*Disclaimer. None of this information is financial advice.

The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below. 

00:00:32:03 – 00:00:32:21

Richard Carthon: Hello everyone.

00:00:32:23 – 00:00:49:24

Richard Carthon: Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Current. I am your host here Richard Carthon, and today I got a very special guest out in Chicago. We’ve got Yan with Swan Bitcoin. How are you doing today? 

Yan Pritzker: I’m great. Thanks for having me on. 

Richard Carthon: Of course, of course. So before we get started how about you give us a little bit of background on yourself.

00:00:49:26 – 00:01:23:22

Yan Pritzker: Sure. Yes. So I’ve been doing startups for a long time. I come from a technology background. I actually grew up in the Soviet Union. So I came over to the United States in 1989. I was seven years old and grew up here. Kind of got my first computer when I was a kid. You know my dad got me a Commodore 64 when those old school little machines and I learned a program on that. And kind of grew up doing some coding and went to school for Computer Science and Linguistics and I thought I was going to do machine translation I was really into like A.I.

00:01:23:24 – 00:02:04:09

Yan Pritzker: and I wanted to basically work on Google Translate before Google Translate was the thing. 

Richard Carthon: Wow.

Yan Pritzker: But what ends up happening is I got into kind of like a few startups. I started working for startups and I realized that I don’t really care about computer science as much as I did about building products and the kind of in a startup environment we’re just you know things are crazy things are happening. People are really into what they’re doing and so I basically ended up as an early engineer and co-founder at a bunch of different startups basically started from to the year 2000 onwards and a lot of them were failures which is you know kind of like the end run right the game part of the writing.

00:02:04:11 – 00:02:05:06

Yan Pritzker: Exactly.

00:02:06:00 – 00:02:42:18

Yan Pritzker: You know part of the game is you try and you fail and you learn. And I did a lot of different things worked on a social event planning startup computing thing. Prediction markets you know array airline aviation system an online university I kind of did a lot of different things. Yeah. My biggest kind of claim to fame and success was something I did in 2012 with David Kalt who started Reverb.com and I joined him as a CTO and basically helped grow that company from just the two of us to 150 employees and doing 500 million dollars worth of sales a year.

00:02:42:22 – 00:03:18:02

Yan Pritzker: And that was a place where you basically as a marketplace for musicians it was like an Etsy you could buy guitars and drums and stuff like that there. So we grew that product you know from 2012 to 2018 and then I decided that I wanted to work on bitcoin because you know I had been kind of studying Bitcoin from 2016 onwards. I’d been kind of in the block chain crypto bitcoin area and looking around trying to understand what was going on and when 2018 rolls around I was pretty much sold on the idea that this was the most important thing I could be working on.

00:03:18:04 – 00:03:25:03

Yan Pritzker: So I left Reverb and decided to work on that coin. That’s that’s why I’m here today. 

00:03:25:05 – 00:03:30:03

Richard Carthon: Awesome man. So let’s unpack that a little bit. What was your first introduction into the crypto and blockchain space?

00:03:30:05 – 00:04:02:02

Yan Pritzker: So I actually learned about bitcoin in 2011 from Slashdot and I read about it. I didn’t understand what it was, didn’t research it or anything like that. I just heard like Oh there’s some open source payment thing people are trying to do. And then I basically went on Mt. Gox which was the exchange at the time sure a lot of people are familiar with it and bitcoin at 30 bucks which was awesome right. Except I made a really bad mistake because after that it went down to 30 dollars was the peak of that bubble 2011 bubble pretty much thirty bucks went all the way down to two dollars.

00:04:02:04 – 00:04:11:05

Yan Pritzker: So I was like OK I’ve heard this is a scam. I don’t know what it is. And I basically sold it at two dollars. So ouch.

00:04:14:25 – 00:04:17:08

Richard Carthon: Ouch indeed. How many bitcoin did you have at the moment?

00:04:17:10 – 00:04:47:26

Yan Pritzker: I mean I don’t even remember. But I think I put it like around a thousand bucks. I want to say so whatever that was you know when I think about a thousand yeah I was you know 30 or 40 bitcoins at that price which ended up dumping a two dollars for you just to save whatever little because you know I felt like I’d been had. So I basically had to just dum. Which is really bad and then basically ignored it for a while. I was working on startups and 2013 rolled around and there was another media cycle with bitcoin you know we heard about it again.

00:04:47:29 – 00:05:21:29

Yan Pritzker: So I went on and I saw Coinbase and Coinbase was a lot more professional and looked really polished right compared to something like Mt. Gox which was clearly very hacky. So I thought OK I feel like progress has been made right. And the price was a thousand dollars so OK something’s happening here that I don’t understand. Again I did not research it. I didn’t read anything about it and I just bought some just in case. And of course the price went down again tremendously. I went from a thousand three hundred. So I was like OK, I’m just burning like twice right.

00:05:22:01 – 00:06:09:08

Yan Pritzker: So again even in 2013 on that second ride I went down and I basically this time I didn’t sell it but I pretty much just ignored it and I was like OK I don’t know what this is I’m gonna leave it just to see what happens. And again I was so busy with Reverb I was building it like I was working on it full time and didn’t didn’t have time to research Bitcoin or anything. And so then in 2016 when really I got back into the space because of my cousin who was researching a theorem and he was working from for Microsoft a block chain strategy and he was like he he was telling me about a theorem and telling me like there’s all this block change stuff going on and I was like OK this is interesting so I started looking at it and I spent probably, I don’t know almost a year it’s six or seven or eight months I don’t know.

00:06:09:10 – 00:06:54:06

Yan Pritzker: Listening to podcast watching videos I watched a lot of that Andrea since Annapolis video and it took me a while to sort through like what was going on and I played with pretty much everything that was out there and I finally kind of started understanding what was going on more as money. And that was really was this Andrea’s video which I highly recommend people to watch called currency wars where and this was I think it was from 2016 or earlier and he was talking about exactly what we’re seeing today like he was talking about bailouts bail ins governments confiscating money from people putting capital controls on we can get money out of your ATMs and it’s like this is this is still happening today and it’s probably happening worse especially in the middle of this crisis.

00:06:54:08 – 00:07:24:12

Yan Pritzker: So after I watched that video I started remembering that like you know I came from the Soviet Union right. So it was a socialist economy full price good currency controls everything. So I went to my parents and I asked them like what happened to our money when we left the Soviet Union. And they told me that the government allowed us to exchange one hundred dollars per person. Wow. So I was like what, say that again to my good ear. I felt like we were rich or anything we didn’t really have a lot of money right.

00:07:24:14 – 00:07:37:18

Yan Pritzker: But basically you weren’t allowed to own U.S. dollars in the Soviet Union was like it was like censorship right. You can have no media in or out no people in or out and no money in or out. Everything was completely locked down.

00:07:37:20 – 00:08:10:11

Richard Carthon: So yeah yeah I mean I was going say I want to I want to stick on this point real quick because you’re the second person that has really driven this point home. Another person that I had on previously was telling me how they’re you know their family was Jewish and when they came to the United States, one of the grandmothers had was like a gold pendant and they took it. And so by the time they got here they had nothing. So like even when they came to the US when they got cash they wouldn’t even put it in the bank. They would just store it somewhere I had it somewhere just so they could always make sure that they had something that couldn’t be taken from them.

00:08:10:20 – 00:08:44:27

Yan Pritzker: Yeah so my family’s Jewish too and we had you know obviously their stories like during the Holocaust and stuff like Jews did all kinds of crazy stuff and people swallowed diamonds and gold and tried to like you know retain their wealth in some fashion. And most people you know thankfully have never had to experience that kind of thing. But the funny thing is that because we’re going to this digital money system like everybody you know all money is becoming digital right. Whether we like it or not you know we have PayPal and Venmo and Apple Pay and whatever. And one thing that we kind of forget is like all this convenience we have with digital payments it’s also very convenient to turn them off or take them from you.

00:08:44:29 – 00:09:17:21

Yan Pritzker: And they always bring up the example of like OK we live in America it’s a free country right. We’re supposed to have liberty with our money and everything right there in theory. But look, you know cannabis just got legalized in Illinois right where I live. I have cannabis shops here. If I go to a cannabis shop I can’t use my credit card and I can’t use Apple Pay. Right. Right. Because those because it’s still federally illegal. So those companies won’t process your payments. So the only reason you can have any freedom to buy cannabis is if you have cash like physical green you know people pieces of paper.

00:09:17:23 – 00:09:54:15

Yan Pritzker: So what happens when all of that becomes digital. Right. All of a sudden all that freedom is gone. So that’s you know to me having like you know kind of Jewish ancestors and also coming from Russia and having essentially our wealth stripped from us. I know that these things that Andrea has talked about in currency wars that were very real and were happening. And so that’s kind of when I decided OK Bitcoin is a thing that really matters the most we need to have freedom of money. And like what is you know why did I go to work on river boys because I wanted to do something good for the world like music wearing that I’m bringing music to people seem to be a good mission right.

00:09:54:17 – 00:10:28:27

Richard Carthon: Great News.

Yan Pritzker: Great mission. I still think it’s a great mission but I think there’s something more important which is freedom. Right. Like the freedom to to move around between countries a freedom to use your money however you want that’s all tied together right. If you don’t have freedom of money then you don’t have freedom of speech. You don’t have freedom of movement. None of those other freedoms work. If you don’t have money that you can use because in the very worst regimes that are the most locked down it’s money that gets you around in places right. It’s like what you pay bribes both to get out of places. Right. So like in Russia when it was illegal to own U.S. dollars

00:10:28:29 – 00:10:56:03

Yan Pritzker: what do you think bribes are paid in?  U.S. dollars. That’s all people wanted was U.S. dollar. Right. Because that was the only real currency right. So it’s the same with bitcoin where now Bitcoin has become that sort of black market currency for all these places in the world where it’s illegal to own any other currencies you have to use this government mandated currency. And but there’s capital controls. You can’t get more than a hundred dollars a week out of the A.T.M.. What are you gonna do if you need to leave? Well you can’t do it with cash. They can take it from you at the border.

00:10:56:05 – 00:11:29:11

Richard Carthon: Before we transition into my next question you brought up a good point about even the dark market. One of my previous guests talked about the dark web and how a lot of the money that’s being used in that is via bitcoin. And when you think about the market cap and where it’s headed as more money you know the world economy is so massive it’s trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars.The crypto market is around 200 billion dollars right now. I think it eventually gets to a trillion market easy.

00:11:29:13 – 00:11:48:06

Richard Carthon: There’s just so much opportunity in this space and it’s still so early. And I’m sure he wants to recognize that. That’s probably why you decide to even go even deeper and get started with this. So tell me about you know Swan bitcoin and like what made you think of the concept like why did you get it started and everything with that.

00:11:48:08 – 00:12:30:03

Yan Pritzker: Yes. So when I left the Reserve in 2018 I knew I wanted to work you know in the crypto space. I wasn’t yet really convinced of what I was supposed to be doing. So I said OK and just feel it out and then I’ll go and learn I want to see what people are doing. So I started consulting with a lot of different startups basically talking to folks helping them with strategy. Kind of you know with my technology and product background and I fell into consulting for a company called Blackstar which is a bunch of people that are kind of like Northwestern P Gs and Cornell GS and they’re working on a system for block propagation like making blocks move around faster which is theoretically good for any cryptocurrency to be able to scale.

00:12:30:05 – 00:13:12:12

Yan Pritzker: So I spent about a year with them helping them with infrastructure and also learning about bitcoin and everything else. And by the end of that time I sort of became more convinced that you know while their product is interesting and will probably help some block chains that really bitcoin was never gonna do that. And the reason is because you know it relies on some kind of centralization. You have to tie yourself to essentially a corporate entity that’s helping you run network even though they have ways of running backups, or whatever not important. Long story short I decided that you know out of all these sort of blockchains and cryptos that are out there that Bitcoin was really the only one that had this true commitment to decentralization in a way that would make them reject anything like that and actually made me more sold on the coin.

00:13:12:14 – 00:13:55:27

Yan Pritzker: The idea that Bitcoin couldn’t be changed was very powerful. And after that I started researching Bitcoin even deeper and started writing a book called Inventing bitcoin which talks about you know how Bitcoin came to be or at least how I imagined it could come to be right. It kind of goes into why Satoshi created it using some of his own quotes as well as the technology and the actual implementation of bitcoin at a very high level. You know it’s good for people you know basic you know show on an intro. It’s only about a hundred pages long but after writing that book I got it into more and more conversations with bitcoin startups and I actually ended up on an advisory board to a public company as well called Riot and riots a bitcoin mining companies.

00:13:55:29 – 00:14:30:14

Yan Pritzker: They have this mine out in Oklahoma. We were doing strategy consulting for them and I was thinking through a lot of stuff around. What is the right thing to be building right now. OK. Because as you said it is very early and I 100 percent agree with that. I think people underestimate how early we are in the adoption of this thing. And because in the media you have this hype like bitcoin is going to twenty thousand dollars now it’s gone to zero. Like it’s just all this craziness. But if you look at what’s actually going on there’s like I mean half a percent of the world has any bitcoin to speak of let alone anything else.

00:14:30:16 – 00:15:09:01

Yan Pritzker: Right. I mean that’s such a small penetration of this new money that nobody is you know people aren’t ready for it yet. So you kind of got to go back to where. Like where are we in the cycle. I mean it’s like 1995 with the Internet which is where at which point the Internet had like half a percent of penetration in the world 5 percent in America this kind of kind of where we are. Quinn I would say even earlier. So in 1995 a lot of people thought the internet was dead on arrival because I’d been 20 years. Let’s keep it in mind how they don’t I didn’t think the Web came out in 93 but Internet has been around for a while and people had been kind of like getting really fed up with waiting but like what.

00:15:09:03 – 00:15:44:22

Yan Pritzker: I mean this is going nowhere. E-commerce is never going to happen. You know people are talking about e-learning whatever. None of this is going to happen. People were giving all these predictions that they don’t know it wasn’t going to go anywhere. And that’s where we are with bitcoin today. We’re very very early. So that led me to the idea. OK well we could be building all kinds of stuff we could be building lending businesses and there’s tons of great businesses like unchain capital and you know things like that. And then there’s like aptly or businesses that are building you know lightning network you know payment processors whatever but to me all of that stuff is it’s necessary and it’s great that they’re building it.

00:15:44:24 – 00:16:06:01

Yan Pritzker: But it’s also very early right. Because I mean who’s energy lighting payments when only half a percent of the world has any bitcoin. Right. Right. You need to build infrastructure but you can’t expect anybody to actually use it. So that led me to the idea that we need to have an on ramp right. We need to have more on ramps for Bitcoin. And a lot of people ask well like isn’t Coinbase an on ramp?

00:16:06:03 – 00:16:10:20

Yan Pritzker: You know as in the other aren’t all of these exchanges on ramps?

00:16:10:22 – 00:16:22:09

Yan Pritzker: And I would say they were. I think in 2013 Coinbase was an on ramp. in 2013 when you went to coinbase it said buy bitcoin and you press the button you buy the coin. That’s pretty decent on ramp

00:16:24:09 – 00:16:58:23

Yan Pritzker: but it became more than that. It became a trading platform. And now if I send you know my mom or my dad or my friends to coinbase or they see that they see a place to buy bitcoin. No they see a place to trade. And so now they’re learning about 30 different cryptos now. I believe you know look I’ve been setting this stuff for a long time and I think if you dig into the economics of it and how money works and how liquidity works most of these coins you know they’re used by traders professionally to make money from people who don’t understand any better. And these traders are primarily there. What are they doing they’re accumulating Bitcoin or they’re accumulating U.S.

00:16:58:25 – 00:17:30:16

Yan Pritzker: dollars they’re typically not accumulating other things they’re really just try and trade these other things against U.S. dollars or bitcoin to to you know to build their stack. So I don’t want to send my mom to a place where she’s going to get fleeced by professional traders. That’s not that’s not what I want her to do right. What I want her to do is be saving a little bit of bitcoin you know 1 percent every paycheck or every month or whatever. And that would be what we call our freedom money stash that stash of money for a rainy day.

00:17:30:20 – 00:18:14:27

Yan Pritzker: If God forbid you know the Soviet Union happens here and like currency controls happen and you know look where I’m locked out already the money’s my money is being printed like crazy a lot of this stuff started happening. So you need to have your freedom money stash of bitcoins for and that’s why we decided to do so on. It was kind of a joint concept between me and the founder of Corey. Corey clips then whose previous project give bitcoin was kind of pivoted into Swan So me and him you know I’d been advising him from early days of give bitcoin and we decided that we we did have room to compete with Coinbase because we wanted to have a really clear really simple onboard onramp to bitcoin which combined easy buying with recurring purchases automatic withdrawals and education.

00:18:14:29 – 00:18:46:05

Yan Pritzker: That’s really the other missing piece like people need to understand why what are they buying. What’s the point. What are they. What do they need this for right. And so we pulled in a lot of the podcasters and authors of the space to try to help us with a nice educational curriculum and get people really you know into what they’re doing because so many people have by the coin forgotten about it or didn’t get it. You know they bought a number that was going up and now the number one down and now they panicked and they sold it going right and 

Richard Carthon: just understanding like what’s the what’s the point of it was you.

00:18:46:08 – 00:19:21:28

Richard Carthon: Not necessary the utility but every time that I talked to anybody about trying to gain this basic understanding like crypto What do you purchase is perfectly good for you trying to get rich quick. Are you looking at this as a five to 10 year investment opportunity. My thing is it’s like if you’re gonna get into this space you are ok with losing it all. Period. Whatever you’re putting in there you have to just be ok with. If I lose all of this it is OK. Is that most likely gonna happen. No. Could it happen. Sure. So if you’re going in there with that mindset and you’re not putting in something that you’re putting in something that you’re OK with losing the next piece of it is is if you’re going to be doing this for the long haul.

00:19:22:00 – 00:19:43:10

Richard Carthon: Let’s say like I’m OK with putting in this money reoccurring over time five to 10 years you’re going to win every time like I’ve done dollar cost averaging in the crypto space year over year and like you just win almost every single time. If you’re just consistently putting in money over time and not caring about the ups and the downs it’s just the way it works 100 percent.

00:19:43:11 – 00:20:15:22

Yan Pritzker: I mean I agree with 100 and obviously that’s why Swann exists but yeah dollar cost averaging and removes the volatility. Right. If it goes up then you buy less for those down you buy more. It also just you know it’s a setter forget process you set it up and you don’t worry about it. A lot of people have tried to trade their way into more bitcoin and like so many people have gotten wrecked right. It’s just so easy and again it’s because you’re going up against guys who are professionals. They’re here. They’re living and breathing this stuff 24/7 and you might get lucky a few times but you’re more than likely going to lose your stash over time if you keep doing that.

00:20:15:24 – 00:20:48:15

Yan Pritzker: So I know dollar cost averaging it’s very low stress you put on the thing and you don’t look at it and like you said five to 10 years for me it’s even twenty five years I think like there is it could have happened sooner it could but I think there’s a generational component to the adoption of a new money that we can’t underestimate because look at I mean it’s not going to be our grandparents that are gonna buy Bitcoin right. It’s going to be our children. So you have to look at it that way. Like any adoption right. We didn’t get Facebook until kids were born with the Internet. I mean Zuck was born an Internet native right.

00:20:48:17 – 00:21:07:21

Yan Pritzker: Like he was on the Internet right. We’re talking about people like that who build a next generation of these services that become very easy to use. Right. Swan is here to onboard the current set of people but you know my kids might get bored by a whole different concept that may be very different to use bitcoin by the time they grow up. Right.

00:21:07:23 – 00:21:14:09

Richard Carthon: So real quick on Swan. Walk me through the process. So if I want to get on the platform what do I do and what does that look like.

00:21:14:29 – 00:21:22:15

Yan Pritzker: Yeah it’s super simple and you go to swanbitcoin.com and the basically you choose three things one is how much money you want to save.

00:21:22:17 – 00:21:53:18

Yan Pritzker: Two is how often. So it’s every week every month every paycheck. We’re also working on daily buys which should be coming probably within the next month or so. But you basically choose you know that period. How often how much. And then you connect your bank account and you can type in your your checking account number or you can do a link with plaid which is kind of this nice little interface where you type in your username and password and it kind of does the bank link for you whichever one you’re comfortable with. And that sets up your swan recurring purchase plan.

00:21:53:26 – 00:22:24:22

Yan Pritzker: And we also have this kind of idea of prepaying your fees which makes which lowers your fees. So our fees the lowest fees we have our point ninety nine percent which is the lowest you’ll find for this particular service which is recurring purchases you know recurring withdrawals from your bank account. And also we have automatic withdrawals back to your bitcoin wallet one that bitcoins ready which I don’t believe anybody else has at this point. So you know with Coinbase you’ll be paying. I don’t want to talk about it they’re completely way higher where.

00:22:24:26 – 00:22:52:13

Richard Carthon: Yeah it takes a lot of your money.

Yan Pritzker: It’s a rip off if you’re trading and you’re doing that kind of thing I mean that’s what the exchanges are for right. We’re not gonna be able to beat exchanges on trading fees but for automatically you offer your bank account automatic purchase of bitcoin an automatic withdrawal back to your bitcoin wallet know point nine percent is what you’re going to get if you’re doing a annual prepay for fees and you’re saving 50 bucks a week which is the most common thing people do on our platform.

00:22:52:15 – 00:23:11:09

Richard Carthon: Gotcha. Well that sounds really awesome. Everyone looking to get into the game and wants to set and forget and just you know be accumulating some Bitcoin over time. I recommend going checking out a swan Bitcoin. But real quick John while we got you just a couple other questions. I mean you’ve been in a space for a while. What are some things in the crypto space that has your attention right now.

00:23:12:27 – 00:23:18:21

Yan Pritzker: You know you talk about the crypto space and I know this is a multi a you know crypto kind of podcast which is cool.

00:23:18:24 – 00:23:22:11

Richard Carthon: Crypto and Blockchain, let me add that.

00:23:22:28 – 00:23:31:12

Yan Pritzker: I really do think that bitcoin is the thing to be looking at. It’s really really important. Right. If you look at how money works what is money.

00:23:31:14 – 00:24:09:10

Yan Pritzker: Right. Money is what people want to have. So they know they can spend it on the next person. Right. Is the most liquid thing and it’s very easy to prove like if you ask somebody you know if you would rather have a hundred dollars or a hundred dollars with the paper clips you probably want a hundred dollars. Right. Because it’s just the most every time. So mostly you could sell those paperclips on eBay or whatever right. But that there’s that liquidity problem where you can’t really just sell them very easily with dollars you know that the next person wants them. And with bitcoin it’s the same thing. Bitcoins got all the liquidity you know the next 30 crypto is behind a combined you know don’t even get close the number 10 crypto unless I’m a look ahead point five percent of the coins liquidity.

00:24:09:12 – 00:24:41:13

Yan Pritzker: So it falls off very very quickly for that reason. I think it’s very important to pay attention to bitcoin specifically and to watch what is happening in that space. A lot of concepts that people you know people are creating these other coins in order to compete with bitcoin on certain aspects. It doesn’t matter if those and if nobody has that coin or wants to accept it for payment. Right. And so the problem there is you know you want to again it’s the liquidity issue. People want to use the thing that’s the most liquid. So I would keep an eye on bitcoin there’s a lot of interesting developments in the space.

00:24:41:15 – 00:25:15:09

Yan Pritzker: Then there’s obviously lightning network. I know a lot of people have gotten kind of fed up with waiting for lightning to come alive and work but it is working. There are some people taking it as payment. And again it’s too early. I there’s no reason you would spend your Bitcoin today when you know it’s going to appreciate you said it’s going to a trillion dollars at least trillion dollars to me is a vast underestimation. Right. Gold is seven or eight trillion. Keep in mind all of the real estate the offshore bank accounts all that stuff that people use to store value today. You know that should not be stored in real estate enough for bank houses should be stored in bitcoin.

00:25:15:11 – 00:25:51:01

Yan Pritzker: So we’re gonna see more and more flows into that and as that happens we’re going to see the lightning network become a more robust vertical project. Keeping an eye on a called strike by as Jack Mueller’s which allows you to instantly convert fiat to you know until lightning payments which is very cool. So the person doesn’t even know they’re using lightning just happens in the background. I’m also very interested in what’s happening in the lending space. Companies like unchain capital which allow you to lend your bitcoin but also do it in a very cool way because you can actually see that Bitcoin stored on chain in a multi-state contract.

00:25:51:03 – 00:26:05:07

Yan Pritzker: So you know that it’s not being moved during any of that. All right. There’s so much innovation happening but it’s just too early which is an. We’re like 10 to 20 years for it to really flower. And I encourage everybody to be very patient because you know it’s gonna take that time

00:26:06:12 – 00:26:25:20

Richard Carthon: Agreed. Well I’m in the space where I’m trying to educate people on these opportunities because of people again think missed they missed the boat and that’s it’s too late to be entering this market. But it’s just so so early and if it’s in its infancy and just growing. So another quick question for you. Bitcoin halving is coming up. What are your thoughts on that.

00:26:26:15 – 00:27:01:15

Yan Pritzker: Yeah. So there’s a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen. So just you know to reiterate what that means is basically the amount of bitcoin being produced every roughly every 10 minutes is going to be cut in half. So basic supply and demand tells us if the supply goes down and the demand stays the same then the price goes up. That’s generally what’s happened in the past to having now to having maybe not enough data points to tell us what’s going to happen next. But Bitcoin is becoming more scarce. That’s that’s basically a fact. Now what’s happening in all over the world right now for paying attention we’re seeing this meme called money printers go burrr.

00:27:01:20 – 00:27:33:02

Yan Pritzker: Money money printers are on full force. And why is that happening well we had this big kind of economic slowdown shut down. Now some people will say it’s because of Corona but it’s not really because of Corona. What happened is you know for the last 10 years we quadrupled our money supply. We inflated the stock market. We had massive amounts of corporate share buybacks inflating the price of stocks without actual productivity gains. We have massive wealth disparity which is going to get worse. So you know this bubble was ready to pop.

00:27:33:04 – 00:28:04:14

Yan Pritzker: And now that it’s popped it’s being reinflated at a rate that’s just going to make less years look like a complete joke. I mean they’re already the Fed’s already at six and a half trillion on their balance sheet. We went into the crisis with less than 4 trillion it’s going to keep going I don’t think this is very near the end. So what does that mean. This is happening all over the world. People are printing money like crazy in order to prop up these unrealistic asset prices. The rich are getting richer the poor while they’re losing their jobs and they’re not investing in the stock market and tell you that. So they’re missing out on all these gains.

00:28:04:16 – 00:28:33:24

Yan Pritzker: They’re dead on on real estate. They’re missing out on those gains. We’re gonna see more and more wealth disparity. We’re going to see more money available in the world. And at some point this bubble will burst. Whether this is the birth or whether we’re gonna be able to reinflate it as is a big question. But when it does burst people are gonna have to realize that all prices everywhere are completely fake because they’ve been propped up by the central banks. So if they’re fake and the money has been diluted while you have hyperinflation and there’s only one thing on this earth that doesn’t hyper inflate that’s Bitcoin.

00:28:33:26 – 00:28:44:20

Richard Carthon: So yes to this point was made in the first place and what I’ve been telling people over and over again Bitcoin is essentially an all of crypto all crypto stands for Bitcoin. This was made in response to the first recession are the last the latest recession and it was made.

00:28:44:22 – 00:29:16:12

Yan Pritzker: I mean look at the message in the bunch and Chancellor on brink of second bailouts for banks right. And now which bailout is this I lost count. SCOTT It’s so bad. We live in a world where bailouts are now normal. There’s just no. Like all the risk has been removed. Right. If there are you know United Airlines or whatever like you have no reason to have any money in your coffers because you could just keep piling on debt knowing that one of the collapses governments step in and save you.

00:29:16:24 – 00:29:47:20

Yan Pritzker: And that creates horrible inefficiency in the economy. And it also creates horrible wealth inequality. So I would say to people you know a lot of people are like OK I’m too poor I can’t afford bitcoin for five dollars a month that’s detrimental I’m going to go to one bitcoin type typing five dollars a month and put five dollars of bitcoin every month. OK. It may not be much but it’s something that’s money that will not be taken from me. And that’s better than the junk paperbacks the greenbacks that you’ve got in your wallet that are losing value. You know it’s coming. I promise.

00:29:47:22 – 00:30:02:27

Yan Pritzker: I mean inflations here man. It’s been here. It’s been here. We’ve been lied to. I mean we were told we have 2 percent inflation but just look at the price of housing education health care you can’t afford it anymore. So two percent inflation is a joke. That’s not a thing. It’s not real.

00:30:03:08 – 00:30:36:23

Richard Carthon: Yes yeah. And being really good good points and like everyone listening today and like one when it is not as exciting as conversation is: it’s on par and it’s on point with what’s going on in the world right now. And I really appreciate all the knowledge you’ve been able to drop in the very important points. Everyone go back and listen to all of this because again the whole point of why crypto is around was in response to 2009 financial crisis in a lot of what happened then is proving itself right now in crypto so far but holding strong and which is a really big reason why I think

00:30:38:03 – 00:30:50:13

Richard Carthon: The next couple of months if not the next year we could see some really big things happen in the crypto market. And again Yan I really appreciate your time. What is a final thought that you want to leave with all of our listeners here today.

00:30:50:15 – 00:31:15:05

Yan Pritzker: I mean my final thought as always as patience always have patience and never sell the bottom like I. Don’t be a fool. Hold on to what you’ve got. You know it’s a generational thing if it’s not for you. It’s not a get rich quick thing for you it’s for your kids. OK bitcoins are not for me. If I can use it. That’s great. That’s a nice bonus cherry on top. But I’ve got it for my kids because they’re going to need it more than I will.

00:31:15:09 – 00:31:45:00

Richard Carthon: That is a great great final thought that I have not heard yet. So like yes you’re buying some of this crypto These are for your kids. So if you’re looking at it for that long term standpoint the Pike will be really happy just to that point. My grandfather bought a bond when I was like 5 years old. Right. And he gave it to me. All right. Actually he passed away and my mom gave it to me like your grandpa got this for you when you’re at this whatever age you spent I think 50 bucks and then it had been worth like I know two or three hundred dollars and it just goes to show like when you’re playing that long game. 

00:31:45:10 – 00:32:17:03

Yan Pritzker: It’s funny right. You talk about that’s what people used to do. They used to buy bonds to give to their children and then like I got a Bonds on my bar mitzvah when I was 13 that had some you know percentage yield on them or bonds of 0 percent yield zero. And they’re going all over the world they’re negative and they’re gonna be negative here too, I think. So bonds are no longer that thing that you can gift your children to. You know if you want a savings vehicle that appreciates over time you’re forced into risky investments you’re forced into the stock market and then you’re going to suffer 50 percent drops because that’s what the stock market does when it’s being artificially inflated. So

00:32:17:05 – 00:32:50:12

Yan Pritzker: So that’s that’s what Bitcoin is for you know and I would also encourage your listeners again. I know it’s the most lucrative podcast but that’s my litmus test is this something that I’m going to hold and can my grandkids use this. OK. If you’re buying like you know Raven coin to pass on to your grandkids. Well man good luck to you. Nobody’s doing that OK. Nobody’s doing that bitcoin. Yes there is inheritance planning around Bitcoin. There are lawyers that will do it for you. Everything else I would I would probably hesitate to pass that on to my grandkids. Just think about that if that’s your litmus test for what is something that’s worth holding on to. It will help you make the right decisions in these markets.

00:32:50:15 – 00:32:52:25

Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well I really appreciate your time. What are some different ways that people can connect with you?

00:33:01:12 – 00:33:33:01

Yan Pritzker: You can find me on Twitter my handle is @SKWP it’s pronounced scoop and you can also find the book Inventing bitcoin at inventingBitcoin,com . And of course you can find Swan at SwanBitcoin.com and we also have another product called give Bitcoin which is kind of part of the Swan family so you can check it out to givebitcoin.io. You just want to give them a gift of bitcoin to your friend. You don’t have to have to give the bitcoin we actually just you know convert it from your bank account to their bitcoin. So go ahead and give some bitcoin get people on board.

00:33:33:03 – 00:33:36:12

Yan Pritzker: It’s a great way to get people on board will hold their hand and we’ll teach them all about it.

00:33:37:03 – 00:33:42:11Richard Carthon: Excellent. Again super appreciate your time and for everyone listening, stay crypto current!