Russell LaCour on How to Earn 12% APY on Bitcoin & Ethereum with Tantra Labs (Episode 149)
Today Russell LaCour with Tantra Labs joins us to discuss how you can earn 12% APY in Bitcoin & Ethereum every year.
Russell is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tantra Labs, an Algorithmic Prop Desk that gives 12% interest on BTC and ETH. Russell has been in the Bitcoin space since 2011 and has been an Algorithmic developer since 2015. After going to India in 2017 and trying to find a purpose greater than just making money for rich people, he founded Tantra Labs in 2018 as a way to let people be denominated in an asset instead of in dollars.
Links
Website – http://tantralabs.io/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/tantra_labs
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMKC2vQ_EpUCfh3yAtszGow
Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tantra-talks/id1497193655
*Disclaimer. None of this information is financial advice.
The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.
00:00:03:08 – 00:00:13:07
Richard Carthon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, your host here, Richard Carthon, and today I got a very special guest. We have Mr. Russel with Tantra Labs. How are you doing today?
00:00:13:16 – 00:00:15:13
Russell LaCour: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on today.
00:00:15:29 – 00:00:30:03
Richard Carthon: Man, I’m excited to learn more about your company. I mean, the highlight on the website talks about earning 12 percent in Bitcoin and Ethereum. I’m looking forward to diving into that and learning more about what y’all have going on, but before we do that, I want to learn a little bit more about you. Give us some background about yourself.
00:00:31:01 – 00:01:07:09
Russell LaCour: Thank you. It’s a long story, but I’m going to make it quick because I don’t want to bore everybody, but also we have a podcast with a longer version of it. I got into Bitcoin in 2011. It was on some forms where we used Bitcoin to transact basically and purchase things online. Kind of fell out of it and ended up in college, was doing like stock trading on the side and so, 2017 came around and I was actually trading algorithmically in the stock market and I was mainly involved in trading like pump and dump.
00:01:07:11 – 00:01:07:26
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:01:07:28 – 00:01:52:18
Russell LaCour: So, I was writing algorithms that were finding pump and dumps and I had some friends who were doing it with me that were like, look, Crypto right now is like full of pump and dumps. This was in 2017 and like we think you can make a lot of money doing it. And so I ended up like being in between jobs a little bit, so I started trading Crypto, ended up going to India and in India I actually met a guy who lived like 20 minutes from me away in California. And he was like, I am friends with a Bitcoin hedge fund manager, I want to introduce you. And that was my co-founder, Ped, who we actually started Tantra Labs in 2018 after Bitcoin went to 20K and subsequently fell.
00:01:52:20 – 00:01:53:05
Richard Carthon: Right.
00:01:53:07 – 00:01:57:00
Russell LaCour: Plummets to the lowest of lows.
00:01:57:11 – 00:01:57:26
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:01:59:01 – 00:02:24:17
Russell LaCour: So, we were trading, we basically started the company in 2018, been trading for about three years now, primarily focused on Bitcoin. We recently added Ethereum, but the whole idea from Inception was we wanted to create a product that allowed people to be denominated in Bitcoin, to be denominated in the asset of their choosing rather than being stuck being denominated to a USD gain.
00:02:24:19 – 00:03:08:18
Russel LaCour: So, we didn’t want even our investors to suffer from having to pay the US dollar price, so like, if you were to invest in a Crypto fund prior to let’s say, 2018, they would give you a US dollar return. So, they might just like, buy Bitcoin for you, hold it and take 20 percent off the top. We basically said we’re going to outperform Bitcoin and give you the additional on top of that. And so we did that for about two years and then we wanted to democratize it a little bit more, because, as you well know, in this space, for the most part, if you don’t have more than like 25,000, $50,000, you can’t do a lot of things.
00:03:08:29 – 00:03:09:14
Richard Carthon: Takes a little longer.
00:03:09:16 – 00:03:43:10
Russell LaCour: And so we created, yeah, it takes a little longer, it’s more expensive. In the United States, it’s illegal for the most part, like there’s a lot of things going on. So, we decided to create a debt product where people could loan us money and we would be able to pay them an interest rate on it in the style of what you might see an accredited investor do. And this allowed us to legally onboard capital in an efficient way that allows people to be denominated in the asset of their choosing right now, whether that’s Bitcoin or Ethereum.
00:03:43:26 – 00:04:23:21
Richard Carthon: Man, that’s a really interesting concept. And like the fact, you know, you have a unique background, obviously, like from going in the regular market and making algorithms that would find pump and dumps. So, figured you did pretty well in that, then in between, you land in India, you find your co-founder and you start to Tantra Labs, which was first to fund, and now it’s kind of transformed into what it has become today. And you know, I imagine going back to 2018 and starting basically in a bear market, not only makes you resilient, but also makes you figure out how to be more efficient and solve for true challenges that are there.
00:04:23:23 – 00:04:52:09
Richard Carthon: So, everything’s great and gravy when it’s a bull market, but when things are tough, you still got to find a way to yield returns and yield stuff that makes people excited. And you know, I feel like now’s a really great and opportune time to you know, be in a position you all are are in and offering this type of debt to exchange. So, can you kind of dive into that a little bit more of like let’s say someone’s listening right now, like how can they go and work with Tentra Labs and get, you know, use the different services that you have?
00:04:53:03 – 00:05:50:15
Russell LaCour: Yeah. Thank you. So, basically you just go to the website Tantra Labs.io. And I’m sure there’ll be a link, but you can sign up for the beta. We’re basically allowing anyone outside of the US, in the US, we have more of a process to make sure that you qualify for the app and we are onboarding any amount of Bitcoin that you want, any amount of Ethereum that you want and we’re paying 12 percent on it. You can talk to me or my co-founder Kagen at any time. So, Kagen and the rest of the team, we’ve actually been working, like you said, through the entire bear market. We’ve been around, we’re publicly known. Like you can find us online, you can talk to our investors. Like I think in the Crypto space, a lot of times you know, you hear not your keys, not your coin and we’re very much doing our best legally to disclose as much information as possible.
00:05:50:17 – 00:05:51:02
Richard Carthon: Right.
00:05:51:04 – 00:06:34:12
Russell LaCour: So that people understand like we’re not here trying to pull a rug, like we’ve worked our ass off, we’re trying to share what we’ve built with the world in a way that we can do it legally. And also, I think one of the biggest things people have to realize, and I’m not going to name any names of some of the bigger companies doing similar things to what we’re doing, but if you don’t have this huge war chest of like hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s very, very difficult to offer a product like this. So, we’re a team of about six people working on this and you can think of us as like the mom and pop shop, so you’re actually directly lending to the prop desk that a company like Blackfyre, Celsius is lending to on the back end.
00:06:34:20 – 00:07:13:07
Russell LaCour: So, where Blockfyre and Celsius is giving you four percent I’m able to give 12 because you’re giving it directly to me. Where Blockfyre or Celsius might actually lend to me behind the scenes, you get to do all of the due diligence, understand what’s going on. You can listen to our podcast, you can read more about it, you can hear like us explaining algorithmic trading and how, like providing liquidity to the market makes money, how we’ve been doing it for three years, how personally, I’ve been doing it for eight. And it’s really that simple, you basically sign up and send us Bitcoin, that enters you into 12 month term with us and at the end of it, we’ll send you back whatever you sent us plus 12 percent.
00:07:14:23 – 00:07:58:29
Richard Carthon: That’s unique, man. Just like you said, it’s kind of like you’re going and you’re lifting the veil. You’re just saying, like, look, you want to look under the hood and see what’s going on, here’s everything as it is, full transparency, this is what you can expect. And just and I like that. I like that you’re from the jump just being like, look, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s how we’re differentiated, here’s your mom and pop. I almost think about it as like, you know, in the states, usually for the best banking that you can really get, you go to your local lenders, right? You go to like your credit union and everything else and they’re going to like, look after you bigger than a national entity, right? It kind of sounds like that’s kind of the positioning that y’all are able to do with that amount of transparency and that kind of care that you’re putting into the people that come through Tantra Labs.
00:07:59:11 – 00:08:01:07
Russell LaCour: Exactly, very well said.
00:08:01:24 – 00:08:17:01
Richard Carthon: Thanks man. So, and you also mentioned something else that’s pretty interesting, that you know, y’all produce some content so that you can learn a little bit more about it, can you tell us a little bit about you know, what that is? Like if they are to go look up your podcast, what are they going to learn about, what are the things that they can expect? And tell us a little bit about that.
00:08:17:15 – 00:09:14:24
Russell LaCour: Yeah, so we have a variety of different episodes, everything from meet the team to demystifying algorithmic trading, where I talk about algorithms from a very simple level so that it makes it easier to understand, right? Like I think a lot of people think of an algorithm like a really complicated thing, but an algorithm is really a math problem. It does this when it’s told to because X + Y = M, right? And so because of that, something happens. And so, I go and break down what that is and how that allows us to make money in a market like this, either through providing liquidity or making a probabilistic bet on something. There are lots of ways, especially in Crypto, to make money that I don’t think, One, a lot of people don’t have time to, so, like, you’re probably very aware of all the people calling you now saying, “Should I buy?,” Is now a good time?
00:09:14:26 – 00:09:15:11
Richard Carthon: Aw man.
00:09:15:13 – 00:09:15:28
Russell LaCour: You probably get a lot of those texts today.
00:09:16:23 – 00:09:17:08
Richard Carthon: You know it man.
00:09:17:10 – 00:09:44:09
Russell LaCour: Like, the price went down and so, what we do is we automate a lot of that for people that are, they don’t want to think about it, but they want to earn yield on their assets. And so by lending to a company, that’s exactly what you’re doing, the same way you might lend dollars to a company in the stock market or lend dollars to your friend, we’ve just enabled it so that someone could lend Bitcoin to us.
00:09:45:01 – 00:10:14:12
Richard Carthon: Got it. And that’s really interesting man. And I like that you’re talking about algorithmic trading. And of course, for the newbies, this is going to be a little bit more advanced and for the more advanced people, this might perk your ears up, right? Can you just give us a taste of that? So like, I’ve always wanted to kind of have this conversation with someone on the show with algorithmic trading and setting it up. Like if someone is new and they’re like, Man, I’ve always wanted to look into this, I’ve always wanted to learn how to get started, you know, what are some, like, initial like let’s call it, first three to five steps you need to take to get involved in this?
00:10:15:08 – 00:10:20:18
Russel LaCour: Well, the first thing that I’ll say is be prepared to lose a lot of money when you’re first starting.
00:10:20:20 – 00:10:21:05
Richard Carthon: Right.
00:10:21:07 – 00:11:27:02
Russell LaCour: It’s a very expensive hobby. I think most people, even in training, lose money for the first two years. But then when it comes to algorithms take that with a grain of salt. But when it comes to algorithms, there’s basically two paths that you can go down. One of them is probabilistic, one of them is deterministic. And so what that is, is in a probability, you think that something might happen. So, the example would be that I’m at the store and I can buy a banana for $1 and I feel like next week there’s going to be a shortage of bananas and bananas are going to be worth a $1.10 and so, I’m willing to buy the banana today because I think I can sell it in a week. Where deterministic trading would be I’m at the store and a banana is a dollar and I’m on the phone with my friend and my friend says, “I’m willing to pay you $1.01 per banana right now.” And so literally on the phone with him, I’m purchasing the banana and selling it to him and immediately making money. That’s arbitrage, just 101.
00:11:27:12 – 00:11:27:27
Richard Carthon: Right.
00:11:27:29 – 00:12:27:09
Russell LaCour: And so, when you go into algorithmic trading, especially in Crypto, there’s a lot of arbitrage that happens because there’s so many different exchanges, there’s so many different ways to get coin, whether it’s through Uniswap or it’s through Coinbase. There’s lots of different price discrepancies happening literally every moment in the Crypto market. So, it presents a unique opportunity for someone who wants to do deterministic trading and then at the same time, probabilistic trading is a huge, unique opportunity here as well, because, like I said, I specialized in pump and dumps and so that was probabilistic. Like, you can line up certain events, like there’s a lot of volume, the price has been trending in this direction, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and create a model that says there’s a 60 percent chance that the price is going to go up or down from here and then place your bets accordingly.
00:12:27:21 – 00:13:04:25
Russell LaCour: And over time, if you perfect that model, it can become a very profitable model. The way that you can measure algorithmic success, really, it’s called like a Sharpe ratio. So, in a perfect deterministic fund, the Sharpe ratio is basically infinite. It’s like you do not lose money, everything that you do is just guaranteed to make money. You’re buying here, selling here, profitable. Whereas with a probabilistic fund, it’s more I hope that I’m right. And your Sharpe ratio can vary.
00:13:05:03 – 00:13:05:18
Richard Carthon: Right.
00:13:05:20 – 00:13:27:01
Russell LaCour: So, at Tantra, we actually have a diverse portfolio of both and this allows us to have a very high Sharpe while also taking full advantage of this exponential market, because in reality, see the way that we set up Tantra’s, like the underlying bet here is that Bitcoin’s going to a million dollars.
00:13:27:07 – 00:13:27:22
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:13:27:24 – 00:13:45:10
Russell LaCour: And so, if Bitcoin’s going to a million dollars, well, it needs to trend and it needs to trend exponentially to go there. And so if that is the case, then you can build momentum based signals and algorithms to capture that trend and we’ve been very successful in doing that.
00:13:45:12 – 00:14:24:13
Richard Carthon: Man I mean, first of all, thank you for breaking that down, that was one of the most eloquent ways of explanation that I’ve heard with algorithmic trading. Obviously, Kudos with your years of experience with, you know, podcasting and explaining it over and over again, but that was great. Everyone that’s listening, rewind that, listen to it again. That was a really great explanation of algorithmic trading, so thanks again for that. With all that being said, obviously y’all are very set up for success because you’ve been doing this for years and you know, you’ve created a company, an entire business around it. Where do you see as y’all continue to trend over the next year? Like, what is the roadmap look like for y’all as y’all continue to grow and expand?
00:14:26:22 – 00:14:50:16
Russell LaCour: I’m going to say this with a grain of salt, but what I’d like to do, because I’ve been saying this over and over again, that like the million dollar or the billion dollar idea in Crypto is a checking account that is like super high interest. So like, imagine you have a checking account that pays you six percent interest or 10 percent interest, but it’s immediately liquid, I’m trying to build that right now.
00:14:50:25 – 00:14:51:10
Richard Carthon: Man.
00:14:51:12 – 00:15:00:20
Russell LaCour: I’ve been saying over and over again that, like, I want somebody else to build it because I’m so busy, but at this point, like, I want it for myself and no one’s doing it.
00:15:00:22 – 00:15:01:07
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:15:01:09 – 00:15:13:02
Russell LaCour: So I’m like, I’ll make it. So, hopefully within the next 12 months to 24 months, I’ll have a high interest bearing checking account that literally allows you like instant liquidity.
00:15:13:04 – 00:15:13:19
Richard Carthon: Man.
00:15:13:21 – 00:15:14:24
Russell LaCour: With five to 10 percent interest.
00:15:14:26 – 00:15:29:22
Richard Carthon: That would be so incredible. The amount of cash that would flow into that, savings accounts don’t do that. I mean, some APYs on just various Cryptos don’t do that. Oh, my gosh like, yes, yes. Please find a way,
00:15:30:23 – 00:15:31:13
Russell LaCour: I’m trying.
00:15:32:01 – 00:16:21:23
Richard Carthon: I’m signing up day one. I’ll be on the waitlist, that sounds incredible. Man, so, everyone, you heard it here first. Hopefully they’re able to figure that out, you want to be a part of that because that would be incredible. But you know, thanks a lot for spending some time on that. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit into, you know, right now the time of this recording, it is early 2021, we’re off to a nice, hot, bullish run, we’re starting to see a little bit of a pullback consolidation around you know, Bitcoin other day is around 58,000, it’s kind of pulled back to 46 now back around 50 again. Eth has kind of gone back and forth a little bit too. But with where we are, even talking about these levels, which is super exciting compared to a year ago, Oh my gosh. You know, what do you see where the industry’s kind of headed right now?
00:16:23:17 – 00:17:37:15
Russell LaCour: So, I’ll answer this question a few different ways. I think everything going on in the market right now, like with Robin Hood and GameStop being the primary like focus, DeFi is huge. And Bitcoin is DeFi. Ethereum is DeFi, these swap smart contracts, that’s DeFi. Like, It’s all working together to prove the use case of Crypto, which is basically peer-to -peer transactions that can be done without a third party, that is Crypto and it is the future and we are going to see that over the next decade swallow the global financial system. What is interesting and like what I’m watching very closely right now and I was actually just cause on my analyst talking about this, see what happened with GameStop, presented a lot of systematic risk where if they wouldn’t have stopped it, you could have seen the entire market blow up and so why that affects Bitcoin, I think a lot of people think that well, Bitcoin is in the market, we have a different beta. We actually do not have data to show how Bitcoin would perform in a bear market of stocks.
00:17:37:27 – 00:18:19:09
Russell LaCour: So, in the global financial system, Bitcoin has only existed in a perpetual bullrun. In March, when COVID happened and there was a huge liquidity crisis, we actually saw Bitcoin fall 50 percent in a debt, which means that in a true liquidity crunch and in like an overall risk off environment, Bitcoin is not an asset that companies and high net worth individuals are investing in, which, at least as a single data point says that in a true bear market like the stocks, like the stock market goes into a bear market, the world goes into a financial crisis, Bitcoin will not necessarily perform well.
00:18:19:23 – 00:18:58:29
Russell LaCour: And so, I’m watching really closely to see what’s happening in the stock market and see how that affects Bitcoin. All things continue bullish, we’re easily hitting over 100k this year, I think 200,000+ is definitely in the cards, will probably be blowing out around that price. I think six months ago I would have thought we would be entering a supercycle as well, which is like we basically never have an 80 percent pullback again, but lots of things can change that. So, I’m starting to become more and more, I guess, realistic and less hopium driven.
00:18:59:15 – 00:19:00:00
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:19:00:04 – 00:19:42:07
Russell LaCour: My 10 year target for Bitcoin has always been over 500K. Like, and whenever I talk to people about purchasing Bitcoin and they ask like, is it a good price? I always say to me, Bitcoin is worth more than gold and if it’s worth what gold is worth, it’s worth over $300,000. So, is $50,000 dollars a good price to buy a $300,000 asset? Absolutely. And so just buy it, wait five to 10 years and we’ll be there. Like, the only way that it doesn’t work is Satoshi comes out from the grave, like I don’t know how Bitcoin stops going up at this point, so.
00:19:42:19 – 00:20:13:03
Richard Carthon: Yeah, no, I mean, a lot to unpack there. And thank you for that take. And you know, you’re actually the second person that has brought that up in a lot of valuable way of talking about the next ten years. What I usually talk about to our audience and everyone else is in the Crypto game, you need to play the long game. And if you look at everything, relatively speaking, if you look at the last decade where Bitcoin has jumped that far insane, if you think about the next decade, it’s on track to do the exact same thing. And you also want to look at the entire global market cap, right?
00:20:13:05 – 00:20:42:02
Richard Carthon: So, when Bitcoin a year ago was, I think, right around like 120 billion and then we’re like, Hey, what happens when it reaches a trillion dollar market cap? Did exactly what I thought it would do, was just be around 20, 30K, that happened. And now it’s trending like how long until we’re at five trillion, or 10 trillion dollar market cap. I don’t know that we’re that far away and with everything remaining the same, Bitcoin dominance being around 60 to 75 percent, that means that we’re looking at a six figure Bitcoin probably pretty soon.
00:20:43:03 – 00:21:22:24
Richard Carthon: And again, longer term, ten years like it is very realistic and probable that just like you said, I also think that it’s more valuable than gold, it’s digital gold. And the other part of it is that it’s finite and that you don’t have to keep mining. After it’s all mined and it’s there, we know where everything’s at, you don’t have to like also keep wondering, Oh, I wonder if there’s more gold in the ground. You know where the Bitcoin is, right? And so, there’s so much value in that. But what I want to go back and unpack a little bit more that I think would be great for everyone here, and it’s made everyone’s ears perk up, if they had not stopped at GameStop. And I also believe that they purposely stopped it. Why do you think it would have collapsed everything?
00:21:25:25 – 00:22:06:16
Russell LaCour: So, it’s a really hard question to unpack, and so I’ll try and do it in like a really simple way. There is more money in the stock market than money that actually exists and so, if something were to happen that caused financial institutions, banks, hedge funds to come up with money that they do not have and that the person who said that they had to lend to them also doesn’t have because of the fractional reserve system, you would see the dominoes fall, much like we saw them fall in 2008 when the real estate market collapsed,
00:22:06:18 – 00:22:07:03
Richard Carthon: Right.
00:22:07:05 – 00:22:52:21
Russell LaCour: Because so much fractional lending is happening. If these funds that are over levered, that are too short now owe more money than they even had to begin with and the people who loaned them the money also owe more money than they had, you have this huge explosion that causes a massive liquidity crisis and just would decimate a majority of the money that’s in the market. And so, with that kind of a liquidity crisis, again, I look to March and COVID, Black Thursday or whatever, Black Tuesday it was, that shows you exactly what happens in a liquidity crisis. The entire market drop 30 percent, Bitcoin’s down 50 percent, Eth’s 60 percent in a day.
00:22:53:15 – 00:23:53:29
Russell LaCour: If GameStop went to a 1,000, 2, 3,000, 5,000, whatever multiple that it was headed for, you would have seen that happen again because the people that needed to get out of those positions have to sell off other assets. They have to sell their gold position, they have to sell their S&P position, they have to sell their Bitcoin, they have to sell everything to cover their losses in this asset. And so, that’s also accentuated by the fact that now other people are getting out of the position because the market’s going down. So, you have all the people that were following the trend or that are betting against it, or betting with it now covering their losses or pressing harder on the market. Because we’ve built a leveraged system, leverage is a very powerful and a very dangerous instrument, especially when something like GameStop happens where you are literally deleting more money than even existed to begin with.
00:23:54:09 – 00:24:34:06
Richard Carthon: Yeah, that is a really interesting take. And thank you for breaking that down. I think that you bring up a really good way of speaking to it. Liquidity is always going to be a challenge, and it’s interesting you bring up the fact that there is more money in the market than actually exists and goes to the idea of how is that even possible, right? And then I would potentially even argue like all the more reason why Crypto, I think is hedged to play well against that potentially happening. I do think there will be a liquidity price of if that were to happen, there would be a liquidity moment where you would see a sharp decline, you might see a massive pullback.
00:24:34:08 – 00:25:04:27
Richard Carthon: But like once the dust settles and everything else and people realize, like, Wow, like this whole Crypto thing, at least I know it’s finite, but some elements of it, some of it is finite and you can use it internationally, wherever ad a Bitcoin is a bitcoin no matter where you go in the world. And I think you eventually get to a point where people double down on that. And I think that’s when you really see things just blow into the next dimension because people finally will get it. And I don’t think we’re there yet where people really get it, but we’re getting closer.
00:25:05:10 – 00:26:02:12
Russell LaCour: Well, if you think about it like this, see, this is actually where we’re at today and I think one of the things that people are starting to become more aware of because of the magnitude of what’s happening is all of the money that’s being printed is being injected into the market, it’s being injected into Bitcoin as well and that is what makes a case for like that $1,000,000 Bitcoin in the next four years. Because before you could have said like Bitcoin’s worth more than gold and that makes it 300,000 because this gold’s at a 10 trillion dollar market cap. But now with inflation, if you price the asset correctly, gold should actually be a 14 to 15 trillion dollar market cap had it retained its value versus the buying power of the dollar. And this is what people, not people, but this is what’s hard to price in because there’s so many levers that are being pulled.
00:26:02:22 – 00:26:03:07
Richrd Carthon: Right.
00:26:03:09 – 00:26:17:13
Russell LaCour: So, when we print four trillion dollars, when we basically add 40 percent to our GDP in a single year, what you’ve done is you’ve taken this dollar and now $1 a year ago is worth 60 cents today.
00:26:17:21 – 00:26:18:06
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:26:18:08 – 00:27:28:02
Russell LaCour: And so, and that’s a very rough and crude way to say it, but the idea is that had all things stayed the same, all assets should have gone up 40 percent against the US dollar and that’s what we’re seeing. Because so much money is being given to government, so much money is being created by the government, given to corporations, given to individuals who are now using that to lever up on stocks, bonds, on Bitcoin, on everything, you’re seeing a massive flood of capital into the market because the only lever the government in the central bank has to pull is, Here take more money because you’re not making it anywhere else. And when that happens, the only assets that you can go to are hard assets, which, interestingly enough, stocks are one of them. So, Bitcoin being one of them, real estate stocks, this is why we’re seeing the market just going straight up. And as long as they continue to do that, which doesn’t look like there’s really an end, I mean, I’m praying Corona is over by the end of summer, but who knows what narrative they’re going to spend. So, I don’t know.
00:27:28:17 – 00:28:00:19
Richard Carthon: Yeah, no, that is a very interesting take and something definitely to keep in consideration is inflation and how that does play a part of all of this, right? Something that I want to get into as we, you know, kind of wrap this up are two more questions I want to talk about, one is just you talked about the long game, so I just talked about last year, but I want to now talk about that decade, right? Where do you see the entire market headed as we get into you know, you wake up tomorrow, it’s 2030, like, what do you think has happened in that timeline?
00:28:02:08 – 00:28:08:23
Russell LaCour: I have no idea. I hope that we plan to allow more trees and the world gets outside of their computers.
00:28:09:03 – 00:28:09:18
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:28:09:20 – 00:29:07:10
Russell LaCour: But for Crypto and Bitcoin, I think in the next 10 years, we easily see the million dollar Bitcoin no doubt with inflation going the way that it’s going. If we don’t see the market implode in the next 10 years, I’ll be very surprised. We really do have a house of cards, Corona showed that the financial system is very weak with central banking policy. A lot of governments around the world are already in hyperinflation and honestly, if you look at the US dollar and what’s happened this year, we are also in hyperinflation territory, it’s just that like you don’t see it like you might see it in Zimbabwe or Argentina or these other places, or Venezuela where it’s gone very, very insane.
00:29:07:19 – 00:29:08:04
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:29:08:13 – 00:29:32:13
Russell LaCour: But I mean, I can tell you just from my grocery bill that in the last year it’s gone up 50 percent. So, we are very much in a world that the wealth gap is increasing and over the next 10 years, I believe humanity is currently waking up to it and going to wake up to it. And the only real alternative we have today is Bitcoin.
00:29:32:28 – 00:29:33:13
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:29:33:15 – 00:29:40:21
Russell LaCour: Everything else is controlled by someone else.
00:29:41:05 – 00:30:06:14
Richard Carthon: Yeah, no, I mean, that’s a really interesting and good take on it. Thank you for walking us down that. This one’s a little bit more of a newer question that I’ve started to ask my guests and I think can go in a lot of different ways, but I think would be very helpful to, especially all the newbies out there. If you could go back and tell yourself back 10 years ago, whenever you first got into Crypto, what are the lessons that you would tell yourself right now?
00:30:09:23 – 00:30:55:24
Russell LaCour: Just Crypto wise, it would literally be like don’t sell ever. Especially 10 years ago, you just buy. But see, I look at it this way, because I owned Bitcoin 10 years ago and. I wasn’t ready to have that kind of money. Like I think, I always looked at it this way, like you remember when Justin Bieber was driving through Miami in his Lamborghini and he got pulled over, whatever, that would have been me had I bought Bitcoin 10 years ago. And so like, I’m grateful that I didn’t end up with that much money at that young of an age, very thankful, probably wouldn’t be alive or where I’m at today.
00:30:55:26 – 00:31:41:08
Russell LaCour: So, very thankful that I didn’t get in like, huge that early. And I think that would be my main thing is like, and I even say this to the guys on the team like, you can’t sell for success. Like a lot of people, when they lose money, they’re very upset and then when they make money, they didn’t make enough. And if you’re going to be upset that you lost money, please don’t be upset when you make money. Don’t think back and think like, Oh, I could have had more, Oh if I wouldn’t have done this I would, like just be grateful because there are so many opportunities here. And I think especially where we’re at today 2021, we’re so early.
00:31:41:10 – 00:31:43:12
Richard Carthon: Yeah.
00:31:43:14 – 00:31:47:02
Russell LaCour: We’re so early it’s ridiculous. I can’t even. Yeah, we’re so early.
00:31:47:04 – 00:32:15:07
Richard Carthon: Man, it’s refreshing for you to say that. I’d say that at least once an episode we are so early everyone. He just said it, I didn’t have to say it. So, now’s a great time to keep educating yourself, finding ways to get involved, finding ways to also hedge for the future and Tantra Labs obviously could be a great way to get that done. So Russell, thank you so much for spending time with us, but what is the final thought that you want to leave with all of our listeners here today?
00:32:22:22 – 00:32:39:04
Russell LaCour: I think it’s just that be thankful that you’re here this early and grateful to be alive. So, go outside, remember that you’re breathing, remember that Bitcoin is very real and we have a once in a millennium opportunity to make a difference, so.
00:32:39:06 – 00:32:39:21
Richard Carthon: Awesome.
00:32:39:23 – 00:32:40:23
Russell LaCour: Thank you for having me on.
00:32:40:25 – 00:32:46:09
Richard Carthon: Really, really great final thought. What are some ways that people can connect with you and also learn more about Tantra Labs?
00:32:48:00 – 00:33:24:04
Russell LaCour: Just check me out. I’m on Twitter, I tweet probably once a month though, so I would try and stay away from that. I would check out TantraLabs.io. My co-founder Kegan’s really active if you want to follow him. And you can chat with us, if you go on the website, you can reach out. We respond to emails, we respond to chats. Yeah, we’re early, you know, so we want to be friends with everybody, we think everybody that’s in today’s, we’re all trendsetters, we’re all here to make the world a better place and take back our financial freedom. So, I’m grateful to be here and I hope to meet some of the people that listen to your podcast.
00:33:25:03 – 00:33:31:13
Richard Carthon: No doubt. Well, thank you again for spending some time with us and dropping all this knowledge. And of course, for everyone listening, Stay Crypto Current.
Crypto Current will be guiding all of you who are new to the cryptocurrency world to becoming a cryptocurrency and blockchain expert. Crypto Current was founded to give access to information to everyone on current events occurring in cryptocurrency and blockchain in a digestible way. Since its creation, we have created content that impacted thousands of people through its podcast, blog, and social media.