466 | What the Big Banks Know About Crypto That They Do Not Want You to Know. Tonya Evans Explains.

Professor Tonya M. Evans graduated from Howard University School of Law, clerked in the Third Circuit, practiced at major law firms in Philadelphia, and is now a full tenured professor at Penn State with a joint appointment in data sciences. She is also a former professional tennis player who played at Northwestern on scholarship, and she is one of the most credible voices in the country on the intersection of law, finance, and emerging technology.

Her message to business owners is simple and direct: the big banks are trying to scare you out of a space they are quietly moving into themselves. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon still calls Bitcoin garbage. JP Morgan is an authorized participant in the Bitcoin ETF. BlackRock, the most conservative investment firm in the world, was first in line to issue a Bitcoin ETF. The little guy is being scared away while institutional money gets positioned.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Prof Tonya breaks down what blockchain actually is in plain language, the three biggest crypto myths holding business owners back, why it is not early but not late, and how to start thinking about Web3 as a business owner even if you never buy a single coin.

Key Takeaways:

• Crypto comes from cryptography. Blockchain is a digital ledger. That is it. When someone starts throwing jargon at you, they are either confused themselves or they want you confused. It is a public record of transactions that no single entity controls.
• Bitcoin came on the scene January 3rd, 2009. Fewer than 8 percent of people globally hold it. If that is a fad, it is the longest fad and scam in the history of fads and scams.
• The banks are not scared of crypto because it is dangerous. They are scared because it threatens their dominance. Jamie Dimon calls it garbage while JP Morgan participates in the Bitcoin ETF. Follow the money, not the press release.
• The biggest mistake most people made in the 2021 crypto run was buying everything because the tide was rising. A rising tide lifts all boats, including the garbage ones. Holding Bitcoin through the crash and not chasing every alt coin is the lesson most people paid dearly to learn.
• Traditional wealth-building paths are not enough anymore. Max out your 403(b), buy a house, get rental property, ride it out. Prof Tonya followed that playbook as a high-income earner and found herself making all the money and all the mistakes simultaneously.
• First mover advantage is fleeting. If you are a business owner who has not thought about how blockchain and Web3 will affect your industry, start now. Not because you have to invest, but because the technology is moving with or without your awareness.
• Decentralized AI is the next frontier. The same centralized model problem that exists in banking is being replicated in artificial intelligence. The business owners who understand decentralization early will have options the others will not.
• The blockchain is public facing. The Department of Justice uses blockchain forensics regularly to recover millions in assets. It is not anonymous. It is the opposite of a dark market.
• Stable coins are going to matter more than most people think. For businesses operating globally or in any space without physical borders, a verifiable stable form of digital currency is not optional. It is coming.
• The mastermind principle applies here too. You do not have to be the expert on everything. You have to get around people who are, stay curious, and keep your saw sharpened.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, everybody? Welcome to Gathering the Kings Podcast. I'm your host, Chaz Wolf. I'm a serial entrepreneur across franchising, construction, real estate, and online education. My mission in this show is to transfer courage to you, our listeners, by showing you and sharing with you real and raw stories of successful entrepreneurs, seven, eight, even nine bigger business owners. Today we've got Professor Tanya M. Evans on the stage. She's a law professor at Penn State. She wrote Digital Money Demystified, and she hosts the Tech Intersect podcast. She's a former pro tennis player and now a crypto expert. Professor Tanya also speaks at huge events like IBM Cloud Form and South by Southwest. In this episode, you will learn three things. One, what the big banks don't want you to know about cryptocurrency.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

They are trying to get their market share and dominance, saying, don't trust yourself. Two, Professor Evans debunks the top three crypto myths. Bitcoin first came on the scene with a gangster lean on January 3rd, 2009. If that's a fad, it's literally the longest fad and scam I have ever seen in the history of bad fads and scams. And number three, how to actually make money with crypto. How do I set myself up to decrease the amount of time it takes me to make up for lost time when I was spending a lot of money as a high-income earner, month to month, looking good, making all the mistakes?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

We'll also hear how Professor Tanya leverages the mastermind principle to succeed in the crypto world. If you want to learn how to navigate the complex world of cryptocurrency, you're in the right place. Stick around. This is one episode you won't want to miss. All right, Prof. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Thank you. I'm so excited to connect and uh Chaz. I love what you're doing, and I've been looking forward to this convo. So I'm uh look forward to helping a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Well, see, those are kind words, but I'm glad you ended it with helping other people rather than just being here for me. Because man, I actually have the honor of of hosting you here today. And so wow, I they didn't hear enough in that intro about all the things that you got your hand to. We are gonna dive even further. I love, I love your there's just this actual balance that I I've already experienced with you in just the few minutes we've been talking. You have this creative, casual humor, and then like I can totally tell you're about your business and you are a master of you've got all kinds of letters before your name. I'm I'm not even sure if I'm qualified to be here, but but at the same time, I you allowed me to call you prof T. So I'm just like, wow, this is I feel right at home. At the same time, I just feel like there's so much knowledge that I need to extract from your super smart brain and help all of these listeners. We're gonna talk not only just about your your your history, so I want to get I want to dive into that, but we're gonna talk, you know, a bunch of crypto here as well. So which is so it's again, so it's like this interesting dynamic that I'm already feeling with you. It's like, you know, you've got this this background, which we're I'm gonna ask you some questions here in a second about law and very intense things that you're still doing today, but yet you're bringing knowledge and awareness to, you know, we we kind of jokingly shorten it as crypto, but it's it's a web three application and and how companies should actually be looking and taking uh this technology very seriously. And so we're gonna get to all that. But uh tell me tell me about your backdrop. So you you've spent time in in law, you've you've been a student of this, you've now you're you're a professor now, you've seen both sides of the of the classroom, if you will. Give us a little bit of your backdrop.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

So I um graduated from law school in '98. Um I went to Howard University School of Law as the editor-in-chief of my law journal. I started clerking in the Third Circuit, and then I, you know, I took a very traditional path, and though it's difficult to see early on. So I started at Big Law, one firm, uh, two firms in Philadelphia. My mother is a retired patent attorney. So after I kind of ran from big law kind of kicking and screaming, it's it's like you do all of the things and kind of color inside the lines and check the right boxes and do all the right things. And you have every right to be in a space, but the question is whether you, you know, whether they deserve you, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And and you mention this of all of the other aspects of my life and my creativity. Uh, I'm a lifelong learner. I really am a writer, speaker, and teacher. And that's not really the right energy to bring into big law, right? Like think paper chase, think, you know, stripe uh suits, excuse me.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

And you get the idea of what a day in a life is like. My father is a retired surgeon. He is a former state representative and one of the first black representatives in Maine. And he's now running for state senate. So we all, you know, we're multi-hyphenates for sure. My mom is now baking cookies, but I made her sell them because I'm an entrepreneur experience. I was like, we're gonna go through all this during Christmas time. We're gonna have to like make more money. So all of those things. I'm an only child and so very close to my parents as well. But they just gave me a lot of room to run to again be intellectually curious. I'm a non-technologist in terms of my uh my background and expertise. So I really had to find my way, like everybody else, to figure out what this intersection of finance and technology means in terms of technological innovation. So that's been fun after practicing for 10 years. Then I've been teaching now. I'm a full-tenured professor, a co-hire appointment with data sciences. So that was later in life once I realized I needed to take a deep dive into something that I did not understand. I didn't exactly want to understand, but I wanted my students to have a better appreciation for so they would be more conversant and show up for a web three reality. So that's really what pushed and prompted me to take a deep dive in my existing area of expertise. I'm an intellectual property lawyer by training, so all the digital stuff resonates with me. So I wanted to figure out how the tech technology was changing that. So that's that's that's my kind of origin story.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Business owner listening right now, they they've you know, they've heard of maybe a crypto or a specific, you know, they've heard you know, Ethereum or you know, any any of the specific coins. They're they're maybe new to you saying web, you know, web three or this technology blockchain and understanding the transaction of it or the record of or encrypting of things. What what is what should they know about it not just being, you know, Bitcoin and an exchange of of currency, but but the technology behind it. What what's like a 30-second intro to that?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

When you think of cryptocurrency, the crypto part really comes from cryptography. You have a cryptic nature about it that seems nefarious, but cryptography or secreting messaging to get from point A to point B was very important at times of war. It's very important when you're doing exchanges with other tribes. I mean, we're this has been around for millennia in different forms or fashions, and now we have um a digital means of using cryptographically secured messaging, a heavy, but basically just means I'm going to encrypt it in one way, and there will only be one unique key to decrypt the information so that you can protect it. Crypto really is about using the same peer-to-peer technology we used to use for MP3s and MP4s as an intellectual property lawyer. I'm using air signs to say that a lot of that was crypt copyright infringement, but it's okay. We're not here to talk about that. But it's not great in value when you're using the same technology to exchange value. If I can have a perfect digital copy of a Bitcoin and send it to a thousand people, that's not going to work for great for money, even though people were super excited with Napster and Grockster and LimeWire and all of those back in the day. But considering using that not just for messaging of media, but now we use it for messaging of value. And the underlying technology that tracks each value and transaction is actually a blockchain. It's a digital record or digital ledger. It's as simple as that. And every time someone comes and starts to force people to look under the hood and use a whole lot of jargon, you instantly lose people. We are already doing this now. Most of our money is digital. Very little of the money that we exchange is in physical form. It's dirty, it's expensive, it's limiting. I love my wires, I love my direct deposits, I love not, I don't really love Zell, but let's just use it as a sample. We got the cash apps, we got the memos, right? We so many forms of ones and zeros moving digitally value from one digital record to another. This is the next iteration of that. Will it replace it for all time? I don't know, but it's one additional opportunity to move money that isn't created by a government and isn't controlled by a single entity. And so finally, to your point about web three, which brings it all together, blockchain technology, financial technologies are one part of a major shift that we are calling Web3, where there are more and more decentralized and peer-to-peer ways to do more things. We have stored data with a few giants that rival or exceed in terms of values a lot of nations. I know it's a long, uh it's a lot in one, but I wanted to show kind of the breadth of the industry. And this being an important part, but certainly not the only part.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah. No, I I appreciate the the extent of all of that. What would you say from like your law background that someone should be maybe not hesitant or maybe prudent about when they're looking into using whether it be crypto as an investor or using it in their business, even Web3 as it's coming? What are the things that we should be prudent about?

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Well, on one hand, you know, we're no longer in the information age because we have no shortage of information. The issue at this point is how how do you right-size the information? How do you separate fact from fiction? How do you find trusted sources and resources so that you can make educated decisions? So the first thing, and and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money to do that, but there's it's very costly if you do this incorrectly. A lot of people got their shirt handed to them in the run-up when you saw like crypto.com stadium and all the celebrities and Tom Brady's of the world were were hawking it. They didn't have a full appreciation for how people could get wrecked. They didn't have appreciation for volatility. We had bad actors in the space, hashtag Sam Bankman Freed, Enjoy Your Time in Jail, right? Even though the crypto ecosystem is a pretty bad place to do, to engage in criminal activity because the records are public facing. In fact, the Department of Justice uses blockchain forensics regularly. We don't see this all the time on the headlines. We only see when it goes badly, but they are recovering millions and millions in assets because it's just follow the money. It's literally public facing. It's not anonymous except for a few anonymous coins like Monero, the bitcoins and Ethereums of the world, and thousands of other coins and tokens of public facing. So a critical first step for business owners, even if you don't become an investor, how can you leverage this technology? How can you leverage a first mover advantage in order to deliver your services or your products or change or recalibrate your products? Will you incorporate artificial intelligence? A project that I'm working on is uh decentralized artificial intelligence because if we're just replicating the same centralized system, you know, the open A models, I'm not disparaging any model in particular, but all of the biggies are going to have their own central repository to have their own playground and they want you to stay in it. Decentralized technology will allow us to leverage these large language models, but do it outside of big tech unless we opt in. That's a game changer. And when you think about digital products and services, you have to have some liquid way of paying that isn't beholden to a particular border or boundary. We're talking about outer space. This is not 10 foil hat stuff. Like this is literally yesterday. So that is likely going to be cryptocurrency. We have to learn how to integrate that into our in our products, our services, and our business models because we're moving from hyper competition to collaborative effort and also a decentralized space that was promised with Web 2.0 but never delivered. And so some of those are some of the things I would think of. Again, even if you never invest, I hope that eventually you'll learn enough and you'll be comfortable to have a part of an overall portfolio strategy. But if you do nothing else, figuring out how your business is being disrupted and the potential opportunities will still allow you at this moment in time to be a first mover. But first mover advantage is fleeting. So you need to start now. You start slowly, but start.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

You said it it's a ledger, right? Public facing, you can see the transactions. And that might have just like glossed right over someone listening. But that that one ability to record something is in every single industry. In like multiple layers deep. And so what percentage do you think that this has begun to shift how we do life? This has been not happening for the just a year or two. This has been happening for a while. But we're really not, you know, at mass scale. What what percentage would you put on this?

SPEAKER_01 13:31

It's interesting. I'll I'll speak in sports analogies in some sense. I feel like we're we might be like in the we're not warming up. It's not even the first inning. You know, let's talk, you know, baseball now. Like we're really in the the bottom of the second, right? We have we're certainly far away from the seventh inning stretch, but we this train has left the station. Bitcoin first came on the scene with a gangster lean on January 3rd, 2009. If that's a fad, it's literally the longest fad and scam I have ever seen in the history of fads and scams. We had, for example, the first regulated, fully regulated kind of package or wrapper or product with 11 exchange traded spot Bitcoin funds, which basically means you don't have to buy Bitcoin, but you can have exposure to it in this regulated package. One of the most successful ETF launches in the history of ETFs, save gold. We're on the precipice now of having a second ETFs for Ethereum. This is happening. The SEC, this is an SEC approved product. We have bills. I just left uh Congress. I was doing some high-level conversations around with senators and representatives and their senior staff on a bipartisan basis. This is not a partisan issue, even though it appears to be that way with headlines, it's very sad to me because it shouldn't be this way. Politics is about moving resources, and politicians are in charge of those resources. So it's political, but it shouldn't be partisan. This is one of those few win-win things where business wins and the little guy. And so we with all of these things happening, you have all of the major banks, even those that said, this is basura, it's garbage. You know, we have Jamie Diamond out there. He still says it today. Guess what? JP Morgan is an authorized participant for these ETFs. One of the, you know, was almost first in line. You mentioned earlier BlackRock, most conservative investment firm in the world, who wanted to be first in line to issue a very successful Bitcoin ETF. So all of this is happening. At the same time, we're being the little person is being scared away. I believe intentionally. What is it that the banks know that they don't want you to know while they are trying to get their market share and dominance, saying, Don't trust yourself. Yeah, don't worry, your pretty little head. Stay in our in our playground. You don't actually have to. That's like that that that's the news. That's the news. And so this is happening. It's early in the sense that fewer than 8% of people around the world hold Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is not the only game in town that's special because it has a hard cap. We call it hard money, call it sound money. And actually, the currency part of it, I don't think it's borne itself out to be a currency when there's a lot of speculation. I hold a lot of Bitcoin. You will not be able to pry it out of my cold dead hands. But there are other things, you know, stable coins, USDC, tether stables are going to be a really important way that people can empower themselves as well with money that's verifiable and that will hold its value, not only here in the United States, where we don't have as much of a problem, though, although we have inflation, we print our way into war in and out of wars, we print our way in and out to stimulate stimulate the economy. All those stimmy checks that everybody's excited about, not so exciting when now eggs calls a gazillion dollars. So this is the alternative, and this is why individually and as businesses, we have to lean in because it's not it's not early, but it's not late.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of um really, really great value that you just gave there. The the banks, the big money, the little guy being scared. I want to press into that just for a second. You know, I I can remember being, you know, ridiculed by many of my family and friends for holding this thing called Bitcoin and and a little bit of a theorem at that time. But I I remember when it went up to 20,000. Bitcoin went up to 20,000 for the first time in December of 18 or 19, I can't remember exactly. But and then it then just right. And it was interesting because I kept not at the time because I couldn't tell, and I was, you know, I was just a young guy that threw some money into it. I really didn't know what I was doing. But looking back and zooming out, it was like, okay, actually what it felt like was that the rush was for the big guy to be able to get in while it was low. And then in comes the flood, right? And so everybody's happy about it, and so it's almost like nobody really talked about it because everybody was on the un on the up ramp, right? But but quietly while everyone was out, because everybody got freaked out about it, and oh, this it see, I told you all my family, see, I told you, I told you, I told you. And and I just held, of course, but but but so many people didn't, right? Just like the stock market, ah, and they get out, right? And and so, but who got in? All of the institutional pieces that you're talking about. And then now it's like, okay, now now we're excited about it. Hey, I want to be first in the hey, here we go. And then boom, here it comes, right? What what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 18:33

It's so true. What it proves to me is something that I had to experience myself. I'm grateful that I did not sell that, but I sold a lot of other stuff because there was a lot of crap that was rising because a rising tide lifts all boats, right? And to your point, so in a bull market, everybody's happy. There's very little to talk about until the market does what markets do. I just, one of my free masterclasses is called the Bitcoin bounce back. And the way that I demonstrate what you're talking about is to take the early days of the Nice, the early days of the Dow, the early days of the S P 500, particularly the Nice, when you think about the New York Stock Exchange, rambunctious gang of probably thieves, quite frankly, under the button wood, you know, making their little agreements, doing their little dirt, right? Which led to the SEC and all sorts of legislation and regulations that came in to provide stability.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

The stability brought more retail and it grew over time. When you take the wide view of every single market and its activities, you know, there's a time, you know, there's a rise and a fall, there's a bull and a bear, the things that happen in spite of the soundness of a stock. For example, when you have micro macroeconomics, everything can go great until you have this little thing called a pandemic, right? Having nothing to do with the underlying asset the day before, but then circumstances change.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

It proved to me I knew nothing about money, I knew nothing about markets, and that's after, and what I didn't say before law school, I went to Northwestern. I was on the dean's list at the end. I was there in a tennis scholarship. I played tennis professionally for four years, having nothing to do with what we're talking about now. But to add to my timeline, all of that educational privilege, I knew nothing about money. I knew nothing about markets. I knew nothing about banking, other than I was supposed to do these traditional things, get a good government job or the equivalent. So came out, make a six figure, do that, be a high income earner, get a home, some rental property, max out my 401k or my 403B, guess get a burial plot, marry someone, and then just ride this Jiggy John out. Like this is every damn we're supposed to do. Those traditional approaches are not enough when things change. Yeah, right. This is where we find ourselves. So all of the traditional messages, do all of those things. It will not be enough. The bankers know it, governments know it. A lot of the FUD or the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that we see is disinformation, not just misinformation. Yeah. It's intentional to keep you on the sidelines, to keep you in fear, to keep you reliant. But if you want to get the same thing that you've always been getting, by all means, keep doing what you're doing.

unknown 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

There is a new way, there's a new opportunity, and the only impediment is our willingness to learn.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

What's the point? What you know, uh even if you're not a technologist or financial person, read the Satoshi white paper, nine pages that literally change the world. Nine pages, seven footnotes, and just realize that the self-determination as a matter of self-sufficiency, of autonomy, of privacy. I mean, I just I know I'm preaching to the converted chess, but I'm just trying to tell you. Is there one who will come? I feel like I've reached I've reached sermon level at this point.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Is there one who're wooing me? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

So I just, I mean, I don't think about it often, but when I do, it's that.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Well, I first off, it's extremely powerful to hear. Someone of your education, success, like I mean, just uh history, to be honest, to say things like, I knew nothing and my world's been rocked. And so what that what that does is it gives courage to the other person of going, well, if she didn't know, then I don't feel too bad. But then the other half of it is like, well, geez, if she doesn't know, how how am I supposed to know? So I want to use this as a beautiful little segue because you have three myths that you've debunked. And I want you to go through them to help the listener kind of know a little bit more about what this means. What are these myths?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

I spend a lot of time talking about three in particular because they're just the ones I imagine that you've heard them, you know, around your dinner table or in your social circles as well. We've kind of talked about one in particular about only for criminals, less than 1%. This these are chain analysis, chain analysis statistics. Chainalysis is a private company that actually often works with the Department of Justice and companies for cyber crimes involving digital currencies with a great deal of success. Because, in fact, less than 1% of cryptocurrencies are used for nefarious purposes. When they do, pack's a punch because of the pervasiveness of the technology. So it's not to understate the impact, even with a small percentage, but it's to right size the conversation. The number one currency involved by leaps and bounds is the almighty dollar, which continues for now to be the global reserve currency. By leaps and bounds.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

It's just no comparison. But I don't know about you. I'm not throwing out my dollars. I love my crypto, but at least the dollars I have, I plan to keep them. I need us to have a right conversation there. Kind of touched on the idea of crypto writ large being a being a fad or just the underlying technology itself being a scam. No, it's just they're scammers in the same way that when electronic mail, email, was first launched, and still to this day, evidently there's someone in some foreign country that would like my banking information so they could send me $10,000. Okay. We did not throw out email. We are not throwing out SMS because we're not getting them on our phones. It is the activity of scamming. And the reason that people are more susceptible to scams is because they don't know what they don't know. So it just makes you an easy Patsy. Where they're, you know, when I think of FTX, for example, and using a centralized exchange model under the pretense of this new financial technology where it really was a centralized exchange. And it won, an exchange is not a bank, not FDIC insured. Gets people to leave assets that were supposed to be there temporarily to exchange one crypto asset for another with the promise of 8% yield, etc. Obviously, that's much better than the money that we could get in the savings account. I'm all for it. Except unbeknownst to them and without their permission, you using that, transferring those assets off and out of FTX to Alameda Research, owned by who? Sam Bakeman-Free. That's kind of that's classic Ponzi. That's Madoff, that's Lehman Brothers, but it cast a huge uh cloud over crypto because people didn't know better.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Or people who are short-term thinkers and are trying to replicate uh day trading or swing trading in a crypto market when they don't know what the hell they're doing. Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

This is 24-7, 365, not bowled into barters. Yeah, it requires far more respect and prudence than most people use it. They were just throwing their money in, hoping for a quick return. That's called gambling. If you're not learning, you're gambling. And it's not because of the technology. So those are some of the myths that I bust or at least right-size the conversation so that people have better information and make more informed decisions when they enter the market.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Hey, kings and queens, Jazz Wolf. I want to talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort, we meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other grow. Yeah, that 365, 7 days a week thing hit me square between the eyes because that's exactly what I was doing. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and trading. Right. On the way better. Yeah, to relieve myself in the middle of the night from to you know from all the water I drank. It's like, let me check real quick. Oh, oh, hurry up.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Let me check the markets.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

And it's like, I'm I'm gonna spin myself off this planet, is what I'm gonna do. And so, yeah, even if I was good, luckily I didn't gamble it away. Thank goodness. Right. But looking back on it, it was like, oh my goodness. Whoa. Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Early on, I bought every token that I could imagine. I bought something called MomCoin. It was turned out to be an unregistered security, but and I'm not even a mother, right?

unknown 27:31

It's like it just.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

What am I doing buying momcoin? Come on. I just yeah, so we've all been there. The my goal now is really to compress the learning curve for folks. The tools and the technology now are so much better than when you and I got into the space. Uh, and they will continue to evolve. The you user, you know, UIUX or the interface and the experiences that we have. When there are more trusted participants in the market, there's greater clarity, we have a better bull cycle. I mean, we shook out a lot of bad actors. If you're around two or three bull cycles, even just one, like you're the real damn deal. Because every time we have one of these, right, we're shaken out. It's just a necessary part of an emerging asset class. Every single asset class did the same thing housing, gold, all of them. It's the same cycle. So hopefully we also get some comfort for that. But it requires us to learn about the system that we've been participating in and relying upon in a season where in the last 12 months, at least four regional American banks have failed. Where's that on the headlines to continue to talk about? Republic Bank just happened two, three weeks ago. No one's talking about that. Don't worry, you're pretty little head. Keep doing what you're doing in our fractional system that is not has not been on the gold standard for decades. It is based upon our trust, our full faith and credit in a government that comes up against governmental debt crises every six months.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

I was gonna say 45 days.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Right. This is the system you ask me what Bitcoin is backed by. Well, I can actually look and we can talk about it and we can tell you, and we agree on the rules. And if you don't have to participate in it, it doesn't benefit me if you do or you don't. I don't, there's no in it for me. That as an alternative, as a hedge against inflation, where you have for the first time in a long time have really hard sound money.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, hard to do that. I mean, this is hard to look. Yeah. Okay, so someone might be wondering, listening to us, going, okay, well, so there's some myths, we've debunked those. I I'm on I'm on the train. Like you've I'm I'm coming. You've wooed me, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

All right, got the ticket to ride.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

How do I actually make money with crypto?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Thinking, I think if you are thinking about it as a long-term view, understanding your risk tolerance, really taking a look at an actual portfolio. Like we're talking about portfolio and diversification. If you haven't even really sat down to say, what is my portfolio? What's in it? How do I sit down and actually look at do I own a home? What are the other things? And it's not a linear process. Right. Um, thinking of ways that debt plays a role and you don't, you're not suffering under, you know, the the the scourge of consumer debt, but maybe leveraging things in other ways. You have access to Fidelity and Vanguard and e-Trade, all of these different Robinhood, all of these different platforms that are giving you access and exposure, but you want to be prudent. It's like the word of the day class, right, about the long-term thinking. Like you could do day and swing trading. My course and my approach is not for that person, but at least you can learn through the book about some of the myths. But if you were looking to substantially change the outlook for retirement, I'm a Gen Xer. I talk a lot to late millennials, Gen Xers, young boomers. What is that going to look like in 50 years, let alone in five?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

How do I set myself up to decrease the amount of time it takes me to make up for lost time when I was spending a lot of money as a high income earner, month to month, looking good, making all the mistakes. Um, this has changed my life or my family's life slowly but surely. I bought a home that my mom lives in, travel. I'm better able to do everything I want to and nothing I don't. I'm currently on an unpaid leave from my school because of my book, and they paid me the first year to do it. And you said, okay, come on back, professor. It's like, I don't know. South of Rest was nice. It was like, uh, let's talk about it next year. I gave myself room. That means I have choices. I have the choice of freedom, I have the choice of time. That's right. Which is the only thing that's finite in my humble estimation. There's those are the reasons that you start leaning in. You'll make money over time. Be patient, be thoughtful, be prudent, get started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

That get started piece. I mean, I think I just sat with a group of investors a couple weeks ago. There was a land presentation, there was uh a different real estate, uh, maybe a multifamily presentation, there was a guy that uh was there for precious metals, really enjoyed the precious metal conversation because it's very similar to this. It was it was this conversation you know before crypto really existed. And so even in that presentation, his his his advice was look, don't you're not gonna put everything into gold and then boom, like you're a millionaire or whatever, whatever the number is. You you you buy you you just you just buy little bits every week, every month, every every quarter, whatever your your buying frame is. And and that's what I'm hearing you say, which is when I think about crypto now, I think about those few years where I was just you know slinging, running and gunning and slinging, it was just like, oh my goodness, my head was gonna spin off.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

That's that's not really leveraging the power of what you're talking about the next five or fifty or five hundred years. My children or my grandchildren's, you know, five generations deep or whatever. Are is there is there a chance that the dollars aren't gonna be there? Huge is there a chance that Bitcoin still might be there? Ah, okay. Well that's there's a couple of resources out there. If you don't quite believe that yet, I could be happy to put them in the show notes, you know. So is this a long-term play? Yeah. Can I make some money along the way? I think you did a great job of illustrating that, but but it's the same reason why I'm gonna I'm gonna buy little bits of of investment in other things. I'm gonna diversify. I'm gonna be prudent about my decision making. So I think I think you've done an amazing job. Anything else you want to add there as far as like the the actual income opportunity with with what we've been talking about?

SPEAKER_01 33:52

It's really interesting. There are three things, two things I'll say about that. One is while you're learning, you still should have exposure to markets. Obviously, this is not legal or financial advice, so you know, do your own research, but your research with sound um sources and resources, as we we mentioned earlier. I'm really excited about exchange traded funds, in addition to my own with what you're talking about, dollar cost averaging or Satoshi cost averaging, buying a little bit over time. It's the set it and forget it in the same way that I make regular, consistent contributions to my retirement plans. It comes out when that money is earned and goes immediately in. It's the same thing that you at a bare minimum do in the crypto space. Also buying the dip you talked about, a retreat and a kind of a retracing. That's a great opportunity. When that happens and everybody else is like, see, I told you something, like, thank God, because I can increase my basis. The same amount of money is going further in terms of investment when you have that pullback, et cetera. And every asset class goes through that. And additionally, and in addition to that, when you have crypto assets, you can then lean into decentralized finance and really become your own bank and kind of your own lending institution in the sense of pulling out the equivalent of the taking in the equivalent of a home equity loan, right? If I have, I can lock up my Bitcoin, don't like doing that. Let's just use another asset. I can lock up my Ethereum. And then one, if there's some type of return and you're starting to see some of those products return, know that Gemini got into some heat about its earned product, but you're going to start seeing those come back just with Gemini butt across the board. You can earn nice yields and interest on when you're locking up products. You can also take a loan out, right? So taking a loan off of your own thing means that's tax-free. And then you pay yourself back or not. So those are other opportunities. Passively, there you will start to see more and more companies like Lolly, where every doing everyday things to earn Bitcoin. If you're already shopping online, why not do it through a company like that? It's not an endorsement of Lolly. I uh, you know, do uh have a Lolly account. And I enjoy getting sats back, Satoshis back, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, rather than a dollar back. You can keep your dollar. I would like Satoshis, please. Thank you. So you'll start to see more of that, more merchants accepting it. You see Visa and MasterCard, uh finding ways on the back end to facilitate the exchange of foreign currencies more easily in the background. All of this is literally happening right now, and we should be able at the individual level to take advantage of it. So it's more than just hold it, you know, buying and holding or huddling or hodling, depending upon how you say it, but leveraging. That's when you start making up for lost time. And you can only do that when you're in it to win it.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Yeah, I love it. I I don't remember the name of the book, but it was probably 2017 uh or so. And I read this giant thick book on basically how to integrate taking Bitcoin payments into your business. And it was just one of the thickest, almost just dry, but I was just so interested in this whole thing that was happening that nobody was talking about. I was just like, what in the world? And so yeah, and you're starting to see that a little bit now. I think that there's several things, even large purchases, cars, homes. I've seen all those things uh purchased in cryptocurrency.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

I know that Tesla did something early on that they suspended the product and you couldn't pay for the entire car, but you could put your down pay. I don't have a Tesla, but evidently it's some type of down payment process, and that was integrated. You see more political campaigns accepting contributions as well, big companies deciding whether they'll be on balance sheets. It's like it's all happening right now. So we need to be paying attention as well.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Yeah, it's good stuff. We talk a lot inside of Gathering the King's mastermind group, but also here on the show about the mastermind principle. Napoleon Hill defines this as two or more minds working together unto the achievement of something specific or a definite chief aim, as he says. And so, how have you used that principle, that mastermind principle, inside of law, inside of crypto, maybe a mixture of both, but what what immediately pops to your head as far as using that to your advantage?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

It makes me think now of the transfer that I feel like we're experiencing from a hyper competitive and siloed model to hyper collaboration. And so that resonates when you think of a mastermind. I've I've been in masterminds as well and understanding the principle. And I found that it's easier for me to connect with and empower people if I approach it from that point of view as well. I believe strongly in having small cohorts. I'm doing one for uh lawyers and other professionals this summer, where you get 10 people together. I have one-on-one time with them as well. But the power of community, where even if you don't ask a question or don't know a question to ask, you are constantly learning by being in the presence of others. They're pressing you, they're asking, you know, causing you to think differently. There's uh an energetic frequency that I think that is achieved when you have uh you're not just in isolation. And this is me as an only child talking. I'm literally my own best friend. And the best thing you can ever do is cancel plans that we have. I'm perfectly fine to be in my little briar patch. But in terms of my intellectual curiosity, in terms of my um learning potential and tapping that within, it's about not being the smartest person in the room and just, you know, the iron sharpens iron concept that is so powerful from a mastermind point of view. So using that, and certainly using it in my teaching, I had to really lean into it because I haven't been in an actual classroom in four years. Now, some of that was having my research leave and then my personal leave, but before that, we're in the middle of the pandemonium. I had to find ways to engage. You know, I'm pretty good with technology and a lot better than my my counterparts, bless your hearts. I can learn, I do know how to turn on my computer. So that was helpful. But also even moving before, like, how do we have an energetic exchange digitally speaking, and how powerful that that is. And I'm grateful to my students, we're really successful with creating those opportunities. But there's such power in not just having your solitary mind, but a mind of like-minded spirits that are that are kind of lifting each other up. And and I that's where you get the exponential growth and and that quantum leap that we were talking about earlier as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think you have some great examples there, but the the frequency, the energy that you were you referenced, it's tough to know that unless you felt it. And when you feel it in a room, especially high achievers, if someone's been listening to this and if they have any interest in crypto, they've been vibing with us for sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

There, but there's this there's this whole palpable feeling, even emotion that comes from being in a room of people who are heading in a specific direction. It's funny when when people look to join Gathering the Kings, I let them know that it's a room of winners and that I'm unapologetic. The fact that winners are attracted to winners. And if you're not, you're gonna hit the door as fast as you come in because we're like obsessed with growth in all areas. Not just business, not just investing, not just marriage, not just faith, not all these things. It's like, no, no, we're we're winners in all of these things. And or at least we're winning uh and wanting to be winning in these things. And so we're pressing in hard, and and that's gonna like suck you in hard, like which you were talking about, or it's gonna make you, you know, run the opposite direction, which is okay, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:34

Just like that. Yes, no, absolutely, and that's that's intentional, you know, it it comes down to like physics, really. And then then someone who is not vibing at that high frequency, they just they will run in the other direction. You don't have to ask them to leave. They'll be so unbelievably uncomfortable. They know that either they're not ready or they don't even know what's going on, and that will repel them. That the the energy and the connection will actually repel them. And I think that's really helpful because you don't want, and I feel like that's what's happening in the crypto space as well. And you can look at small interpersonal groups all the way to larger systems as well, but it starts in these small, like if we all did that, 10, 20 folks vibing in those pockets, the the energy that is created from that is really the type of thing that that changes the world. And so, and I don't think that's hyperbolic to say. And if you don't get it, then you can't be a part of our mastermind.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Well, and and you've got some coming up here. I know this summer. I'm sure you're gonna do some after that. Uh, you've worked with attorneys, you've worked with all different types of professionals. I'm sure that I used that you mentioned masterclasses. Of course, you've got a book, but like how can they learn more about getting involved with one of your cohorts or potentially even just getting your book or uh all the other things that you've got?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Absolutely. Well, two uh places. One, everything really starts at advantageevins.com. The advantage evans comes from my my tennis years for sure, and really setting up people for success to have their advantage, that they are not wasting time, they're not spinning their wheels, they're not having misinformation or disinformation. They um are connected with like like-minded winners who are ready to rock, not just folks who are kind of on the sidelines, but in the fast lane, and not in the fast lane to just throw all your money and you like buckshot and just hope you hit something. No, that's you know, it's the strategy that really comes from the mountain of information that you've already made. Like you've already done all of the logical things.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

When you're done and you're tired of the logical things, let's talk about exponential growth and compressing your timeline. And so that really comes from a cohort that I'm doing this summer. I call it more like a strategy sprint because people don't always have a year's worth of time. They don't even want to do like a like I am a you know, I will sit there and actually do an online course. I love online courses. I love masterminds. I paid a gazillion dollars for all these things. Some people they do not have the time, but they have. The desire for exponential growth, this would be a program for you. You can learn at advantageevins.com forward slash consult. Right now it's in wait list form because it's not for everybody. So the opportunity to get on the wait list, find out more information, also jump on a one-on-one with me. Let's see where you are and talk about strategy, not just as an investor, but also business folks and lawyers who are trying to figure out how to show up for the unbelievable needs of businesses in Web3. So doing that, advantageevins.com forward slash consult and everything else can be found at advantageevins.com. The book, the masterclass, free resources, et cetera. And so there's something for everyone, but I'm really focusing on those kind of the high achievers who are really, really ready to rock and move forward in a short period of time to get set up for success.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

I love it. You the the frequency to going back to the energy. I mean, gosh, they would be silly not to go check you out. I mean, just the simple little drops of of things that you've said. You've been totally serious about one little sentence, and then you throw in something totally that makes you real. And I just love every moment. Gotta keep up. That's for sure. They're gonna have to go back and listen to this one again to catch all your little nuances there. But in all seriousness, prof T, you've been amazing. Doctor in some forms, prof uh professor, capital T, all the way. We just appreciate your time. Not only just again, I said at the beginning, not just in you sharing here, they've gotten like the tip of the iceberg, but just the years of mastery that you have brought to this conversation. I just so appreciate that because we get to be the benefactor of that. So thank you um so much. Blessings to you, your family, all of the things that you're touching here, all the people that you're helping. We appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

I appreciate you so much. And it's the first, but I hope it's not the last because this is an ongoing conversation. Want to keep people lifted and keep people ready, high frequency. That's right. High frequency.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over two or three hundred other very successful seven, eight, and nine-figure business owners, is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1,000 kings, specifically who are grateful but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities. And here's what we believe that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other, very successful business owners, I want you to go to gatheringtheKings.com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1,000 kings. Talk soon.