From $600M To $100B Michael Saylor’s Big Bitcoin Bet

if you're a betting man Bitcoin hits a million way I will just tell you I think it's 13 million in the year 2045 if you ask the question what did your Monae cost in 1930 and what does it cost today welcome to Today's Show the Tai Lopez Show I'm here with a very special guest Michael sailor some would call him the king of Bitcoin that's how I think of him he's got a company worth over 100 billion took a $600 million company made it worth 100 billion by strong conviction on bitcoin we're going to be talking about what Trump will do for the Bitcoin economy can Bitcoin save the world was Jamie Diamond right that bitcoin's the biggest scam thanks for being on the show happy to be here one of my questions for you is just to start you know I started really looking into crypto in 2016 I recorded a video about the two Pizza Story um and it went viral got 50 million views on YouTube before YouTube took it down um do you think people buy more out of fomo or do you think humans are motivated especially with Bitcoin by Logic where they go well I see where this is going there's a limited Supply it's anti-inflationary you can C you can be a custodian of your own money or do you think the average buyer is just fomo um we say that Bitcoin is on a need to no basis I think that people that discover Bitcoin uh they discover it because they need to know about it and so that need to know comes at different times for different individuals in and different corporations and different uh jurisdictions if you're living in hyperinflation in Argentina then you have a need to know so the argentinians were some of the early Bitcoin adopters and big Bitcoin Advocates if you live in uh Nigeria and the currency collapses or Lebanon and the bank freezes your assets you're on the need to know uh so normally it's it's people in uh struggling economies they get it and then uh a company that's well-run that's very successful doesn't have a need to know uh very affluent on the upper east side of you know New York don't necessarily have a need to know they come a bit later but when my company ran into uh travails and struggles during the covid lockdowns of 2020 we had a need to know and we started looking for a solution so I would say that um uh people adopt and embrace Bitcoin uh when they run into some challenge in their personal or professional life that causes them to open their mind and think I I need I need a new idea I need to embrace a new a new way in order to move forward with life yeah this morning I was read I try to read biographies and I was reading the the autobiography of Charles Darwin and he at the last page of his autobiography he said um he he thinks the reason he was successful is because he had unbounded patience on Long contemplation of a single matter he could think and focus on one thing it seems like you're that guy with Bitcoin like you've been thinking about it living in breathing it when was the first light in the brain where you go do you remember it do you remember where you were like people remember where they were when JFK was assassinated is there a moment you just remember the light bulb you had been contemplating and the light bulb just went this is where I'm going to take my financial life um I think in in March of 2020 during the covid panic and the lockdowns uh the economy came to a grinding halt everybody went home we had the 15 days to stop the spread uh there was a lot of anxiety in the economy and then we saw interest rates get taken to zero and it's almost like the economy just stopped I mean traffic stopped cruise ships stopped airplanes stopped you know restaurants closed hotels closed interest rates went to zero and I was sitting in front of my pool in Miami Beach and it was just Dead Calm but I was watching CNBC and and in CNBC at some point it became clear that there was a that if you actually we in Wall Street or you owned a bunch of financial assets you're probably going to be okay but if you're on Main Street and you're trying to actually uh do things like run a restaurant or a yoga salon you were going to have a bad year and so at that point I said well I have all this cash and it's worthless like zero interest rates and the central Banker said we're not even thinking about thinking about raising interest rates for four years so you have a non-performing asset and then I looked at uh the government basically printing money as I mean I thought if we shut down the economy for two years that's going to cost a lot of money and that's going to get printed and so I saw hyperinflation you know coming at the end of those lockdowns and I noticed my money was a melting Ice Cube and I thought well I need to do something with the money before it becomes worth 40% less and that's the point where I said to a friend of mine so tell me about that Bitcoin thing again so to be clear you that's an interesting story because I feel like the number one reason people don't get into crypto or anything is they think they're too late but what you're saying is really you only had the aha moment four years ago I I think uh when I when I was thinking about it it was four or 5,000 a coin for Bitcoin and when we started buying it in size it was in the mid 9,000 and 10,000 11,000 and it's it's 10x since then but to be clear um the brilliant idea Bitcoin is digital property it's uh it's cyber Manhattan I've created a city in cyberspace that's 276 blocks wide 276 blocks high 276 blocks deep you're buying 121 millionth of all the money that there's ever going to be in cyberspace and one day the8 billion people are going to want to put some of their money there and it's it's it's the most simple idea imaginable do you want to buy 121 millionth of all the money in the world for all of eternity like the product's going to be the same in 100 years 500 years a thousand years so think of it like um you know buying Manhattan in 1750 and you're 100 years late and someone goes you know you're 100 years late you know the guy that's selling you the the building paid less than you're going to pay aren't you afraid you're overpaying and it's like well I'm going to dump it to a guy in 1770 for more and that's stupid because you should buy it every year from, 1650 to today and it's the it's the greatest city in America so why would you why wouldn't you want to own 67 blocks of Manhattan just like why wouldn't you own 67 blocks of Bitcoin so I'm not it's you're never going to be too late if you understand that the future digital economy is going to be built on top of 21 million blocks of Bitcoin I remember in 2016 when I released this video and it was fluctuating between 4 and 15,000 I found an old tweet I did and it was at 14,000 and people were saying oh Ty you're you're getting people slaughtered they're buying at the top and I said if you believe in something the reason you believe in it is because you believe there's no top so you know I I said about eight years ago I said my guess I don't know if you remember when John McAfee made a bet I think he said if bitcoin's not at a million by 2020 I'm going to cut my penis off uh I told all my friends never bet a body part on anything but but I said I think it'll be at 250 Grand by 2025 2026 part of the reason is the old hands have to flush out I know people that got Bitcoin at $300 $1,000 as it the rise comes to 100 Grand which it recently hit it just becomes such a big Temptation the old hands flush push the price back down but inevitably now you have a new hand of buyers that bought in at 100 they're not going to sell delto it hits 200 so this kind of seawing do you think because I I feel like among smart people the seawing is the number one thing that people argue against Bitcoin so I had a friend here in finance he says Ty I I see where you're going Bitcoin the reason I don't consider it is a currency is the currencies we trust in the world they don't seea very much you know the dollar is pegged somewhat re not with Joe Biden it change but what's your counterargument to people say yeah bitcoin's good but it's too speculative it moves in one year from 15,000 to 100,000 what's your counter I think the important thing is to understand it not as a digital currency but as digital Capital uh money decomposes into currency which is the medium of exchange like the peso the ruble or the dollar or Capital which is a store of value like a Monae painting like a really nice penthouse in Manhattan like a bar of gold or like uh a Bitcoin and so if you think of it as currency you get really confused because you want to buy coffee with it but the truth is no currencies are good stores of value you wouldn't want to hold a million dollars of dollars or pesos or marks or Franks or Yen or anything for a hundred years right but you know if you go and you ask the question what did it cost for an acre of land in Manhattan in 19 1900 what did it cost for an acre of land in Palm Beach in 1900 uh you know I live in Miami Beach uh the land that my house is on was $10,000 an acre in 1930 now it's 20 million an acre yeah okay so if you ask the question what did your Monae cost in 1930 and what does it cost today the point really is the people that bought Palm Beach or Hampton's real estate or Mones or or they want to buy Bitcoin those are not speculators it's not a four-year if you bought a Monae in 19 uh 13 and if you had to sell it in 1916 in the middle of World War I I mean maybe you sold it at a loss but you're an idiot right because a 100 years later it's going to be worth somewhere in the range of a 100 to a thousand times more money so you should think of it as scarce Desir Able Property something that a government can't make more of I mean the reason that Palm Beach real estate is valuable is because uh the government can't make more beachfront in Palm Beach and they can't the reason that dead artists are more valuable than alive artists is you don't want the artist to make any more paintings you want the vermier to stop painting you want D Vinci to stop painting So you need a cap it needs to be something which is scarce it needs to be desirable and Bitcoin happens to be the most desirable Global Capital asset people are buying it because the alternative is to buy a building in Africa or to buy a bunch of land in Siberia or to haul a bunch of gold bars you know in their car across a border or to worry about someone spilling coffee on their van go you know it's like you once you see it like that you're like okay I kind of like the idea that I can hold a million dollars worth of value on my phone and I don't have to someone worry about someone spelling coffee on it and if I needed to send it from here to Tokyo on Saturday afternoon in half an hour I could do it that's that's the way to think of bit Bitcoin so on that note that now you have this Capital store on a practical basis for my friends that are new to the game do you recommend that they buy buy Bitcoin on a centralized exchange a coinbase a crypto.com a binance or are you a big fan of you have your own wallet it's a device you own it you maybe put it in the safe deposit box or you control it a lot of people say you know your it ain't yours if you don't control the keys what's your thought I think there are three reasonable ways to acquire Bitcoin uh and the right way depends upon on who you are what stage of life you're in where you live also whether you're acquiring it for yourself your family or your company or your government uh or institution like and so if you're uh an Institutional Investor and uh you're acquiring it for your charity or your city or your government or your company or and you just want the economic exposure you might just buy the spot ETF and there are spot ETFs like ibit from Black Rock or fbtc and every country in the world right there ETFs in Europe and there ETFs in Brazil and there are ETFs in Germany and Australia and the like and and for some people what they should hold is they should hold Bitcoin wrapped as a security now that's that if you're if you're um a a senior citizen and you just kind of want it in your retirement account or something and you want to be invested 2% in it or three % in it in that particular case that might also make sense because you just pick up the phone call your broker and say just buy me a bunch of of this thing and you put the phone down after 10 seconds and it's done and your bank you know JP Morgan or Wells Fargo or whatever Morgan Stanley they' just done it for you and it took 10 seconds like you know my 86-year-old father is not going to actually self- custody change jurisdictions move to another you know country you know and running a hardware wallet so so for a group of people that's the right call for another group of people um they should buy the Bitcoin on a on an exchange that they trust probably a regulated exchange there you know depends on whether you're in London you know or whether you're in uh France or whether you're in Australia or Brazil or the US normally pick a regulated trustworthy entity and whatever country that you have domicile and then you buy Bitcoin and you buy the commodity and then I would say for many people it's okay just to put it into coal storage or or put it with a a custodian they trust many people custody with Fidelity some custody with coinbase there I would you know there are large banks in Brazil like Bank of to so there are other other uh regulated custodians that people Trust you've already got an account with them and you trust them then that would be simple Standard Chartered Bank is another example of a regulated custodian um and then there's a third group of people that would want to take self- custody and if if you capable of handling your own uh if you're an adult I would say you should be probably more than 18 maybe you should be less than 75 I not not because I don't think senior citizens can do it I just think that their eyesight's not that good right like at some point if your eyes aren't that good you have a hard time reading the hardware wallet and you struggle with that then maybe you would think about it but but if you're pretty fasel with a computer and you're fasel with a phone and you're capable of managing your own assets and and if you have a need to then you should take self- custody and so another way to say is is the more uncertain your future and the longer your future is is the more important it is for you to own Bitcoin and not own the security version of it if you were sitting in uh Lebanon or you were in the middle of Africa and you know my checkl would be well do you trust the bank no do you trust the government no do you trust the currency no do you think you might need to change countries across the border with all your money yes in that case it's a no-brainer you should have the Bitcoin in self- custody or you should have it in a custodian that you trust outside of that country but you know at the point where you're like 85 years old and you're not you know you're not leaving your living room you know for the rest of your life at that point then probably you take a different view because because you're different and companies like my company micro strategy we hold Bitcoin because we want to be able to move the Bitcoin between any custodian in the world or take self- custody and when you do that as a commodity there's no tax ible event so you're keeping optionality you know if I needed to put it in London and or I needed to move it between 100 different custodians or if I wanted to take self- custody I can do that without a taxable event I wouldn't uh I wouldn't hold the security because right now Securities Law in the US and the treatment of Bitcoin ETFs is you would have to sell the ETF take a tax taxable capital gain and then move the cash and then repurchase someone else and that's that's a inefficiency of the current market structure it might be cured if we get to inine create and Redemption of Bitcoin ETF but right now it's an inefficiency so I think if you think you need to move the asset around your your advantaged and you have better property rights holding the commodity that the pure pure property rather than holding the security if you're not selling it and you're just transferring it that's not and you have it in custody I I always said people would always say to me my counterargument to people on Bitcoin in general was I use it as a utility I for example I do big giveaways on my social media I have 7 million social media followers one of the things I did at one stage the early stage like Mr Beast I did these big giveaways and I would get people in India I would get people in Pakistan win and to wire somebody $300 in Pakistan is effectively impossible even if you pull it off and your bank doesn't freeze it as fraud uh the fees to the person in Pakistan receiving the money right now I love Bitcoin because I can send somebody a payment so to me just to add on what you were saying about it being a store of capital that can appreciate there also is a utility to it so on that note do you think like El Salvador which has made 300 million in profit recently from their buying Bitcoin do you see a day where Donald Trump has a US Reserve in Bitcoin I do actually um I think that Bitcoin is emerging as the world's Reserve Capital Network it is the dominant Capital network of the world so the dollar is the world's Reserve currency and you recall I said money is currency of its short-term medium exchange it's Capital if it's long-term store of value and if I wanted to say a billion dollars from one point on the earth to the other right the choice is ship a billion dollars of gold move a billion dollar building or send Bitcoin or send a billion dollars of paintings you can you can see paintings aren't funable they don't make good money a building isn't portable it doesn't make good money gold you know gold failed as a capital Network 400 years ago when the king of Spain tried to send a bunch of gold to the Netherlands to finances AR Army it got blocked by Queen Elizabeth she bankrupted the Spanish Army and that's why the Netherlands is Protestant and not Catholic today so so it's pretty obvious Bitcoin is a great Capital Network and it's a great Capital asset um it makes sense for the US to own it because if the US owns that Capital Network then anybody that wants to sell their Russian real estate or their Chinese natural gas Fields is going to buy Bitcoin so if you know where everybody's going if you know everybody in the rest of the world is going to bitcoin and if you know everybody in the 20th century is going to trade their 20th century assets for 21st century assets you might as well buy a big chunk of the network so that when they get there you're the beneficiary of it and I I think uh Trump is pretty good business person and uh and this is an economic brilliance stroke so I I think that they get it they understand it and we will see the US um move very very aggressively into Bitcoin at some point in time now I want to step back for a second my audience is very interested in high performers and and you're certainly one you you might be called the king of Bitcoin uh I saw by the way congratulations I saw your release that you bought about 21,000 Bitcoin last last week or very recently so what's a daily routine or are you even a believer that some of your success comes from a certain daily routine do you have one do you think it's important you're you're you know you're a you're worth maybe 10 billion dollar do you think a big part of your success has been a discipline daily routine or not so much I I think a lot of different routines work for different people depends on your culture and where you live but but right now my daily routine would be to be up with the sunlight so when the Sun rises I'm moving make sure uh make sure I start the day with a bit of exercise then uh then uh study and uh absorb what's going on in the marketplace and and uh and then start to engage and uh I've got a bunch of business you know projects and activities I'm always working on and then I've got a bunch of communication so I you know I think that uh if you combine that with Focus I mean I would I would say the principles for Success are you know Focus figure out what you're going to do I would I think it's more important the world wants you to be really good at something it doesn't want you to be uh decent at a 100 different things and I think that and the world I don't think the world wants my opinion on the 99 other things I mean if you're not the foremost expert on the one thing and you're just if you were the top if you're the top 0.1% on a 100 things well that means there's like 10,000 people that have a better Insight than you have that makes you number 99,999 and the world is getting to the point where it really wants to go to the opinion of the top one two it might take three opinions maybe it can it can deal with three or four opinions it doesn't care about the opinion of the 9,000th best person in something and we're all talking to each other so I think laser like focus on what you're doing and and my general view is uh you can discuss a hundred things with your circle of trust your friends and your family you can engage in 10 things you know as part of your vocation to make a living but you ought to speak about one thing right I I I focus upon what is what is it the world needs to know about this one thing that I'm focused on and I stay in my lane and I let other people be the experts on all of the other things because the world's a big place it's very complicated and uh and I don't want to dilute my uh message distract my followers or dissipate my energy I think confucious said the man who chases two rabbits catches is none so but on that note though as you were building focus on bitcoin this one asset class becoming the king of Bitcoin do you were there books and mentors that helped you gain that Focus are there people you look back and go that was a key human that I knew that was a key book that was a key article do you attribute some of your success to mentors in Reading well um I would start to preface this with you can learn anything on the internet and once you decide that you want to learn something and you go and you start to Google it or you start to Google on YouTube and you start to search on X or other other platforms and you start to you start to engage you'll find a lot of expertise and a lot of resources so I definitely did a lot of research but you know off the top of my head some of the key inspiration are uh the Bitcoin standard which is a excellent book written by saine amus uh a lot of work by uh Andreas Antonopoulos you know on the internet of money I thought was very good uh the bullish case for Bitcoin uh a lot of papers on bitcoin by early ogs and then and then start to speed watch all of the Bitcoin podcast and then start to dig into all the literature I mean there's you know eventually I end up say you know going through four or five six different courses on bitcoin and watching thousands of hours or re consuming thousands of hours of content but if someone were to ask the question how do I come up to speed on bitcoin I would say just remember Bitcoin is Hope and type in h go to hope.com that's my website and on my website I have books papers course videos all sorts of leaders and you can certainly sift through that and find materials and in the absence of that you know go to YouTube and just start googling and then find the most popular you know videos and and A lot's been said I think once you're focused on it you'll actually take away what you need to know about the subject yeah yeah back in 2016 I launched a a little online course not very much money I built a paid community called Bitcoin crypto Mastermind I just went around interviewing really smart people who at that time had 50 million or 100 million in in Bitcoin and I remember four or five years later there was a woman came to an event at my house and she's like Ty I was in this Mastermind and I bought you know bit I had inherited 100 Grand and I I bought Bitcoin at five grand or something and she's like I'm retired now and so I I like the name hope she was anytime you catch a new trend early you have a chance to bypass the path of the masses the path of the masses is only learning through trial and error um you know Buffett Warren Buffett says it's true humans only learn through trial and error but there's no rule it has to be your own and I see people resisting Bitcoin and I'm going this is going to be a tough life because the world's going digital we got Quantum Computing we have ai it just makes sense if we went back to the 1960s and we made one of those Jetson's you know predictions what will the future look like okay flying cars this it just makes sense that somebody would say well there'll be like a digital currency you won't need paper anymore and it might not even be controlled by a government do do you think and I maybe I know the answer because you call it hope.com but do you think that Bitcoin actually has the ability to solve major problems when I say major I mean prevent nuclear Wars prevent famine prevent Another Cold War because now when people are connected to I don't know if you remember this old Theory called the McDonald's Theory countries that have a McDonald's don't go to war with each other because they have an economic interest with each other do you think there's something to that that if if there is a universal hope that this Bitcoin we use it in China we use it in Nigeria we use it in Los Angeles that it actually brings people together more than just a greedy way to make money I do I think that uh Bitcoin is an enlightened and peaceful way to settle our differences on a global basis I think that it uh in a way it it demonetized is the incentives for war if um if a nation has the majority of its assets and land uh you can simply take the land but if a nation has the majority of its Assets in Bitcoin no amount of violence will allow you to seize their property because it's in cyber space so so when your property is in your head or in your private possession uh there's an incentive for hostile actors to negotiate with you whereas you know if all your wealth was literally uh a bar of gold I could just shoot you and take the bar of gold I could even even bomb your house and take the gold the gold doesn't get destroyed so so I think that um that digital property is a much better a more secure idea than physical property I also think that um there's 900 trillion dollar of wealth in the world and half of it is an assets people hold um they hold it uh for some utility like they want to use the house or the boat or the warehouse but the other half of the wealth is just store of value people just want to preserve their capital for long periods of time without degradation so bitcoin's a$2 trillion asset class there's 450 trillion of physical and financial assets that are 20th century assets those assets are degrading due to war due to inflation due to entropy due to chaos due to competition due to weather um the cost of that is like 3% a year so 3% of 450 trillion is is 134 trillion dollar a year of just environmental destruction so as you transform wealth from analog form and physical form to digital form you uh you avoid and eliminate a lot of misery and anxiety and tragedy and uh and so Bitcoin is solving the problem of just giving us um a more efficient way uh to preserve our economic energy forever and if you think about think about a family if I say to you as the head of a household you're financially secure you have enough money to to provide for your family now and for the next four generations whatever they might need and then I say well how does that make you feel and the answer is I you know I can take the Long View and I can plan for my grandchild's college education or you know and if I said to you well you've got all your money in a bank the bank just froze your assets you won't be able to get it out I I'm not sure you're going to have to leave your house on Monday and I don't know how you're going to eat figure it out think about how that affects your mindset and so so I think that economic security has an impact on your mental health your physical health your psycho you know your economic welfare and then also your time Horizon and the really beautiful things in humanity whether they're notra or whether they're a park or whether they're a great um a great scientific invention uh they're made by people that were economically secure that could take a long view of things and and Bitcoin provides that Foundation to build a better civilization yeah I was just reading all this news coming out about how big Banks were just not giving people a bank account people would wake up their assets were frozen I know a guy came to my house about 5 years ago beautiful family kids he woke up one day and all his assets were frozen he ended up killing himself it's a very tragic story and I tell people who have money don't trust Central governments completely with all your assets they've been letting people down since the beginning of civilization when you Central absolute power corrupts absolutely so there's a little clip I'm sure you've seen it Jamie Diamond you know CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world he says and his opinion bitcoin's a scam it's a Ponzi scheme it just it's a shell game yes it's going up in value because you can convince somebody else to buy it or I think Charlie Munger also said Bitcoin is rat poison he calls it the greater sucker Theory yeah it goes up because you find a sucker dumber than you to buy it at a higher price but eventually they say the shell game will drop what's your argument obviously these are intelligent people who have made money why did they miss it why do smart people who have called many things correctly why do they see Bitcoin and just go oh this is just a scam there's no substance to it what are they missing um at some point in your life you know you you have a successful business uh you're wealthy you have succeeded in life you've had a family you've got respect and and it's inevitable uh in human condition that as you progress through your life cycle you become more conservative more comfortable in your ways and more comfortable in your assumptions um I I don't think uh you can as I said bitcoin's on a need to know basis you can't expect someone at the end of their career who's been successful with a different set of techniques and Technologies and and uh systems of thought to embrace this one you know uh Jamie Diamond didn't invit Facebook either right and and uh you know the people that if you were to roll the clock back there was electricity and and it used to be electricity people were the innovators and then there's AT&T but AT&T didn't invent Google and uh you know and large banks in the US aren't responsible for giving bank accounts to people in Africa or War zones so they're thinking about about their frame of reference you know he or Warren Buffett or Charlie Monger they have their frame of reference but they're not 20-some years old in Venezuela or Argentina watching their money melt down a toilet right and they're not fleeing from uh a war zone in Afghanistan or Iraq and they're not they're not providing banking services to people in Siberia or in Ukraine in the middle of a war right so so I think that uh the people that Embrace crypto and embrace Bitcoin they're um they're the new generation uh 20-some 20-some wants a house wants a family wants a life wants respect wants to make their way in the world wants to make uh a successful career and and wants money they don't have it they have to come up with new ideas a 70-year-old doesn't need those things um Led Zeppelin picked up electric guitars right and they created rock and roll and it wasn't a 50s something classical musician in Carnegie Hall that did it even though even though that musician was probably a genius you could be a genius you could be the best um musician of your generation but the point is it's the 19-year-old that's going to grab the electric guitar and do the new thing so you're seeing the Millennials the Gen Z's you'll see you'll see people that are of a new generation use new tools and create brilliant new things and and you know if you're sitting around wondering why waiting for an 85y old at the end of their life to tell you why it's a good idea for you at age 18 to pick up a guitar or to Tinker with electricity you know or to program your computer right then then you're probably the wrong idea because it's it's not there their job to innovate and create the future they won't be around to see it it's it's the future is for the young and and for those who have a need yeah necessity is the mother of invention people who don't need it if you're the head of a bank if you're already a billionaire it's like H you're one of the few people that it's it's interesting you have this openness to new experience what I I'm very interested in people's families without going too deep but parents grandparents uncles do you have this in your blood where there's were there innovators were there Pioneers were there people took big bets big balls are is that is that in the bloodline you know uh I lived on Air Force bases my entire life and I traveled all around the world and so I think that was a really good formative experience to see the world uh my family also uh they taught me to read I mean they used to encourage me to read a lot and I read hundreds and thousands and thousands of books and I was inspired by especially science fiction you know Robert heinan and and Arthur C Clark and Isaac azimov and and and from a very early age in elementary school you know I was thinking I should uh I should go to MIT and build spaceships because that's what the hero does and have space suit World Travel so I think that helped and then I think when I got to MIT I met a lot of extraordinarily well well educated uh people from good backgrounds and then I I encountered some great professors and uh I remember one Professor walking out saying you know I just talked to NASA this tile fell off the space shuttle they don't know why it burned off on re-entry but they want to figure out how to fix it what do you think we should do and I was 18 years old and this guy with a PhD who consulted with NASA scientist was pretty much saying here's the problem no one in the world's figured out but I think you as an 18-year-old can probably figure it out I believe in you so why don't you reason from first principles and solved the problem that nobody else in the universe has ever figured out before and that gave me an extraordinary amount of confidence and so I I I think I I think my upbringing did help and I think the idea of having that education and encountering those Role Models where they they pretty much say you know figure it out for yourself from first principles here's the tools you need and other people have done it before and and we expect you to do it too I I think that really catapulted me into my career okay I have a question from a follower Michael you you you've got many billions to your name how does it feel to be a billionaire you know I mean the best thing about it is that is that you're able to get the attention of people that you can help right e sometimes there whether it's a corporation like Apple computer or Tesla they might respond to your tweets they might notice you you know the ability to go on television and and explain to people if Bitcoins Crash from 66,000 to 16,000 I get the ability to go on TV and explain that it's okay we're gonna come back I'm not selling I'm buying and I meet a lot of people around the world that say I was really stressed out but you gave me hope and you helped me get through a difficult time and I was inspired by the example so I see it as you know it's a responsibility but it's an opportunity and uh you know if you say an intelligent thing and three people around the table nod you help three people but if you can say the same intelligent thing and help three million people it feels pretty good you know I it feels very very good to be able to help people and for people to say you made a difference in my life and I find that to be very motivational gets me up in the morning with much power comes much responsibility they say what's your favorite social media platform now what's the one you're like this is the one I like I go to here Tik Tok they say may be banned you know Tik tok's had a lot on bitcoin and crypto YouTube where do you go most of my thoughts engagement is on X so I I post a lot of stuff on my my ex account at sailor sa y l r and of course I think I think uh platforms like YouTube are very powerful so so I think uh you know deep content intellectual content either on X or YouTube are probably the two places where I engage most with my community you know I do Post occasionally on some other platforms like Instagram but but um you know the investment Community the political Community the crypto community the Bitcoin Community they're kind of bouncing between those two platforms pretty often yeah yeah crypto X is kind of become the default place I mean YouTube like I said when I first started posting and I did an ad campaign of mention crypto it take you down they reversed courses but the good thing about X is hopefully with Elon it's just it's not going to be shut down you know um so real practical Somebody's Watching they've never bought Bitcoin they've they've got let's take a simple scenario somebody has $11,000 they feel like they could invest they're not wealthy they're you know what's your recommendation because do they wait and try to time it and they go oh okay I'm going to wait it's at 100,000 now let's wait till I'm not going to buy until it goes to 60 I saw somebody on on social media saying never buy now it's a scam you know wait or are you let's buy a little bit every month you got a th000 bucks let's put 80 bucks a month in over the whole year what what's something I would say first of all just understand it's part of your Capital portfolio so you only take the money that you don't need to live on in the next four years so four years is a shorttime horizon 10 years is a good investment Horizon forever is the best investment Horizon it's something that you want to to retire on and give to your kids kids and maybe your family four generations from now we thank you for making them Rich it's like if you could if you could buy Central par a 100 years ago you know and own own part of Central Park your family would be angry at you you know 200 years later that you sold it in order to buy a Model T Ford so so think long term and then after that I think dollar cost averaging you know just whenever you've got some money and you don't need it you know for a near-term expenditure you just progressively invest just like you know again in 1900 I would have said every year you buy a little bit of Central Park and then over 20 years you'll own a lot of Central Park and then your grandkids will thank you for having bought that so that that would be my suggestion so on the inverse let's say somebody has put money in and they put a th000 in and now it's worth 10,000 and they need some income they need to pay a bill for two grand are you a fan of reverse dollar cost average dollar cost sell so you go okay let's sell a little bit every week you know I think um the smartest thing to do is if you have Bitcoin and that's I I would sell every other asset first I would mortgage my house first I would sell you know I would sell my chairs I would sell other Collectibles I would sell other stocks I would sell my other bonds but if you are a Bitcoin maximalist and the only thing that you have that's of liquid quality is Bitcoin I hold it till the bidder end and then I would sell only the amount I have to to pay my bill because bitcoin's been going up 60% a year for the past four years probably for the past decade and so it's it's pretty expensive money I would rather borrow money at 8% than give up 60% interest on my Bitcoin wait you oh sorry go ahead I missed the last part no I I said when you absolutely need the money you know for the kidney transplant or right or for the whatever sell Bitcoin but I also say to people just keep in mind like my long-term forecast for Bitcoin is it goes up 29% a year on average for the next 21 years and so I look out to the year 2045 and I think it's like you know base Cas is 13 million a coin and it you know it could go faster it could go slower but when you think about that you're like well every Bitcoin you sell is going to cost you $13 million or if you decide to go buy a Ferrari or a sports car with three or four Bitcoin or five it's a $65 million Ferrari yeah so think really hard do you want the Ferrari which will be good you know may get you a few dates and people think you're cool for the next years but would you rather have $65 million 20 years out because you can retire on that live a very comfortable life so so I cling to my Bitcoin you know you do not sell your Bitcoin sell the chairs sell the shoes walk Barefoot so w in your mind if you a betting man Bitcoin hits a million when yeah it's it's difficult to give you a short-term for so I'm not going to give you an exact date I will just tell you I think it's 13 million in the year 2045 I think it'll grow between 30 and 60% a year for the for the next for the next 5 to 10 years and then I think it'll it's growing 60% a year right now I think it it it uh will decelerate to be growing 20% a year 21 years out and so it could surge up you know quite quickly over the next four years and you would get there in four to eight years but it you know it's very volatile it takes a random path and we can't be quite sure so I I think uh I would uh I would take a more open-minded view I would just assume that it's going to keep grinding up it'll surge up it'll you know it'll Smash down it'll you know it'll do the serpentine thing and the vola is good because if it was straight line growing and everybody saw that it was very predictable then a bunch of people richer than you that you don't like would just buy it all and you wouldn't be able to get any I like that so the volatility is actual turning lemons into lemonade it's like I I always say you don't want to find something that's easy because then anybody everybody will do it so it's not easy to buy Bitcoin when it's dropping but that's actually your best protection from some genius sitting on 40 billion just buying it all up the volatility is a gift to the faithful the volatility for example I started buying Bitcoin and it and it soared up to 66,000 it crashed down to 40,000 it zoomed up to 60,000 something again it crashed down to 16,000 it came back up and all the way it was very volatile and uncertain and we were able to go from $250 million in Bitcoin to buying 25 billion to having 42 billion in Bitcoin and we took our company from 600 million in Enterprise Value to more than a 100 billion yeah if Bitcoin had been predictable if it had just if if Bitcoin had just grown 30% or 60% consistently 5% a month or something then Warren Buffett Charlie Monger you know Jamie Diamond everybody in the world Bill Gates they all would have bought it I wouldn't get any I would have 125th as much we wouldn't be a hundred billion company we might be A5 billion company but the volatility was a gift to the faithful it scares away the tourist it scares away the lazy it scares away the people that are already conventionally rich that have all the money if you're a 20 something or 30-some and you're willing to do the work if you're willing to spend a 100 hours or 200 hours if you have more time than money then the volatility of Bitcoin is a gift to you if you have more if you're if you have more money than time and you're arrogant and egotistical and and you just pick the obvious then if the volatility goes away you buy Bitcoin if people if people in the rest of the world knew what I know and they understood and they agreed with me Bitcoin would go to $10 million tomorrow and if Bitcoin went to $10 million tomorrow I want you to think about how you would feel and how your viewers would feel because you would lose 20 years of stacking opportunity during which you get to buy at less than $10 million so the difference between $10 million and $100,000 that's what you give up if the volatility goes away and people start to agree with you so I'll end with just one thought which is uh in my life I've made a bunch of very successful Investments I bought Facebook I bought Apple I bought Google I bought Amazon I bought Bitcoin and and there's a simple formula if you want to make 10 extra money or even 100 extra money and this is the formula find something in the world everybody needs Nobody Can stop and few people understand and if you find that if if if it's like obvious Amazon Google Facebook iPhones Bitcoin digital digital Capital digital money digital photos digital relationships digital video if it's obvious and nobody can stop it but you go and you talk to a bunch of people with more money than you and they're old older than you and they're more successful than you and they all say I don't get it I don't get it okay at that point the right the the Cowardly response the loser response is well a lot of people told me to give up on it because they don't get it so I won't get it and the right response is I'm going to study it and decide if they're wrong and I'm going to make a decision for myself and if I got it if I bought Amazon when Wall Street hated it if I bought Facebook and Google and apple when Wall Street hated it if I bought Bitcoin when Wall Street hated it then I'm getting rich Charlie Monger did say you get paid in uh he said wasn't for the stupidity of other people you wouldn't be able to get rich and when it comes to bitcoin whether it's the guy who bought two two pizzas for because he didn't understand the Bitcoin that was in his possession and he said now that is worth over1 billion so he has two piz worth it's just and so I tell people catch Trends early don't be a skeptic skepticism is the killer of hopes and dreams and then like you said uh or maybe you didn't say it but I when I think of you I think this guy's got balls the whole world is saying oh you know and you really get paid in proportion to your courage too so let me ask you this last question as we wrap up do you think courage is genetic do you think you built it you used to be more scared and then over time you learned it's like a muscle where did the courage come from I think it's one part courage it's one part conviction and one part Clarity but the the conviction comes from the clarity and the courage comes from the conviction and at some point if you've done the work then you have the conviction and if we go back and look at the history of the human race there's a dude running through the forest and sees a lightning strike and and he sees the tree on fire and at that point you either run away from the fire because it's scary or you go and you stare at it and you take a a bow and you capture the fire make a torch and if you're a little bit smarter you keep a fire for yourself and if you're a lot smart you think wow I'm going to create a bonfire I'm going to sell fire I'm going to go take it and carry it from tribe to tribe and from place to place and I'm going to use it to cook food and scare away animals and clear the forest and maybe one day I'll make steel or maybe if you're Henry Ford you'll put the fire in an engine put it in a car and give Humanity Wings right right that's the Human Condition are you going to run toward the fire or away from the fire and uh you know people Define thems in that way I'm not the first guy to decide I to look at fire and decide I'd like to commercialize it Henry Ford did it Edison did it John D Rockefeller did it everybody throughout human history that you admire you know Madam cury it's like that's radioactive so here's an acid test if I tell you it's radioactive do you think think I'm going to run away from that or do you think I can create a nuclear reactor and create unlimited energy forever right and and the engineers the engineers think think I'm going to harness energy I'm going to harness volatility right and I would just say I'm not the only engineer in the world I'm inspired by a lot of Engineers that came before me I feel very fortunate that I was given the opportunity to harness digital energy and put it in the hands of other people yeah I'd leave people with on that line what one of my mentors Alan Nation said he said Ty never be the first or the last to try a new idea so you've been on the fence with Bitcoin you don't want to be the last and if you uh are somebody who says well this thing could go to 13 million in 2014 uh let me sell let me sell the the suit let me sell the Ferrari let me grab one of these Bitcoins uh one day you might look back on this podcast and go this Michael guy was on to something here never too late so thank you so much for being on the show uh for people that want to hear you s sailor onx Twitter or hope.com are those the or where's the best place yeah go to hope.com uh you can find my personal website michael.com or you'll find me on Twitter sailor y l r thanks so much it's a pleasure