Julian Assange was holed up and people were sending the money. And then the government said, Nope, you can’t send the money anymore. So people started sending them Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is freedom. Bitcoin is sovereignty. If I hold Bitcoin, nobody can steal it. Nobody can seize it. Nobody can manipulate it. Nobody can inflate it away. Like those dollars. In your bank account, the government’s inflated away or they could take them out of your bank if they want it either way, right? But nobody can seize it. And in addition, if I want to pay you for something with dollars through PayPal Venmo wire transfer, there’s a 50 people in line that could stop that transaction. But But if but Bitcoin is peer to peer, if I want to pay you, nobody can stop it, block it or prevented its freedom. It’s, it’s its sovereignty, and that, and I believe that freedom and sovereignty will always win.
Jason Hartman 35:27
Yeah, and that’s a really good libertarian view. I like it. I guess the only way they could stop it is they could somehow block the packets on the internet, like, you know, they can block voice packets, right? Because they’re different than other bits and bytes. You know, that’s
Mark Moss 35:44
theoretically but technically No, right? So people are already doing Bitcoin transactions over ham radios. They’re doing them through, there’s a new thing called there’s a new thing called mesh networks. So it’s getting really really big where it’s like it’s there’s a new there’s a new sector called dissident Tech. And so as governments become more tyrannical we’re seeing this, for example, that we see it in New York as well. But there’s called mesh networks and basically their little mini, you know, that is like yeah, and they and they they use multiple radio waves they avail using Bluetooth your Wi Fi and the cellular. Yeah, right. Exactly. So they’re they’re transferring Bitcoin on mesh networks and transferring Bitcoin on ham radios. And so they have they have satellites up so their satellites up, if the ISP takes internet down, you have the entity of the satellites up. So you’re right, I mean, there’s gonna be this there could be this cat and mouse, there’s all these what ifs, right? And they’re all and we and we have to recognize though we don’t want to ignore them, but we want to assign them probabilities. Is that probable that the people and I hear it all the time on my channel? What about the whole internet goes down? And I’m like, if you think there’s a world with no internet, like, we have we have bigger problems. So um, yeah, probable, I guess but I give
Mark Moss 36:58
it a such a small percentage.
Mark Moss 37:00
prop right? So you have heard all these things. And I do I will give you though that money is money is power and the fed the central banks, whoever you want to call it control the world with the money, and they do not want to lose control of that. And they will throw every tool in their arsenal at this right and so it’s gonna be a battle and I’ll give you that Yeah, and
Jason Hartman 37:21
I think they’ll they’ll come along with their own cryptocurrency their own digital dollar, you know, at some point, that’s that’s gonna happen because but the problem is, when that happens, there will be zero financial privacy. I mean, they will know our every move. I mean, one of the, you know, ultimate forms of freedom is the ability to trade without Big Brother watching you, you know, to buy what you want. Can you imagine in a really ugly, dystopian 1984 ish world where you know, every time you make a purchase on the internet or something, the government questions well, what was that for? It’s like posting something on Facebook that they consider questionable, and they’ll they’ll hide it or ghost it You know, or they don’t agree with the politics. I mean, it’s absolutely scary.
Mark Moss 38:03
It’s even it’s even worse so like those government cryptocurrencies that it’s programmable money they can program it so for example if you’re on if you’re receiving government assistance for example, when they transfer that money they can program they can program that money where you can only spend it on these certain things right? Beyond these things. If you don’t if you don’t spend it within a certain time it automatically comes back to them. So like it can be programmed any way they want before they even give it to you.
Jason Hartman 38:28
Yeah, yeah man and that will create all sorts of black markets.
Mark Moss 38:33
But what I like what I would just say is the overarching theme is what I started with is it always has to come down to trust and so no government force and I they threaten you with the barrel of a gun I understand that but no amount of force can make you use something when humans don’t want to trade for it. So when in Venezuela they go to buy that bread with those dollars and they say I don’t want those dollars but I will take water I’ll take batteries. Yeah, right fruit, right. I don’t want Those Venezuelan dollars. And so at the end of the day, there’s always going to be free will there’s always going to be free trade and no amount of force can affect that. I don’t think Yeah,
Jason Hartman 39:10
yeah. Well, very good. Because, you know, I remember when I was in Romania, our guide was a high level person under the, you know, Ceausescu communist regime, right. And she was a media reporter. And so she got to live a much nicer life than other people did. But of course, she had to tow that state line, which was completely bogus. And she talked about how they would ration everything. And maybe one or two times a year, the country would get you ready for this chocolate. And the whole country would be like, in heaven, they’d be stoned on chocolate because they got chocolate, right? And, you know, she said that they would dole out shoes, there would be a certain time when the government would announce that, hey, we’ve got shoes and you can go get shoes based on you know, whatever your name is, or I don’t know I don’t know how they did it. But people would wait in line to get a pair of shoes mark for, you know, 2436 hours. And they get to the they get their place and they go into the place to get their free communist shoes, and they wouldn’t have their size. And I said, Well, what did you do? Well, we had to develop our own market and trade them behind the scenes because we had to get what fit properly. Right? And that’s exactly what you’re saying people. People always develop their own gray or black markets for everything. So that’s true. Capitalism is a very natural thing, isn’t it? Is it is Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Hey, give out your website. It’s been great talking to you. give out your website, tell people where they can find out more.
Mark Moss 40:37
Yes, for sure. I mean, I put out content a couple times a week on YouTube, just just search Mark moss, you’ll find it there. Like I said, I just dropped a video as it released right now on this whole Bitcoin halving. So if you want to know more about that, I have a whole video about that. I talked about all these different topics that we’ve kind of covered on this show. So if you like any of those topics, making money, investing money, and having success in life and check out the channel, it’s the best place pleases me.
Jason Hartman 41:00
We love it. Hey Mark, thanks a lot for joining us.
Mark Moss 41:03
Yep. Thank you so much.
Jason Hartman 41:09
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