#43 Bullion, Crypto, & The Future Of Wealth, with Michael Engeman, CEO of the Ainslie Group

My guest in this episode is Michael Engeman. Michael is an experienced business executive and entrepreneur, and is the CEO of the Ainslie Group of companies, one of Australia's most respected bullion and crypto dealers.  

Founded in 1974, Ainslie has grown into one of Australia’s largest and most trusted bullion dealers, later expanding into digital assets. As the country’s only Over-The-Counter (OTC) crypto dealer, Ainslie also launched The Gold & Silver Standard (AUS and AGS) digital tokens backed by securely stored bullion. 

Highlights of our conversation include seeing the opportunity in crypto many years ago, selling physical gold and silver tokens on the blockchain, Trump's impact on crypto, minting a one ton gold coin, and discussing how we might create a more equitable world.

Enjoy the conversation.

To find out more about the Ainslie Group go to: https://www.ainslie.com.au

To learn more about what it takes to be an evolved leader, and to check out our other podcast episodes, go to:  https://www.evolvedstrategy.com.au

#crypto #bitcoin #bullion #gold #goldbullion #cryptocurrency #blockchain #leadership #evolvedleadershippodcast #evolvedstrategy 

Chapters

• 2:00 Seeing the opportunity in crypto many years ago
• 4:45 Selling physical gold and silver tokens on the blockchain
• 14:12 Trump's impact on crypto
• 23:03 Minting a one ton gold coin
• 29:12 How do we create a more equitable world?

Transcript

Audio version

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Evolved Leadership Podcast, where we speak to business owners and executives who make the world a better place. You'll hear experienced and successful leaders share powerful stories and insights that will help you evolve as a leader in your own journey.

David: Hi, guys. Welcome to the show. My guest today is Michael Engerman. Michael's the CEO of the Ainslie Group, a fascinating business that plays in the the crypto and bullion space. So it's very much in the wealth, creation industry, wealth management.

 It's been really fascinating to learn about. The Ainslie Group and Michael, I'll let you say exactly what the Ainslie Group is. Firstly, welcome to the show and yeah, tell us about what it, what is the Ainslie Group?

Michael: Yeah, thanks, David. Always a pleasure joining, you on these on these calls and we do a bit of it ourselves, so it's a bit in reverse [00:01:00] for me this time, but I'm more than happy to answer some questions and give you a bit of insight into what we do and who we are. Yeah we're in our 51st year of operation this year, so we're an established family business and we've been around in Australia for some time now.

Celebrating our 50 years last year. But Ainslie is, you summarized it well. Essentially we are a business that we started off being just the bullion business that most people would know where you can buy, precious metals from and that business has evolved over time to becoming a lot more.

We're now classed as the Ainslie group of companies as there is a few different group, a few different companies that make up. Still do bullion. So still one of Australia's leading bullion dealers based out of Brisbane and Melbourne, physical locations, soon to be out of the Gold Coast, probably halfway through this year, we'll have an operation down there on the Southern end as well.

So the business has grown from just doing bullion. We saw an opportunity, our customers as well, saw an opportunity in crypto many years [00:02:00] ago, back in the teens. I think it was around 15 that we started involved in that space as a alternative asset because that's what bullion is. It's an alternative asset to the mainstream.

So we've been, playing in the crypto space for some time now. We then saw an opportunity while we were doing both bullion and crypto. We saw an opportunity to develop our own and the first digitized gold and silver tokens. So we can, we now sell physical gold and silver tokens on the blockchain, and that's on an Ethereum smart contract, and that's been going since about 17.

For some time, and that's the first in Australia to do that. Others have copied you will find if you dig a little deeper about what they are and how we do ours very different product to what's on the market. And then since then, we've just been applying or in the process, we're just waiting for it to come through as our AFSL because we will have a wholesale fund that we're launching [00:03:00] very shortly as well, which will be a mix of Bitcoin, gold and silver actively managed for those that want to, because we know through history and throughout data.

Going in and out of these assets can be quite lucrative rather than just sitting in one or the other. And that tie all those businesses together, you can't do those without vaults. So then we have the reserve vault in Brisbane and the Melbourne vault down in Melbourne, and those two vaults are world class underground facilities.

That store assets for people or businesses. Just like the vaults on, the TV and so forth. You go underground and have your own storage device or box. So

David: Yep. So you that is a really fascinating summary of what the Ainslie group does. And so many areas we can probe into there. There'll probably be a lot of listeners, I'd say most people will have heard of crypto but many will not be familiar with, some of the terms you've used, which we might just clarify some of those [00:04:00] shortly.

In terms of global context, this interview, Okay. Comes at a time where and I'm not sure when we actually booked it in, if this was the case, I may not have been that, Trump has been elected and he's come in and, the press is booming about, this is the first, crypto positive president and already there's been, executive orders signed that are, revolutionizing putting crypto more and more on the map.

There's been talk of a crypto, Treasury reserve. You could maybe say more on what exactly that means. And and you mentioned you're now doing a gold and silver token. That's on the Ethereum blockchain, if I understand right. And some of my terms may not be perfect.

So correct me there if I,

Michael: you're going well so far.

David: All right. And most people would know Bitcoin is the most popular crypto, Ethereum probably the second most popular, what I've understood from my own explorations in this area so far is a lot has been built on the [00:05:00] Ethereum blockchain, which is making it increasingly valuable and has been for some time.

Bitcoin is still you know I guess by market cap and and by popularity and in terms of the various crypto assets out there that you can purchase. And of course there's the whole world of NFTs, et cetera. And, many kinds of. crypto assets that you can purchase. You, if I understand right, Ainslie has their own crypto token.

Is that right?

Michael: No, we no, not right. We don't have

David: Okay.

Michael: Those gold and silver tokens that you talked about before, I can see how you can get confused with it. And people might think because they are a gold and silver backed contract. So you as a person could buy, if you don't want to hold the physical product and carry it around with you, gold is probably not so bad.

But when it comes to silver, it takes a lot of silver when it comes to the value with the amount. So you can actually buy these [00:06:00] tokens from us. And that is a smart contract. So that's a blockchain strong contract between Ainsley and David McDermott. And that means that you own X amount of grams of gold or X amount of grams of silver, and that contract is always yours and will stay with you.

Immutable for the rest of your life. So you can then come into store and redeem that product. So you could come into store at any point in time and for an administration fee of 250 bucks, pick up your product on the same day, or you can sell that product on say coinspot. com It trades 24 7 or through our desk, Monday through Friday, but it's physically gold and physically silver, but it's just on the blockchain versus the physical product, which you would otherwise have to come in and pick up.

David: Yeah. Okay. So you're marrying what's happening in the crypto space with the traditional. Bullion industry and,

Michael: way of saying it. Absolutely. And I think we [00:07:00] call that opportunity back in the late teens. This has been around for some time now, probably coming up to 10 years since inception. And absolutely right. We saw the the eventual growth in crypto. And we also saw the need for, if you look in the history of crypto and the, the ups and the downs and the busts and the cycles.

People go from crypto to precious metals. They park their profits on the, on when crypto has a bull run. They then park their profits into gold and silver for the downturn because gold and silver don't tend to have the downturns that crypto has. And we've seen plenty of those and whether we're going to see them in the future is another, wait till we see.

But I think the two are quite nicely joined and you can swap between the two because it's a blockchain, because it's a crypto. You don't have to be, physically in store or go through the banks with your fiat currency. You're literally just going back and forth between the two very simply.

David: [00:08:00] yeah in terms of the future of crypto, which is, has been a hot topic for a long time now since it really came onto the map with although there's been ups and downs, I think it's fair to say certainly hitting a hundred K. Us recently, Bitcoin price was a major milestone and increased interest even more, but interest has been increasing prior to that for a number of years.

Significantly. The CEO of MicroStrategy Micro, Michael Sailor and MicroStrategy is a I think the company that owns the largest amount of Bitcoin, I'm pretty sure that's fair to say. They own, I'm just looking here, 478,740. Bitcoins at an average purchase price of 62, 473 per Bitcoin. I haven't calculated exactly how much that is in today's Bitcoin value, but it'd be 500, 000 Bitcoins times approximately 100, 000 [00:09:00] or thereabouts.

I've got a calculator here. Let's quickly work that out. You might know immediately.

Michael: everything you've said is right. And Michael Saylor is a it's probably one of the leading. Commentators on Bitcoin. The first real business to really put Bitcoin on his balance sheet. And has worked out very well for him so far. I think that he's got, very good leads into some of the key people internationally.

Now he's got an ear in Donald Trump. There's a lot of things that he's been doing that have really made others sit up and go, oh, there might be something here. Because Bitcoin, as you alluded to some time ago. Is not a Ethereum. It's not a Sol Solana. It's a really it's an asset. It's like we call it a digital gold now because it's just being people are buying it for the asset perspective.

So for the capital gains, yes, it doesn't give you a return. It doesn't do what some of the big, banks or miners. But the capital [00:10:00] return that we've been seeing in Bitcoin far outstrips, you don't worry about those other things when you're getting the returns that you're getting out of these assets. You just have to be able to sit in for the ride,

David: Yes, and that's what I know Sailor's message has been for a long time. I just did a quick calculation. It's roughly 50 billion dollars is MicroStrategy's current Bitcoin holding in US dollar value. Sailor, his predictions for the future. He's looking at Bitcoin currently.

I I forget exactly what the market cap is, and we're just talking about Bitcoin. But as total dollar value. Do you know off the top of your head, Michael, what the entirety of Bitcoin is worth at the

Michael: just under two trillion,

David: 2 trillion.

Michael: Just under. Yeah.

David: Yeah, and Michael Saylor and others like Raoul Paul from Real Vision and others are looking at in time a 100 trillion dollar total market cap as Bitcoin really replace it like they look at they're talking about it replacing [00:11:00] gold and digital gold becoming more valuable than real gold Bitcoin being the digital gold and other key cryptos.

What's your view on that?

Michael: Yeah. Look we, you've just named some people that we follow. Raoul Paul is a has been a proponent in this space for a long time. That real vision subscription that he has now is stronger than it's ever been. We're one of the members. We only went to an RVIP event in Sydney last week.

We do. Our own news is one thing that I didn't mention before, but we have a part of our business is Ainsley Research and we publish news every single day of the week that we launch and we send out to all of our subscribers on global macro, economic things that are occurring around the world with a crypto bullion slant with regards to just why you need these assets in your stable.

And we do a lot of work with Real Vision and also there's a a lot of liquidity information that's coming out of a guy by the name of Michael Powell [00:12:00] who comes out of the UK. And, there's a lot of information there that. Is correlated with regards to the ups and the downs, but yeah, totally agree.

Rail he rails on a, on the right path. Sometimes he gets it wrong, but mostly the last 10 or 15 years, he's got it mostly right.

David: Okay. Yeah. You mentioned Michael Powell there. Another sort of key thought leader in the, certainly the Bitcoin space is Andreas Antonopoulos, who is much more of a, an academic, but attracted a real following. And a lot of the You know, quite well known, Bitcoin, but both active leaders in the space like Michael Saylor, et cetera, as well as thought leaders have their beginnings, certainly have learned a great deal from Anton, Andreas Antonopoulos.

Have you studied his work or followed his work at all, Michael?

Michael: no, the name doesn't ring a bell, so to have a look at that. There is arguably, there's a lot of people out there that are have been [00:13:00] around this space for a long time. So academics, probably not so much because it's been a bit of a speculative trade for some time. Probably in the last, since COVID, it's probably become a bit more mainstream and a bit, it's becoming accepted more widely.

And that's because you look at some of these drops. I had some data just for you, David. But you 2011 12, Bitcoin dropped 93 percent in 13 15. It dropped 86 percent in 17 18. It dropped 64 percent 21 22. It dropped 77%. So that's, I think, the reason that in the past people have been saying that it's fake, it's a scam, it's, not real, you're going to lose all your money, don't do this, but I think since 21, 22, we've seen some enormous growth in Bitcoin and crypto alike.

Ethereum, not much difference. It's tracks pretty much the same path that Bitcoin does, but old coins are different. We won't go in that space because old coins is a completely different [00:14:00] basket. When you're looking at the fundamentals of what they are out there to try and achieve, they're looking at the systems and the processes in the background, but just Bitcoin itself, I think, has been legitimized since COVID.

And legitimized even more, you mentioned at the start, because Trump's now elected and he is more pro than anyone. But the one thing that we struggle with here in Australia is the regulation. And I think that's what Trump is doing internationally, is legitimizing it. But also forcing a bit more regulation in the space and we only just heard last week that the current government here is On the cusp of releasing some information around regulation in this space And we welcome that because that is going to at least be able to put some railroad tracks up that we stay between when dealing with crypto because I think that's the reason that a lot of Businesses out there you know, anti it and they don't want to get involved because they just it's not regulated and they want it regulated from a legal point of view.[00:15:00] 

David: Yeah. 

Michael: Quickly.

David: Yeah. So how do you see that changing over time in Australia?

Michael: It's a million, millions and millions of dollars of question that one. How do we see it changing? I think it's just going to give us the rails that we can, be able to operate in the the things that we as a business need to do from a regulator point of view. So ASIC will be very clear with regards to if you're trading in these products, this is what we're going to be asking you to do report on.

Maybe there's audits involved. It gives a lot better assurance to the general public that if you're dealing with a business and we know there's a lot of scams out there, scams are real. People think that it's just a cover by the banks to make it more difficult, but they are real. There is a lot of businesses internationally that are targeting individuals to try and take their funds away from their.

We believe this is going to help that because it then will give rules and whether it's an AFSL or whatever it is, but businesses like ours will then be made to, play within those rules [00:16:00] and there'll be players that will just fall away because they won't be able to meet the, regulations that will come towards them.

So I think it's

David: and for listeners who aren't aware when Michael uses the term AFSL, that's an Australian Financial Services License which is essentially being a bank. It's the start of being a bank. Would that be fair to say, Michael?

Michael: Yeah, it's a, it's on the way to that. Correct. You're dealing with financial products. So ASIC require then to have some rules that you need to abide by. That's why internationally crypto hasn't had that and it's starting to get that in some places.

David: Yeah. So for the average Joe who may have a bit of savings, but not a great deal, certainly at the moment when. interest rates are high, people are under more strain than average. And there may be not a great deal to invest in of the little there might be. There's so many possibilities that certainly so much that comes [00:17:00] across people's Awareness through social media, et cetera, of ways to make money from what you have two questions, one, let's say, someone has 5, 000 available right now to put into something, and they're happy to put it away for, a reasonable period for at least two years.

Question one is what would you be advising people to put it into and two, for those who are interested in the Ainslie group and and taking advantage of your service, what is there a, like a minimum barrier to entry to to invest with you guys and, how does that part work?

Michael: First, first things first. Glad you mentioned it. We aren't advisors and we can't advise. We'll never advise people or companies what they should or shouldn't be doing. This isn't financial advice. We are a business that enables people to enter the market. So it's I liken it and I say it to people, we're like a vehicle that enables people to get from where they are.

Into [00:18:00] this space, be it bullion, gold, silver, platinum, or into the crypto space. The minimum, minimum spend is 5, 000 for, investing into crypto. And the reason that we have a minimum spend is because there's a lot of work that goes on in the background for us to set a customer up take the, all of the information that we need from a point of view of know your customers.

That's the KYC due diligence that we have to go down. Because of the scams that are evident it was probably, 10 years ago that we didn't have to do any of this, but things change and in the last few years. I'm sure a lot of your other interviewees that have been on this show talked about compliance and regulation and that's that would exist in, in this country.

And it's getting, more and more. And some would argue that it's probably too much, but for this space, we need to make sure that we know who we're dealing with and we need to know who is behind those funds. So once we do that it's a very simple process of transferring the fiat to us.

We then transfer the [00:19:00] asset. Whether it's for the person to take by themselves or whether it's put it into storage. And as I meant before the vaults become super important in this space because we run those world class underground vaults. We can store assets like these. Very securely as you can anywhere in the world and take the I suppose pain away from the customer worrying about whether they're going to get held up and their asset taken away from them or lose the asset because we hear a lot about in particular with crypto that customers are fearful of doing it themselves.

Because they don't want to lose the secret key. They don't want to lose that crypto. We can do all that for them, hold that product for them, and then at the time of their choice in the future, when that comes time to realise the gains in that asset, sell it for them and they reap the benefit. Reputation has, has given us that, because we've been doing it [00:20:00] for 51 years, and family business, we've never let anyone down, and we don't intend to do that moving forward.

Yeah, but we've got a lot of customers that use that service. More customers actually put it into storage than actually walk away with it to give you some sort of relevance to what they do with it once they take hold.

David: Yeah, so they prefer the security of a professional company managing it for them. It. Is Michael is Ainsley group more than a storage company.

Michael: I think that the storage is a big piece of it. If you look for our business on a whole, the majority of our business still, the 80 20 rule would still be where it's one of Australia's leading bullion businesses. So for those that want to access, gold and silver and platinum a lot of people come through Ainslie every day of the week.

We have a web shop that people visit by. The crypto part is getting bigger and bigger. It would probably it's this year because we've, [00:21:00] because of what's happened with Trump, it's probably grown to 25 to 30 percent of our business. It's still a very big chunk of our business.

And people are still taking those cryptos away for them, but. From a storage point of view, we absolutely have that as one of our unique selling points that others don't because we have links directly into those vaults. So yeah,

David: And in terms of the bullion which we haven't talked a great deal about the gold and silver I can see Ainsley does have a branded bullion bar. So you do produce a bull bar with the Ainsley trademark on it. And there seems to also be a relationship with the Perth Mint.

Is that correct?

Michael: yeah, spot on. So we're one of their leading distributors on the East coast would be the largest distributor of Perth mint product over here. Generally speaking, those that want to buy Perth mint on the East coast, it's far better to buy it through the likes of us on the East coast.

And to go to Perth and get it if you're in Perth and you're buying it from over there. No problem But if you're having to then [00:22:00] fly it and ensure that product to get to where you are. It then escalates the price up. So yeah,

David: Yeah. And if people are purchasing through you Perth Mint bullion, would that be Perth Mint branded bullion?

Michael: absolutely it is. Yeah, we carry all their product. We have some exclusive lines that are released from the Perth Mint that only we sell every year as well. We have a very long relationship with the Perth Mint. Myself and Paul went over to the Perth Mint late last year and we did a tour of their facility and it's all online on our YouTube channel.

So you can have a look at the background and the inner workings of that mint itself. So yeah, no, it's a very long established relationship that we we hold very dear to us. All

David: It reminds me, I've actually walked the floors of the Perth Mint also

Years ago as I started my career as an engineering consultant, fresh out of uni after studying aeronautical engineering, and I worked for a noise and vibration consultancy in the field of. [00:23:00] Environmental consulting

Michael: plenty of that goes on there.

David: Yes, I moved to Perth at the time that the mining boom was at its peak and lived there for a few years and set up an office there for the company and the Perth Mint was one of our clients for a particular project, measuring noise and vibration levels. And I remember walking around with the the OH& S head at the time for the Perth Mint and he talked to me about one of their projects that they were working on at that very time was minting a one meter diameter gold coin that was, I think, an inch thick for an Arab sheikh, an enormous gold coin.

So they do some interesting stuff.

Michael: Oh, it's very interesting. Those that can visit it, as you walk into the main entrance of Perth Mint now, there's a one ton gold coin on display and they have a live price of what it's worth. spot price of gold. And it's pretty impressive to look at that, to think that is actually one ton of real gold sitting there.

It's a very impressive [00:24:00] thing to say.

David: Very cool.

Michael: Yeah.

David: In terms of coming back to the Ainslie group, Michael, and and the average Joe, as an expert in the space around bullion, crypto, let's leave the stock market aside, unless you want to bring that into the picture as well. But what would your advice be to someone who has a little bit of savings to invest, but Not, and I know you're not a financial advisor, but just, specifically bullion crypto, would you be saying go 50 50, just as a, if you were talking to a friend at a barbecue, not under any kind of financial advice license

Michael: It's look, it's a great question. We have it occur here. Multiple times every day. Nearly every single person that comes in here is asking the question. I've got this amount of funds. What do I do with it? We take them on a journey. So we really, we start out wide with regards to just what are they really looking for in those investments?

What do they want those assets to do for them? Because when it comes to the bullion part, Crypto not so much. [00:25:00] Crypto does this because you can sell bits of crypto at a time, but depending on what they're buying with the bullion. Whether you buy a large bar or small bars, it all gives you liquidity in the future.

And as we know, and we say this to a lot of people, you buy a house, you can't sell the garage or the bathroom off that house in the future to realize a little bit of liquidity for yourself in your retirement or whatever it is. Bullion and crypto enable you to do this. They're a different asset class.

And we term, we have a saying and it's on in our waiting room. It's balance your wealth. In an unbalanced world, so that saying is so true to this day because those that have had bullion or crypto in their portfolio, in particular, since the year 2000 have outperformed others that have not had it in their portfolio.

And quite considerably, there's a chart that we put up when we do our presentations and we're more than happy to do presentations to large groups of people that get [00:26:00] in contact with us. But there's a present, there's a page that we stick up there and it talks about the returns that in particular gold has done since the year 2000 versus any other asset class including the ASX and the SMP.

It's outstripped all of them and that even includes property with rentals. So the rental yield included. Gold has outstripped all of those. The balancing of your wealth in an unbalanced world can never ever be as true as it is today. So people might also think, Oh, cryptos, you mentioned at the start, David, about it hit a hundred thousand us and gold's hitting all time highs in the news all the time.

I still remember when I bought my first, when I first entered into the bullion market and I bought mine, I was arguing over. 100 at the time. Now it was a lot lower than what it is today. But at that time I was like, Oh, I'm going to wait because I can get this a hundred dollars an ounce cheaper.

I just will. I'm just going to wait. And I'll, and then I ended up just going, you know what? I'm not [00:27:00] waiting anymore. I'm entering. I'm just going to buy. And I don't go and look back there and say, Oh, I've missed out on that a hundred dollars anymore. That's a thought that's long gone. I think that's where people get caught up these days where they're like, Oh, the price is so high.

I'll wait. There is a potential that this continues with the current world situation, with the debt the world's in, the changes that are occurring the situation we've found ourselves in. I think that there is a potential that potential it just gets worse and worse and the price just keeps going up.

Another interesting point just to summarize that for your listeners is one ounce of gold in the past used to buy a really fine suit. But ever in mankind, one ounce of gold always bought you a fine suit. One ounce of gold today still buys you a fine suit. So I think there's another way of looking at gold and the way that gold has [00:28:00] increased in value to say that it's actually not gold that's increasing in value.

It's that a dollar's depreciation, depreciating.

David: yes. So it's hedging against inflation and gold is matching inflation. So you're not a. You're not losing out there like you would be if you just kept cash in the bank. Eventually, your cash will be almost worthless over time.

Michael: Oh, we talk, in particular, the last four or five years, we've been talking about that in nauseam with regards to people. Why have money in the bank when you can, when you're going back, arguably a hundred dollars each year is probably worth, 10 percent or arguably more. Less every single year where you could have had that money sitting in precious metals or other hard assets and appreciating.

And there's a thing called, asset inflation and, goods and services inflation. They're two very different things. And those that don't own assets at the moment the ones that are really struggling. in the environment that we're in [00:29:00] because they're getting whacked with the product and goods and services inflation, but they don't have the assets to offset that.

And that's the real cold, hard difference between what's happening at the moment. So

David: I'd like to ask a different kind of question, Michael. I'm just inspired to explore a topic and it may seem a little strange, but if you're up for it, let's go there together. I'm just considering, if you think of bullion, and gold bars, silver bars, currently being what it generally looks like.

But going back to, pirates love to raid ships and steal treasure. That actually happened. And you, in the movies we watch, large hordes of gold, the treasure chests that are full of all sorts of things in there, crowns, jewels, gold coins, et cetera. And, going back further to, more historic times.

Generally, the royal families of, whatever empire or the strongest empires were had the majority of the [00:30:00] gold and in the form of treasure and gold coins and the actual just precious metal itself in raw form, ready to be melted down, et cetera, and do whatever they wanted with it.

I'm I had an interesting background, through a charity called Luca Leadership where there was a strong focus on creating a world where people lived an equitable life. Now, if you look at current time, I agree with Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, who has his message, one of his messages, and I don't agree with everything Robert says, to be clear, but one of the, one of the messages I do agree with, is that he.

Puts forward is the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer and as an ideal of a more equitable world, not necessarily perfectly equitable where everyone has exactly the same amount of resources, but a world where at the least everyone has their basic needs met and and the rich are [00:31:00] not.

Astronomically, how to put this, a world where there are not a small number of individuals with astronomically more than they need while so many, millions if not billions in suffering not having enough just to meet their basic needs. Do you have a view, yes, there's a philosophical aspect to this, but do you have a practical.

view on this in terms of what might be possible in the future in terms of a more equitable world, however far that may be down the track.

Michael: It's a big big question. Big question, David. I've got plenty of views around that. There's the social side of me that says that, I wish for a more balanced world. Absolutely. How we do that and what we have to do as a world to achieve that is is the difficult part.

You said it before, it's the, the rich now holding more wealth than they've ever held in the history of humankind as a percentage. And that's because they've owned the [00:32:00] assets. And if you look at the asset inflation, as I spoke to you before about anyone that's got assets around them have become exponentially wealthier over the past 10 years than those that don't.

Even the middle class that have assets have realized that property prices in Australia is a classic example, but, outside property shares have done well, every single asset has done well. How we fix that imbalance. Unfortunately, I don't have the answer. There is ways that, I think that potentially some of what some of the leaders of the country, countries around the world are doing now with regards to just taking it away from a a debt based society and having everything come back to, debt is good.

Maybe not, maybe debt is not so good. Maybe we shouldn't have the reliance on. Having to borrow for everything that we need in life and rather than go back to how potentially you were but definitely I was raised where if you don't have the money to afford the book because they're behind you or a mobile phone or a [00:33:00] Avocado on toast.

Then you don't go and purchase that because you haven't earned that money to pay for it That is a potential way of balancing it but my God, that is a that is a very big undertaking. Maybe Trump's, doing some of that now, maybe he's on that path and trying to balance it. I think that maybe some of these tariffs, the underlying, some of the reasons behind the tariffs are all it's an imbalance in the world.

There's been too many countries that are doing too well out of it and others that aren't. So maybe that's balancing that side of things. I think of what it does do though, probably tends to say that we have to have faith back in our leaders of their governments. And I'm not sure about you, but there is a long way from that coming just yet because of the things that we've experienced, in particular, the last five years, but it's been building since probably 2008.

It's really been building. So until we get that faith, until we get that trust back in the leaders of our governments who essentially are running the largest business in the [00:34:00] country. Until we get that trust back in those I think that it's a long shot to try and think that we'll fix it.

David: Yeah, exactly. And you're absolutely right. Governments are the largest companies in the world. They spend the most money. The Olympics are coming to Brisbane. I was at a summit event recently, a couple of weeks ago, and the new CEO of the Brisbane Olympics spoke, as well as the Sydney CEO, the former CEO of the Sydney Olympics at the time.

And just talking about the amount of money. that is spent in relation just to the Olympics, let alone the entire state budget for Queensland. And by far the Queensland government is the largest spender compared to any other corporation. And it's the same, the generally the world over and the leaders of those large entities, governments If they were ideal, we would see a lot of these issues in more balance, in more harmony.

Not likely [00:35:00] perfect, but more harmonized than the disparity that's so so evident at the moment, and we're having a philosophical conversation here. It's an ideal. The reality the reality also, needs to be accepted and worked within, we talked about Michael Saylor earlier, CEO of MicroStrategy.

You can tell me as an expert your view and that, if I'm on track here, but my understanding of one of the things MicroStrategy can do well is they do use. very large amounts of debt to leverage greater gains. And, one of Michael Saylor's expertise is he wasn't always into crypto, obviously, because crypto has come in, only in the last decade recently strongly, but he's a experienced investment professional and micro strategy was there as a business prior to crypto coming in, as I understand, but He uses debt, huge amounts of debt, many billions of debt to leverage purchasing larger amounts of Bitcoin and holding Bitcoin for the long term.

[00:36:00] You've got to make a choice right now in 2025, the world's not suddenly going to be equitable. Are you going to. Embrace debt and use it to create greater gains down the track, ideally, obviously for yourself and your family, but ideally for a larger circle, if you can. That's probably, the right philanthropic approach right now versus trying to shift to an equitable world, even in our lifetimes, but I still wonder what seeds can be planted now by.

Individuals with those sorts of ideals that might eventually bear fruit some generations down the track.

Michael: yeah, and you know what David, I think it also starts at the school level, like we've got a We've got a generational change that we need to be that we need to take full responsibility for because if we believe that Ainslie and we're following a lot of people worldwide that there is going to be a major change economically financially, [00:37:00] there's going to have to be something happening soon.

There's a lot of things that are bubbling away underneath the surface that you may not be aware of, but this whole,

Thing that's happening at the moment with the futures on gold and silver. We've never seen what's occurring at the moment ever before. The way that, the paper traded the ETF side of gold and silver versus the physical and how people can just, lend and lease and borrow without no real need to have the physical on hand.

That's coming that's right now at a bubbling point, which could blow over. And if that blow over has got a potential, some of the commentators on X are saying that it has the potential of destabilizing the entire world. There is a lot of things that are occurring financially right now, that may, Lead to this way that people have borrowed debt to buy assets to get ahead that may actually, that could be the one of the causes of the problem because

It's just a never ending path to Where does it end and that's you [00:38:00] see some of the statistics and some of the data that's coming out around the world It you know, it's not a great position for the world to be in but like you said It's the position we're in and how do you navigate through that as best you possibly can at the moment, but also set yourself up for when that change does occur.

You've got the assets around you that will do well in that time.

David: Yeah what are you most concerned about for the future of the world, Michael?

Michael: Yeah, probably. Look, I think it's the financial piece for me. We talk about it a lot in our research and in our news. We've seen a lot more of it occur probably started, eight the financial crisis and then it just has exacerbated since then. And any data that you look at.

from a world, in particular it starts with the U. S. We know that if the U. S. catches a cold, the rest of the world sneezes. We know that. And it's very evident there that they have a situation that, it takes someone like Donald Trump to get into power and try and get out of.

Whether he can or not, is [00:39:00] going to be another, is another thing. Australia is no different. We're well over a trillion dollars in debt now. It was only just yesterday that we were like in a surplus. It's an amazing change that we as a country have gone through and how do we get out of that?

The US now has a higher repayment on their interest bill than they spend on their defence every year. People don't understand that, but that's fundamentally wrong. What's going to happen in the future is really key to our livelihoods moving forward because you and I and all the listeners and how we end up living and how, what sort of a childhood our kids will end up becoming adults into and what we leave them.

In the future as a country and as the world, I think solely rests on the financial prosperity of the world. And we're not looking great at the moment. 

David: Yeah. And coming back to right now and the next immediate step what would you [00:40:00] be advising listeners to be focusing on? For the next step in terms of the immediate future.

Michael: yeah, absolutely get as many of the alternative assets into your stable as possible. Have a balance your wealth in an unbalanced world mindset with regards to the what if this occurred.

And having a percentage 5, 10, 15, 20, the aggressive people might go 30, 50 but having a percentage of your assets tied up into the assets that do well in times of uncertainty is never been more real than it is now.

And don't go for the. paper ETF sides because they're only a borrowed promise to someone. And we're seeing that could come unstuck like never before. If you want assets in this class, then actually get the physical and hold the physical yourself or speak to us about holding it for you. That would be what I would say as a recommendation for the near to medium term future.

David: Great advice. [00:41:00] And to be clear, the assets that do generally in an uncertain, in times of uncertainty are primarily gold and silver bullion, or others as well.

Michael: Yeah, crypto has tended to do the opposite as well. So we've seen crypto if you look back over the 10 or so years Typically when things have gone pear shaped it absolutely takes a tumble to initially as does gold as does silver But it quickly bounces back like silver and gold do I've got you know, I don't know where I had it, but I had a chart We talk about a page where we go through the differences in the difference between the ASX and gold in times of uncertainty in times of trouble go back to 87, it was a 42 percent difference.

If you had gold in your stable 2008 was 68%. So if you had 10 percent of your assets tied up to gold, those 10 percent of assets were returning you 68 percent better. And what the ASX returned in that year. [00:42:00] So it's a huge difference. And that's what we're talking about. These changes in time, just having some of your assets tied up to these gold crypto, et cetera.

I think it's, as I spoke before, I just think it's a it's a good bet to have like never before we were in uncertain times. So this is, if you're ever going to do it now. I

David: Yeah. Great advice. And Michael, thank you very much for your wisdom and what you've shared today and such a fascinating business to be running in the Ainslie Group, particularly in today's world. And with crypto being such a hot topic before we finish, what's the last thought you'd have to share with listeners, either something specifically around leadership or, something more around Crypto, bullion, etc.

What's something you'd like to leave listeners with as a final offering?

Michael: think, I think it's quite funny. I got asked to write a letter for my godson, just not. long ago about the future and what to look for and be aware of. [00:43:00] One of the underlying messages that I left him was ask why, and just continue to ask the question why. We have a lot of experience, especially in the past where we get told not to ask why, and why are you asking why, stop asking why.

But those inquisitive minds. I think are going to learn a lot more and benefit from learning a lot more. We all benefit from learning, reading books, studying. The more you do that, the better that you are and the more equipped you are to be able to embrace the changes that are eventually going to come.

I encourage everyone to continue to ask why is that happening? What, why did that, the W's, why, what, where and I think if we did a lot more of that in society instead of just, following the headlines I think we would be a much better society for. Yeah, something that I've just recently advised, him on, and I think it stands true for everyone listening as well.

David: I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Why the three? There's three why's. It reminds me when I [00:44:00] was consulting with Second Road, one of the advocates of Second Road was Catherine Livingston, who at that time was chair of the Business Council of Australia and also chair of Telstra. And she, Second Road moved to the city in Sydney at the time from their Chatswood offices and at the launch of the city offices, Catherine Livingston spoke and opened the offices formally.

And she spoke about how Tony, the founder of Second Road, had most impacted her in her business journey by introducing her to the why, what, how framework. Where, to any problem, to any challenge, you ask the three questions, why, what, how how being more, solution focused, but starting with an exploration of curiosity with why, what's actually going on here, and then how can we move forward.

But thank you for finishing with that element of curiosity. Great

Michael: No, it's been around. It's been around me for a long time. And, if I reflect back to, my earlier days and I had individuals that pass these thoughts on to me [00:45:00] and I had individuals in my life that I looked up to when I was younger, that, that enabled me to get this advice. And I still look up to these, some of these individuals now that are with me or around me.

Yeah it's, I suppose blessed when you get someone on. that is able to give you this advice. Podcasts are a great medium for other people that don't have those around them to get this advice. And yours is one of them. But if you do have individuals   

around you, listen and learn as much as you can from the gray haired people.

David: That's fantastic. Again, Michael, thank you so much for today. It's been really fascinating.

Michael: Yeah, no problems, David. Thanks for having me and all the best. 

Thanks for listening. To learn more about how you can evolve as a leader, go to evolvestrategy. com. au and enjoy our wide range of articles and resources, as well as our other great podcast [00:46:00] episodes.