Paul McNeal 0:00 As many might know, right now, the world of finance is being turned upside down prices are going through the roof. Your money is being evaporated daily. But there is a way for you to be able to save and maintain your buying power. Enter Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a decentralized censorship resistant technology that allows you to save your money because it's the best savings technology we have. Announcer 0:30 You're listening to Millennial Money with award winning money expert and serial entrepreneur, Shanna, come to game where we flip the script on the old school approach to everything your parents never taught you about money. Each week, Shanna creates a safe space by talking with special guests from around the world about money wellness, entrepreneurship, traveling like a boss. And what makes Millennials tick unique stories, trailblazing perspectives, tips, tricks and everything there is to know about money. Find it all here as you uncover your money story and unlock the life you want to live. Pretty cool right? Here Shauna money expert, Indiana Hoosier and burger afficionado. Shannah Game 1:12 Welcome back to the show. This is going to be a great episode. In a time when inflation is running wild. rent prices are surging loads of money has been printed and the world is changing rapidly. Bitcoin has emerged as this new currency that is gaining some serious legitimacy. In fact, did you know this? There is 21 million in Bitcoin and that is all there will ever be. Experts have said Bitcoin could trade at a million dollars by 2030. But regardless of where bitcoin is headed, what I can tell you is that this digital currency is certainly something to learn more about. Our guests, Paul McNeil is a tour de force when it comes to Bitcoin. Paul has been aware of Bitcoin since 2011, and he is methodically followed a daily, he pulls together the most relevant news articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and social media mentions to create crypto watch a daily brief sent before 9am PST. By the end of this episode, you're going to learn what Bitcoin is, who created it? Why are we having wild swings? How much is Bitcoin maybe going to be worth? And the question you really want to know is do I need to invest in Bitcoin? I'm so thrilled to bring you this episode. I'm Shannah. game this is Millennial Money. Let's head into the conversation. Well, Paul, I am so excited to have you join us on the podcast today. This is going to be a fun one. So thanks for being here. Paul McNeal 2:43 Hey Shannah thanks for having me on. I am super excited. Shannah Game 2:47 So we're gonna talk about Bitcoin, hopefully roll our sleeves up a little bit and where we are currently right now, this last weekend, things kind of went a little a little wonky in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency world, I think there's a meltdown of somewhere around a trillion dollars in value. And I have been into bitcoin and cryptocurrency for quite some time, kind of from afar, looking at it, obviously for the show wanting to really explain this to listeners. And there are a lot of critics that talk about there is an actual value to crypto. So when these highs and lows happened, they're kind of like yeah, of course this is going to happen. So I just want to throw this out to you because you're the expert. Is there truth to this that Bitcoin and crypto are they all speculation and hype? Paul McNeal 3:39 No, no, not at all. And it's easy for people to assume that based on the media coverage, mainstream media has a way of communicating certain things about this market without really having a full understanding. So I will say right off the bat, all of it is not speculation. And bitcoin is definitely the place to focus. Shannah Game 4:05 So help us understand that a little bit deeper. What actually is happening right now in the world of Bitcoin before we really dive into, like what Bitcoin is and all this know what is happening right now. Paul McNeal 4:17 Sure, as you mentioned, we are in the midst of what some analysts are trying to determine if it's what's called a bear market, and that's where the market has, in fact, declined. We saw an all time high around $68,000. And that was late part last year. And since then, we've seen a steady decline all the way back down to somewhere in the neighborhood of about $37,000. I believe this Ron, I think we got his lowest 32 So a lot of people looking at this market. They're probably like what the heck is going on losing trillions of dollars in value You know, oh my god this, why would anyone ever want to touch it? And if you look at the history of this asset, this has happened many times this is nothing new. This is par for the course. Shannah Game 5:11 Right? Yes. It is definitely par for the course. And I think it's really important to point that out. I love that you talked about that and doing a little research for this, this episode and reading a little bit more about you, you have this great brand called the crypto curator. And you also say you've been in Bitcoin or interested in it since 2011. And that you I love this sense followed it methodically, daily. Tell us a little bit about like, how did you get interested in Bitcoin? Paul McNeal 5:43 Yeah, I tell people, and this is until this year, unfortunately, I took some time off social media, but I used to literally live on Twitter. Like if you didn't see me on Twitter, tweeting, like every second is like call the ambulance with call. So while I was on Twitter, I came across either Max Kaiser or trace mayor, these are two well known names in the industry. And one of them said something about Bitcoin, I believe it was Max Kaiser. And I was like Bitcoin, what is that? And so I started, like, I always do searching things, right? So I began to search and I came across the Bitcoin white paper, a paper that I recommend everyone read, it's only about nine pages. So it's not a long document. And after reading that, I was like, Ooh, this is really interesting. So I started staying tuned in. And so 2011 was the time that I came across this and my former business, we used to what's called curate news information every day for most of Capitol Hill, part of the White House in Fortune 500 companies. So when I saw this, I used those skills, and I was constantly every day searching for news and information on Bitcoin. And that grew into in 2017, I launched a newsletter about Bitcoin. Shannah Game 6:58 Interesting story. Wow. Tell us a little bit more about that the white paper like what, what's in there? Paul McNeal 7:04 Yeah, what people need to understand. And this is the challenge with Bitcoin, Bitcoin can be a lot of things. And it's especially money. And if you understand money, which your show talks a lot about, money goes through what they say three stages, first, it becomes a store of value, then it becomes a medium of exchange, and then it becomes a unit of account. Right now bitcoin is just working on the store of value narrative, it has been a store of value, and people say, Well, how could something volatile like this be a store value? I tell most people, let's go back to 2008 2009. Winston was first created, fast forward to 2022, Bitcoin has went from $0 to $37,000. If you asked me, that's a store value, a really great store of value. So if you were fortunate enough and crazy enough to put money in back in 2008 2009, until today, you've got a lot of money. And then it goes to medium of exchange where people can actually exchange it for things rather you're buying a cup of coffee, or rather you're buying, you know, shoes or house or cars or what have you. And then things get priced in that asset. So you say a cup of coffee would cost you 5000 Should Toshiba and that's the smallest unit of a Bitcoin but yeah, that that the white paper talks about this. It's called a peer to peer electronic currency or electronic cash. And a lot of people say, well, it's not that correct. Not today. It will be soon. So that's what the white paper talks about. Shannah Game 8:46 I have so many questions. Okay, so now we understand when Bitcoin was created, but do we know who created it and why they created it? Paul McNeal 8:57 So the story goes, it was created by a fictitious name of a person called should Toshi Nakamoto. Of course, right. Exactly. And the crazy thing is, is there's a guy named, Doron should Toshi Nakamoto that happened to be on time magazine because people raid raided his house. You know what I raided his house but they went to his house thinking he was Satoshi Nakamoto completely ruin this guy's life. But he's actually Toshi Nakamoto. So what we believe is she Toshi Nakamoto is a group of people because when you really look at this technology, there's no way one individual came up with this. And the reason I say that is if you go listen, when you go watch some of the document documentaries on Netflix about Bitcoin banking on Bitcoin is one of the most popular ones. It talks about the Cypherpunk movement. There were a lot of people working on digital currency digital cash. Nick Zeebo, how Finney There are so many names of cypherpunks that were working on this type of technology, that I'm sure they had something to do with this, what we don't know. So right now, it's just a fictitious person. Shannah Game 10:12 It's, it's both fascinating. And also like one of those things that makes you go like, Huh? Like, like, really? You know, I mean, it's, it's, like prepping for this episode, I was talking with my husband who's kind of like the the ultimate skeptic, if you will of crypto and he's like, I don't get it. Like, I don't understand why. Who created it? I mean, it was fictitious, like, why I mean, he just every single question, you know, and I'm like, doing my best from like, a naive perspective to explain it. But even myself, I'm kind of laughing, you know, as I'm explaining it, because I, it sounds it does sound like kind of this, this made up story. So, you know, one of the questions I want to ask you is, you explain kind of where we are in the Bitcoin movement. But for people who are listening, why should they care about Bitcoin? Like, why is this something that we should even learn and educate ourselves about? Paul McNeal 11:11 That really is a great question Shannah. And here's what a lot of people have to get their minds around when looking at something like this. It's money. And if you're creating money, in our world that we live in, there's only one entity that gets the privilege to create money, and they're called the Fed. Yeah, the central banks, they have the authority to create money. And so when someone comes along and says, Hey, I'm going to create money, they're like, uh, yeah, no, you're not going to create money. So this is why should Toshi is fictitious? Could you imagine if we knew who created Bitcoin, that person would be in front of Congress, that person would be, you know, getting sued left to right, the person who's getting fined by the SEC, I mean, there'd be so many issues. And so what should Toshi, whoever they are, figure it out was less, if we stay anonymous, there's no fight to go after? And if we make this truly decentralized, and Bitcoin is the only decentralized asset and what we mean by decentralized, is that everybody who is mining Bitcoin, or if they're a node in the network, they control Bitcoin, no one individual no one individual country, no one individual government, there's no entity controlling this, this is free global access to this network. And so it's censorship resistant, no one can censor it as a matter of fact, you probably see news about China banning Bitcoin not true. Russia banning Bitcoin not true. As a matter of fact, Putin came out today and said, Guess what, we're not going to ban it, we're going to regulate it and we're going to figure it out. So he told his legislative body go figure out how to control this thing, but we're not going to ban it that's for sure. India's tried you know, all countries have tried to ban and they all come back and say the same thing. We will regulate Bitcoin because you can't ban it. Shannah Game 13:08 Yeah, I was gonna say I mean, how would they even if they said they were going to ban it like how would they actually practically do that? Paul McNeal 13:15 Can they can as a matter of fact so when China kick that all the miners supposably we saw what happened. Bitcoin market cap fail, its hash powers, what they call it hash power, it fail, but the network stayed up. 24/7 365 So what that tells you is all the miners left China, they went to Kazakhstan, they went to Russia, they came here to the US. So you can't stop Bitcoin, even if a country decides we're gonna even they even in Kazakhstan, they cut off the internet. Still didn't stop. Right. Shannah Game 13:48 That's fantastic. Paul McNeal 13:49 It's fantastic. So So I know for those people that are skeptics, like, you know, some fake person creators, so but but here's back to the deal. So it's money, it's about money. So inflation is running out of control. The central banks are printing trillions upon trillions of dollars and in the Bitcoin white paper in the first block of the Bitcoin Blockchain, there's the front page of the article that Chancellor is on the brink of bail out. And this was a solution to central banks globally, printing money out of control. You can't do that with Bitcoin. There are 21 million, that's all there ever be. It's written in the code, no one can change it. And so it's a way to have really hard sound money. Shannah Game 14:32 Interesting. Okay. So 21 million. So there will be like you say, no more printed from that. So is it because it's only limited to that amount that it has some of these wild swings? Paul McNeal 14:46 Yeah, it well, the wild swings are basically the market playing around with this asset because it's still such a small asset. I mean, a trillion $2 trillion. Market cap is nothing right. They can push this market up and down so fast. It'll make it head spin the big money people, they know how to play the game. And that's what they're doing with this asset right now because they can. And volatility is their friend, they want it to be volatile. That's how they make money they buy and sell, buy and sell. So they need the price moving all over the place, so they can make tons of cash. So that's the way to look at it from that, but that 21 million fixed is because, again, she Toshi Nakamoto and their brilliance. This is just pure math. The way the system works is that when it first started every 10 minutes until to the until this day, right now, every 10 minutes, Bitcoin is introduced into the monetary system. So what happened is that in the very beginning for four years 50 bitcoins every 10 minutes was given to someone to secure the network. And then they have, excuse me, they have a script written, so that that reward gets cut in half. And they call that the havening. Or the halving. So it went from 50 Bitcoin to 25 Bitcoin. And then in four more years, it went from 25 to 12.5. And then four more years where we are today, it's at 6.25. So right now, every 10 minutes, some miner will get 6.25 Bitcoin for protecting the Bitcoin network. Shannah Game 16:21 Okay, so tell me, tell me what it means to actually mined Bitcoin? Because I have a lot of friends that say that they do this, and I don't quite understand it. Paul McNeal 16:31 Yeah, it can get really technical, but I'll try and keep it. So it's not technical. So as I mentioned before, the job of a miner is to secure the Bitcoin network to make sure that there are no fraudulent transactions happening on the network. So in order to do that, she Nakamoto in the brilliance came up with this process where you have to run these algorithms. And if a person's familiar with technology and algorithms is basically trying to solve a puzzle trying to solve a problem, a math problem. And if you solve the math problem properly, you get bitcoin. So think of it like Sudoku, okay, to do Sudoku map, or whatever you call the game. To do the Sudoku, it takes a long time for you to actually feel the all the blocks out and make sure all the numbers are right, right. Yes. But then for someone to verify that you did it right. You can do that in seconds. Right? That takes a lot of work. Okay. So in Bitcoin, they call this proof of work. So what the miners are doing is that they are doing, they're proving that the ledger is correct, by working. And they have to expel energy to do that. And this is where all the ESG people get up in arms about how much energy Bitcoin network uses, which is a fraction of what the traditional finance system uses. But they go through all this work, burn electricity, and solving these problems, and whoever solves it correctly, which means they verified that all the transactions on the ledger is correct. They get rewarded. Shannah Game 18:11 All right, I think I get it. Paul McNeal 18:14 Yeah, it's weird. It's far more complicated than that. But that's just dumb way for the average person to sort of get their head around it. Shannah Game 18:21 Thank you for breaking it down into English. You're welcome. So you, you talked about the traditional money system that we all familiar with, with the fed the central bank, and that we've got some obviously issues right now we got inflation, we printed a lot of money. For those listening, who are maybe thinking, Yeah, but does that actually like impact my daily life? Like? How do those things really show up like person to person for us to actually feel them and understand why maybe creating another currency? Makes sense? Paul McNeal 18:55 Sure. So what the average person, and even me I didn't think about this stuff until I started getting a Bitcoin like never what I thought about it. If I go to the store, and I buy milk at $1.65 a gallon, I think I buy milk, $1.65 gallon, who cares? And then if I have to go pay $2.65 a gallon, the average person still really doesn't say anything. They're like, oh, so I'm paying $2.65 A gallon for milk and their prices went up. But what they don't understand is that if you're making a certain amount of money, and if the prices are increasing so drastically that the amount of money you make can't keep up with that increase, that's a really big problem. Rent right now is going through the roof. I rented my place at a small place and I pay a certain amount. Well, when I talked to the front office, I'm like, hey, if I were to renew my lease, how much would I have to pay? It's a significant jump. And so I'm like, Okay, that's interesting, but prices are on the rise and what people have to understand unless your salary is rising at the same rate or higher You're, you're losing and you're becoming poor every day. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a hard currency. And it's deflationary, which means this prices will as as, as more people get into this network and as more people are buying them because there is a fixed supply, the price of this asset rise, which means your buying power rises. So if you're storing your wealth in Bitcoin, you're actually making money, and it's far exceeding inflation, which means you're staying ahead of it, building up your wealth Shannah Game 20:43 right, okay, so then thinking about it just a little bit further, obviously, the federal government controls the, I should say, I, you know, how much money is worth, I guess, right? So $100, today, you know, and next year is probably not going to be the same value exchange, we're not gonna be able to buy the same products for that, that currency. So then thinking about Bitcoin, who is actually out there determining the value? Like, how do we actually place value on Bitcoin? If that makes sense? From asking? Paul McNeal 21:22 Yes, yes, no, that's a great question. It's called stock to flow from what I understand. And I'm not super good at this. But there's a certain amount of bitcoin in circulation, there's a certain amount of energy being consumed certain amount of miners being purchased certain amount of time being devoted to managing all of this. And that network has built up a certain value and the market has placed a price on how much is in circulation, how much the stock is out there, and how much it's flowing. And they come up with a value for what Bitcoin should be. When Bitcoin first came into existence, it was worth zero. And then one day, and I'm gonna miss this name. I think it was how Laszlo or Laszlo, I forget his last name, but I think his last low, he went on line and said, Hey, if someone will buy me pizza, I'll pay you 10,000 Bitcoin. And that was one of the first transactions that actually gave Bitcoin a value because it showed that someone was willing to exchange value for this virtual currency. And so that set in motion, the ability for people to buy. And so the equation I tell most people what you have to remember, it's really simple. Robert Breedlove, came up with this equation. He said 21 million fixed supply. That's we know that that's fixed and 4 million probably lost forever. In the early days, people didn't pay attention lost their keys. So let's just say yeah, 17 million fix apply plus massive demand. And macro economics tells you if you have something that's fixed supply, and you have a huge demand, the number must go up. That's why they call this number go up technology. And so over time, you will have your fluctuations, but over time, the numbers gonna go up. Shannah Game 23:08 Interesting. Okay, that makes sense. I get it. Yeah. I mean, the first time I learned about Bitcoin, if I would have bought in then who I know right, so happy right now. I mean, my gosh. You know, you can say that about almost anything. Same thing with Amazon. Same thing with Google Chrome, but so frustrating. Paul McNeal 23:31 And here's the crazy thing is that people don't understand, I think it was Mark Yusko, who said he coined this term, he says, The Star Spangled Banner hasn't even just he said just ended the Star Spangled Banner just ended. And if you've ever been to a game when the Star Spangled Banner and the game starts, so the game hasn't even started yet. What people don't understand is Cathy wood from Ark invest came out recently, I think it was yesterday or today. And what she and her team has said, is that, um, Bitcoin could very well reach a I think it's I think it's a what was the number? Let's see, yes, it could trade at a million dollars and Etherium could traded $180,000 By the year 2030. Now, that's only eight years away. Eight, small, quick years away a million dollars 180. So someone bought it today is $37,000. And let's just say she's right. It's at a million by 2030. In eight years, someone could retire if they want it to if they invested in this digital asset, not financial advice. But if they looked at it, right, yeah. 2030 is what they're predicting. Now. Are these predictions going to be correct? Probably not. But she gives you her logic as to why she thinks that's gonna be the case. Shannah Game 24:51 So then thinking about Bitcoin as an investment, if it's something that we're interested in, of course, not giving financial advice here. But if it's something that we're interested in, we're curious about, how do we rationalize these kind of wild swings that are happening? So that either we ride these out? Or is it something where we're getting in and getting out of Bitcoin? Like, how are we sort of building a framework around investing in Bitcoin? Paul McNeal 25:22 Yes. So there's a couple terms. Couple ways Look at this. They have a term called DCA dollar cost averaging. And they sort of wrote that into what I call automated monthly purchases, or weekly purchases, DCA, let's just say a person had $10,000. And they're like, You know what, I believe this whole Bitcoin story and I want to put 10,000 in Bitcoin, I would recommend that they would take and split that up into four chunks, 2500 bucks each, and you buy 25 bucks one week by 25 bucks next week, but 25 bucks next week, and so on. And all of a sudden a month, you've now got 10,000, but your average cost has been normalized, because you did it in four weekly timeframes. Or some people can say, You know what, ah, this story might be true. So I'm going to commit a small amount every week, or every month, and there are platforms that let you do this automated where you just set it and forget it, set it 25 bucks every weekend, the Bitcoin I'm gonna walk away, come back in 10 years, right? What people have to understand is that they want to try to see the million dollars next week. Not gonna happen. Sorry, not gonna happen. Your level here? Yeah, exactly. It takes time, right takes time. So look at this. And again, like you said, Enough, twice, I will tell the average person do your research, but look at it with a very long time horizon, because you know that we have these huge cycles. So give yourself three to five years, give yourself five to 10 years and see what happens by consistently putting your money to work in it. Shannah Game 26:56 So how do we do the research? Like, are there? Obviously you are a huge resource? What sort of resources should we be reading about looking into learning about to really educate ourselves? Paul McNeal 27:09 Yeah, there's a lot of great, you're correct. This is what I do. This is why I do what I do. I started in 2017, because I was like, you know, I want to do two things, keep people away from scams, because there's a lot of them out there, please, people never send your money to people under no circumstance for any reason, including myself. And then the second one is so that they have a trusted source that someone's going to put the right information in front of them. So I have my website, which I'm currently in the process of doing a switch to a community platform where I send alerts. But then there are some really great YouTube channels, old coin daily, those guys are constantly doing the news every single solitary day and they put out really good content. They curate the news well themselves, and they talk about projects to consider. I would say, they're great podcasts at the Anthony pomp Leon O has a great podcast where he is constantly talking about the issues going on with Bitcoin he has great guests on so listen to some really good podcasts or watch some good YouTube videos, or read some good news articles, coin, telegraph, coin desk, there's tons of places, but that's what I try and help people do. Shannah Game 28:15 So do you think the I want to talk a little bit about the future of Bitcoin? We obviously talked about, you know, some speculations on the value but we see a lot of big companies now. Saying that now they're going to make either Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency as a method to pay for things like companies that I never thought what, you know, jump into this game. Where where are we going with us? You know, they're going going to be more and more places. We're cryptocurrency is going to be a legitimate currency exchange, like where do you think we go? Even in the next I don't know, two, three years? Paul McNeal 28:53 I do I believe we do. What people have to realize is that we're going through a financial transformation. Everything's going digital. And as things go digital, if people say, Well, I manage digital the day I swipe my credit card, that's digital, true it is but it's not like programmable money, which CBDCs which is central bank, digital currencies, things like Bitcoin, things like a theorem, these things will be programmable money, which means that you can say, like, if the government wanted to the government could come out with their cbdc and they could say, Hey, we're gonna give you $2,000 a month and you know, you know, money basically. Basically income, right? We give you $2,000 A month in basic income, because there's more jobs and you have to take and get money from the government, but they can program that money you say 30% is going toward your living 50% is going towards your food, and they can code that money. So that's the only place you can use it at write digital currencies open up a brand new world to how we're able to use money. And so I think that's going to happen, the Lightning Network for Bitcoin It's being used today. That's how you can zip money from the US to El Salvador. And at no cost, and the person in El Salvador will get 99.9% of that money. Whereas today, if you did that with Western Union, they get 80%. And it will take them weeks. Now they get it within seconds, and they get the whole thing. It's amazing. Shannah Game 30:23 Interesting. So do you think we're going to get to this point where we're gonna essentially have legitimately these two different methods of payment for most things? Paul McNeal 30:34 Um, I don't think it'd be two different methods. Well, if you think about today, we have a lot of methods to pay for things, right? I can pay for something with a cheque or credit card, or I can send a wire, you know, there's multiple ways now, will there be different assets? Yes, even today, like I reserved a hotel, but I did it with my points instead of using cash. Right? Right. So we have to think about it in that fashion, this is just another method of you paying for something and I think it's gonna run parallel to the US dollar. Shannah Game 31:03 Interesting. So I think this point in time where we're at is, is this curiosity point, right? Like, what you're saying is, is get the knowledge, you know, maybe start if it's something that you feel is part of your financial plan, start investing a little bit in, it's something you're going to hold for a little bit of time. But this is also that, that curiosity, time to learn about something kind of stretch your brain in a different direction than we were just used to, you know, the the kind of normal exchange of money and now with technology and everything this is coming on. And this has really changed the game. So we're kind of like in this new frontier. Paul McNeal 31:41 We really are. And there's a podcast if your listeners will search for it. They can search Bitcoin, the best savings technology, and put Mark use gos name next to it. It's an interview he did with the crypto conversation, Andy Pickering from Brave new coin. And he talks about Bitcoin being the best savings technology. And what I've been trying to encourage people to do is again, listen, I'm not asking anyone to put their life savings into this without understanding it. But I tell them, take a little nibble, right. And some of this, the great thing about this industry right now is you can get a lot of money free. Like if you were to get let's just say Voyager, which is a great platform where they allow you to earn yield on your digital asset. If you refer someone to them, they would give you 25 bucks, and they'd give that person 25 bucks. So a lot of people say was 25 bucks, well, yeah, but it's 25 bucks. And if you did that with cash app, and you didn't have a strike, and you did that with Coinbase. And Coinbase has an earn program where if you go through these courses, and they're small courses, I mean, it'll take you you know, 15 minutes, they'll give you a free digital assets. So go earn a lot of these assets for free and you're not committing any capital at all. You're just earning free crypto. Shannah Game 33:01 Love it. Love free stuff. Paul McNeal 33:04 Yeah, who doesn't write small Hey, one day might be big. Shannah Game 33:09 Hey, you know, and we've got you to thank for Yeah. So to put a little period here on our conversation, just kind of looking even a forward to 2022 What do you think if we're listening right now or a couple of things we need you to know or just remember about Bitcoin like even for this year? Paul McNeal 33:27 Yes. So for this year, and now start off talking about numbers because that's what everybody likes. The sentiment, this is not me. This is the sentiment across different people like Kathy at Ark invest. Anthony Scaramucci, Mark Yusko, Anthony Pompliano. Justin Timur from fidelity. I can go on with all of the analysts out there. The sentiment still is that will in the year 2020 to $100,000. Let's again say there, right? What should you do, if that is a real possibility? And just to give you an example, granted, we're not talking $100,000 But had you invested in Bitcoin? January 27 2021, the price of Bitcoin was $30,000. Today, it's trading currently at about 37,000. So you would have made $7,000 on your money in one year, you can't do that with stocks. So what people need to understand what I believe is going to happen is we will continue to see this huge volatility swings. We have three major things that's impacting this market, geopolitical, the Ukraine issue. Will we go to war with Russia? I don't know. But it's definitely looking possibility. The second, the Fed, the Fed has been very hawkish, they said they're going to raise rates in March. Will they be able to will the economy turned down and they might have to say we can't raise rates or will they maintain raising rates and continue to exacerbate The market. And the third piece, of course, is Omicron. And this whole Coronavirus thing, how will that impact businesses? How will that impact the economy? So those three headwinds are really strong. So we will see some tough market conditions. But I believe there's going to come a point to where that's going to evaporate, and Bitcoin will effect continue to soar. And so you will very well come back this time next year and say, wow, look, Paul, we're over 100,000. I'd be like, yep, that's what we thought. Shannah Game 35:29 All right, Paul. So that's a date. We are having you back this time next year, for sure. Listen, I would love for you to tell everyone listening. Where can they go to find you and connect with you? Great, great. Paul McNeal 35:42 You know, I had taken a sabbatical from Twitter for the month of January. I'm almost done. I am sweating. I can't wait to Monday. Shannah Game 35:51 Your fingers are like getting crapped. Right? Going crazy. Paul McNeal 35:55 But I'm on Twitter at underscore crypto curator that's underscore crypto curate. And that's me. And as I mentioned earlier, I've launched a community platform. If anyone's familiar with community, it really is a great SMS texting platform. And so what I've done is I've created different categories, where I'd like to keep people up to speed. So I tell people, if they want to be the first to know, if they text the word crypto to 214380 to 013. Then whenever I see something, I'm going to let them know. And if they say, hey, I'm interested in mining or I'm interested in regulation, or I want to know what's going on with the analyst, or hey, what about these alt coins? They'll get that news right to their phone, no additional apps, nothing like that straight to their text. Shannah Game 36:40 I'm just so blown away learning there's only 21 million Bitcoin in existence, and that's all there will ever be. I don't know just something about that is is really interesting. Um, but honestly, it's hard to encapsulate a takeaway from this episode. I learned so much, and I hope you did as well. Paul really knows his stuff. And after the interview, he of course agreed to come back on the show to dig a little bit deeper, because I still have so many questions. Until then head over to the shownotes for all the links to everything that Paul mentioned. And if you enjoyed this episode, share the love and pass it on to a few friends who are also super curious about Bitcoin. I'll see you back here in a few days for a brand new episode. Announcer 37:26 Hey, you. Yes, you. Before you go, we want to say thanks for listening to this episode of Millennial Money. 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