What's up, everybody? Welcome to Gathering the King's podcast. I'm your host, Chaz Wolf. I'm a serial entrepreneur across franchising, construction, real estate, and online education. My mission in this show is to transfer courage to you, our listeners, by showing you and sharing with you real and raw stories of successful entrepreneurs, 7, 8, even 9 bigger business owners. Today, we've got professor Tania M Evans on the stage.
She's a law professor at Penn State, she wrote digital money demystified, and she hosts the tech intersect podcast. She's a former pro tennis player and now a crypto expert. Professor Tanya also speaks at huge events like IBM CloudForm And South By Southwest. In this episode, you will learn 3 things. One, what the big banks don't want you to know about cryptocurrency. They are trying to get their market share dominance saying don't trust yourself.
2. Professor Evans debunks the top 3 crypto myths. Coin Erst came on the scene with the gangster lean on January 3 2009. If that's a fad, it's literally the longest fadest scam I've ever seen in the history of spads and scams. And number 3, how to actually make money with crypto. How do I set myself up to decrease the amount of time it takes me to make up for lost time? When I was spending a lot of money as a high income earner. Month to month. Looking good. Making all the mistakes.
We'll also hear how Professor Tania leverages the mastermind principle to exceed in the crypto world. If you wanna learn how to navigate the complex world of cryptocurrency, you're in the right place. Stick around. This is one episode you won't wanna miss. Alright. Per off t. There she is, miss Tanya. How are we doing? Welcome to the King stage. Thanks for being here. Thank you. I'm so excited to connect and a chat. I love what you're doing, and I've been looking forward to this convo.
So I'm, look forward to helping a lot of people. Well, see, those those are kind words, but I'm glad you ended it with helping other people rather than just being here for me because, man, I actually have the honor of of hosting you here today. And so, wow, they didn't hear enough in that intro about all the things that you got your hand to.
We are gonna dive even further I love I love your there's just this actual balance that I I've already experienced with you in just a few minutes we've been talking. You have this creative, casual humor, And then, like, I can totally tell you're about your business, and you are a master of you've got all kinds of letters before your name. I'm I'm not even sure if I'm qualified to be here, but But at the same time, I you allowed me to call you profftee. So I'm just like, wow.
This is I feel right at home at the same time. I just feel like there's so much knowledge that I need to extract from your super smart brain and help all of these listeners. We're gonna talk, not only just about your your your history, so I wanna get I wanna dive into that, but we're gonna you know, a bunch of crypto here as well.
So which is so is again, so there's like this interesting dynamic that I'm already feeling with you is like, you know, you've got this this background, which we're I'm gonna ask you some questions here in a second about law and very intense things that you're still doing today, but yet you're bringing knowledge and awareness to, you know, we we kinda jokingly shorten it as crypto, but it's it's a web 3 application and and how companies should
actually be looking and taking this technology very seriously. And so we're gonna get to all that, but, tell me tell me about your backdrop. So you you've spent time in law, you've you've been a student of this. You've now you're you're a professor now. You've seen both sides of the of the classroom, if you will. Give us a little bit of your background. So I graduated from law school in 98.
I went to Howard University School of Laws, the editor in chief of my law journal, I started clerking in the 3rd circuit, and then I, you know, I took a very traditional path, and now it's difficult to see early on. So I started a big law, one for, 2 firms in Philadelphia. My mother is a retired patent attorney. So after I kind of ran from big law kind of kicking and screaming.
It's like you do all of the things and kind of color inside the lines and check the right boxes and do all the right things. And you have every right to be in a space, but the question is whether you, you know, whether they deserve you, quite frankly. Yeah. And and you mentioned that of all of the other aspects of my life and my creativity. I'm a lifelong learner. I really am a writer, speaker, and teacher. And that's not really the right energy to bring into to big law. Right?
Like, think paper chase, think, you know, straight, suits, excuse me. Right. And you get the idea of what a day in the life that's like, my father is a retired surgeon. He is a a former state representative and one of the first black representatives in Maine, and he's now running state senate. So we all, you know, we're multi hyphenates for sure. My mom is now baking cookies, but I made her sell them because I'm an entrepreneur. It was like, we're gonna go through all this during Christmas time.
We're gonna have to, like, make more money. And so all of those things, I mean, only child. And and so of our close to my parents as well, but they just gave me a lot of room to run to, again, be intellectually curious. I'm a non technologist in terms of my, my background and expertise. So I really had to found find my way like everybody else to figure out what this intersection of finance and technology means in terms of technological innovation.
So that's been fun after practicing for 10 years. Then I I've been teaching now. I'm a full tenured professor cohier appointment with data sciences. So that was later in life. Once I realized I needed to take a deep dive into something that I did not understand, I didn't exactly want to understand, but I wanted my students to have a better appreciation for. So they would be more conversant and and and show up for a web 3 reality.
So that's really what pushed and prompted me to take a deep dive in my existing area of expertise. I'm an intellectual property lawyer by training, so all the digital stuff resonates with me. So I wanted to figure out how the tech technology was changing that. So that's that's that's my kind of origin story.
Business owner listening right now, they they've, you know, they've heard of maybe a crypto or a specific, you know, they've heard, you know, Ethereum or you know, any any of the specific coins. They're they're maybe new to you saying web, you know, web 3 or this technology, blockchain, and understanding the transaction of it or the re the record of or encrypting of things.
What what is what should they know about it not just being, you know, Bitcoin and and an exchange of of currency, but but the technology behind it. What what's like a 32nd intro to that? When you think of cryptocurrency, though, crypto part really comes from cryptography, you have a cryptic nature about it that seems nefarious, but crypto photography or secreting messaging to get from point a to point b was very important at times of war.
It was very important when you're doing exchanges with other tribe. I mean, we're this has been around for millennia in different forms or fashions, and now we have, a digital means of using demographically secured messaging heavy, but basically just means I'm gonna encrypt it in one way, and there will only be one unique key to decrypt the information so that you can protect it. Crypto really is about using the same peer to peer technology.
We used to use for MP threes and MP fours as an intellectual property lawyer. I'm using air quote air signs to say that a lot of that was crypto copyright infringement, but it's okay. We're not here to talk about that. But it's not great in value when you're using the same technology to exchange value. If I can have a perfect digital copy of a of a Bitcoin and send it to a thousand people.
That's not gonna work for great for money, even though people were super excited with napster and Groster and and limewire and all of those back in the day. Yeah. But considering using that, not just for messaging, of of media, but now we use it for messaging of value. And the underlying technology that tracks value and transaction is actually a blockchain. It's a digital record or digital ledger. It's simple as that.
And every time someone comes and starts to force people to look under the hood and use a whole lot of jargon. You instantly lose people. We are already doing this now. Most of our money is digital. Very little. The money that we exchange is in physical form. It's dirty. It's expensive. It's limiting. I love my wires. I love my direct deposits. I love not I don't really love Zelle, but let's just use it as sample. We got the cash yes. We got the memo. Right?
We so many forms of ones and zeros moving digitally value from one digital record to another. This is the next iteration of that. Will it replace it for all time? I don't know, but it's one additional opportunity to move money that isn't created by a government and isn't controlled by a single entity.
And so finally, to your point about web 3, which brings it all together, Blockchain Technology Financial Technologies are one part of a major shift, that we are calling web 3 where there are more and more decentralized and peer to peer ways to do more things. We have stored data with a few giants that rival or exceed in terms of values. A lot of nations.
Sure. We we we, you know, for the the the the price of doing business and having an open internet early on was that we learned a lot of things that were great and a lot of things not so great. So Webb 3 is our opportunity final point to do that differently. And that's why learning this and other things, AI, internet of things, VR, and and the like are really, really critically important. No. It's a long, it was a Latin 1, but I wanted to show kind of the breadth of the industry.
And this being an important part, but certainly not the only part. Yeah. No. I I appreciate the the extent of all that. What would you say from, like, your law background that someone should be and maybe hesitant or maybe prudent about when they're looking into using whether it be crypto as an investor or using it in their business, even web 3 as it's coming, what are the things that we should be prudent about?
Well, on one hand, you know, we're no longer in the the information age because we have no shortage of information. The issue at this point is how how do you rightsize the information? How do you separate fact from fiction? How do you find trusted sources and resources so that you can make educated decision. So the first and and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money to do that, but there's it's very costly if you do this incorrectly.
A lot of people got their shirt handed to them in the run up when you saw, like, crypto.com stadium and all the celebrities and Tom Brady's of the world were were hawking it. They didn't have a full appreciation for how people could get wrecked. They didn't have appreciation for volatility. We had bad actors in the space, hashtag Sam Bateman Treat, enjoy your time in jail. Right?
Even though the crypto ecosystem is a pretty bad place to do to engage in criminal activity because the records are public facing. In fact, the Department of Justice uses blockchain forensic, regularly. We don't see this all the time on the headlines. We only see when it goes badly, but they are recovering 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 in assets because is just follow the money. It's literally public facing. It's not anonymous except for a few anonymous coins, like Monero.
The Bitcoins and Ethereum of the world and thousands of other coins and tokens of public fake facing. So a critical first step for business owners, even if you don't become an investor, how can you leverage this technology? How can you leverage a first mover advantage in order to deliver your services or your products or change or recalibrate your products.
When will you incorporate artificial intelligence a project that I'm working on is a decentralized artificial intelligence because if we're just replicating the same centralized system, you know, the open a models. I'm not disparaging any model or in particular, but all of the biggies are gonna have their own central repository do have their own playground, and they want you to stay in it.
Decentralized technology will allow us to leverage these large language models, but do it out side of Big Tech unless we opt in. That's a game changer. And when you think about digital products and services, you have to have some liquid way of paying that isn't beholden to a particular border or boundary. We're talking about outer space. This is not 10 oil stuff. Like, this is literally yesterday. So that is likely going to be cryptocurrency.
We have to learn how to integrate that into our in our products, our services, and our business models because we're moving from hyper competition to collaborative effort and also a decentralized space that was promised with web point 0, but never delivered. And so some of those are some of the things I would think of. Again, even even if you never invest, I hope that eventually you'll learn enough and you'll be comfortable to have a part of an overall portfolio strategy.
But if you do nothing else, figuring out how your business is being disrupted and the potential opportunities, will still allow you at this moment in time to be a first mover, but first mover advantage is fleeting. So you need to start now. You start slowly. Yeah. But start. You said it it's a ledger, right? Public facing, you can see the transactions. And that might have just like, glossed right over someone listening. But that that one ability to to record something.
Is in every single industry in, like, multiple layers deep. And so what percentage do you think that this has begun to shift how we do life. And this has been not happening for just a year or 2. This has been happening for a while, but we're really not, you know, at mass scale. What what percentage would you put on this? It's interesting. I'll I'll speak in sports analogies in some sense. I feel like we're we might be, like, in the We're not warming up. It's not even the first inning.
You know, let's talk, you know, baseball now. Like, we're really in the the the bottom of the second. Right? We have worked certainly far away from the 7th inning stretch, but we this train has left the station. Bitcoin first on the scene with the gangster lean on January 3 2009. If that's a fad, it's literally the longest fadest scam I have ever seen in the history of spads and scams.
We had, for example, the 1st regulated, fully regulated kind of package or wrap or a product with 11 exchange traded spot Bitcoin funds, which basically means you don't have to buy Bitcoin, but you can have exposure to it in this regulated package. One of the most successful ETF launches in the history of ETFs save gold. We're on the precipice now of having a second ETFs for Ethereum. This is happening. The SEC this is an SEC approved product. We have bills. I I just left, Congress.
I was doing some high level conversations around with senators and representatives and their senior staff on a bipartisan basis. It's not a bipartisan issue, even though appears to be that way with headlines. It's very sad to me because it shouldn't be this way. Politics is about moving resources and politicians are in charge of those resource So it's political, but it shouldn't be partisan. This is one of those few win win things where business wins and the little guy.
And so we we all of these things happening, you have all of the major banks, even those that said, this is bus soda is garbage. You know, we have Jamie Dimon out there. He still says it today. Guess what? JP Morgan is an authorized participant. For these ETFs when, you know, was almost 1st in line. You mentioned earlier BlackRock, most conservative investment in the world. Who wanted to be 1st in line to issue a very successful Bitcoin ETF. So all of this is happening.
At the same time, we're being the little person is being scared away, I believe intentionally. What is it that the banks know that they don't want you to know while they are trying to get their market share dominance, saying don't trust yourself. Yeah. Don't worry. You're pretty little hit. Stay in our in our playground. You don't actually have to That's like Yeah. That that that's the news. That's the news. And so this is happening.
It's early in the sense that fewer than 8% of people around the world hold Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is not the only game in town. It's special. Yep. Because it has a hard cap. We call it hard money. We call it sound money. And actually the currency part of it I don't think it's born itself out to be a currency when there's a lot of speculation. I hold a lot of Bitcoin. You will not be able to pry it out of my cold dead hands.
But there are other things, you know, stablecoins, USDC, Tethr Staples are gonna be a really important way that people can empower themselves as well. With money that's verifiable and that will hold its value, not only here in the United States where we don't have as much of a problem in the although We have inflation. We print our way into in and out of wars. We print our way in and out to stimulate the economy.
All those STEMmy checks that everybody's excited about, and that's so exciting when now eggs cost a bazillion dollars. So this is the alternative, and this is why individually and as businesses, we have to lean in because it's not it's not early, but it's not late. Yeah. There's a lot of a lot of, really, really great value that you just gave there. The the banks, the big money, the little guy being scared that I wanna press into that just for a second.
Mhmm. Yeah. You know, I I can remember being you know, ridiculed by many of my family and friends for holding this thing called Bitcoin and and a little bit of a theorem at that time, but I remember when I went up to 20,000 Bitcoin went up to 20,000 for the first time in December of 18 or 19. I can't remember exactly, but 18 or in 18. Yep. Okay. And and then it then just right?
And it was interesting because I kept not at the time because I couldn't tell, and I was, you know, I was just a young guy that threw some money into it. I really didn't know what I was doing. But looking back and zooming out, it was like, okay, it actually what it felt like was that the rush was for the big guy to be able to get in while it was low. Mhmm. And then in comes the flood, right? So everybody's happy about it. So it's almost like nobody really talked about it.
Because everybody was on the on on the up ramp, right? But but quietly, while everyone was out, because everybody got freaked out about it. And, oh, this is it. See, I told you all my family. See, I told you. I told you. I told you. And and I just held, of course, but but but so many people didn't, right? Just like the stock market, and they get out, right? And and so but who got in? All of the institutional pieces that you're talking about And then now it's like, okay.
Now now we're excited about it. Hey. I wanna be first and then, hey. Here we go. And then, boom, here it comes. Right? What what are your thoughts on that? It's so true at what it proves to me is something that I had to experience myself. I'm grateful that I did not sell that, but I sold a lot of other stuff because there was a lot of crap that was rising because a rising tide lives all all boats, right? And to your point, so in a bull market, everybody's happy.
There's very little to talk about until the market does what markets do. I just one of my free master classes is called the Bitcoin bounce back. And the way that I demonstrate what you're talking about is to take the early days of the niece, the early days of the Dow, the early days of the S and P 500 particularly the niece.
When you think about the New York Stock Exchange, rambunctious gang of probably thieves, quite frankly, under the Buttonwood, you know, making their little agreements, doing their little dirt, right, which led to the SEC and all sorts of legislation and and regulations that came in to provide stability. The stability brought more retail and it grew over time. When you take the wide view of every single market and its activities, you know, there's a tie, you know, there's a a rise in the fall.
There's a bull in the bear. The things that happen in spite of the soundness of a stock, for example, when you have micro macroeconomics, everything can go great until you have this little thing called a pandemic. Right, having nothing to do with the underlying asset the day before, but then circumstances change. Yeah. It proved to me I knew nothing about money. I knew nothing about markets. And that's after.
And what I didn't say before law school, I went to Northwestern, and I was on the Dean's list at the end. I was there on a tennis scholarship. I played tennis professionally for 4 years having nothing to do with what we're talking about now, but to add to my timeline. All of that educational privilege, I knew nothing about money. I knew nothing about markets. I knew nothing about banking other than how I was supposed to do these traditional things.
Get a good government job or the equivalent came out and make us 6 figures. Do that be a high income earner, get a home, some rental property, max out my 401 k or my 403b, guests get a burial plot, marry someone, and then just ride this. You can join out. Like, this is whatever day we're supposed to do. Those traditional approaches are not enough when things change. Yeah. Right? This is where we find ourselves. So all of the traditional messages do all of those things. It will not be enough.
The bankers know it. Governments know it. A lot of the food or the fear uncertainty and doubt that we see is disinformation, not just misinformation. Yeah. It's intentional to keep you on the sidelines, to keep you in fear, to keep you reliant. But if you wanna get the same thing that you've always been getting, by all means, keep doing what you're doing. Yeah. There is a new way. There's a new opportunity in the cooling impediment is our willingness to learn. That's right. What's the point?
What what, you know, even if you're not a technologist or financial person, read the Satoshi white paper. Nine pages that literally changed the world. Yep. Nine pages, seven footnotes, and just realized that the self determination as a matter of self sufficiency of autonomy of privacy. I mean, I just I know I'm preaching to the converted chats, but I'm just trying to tell you. Broom, is there one who will come? I feel like I've re I've reached sermon level at this point. You're you're wooing me.
Yes. Well, I just, I mean, I don't think about it often, but when I do, it's Well, I first off, first off, it's extremely powerful to hear someone of your education success. Like, I mean, just, history, to be honest, to say things like, I knew nothing, and my world's been rocked. And so what that what that does is it gives courage to the other person of going, well, if she didn't know, then I don't feel too bad.
But then the other half of it is like, well, jeez, if she doesn't know, how How am I supposed to know? So I wanna use this as a beautiful little segue because you have 3 myths that you've debunked. And I want you to go through them to help the the listener kinda know a little bit more about what this means. What what are these myths? I spend a lot of time talking about 3 in particular. Because they're just the ones.
I imagine that you've heard them, you know, around your dinner table or in your social circles as well. We've kind of talked about one in particular about only for criminals less than 1%. This these are chain alice chain alice's statistics. Chainalysis is a private company that actually often works with Department of Justice and companies for cyber crimes involving digital currencies with a great deal of success. Because in fact, less than 1% of cryptocurrencies are used for nefarious purposes.
When they do, packs a punch Yep. Because of the pervasiveness of the technology. So it's not to understate the impact even with a small percentage, but it's to right size the conversation. Yeah. The number one currency involved by Leaps and bounds is the almighty dollar. Which continues for now to be the global reserve currency. By leaps and bounds. Yeah. It just is no comparison. But I don't know about you. I'm not throwing out my dollars.
I love my crypto, but at least the dollars I have, I plan to keep them. I need us to have a right conversation there. Kind of touched on the idea of crypto writ large being a being a fad. Or just the underlying technology itself being a scam. No. It's just they're scammers. In the same way that when electronic mail, email was first launched and still to this day. Evidently, there's someone in some foreign country that would like my banking information so they could send me $10,000.
Okay. We did not throw out email. We are not throwing out SMS because we're not getting them on our phones. Yeah. It is the activity of scamming And the reason that people are more susceptible to scams is because they don't know what they don't know. So it just makes you an easy pepsi. Where there, you know, when I think of FTX, for example, and using a centralized exchange model, under the pretense of this new financial technology where it really was a centralized exchange.
And it won an exchange is not a bank, not FDIC insured. Gets people to leave assets that were supposed to be there temporarily to exchange 1 crypto asset for another with the promise of 8% yield, etcetera. Obviously, that's much better than the money that we could get in the savings account. I'm all for it.
Except unbeknownst to them and without their permission, you using that transferring those assets off and out of FTX to Alameda Research owned by who, Sam Beckman Freight It's it's classic ponzi that's made off that's Lehman Brothers, but it cast a huge cloud over crypto because people didn't know better. Right. Or people who are short term thinkers and are trying to replicate day trading or swing trading in a crypto market when they don't know what the hell they're doing. Right.
Yep. This is 20 fourseven, 365, not pulled into borders. Yeah. It requires far more respect and prudence than most people use it. They would just throw in their money in hoping for a quick return. It's called gambling. If you're not learning, you're gambling, and it's not because of the technology. So those are some of the myths that I bust or at least right size the conversation so that people have better information to make more informed decisions when they enter the market.
Hey, Kings and Queens. Jazz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneur who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this.
Let's help each other grow. Yeah. That's 365, 7 days a week thing. Hit me square between the the eyes because that's exactly what I was doing. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and trading. Make Right. On the way. Yeah. It's a to relieve myself in the middle of the night for to, you know, from all the water I drink, it's like, let let me check real quick. Oh, oh, hurry up quick. Check the markets. And it's like, I'm I'm gonna spin myself off this planet is what I'm gonna do.
And so, yeah, even even if I was good, luckily, I I didn't gamble it away. Thank goodness. Right. But looking back on it, it was like, oh my goodness. Woah. Oh. Early on, I bought every token that I could imagine. I something called mom coin. It was turned out to be an unregistered security, but and I'm not even a mother. Right? It's like It just slipped you by mom coin. Come on. I just yeah. So we've all been there.
The my goal now is really to compress the learning curve for folks the tools and the technology now are so much better than when you and I got into the space. And they will continue to evolve. The u user, you know, UI or the interface and the experiences that we have. When there are more trusted participants in the market, there's greater clarity, we have a better bull cycle. I mean, we shook out a lot of bad actors.
If you're around 2 or 3 bull cycles, even just one, like, you had a real damn deal. Because every time we have one of these, right, we're shaken out. It's just a necessary part of an emerging asset class. Every single asset class did the same thing. Housing, gold. All of them. It's the same cycle.
So, hopefully, we also get some comfort for that, but it requires us to learn, about the system that we've been participating in and relying upon in a season where in the last 12 months, at least 4 regional American banks have failed. Where's that on the headlines to continue to talk about? Republic Bank just happened 2, 3 weeks ago. No one's talking about that. Yep. No problem. Don't worry. Your pretty little head. Keep doing what you're doing in our fractional system.
That is not has not been on the gold standard for decades. It is based upon our trust, our full faith in credit, in a government that comes up against governmental debt crises every 6 months. I was gonna say 45 days? In right. This is the system. You ask me. Well, Bitcoin is backed by. Well, I can actually look and we can talk about it, and we can tell you, and we agree on the rules. And if you don't have to participate in it. It doesn't benefit me if you do or you don't.
I don't there's no in it for me. That is an alternative as a hedge against inflation where you have for the first time, you know, long time have really hard sound money. Yeah. Hard to look. I mean, this is worth a look. Yeah. Okay. So someone might be wondering, listening to us, going, okay. Well, so there's some myths. We've debunked those. I I'm on I'm on the train. Like, you I'm I'm coming. You've wooed me. Right? Alright. Got the ticket to write. How do I actually make money with crypto?
Thinking. I think if you are thinking about it as a long term view, understanding your risk tolerance, really taking a look at an actual portfolio. Like, we're talking about portfolio and diversification. If you haven't even really sat down to say, what is my portfolio? What's in it? How do I sit down and actually look at do I own a home? What are the other things?
And it's not a linear process, thinking of ways that debt plays a role when you don't you're not suffering under you know, the the the the scourge of consumer debt, but maybe leveraging things in other ways. You have access to fidelity and Vanguard and each rate all of these different Robin, all of these different platforms that are giving you access and exposure, but you want to be prudent. It's like the word of the day. It's gonna pass. Right, about the long term thinking.
Like, you you could do day in swing trading. My course and my approach is not for that person, but at least you can learn through the book about some of the myths. But if you were looking to substantially change the outlook for retirement. I'm a gen xer. I talk a lot to late millennials, gen xers, young boomers. What is that going to look like? Yeah. In 50 years, let alone in 5. Yeah. How do I set myself up to decrease the amount of time it takes me to make up for lost time?
When I was spending a lot of money as a high income earner, month to month, looking good, making all the mistakes. This has changed my life and my family's life slowly, but surely. I bought a home. My mom lives in. We travel. I'm better able to do everything I want to and nothing I don't. I'm currently on an unpaid leave from my school because of my book and they paid me the 1st year to do it. And he said, okay, come on professor was like, I don't know. South the worst was nice.
It was like, let's talk about it next year. I gave myself room. That means I have choices. I have the choice of freedom. I have the choice of time. That's right. Which is the only thing that's finite in my humble estimation. As those are the reasons that you start leaning in you'll make money over time. Be patient. Yeah. Be thoughtful. Be prudent. Get started. Yeah. That get started piece. I mean, I think I just sat with a group of investors a couple weeks ago. There was a a a land presentation.
There was a different real estate, maybe a multifamily presentation. There was a guy that, was there for precious metals. Really enjoyed the metal, you know, conversation because it's very similar to this. It was it was this conversation, you know, before crypto really existed. And so even in that presentation, his his his advice was, look, don't you're not gonna put everything into gold and then boom. Like, you're a millionaire or whatever, whatever the number is. You you you buy it.
You you just you just buy little bits every week, every month, every every quarter, whatever your your buying frame is, And and that's what I'm hearing you say, which is when I think about crypto now, I think about those few years where I was just, you know, slinging, running, and gunning, and it's slinging. It was just like, oh my goodness. My head was gonna spin off. Right. That's that's not really leveraging the power of what you're talking about the next 5 or 50 or 500 years.
My children or my grandchildren's, you know, 5 generations deep or whatever, are are is there is there a chance that the dollars are gonna be there? Huge. Is is there a chance that Bitcoin still might be there? Ah, okay. Well, let's there's a couple of resources out there. If you don't quite believe that yet, I'd be happy to put them in the show notes. You know? So Absolutely. Is is this a long term play? Yeah. Can I make some money along the way?
I think you did a great job of illustrating that, but but it's the same reason why I'm gonna I'm gonna buy a little bits of of investment and other things. I'm gonna diversify. I'm gonna be prudent about my decision making. So I think I think you've done an amazing job. Anything else you wanna add there as far as, like, the the actual income opportunity with with what we've been talking about? It's really interesting. There are three thing two things I'll say about that.
One is while you're learning, you still should have exposure to markets. Obviously, that's not legal or financial advice. So, you know, do your own research, but research with sound, sources and resources as we we mentioned earlier. I'm really excited about traded funds in addition to my own with what you're talking about dollar cost averaging or satoshi cost averaging, buying a little bit over time. It's to set it and forget it.
In the same way that I make regular, consistent contributions to my retirement plans. It comes out when that money is earned and goes immediately in. It's the same thing that you at a bare minimum do in the crypto space. Also, buying the dip, you talked about a retreat and a kind of a retracing That's a great opportunity. When that happens and everybody else was like, see, I told you something. Like, thank god.
Cause I can increase my basis the same amount of money is going further in terms of investment when you have that that pullback, etcetera, and every asset class goes through that.
In a actually, in in addition to that, when you have crypto assets, you can then lean into decentralized finance and really become your own bank and kind of your own lending institution in the sense of pulling out the equivalent of the taking in the the equivalent of a home equity loan, right, if I have I can lock up my Bitcoin. Don't like doing that. Let's just use another asset. I can lock up my Ethereum.
And then one, if there's some type return and you're starting to see some of those products return, you know, that Gemini got into some heat about its earning product, but you're going to start seeing those come back. Just with Gemini, but across the board, you can earn nice yields and and interest on when you're locking up products. You can also take a loan out Right? So taking a loan off of your own thing means that's tax free and then you pay yourself back or not.
So those are other opportunities passively that you will start to see more and more companies like Lolly where every doing everyday things to earn Bitcoin. If you're already shopping online, why not do it through a company like that? It's not an endorsement of lolly. I, you know, do have a lolly account, and I enjoy getting Sats back, Satoshi's back, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, rather than a dollar back, and keep your dollar. I would like Satoshi's, please. Thank you.
So you'll start to see more of that, more merchants accepting it. You see, Visa and Mastercard, finding ways on the back end to facilitate the exchange of foreign currencies more easily in the background. All of this is literally happening right now, and we should be able at the individual level to take advantage of it. So it's more than just hold it, you know, buying and holding or huddling or hodeling, depending upon how you say it, but leveraging.
That's when you start making up for lost time. Then you can only do that when when you're in it to win it. Yeah. I love it. I I don't remember the name of the book, but it was probably 2017, or so. And I I pray this giant thick book on basically how to integrate taking Bitcoin payments into your business. And it was just one of the thickest, almost just dry but I was just so interested in this whole thing that was happening that nobody was talking about. I'm just like, what in the world?
And so, yeah, and you're starting to see that a little bit now. I think that there's several things. Even large purchases, cars, homes, I've seen all those things purchased in cryptocurrency. I know that Tesla did something earlier on it. They suspended the product and you couldn't pay for the entire car, but you can put your down pay. I don't have a Tesla, but evidently, it's some type of down payment process and that was integrated.
You see more political campaigns accepting contributions as well. Big companies deciding whether they'll be on balance sheet, It's like it's all happening Yeah. Right now. So we need to be paying attention as well. Yeah. It's good stuff. We talk a lot inside gathered the king's mastermind group, but also here on the show about the mastermind principle. Napoleon defines this as 2 or more minds working together onto the achievement of something's specific or a definite chief aim, as he says.
And so how have you used that principle? That mastermind principle inside of law inside of crypto, maybe a mixture of both, but what what immediately pops to your head as far as using that to to your advantage? It makes me think now of the transfer that I feel like we're experiencing from a hyper competitive and siloed model to hyper collaboration.
And so that resonates when you think of a mastermind, I've I've been in masterminds as well and understanding the principle And I found that it's easier for me to connect with and empower people if I approach it from that point of view as well. I believe strongly in having small cohorts.
I I'm doing one for, lawyers and other professionals this summer where you get ten people together, I have one on one time with them as well, but the power of community where even if you don't ask a question or don't know a question to ask, you are constantly learning by being in the presence of others. They're pressing you.
They're as, you know, causing you to think differently if there's, an energetic frequency that I think that is achieved when you have, you're not just in isolation, and this is me as an only child talking. I'm literally my own best friend. And the best thing you'd ever do is cancel plans that we have. I'm perfectly fine to be in my little briar patch. But in terms of my intellectual curiosity, in terms of my, learning potential and and tapping that within.
It's about not being the smartest person in the room and just, you know, the iron sharpens iron concept that is so powerful from a mastermind point of view. So using that and certainly using it in my teaching, I had to really lean into it because I haven't been in an actual classroom in 4 years. Now some of that was having my research leave and then my personal leave, but before that, we're in the middle of pandemonium. I had to find ways to engage.
You know, I'm pretty good with with technology and a lot better than my my counterparts. Bless your hearts. I can learn I do know how to turn on my computer, so that was helpful. And but also even moving before, like, how do we have an an energetic change, digitally speaking, and how powerful that that is. And I'm I'm grateful to my students. We're really successful with creating those opportunities.
But there's such power in not just having your solitary mind, but a mind of like minded spirits that are that are kind of lifting each other up. And and I that's where you get to exponential growth and and that quantum leap that we were talking about earlier as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have to give some great examples there, but the the frequency, the energy that you were you referenced Right. It it's tough to know that unless you felt it.
And when you feel it in a room, especially high achievers, if someone's been listening to this and if they have any interest in crypto, they've been vibing with us for sure, No. That's right. There but there's this there's this whole palpable feeling, even emotion that comes from being in a room of people who are heading in a specific direction, It's funny when when people look to join Gathering the Kings, I let them know that it's a room of winners. And and I'm unapologetic.
The fact that winners are attracted to winners And if you're not, you're gonna hit the door as fast as you come in because we're, like, obsessed with growth in all areas. We Not just business, not just investing, not just marriage, not just faith, not all these things. It's like, no, no, we're we're winners in all of these things. And or at least we're winning, and wanting to be winning in these things.
And so we're pressing in hard, and and that's gonna like suck you in hard, like what you were talking about, or it's gonna make you you know, run the opposite direction, which is okay. Right. Just like that. Yes. No. Absolutely. And that's that's intentional. You know, it it comes down to, like, physics. Really. And then then someone who is not vibing at that high frequency, they just they will run-in the other direction, you know, after that ask them to leave.
They'll be so unbelievably uncomfortable that they know that either they're not ready or they don't even know what's going on and that will repel them that the the energy and the connection will actually repel them. And I think that's really helpful because you don't want and I feel like that's what's happening in the dospace as well.
And you can look at small interpersonal groups all the way to to larger systems as well, but it starts And they small like, if we all did that, 10, 20 folks vibing in those pockets, the the energy that is created from that, is really the type of thing that that changes the world. And so and I don't think that's hyperbolic to say. And if you don't get it, then you can't be a part of our master mind. Well, and and you've got some coming up here. I know summer.
I'm sure you're gonna do some after that. You've worked with attorneys. You've worked with all different types of professionals. I'm sure that I used to you mentioned master classes. Of course, you've got a book, but, like, How can they learn more about getting involved with one of your cohorts or potentially even just getting your book or, all the other things that you've got? Absolutely. Well, two, places. 1, everything really starts at advantageevans.com.
The advantage evans comes from my my tennis years. For sure and really setting up people for success to have their advantage that they are not wasting time. They're not spinning their wheels. They're not having misinformation or disinformation, they, are connected with like like minded winners who are ready to rock, not just folks who are kind of on the sidelines, but in the fast lane. And not in the fast lane to just throw all your money and you like book shot and just hope you hit something?
No. That's you know, it's the strategy that really comes from the mountain of information that you've already made. Like, you've already done all of the logical things. Yeah. When you're done and you're tired of the logical things, let's talk about exponential growth and compressing your timeline. And so that really comes from a cohort that I'm doing this summer. I call it more like a strategy sprint because people don't always have a year's worth of time.
They don't even want to do, like, a, like, I am a, you know, I will sit there and actually do an online course. I love online courses. I love masterminds. I paid a gazillion dollars for all these things. Some people, they do not have the time, but they have the desire for exponential growth. Yep. This would be a program for you. You can learn at advantageevans.com forward slash consult. Right now, it's in wait list form because it it's not for everybody.
So the opportunity to get on the wait list, find out more information, also jump on a one on one with me. Let's see where you are and talk about strategy, not just as an investor, but also business folks and lawyers who are trying to figure out how to show up for the the unbelievable needs of businesses in in Webb 3. Yeah. So doing that, advantageevans.comforward/console, and everything else can be found at advantageevans.com. The book the master class, free resources, etcetera.
And so there's something for everyone, but I'm really focusing on those kind of the high achievers who are really really ready to rock and move forward in a short period of time to get set up for success. I love it. You the the frequency to go back to the energy. I mean, gosh, they would be silly. Not to go check you out.
I mean, just the simple little drops of of things that you've said, you've been totally serious about one little sentence, and then you throw in something totally that makes you real, and I just love every moment. Gotta keep up. That's for sure. They're gonna have to go back and listen to this one again to catch all your little nuances there. But in all seriousness, ProFT Tea, you've been amazing. Doctor in some forms professor, capital t, all the way. We just appreciate your time.
Not only just, again, I said at the beginning, not just in you sharing here, they've gotten, like, the tip of the iceberg, but just the years of mastery that you have brought to this conversation, I just so appreciate that because we get to be the benefactor of that. So thank you, so much blessings to you, your family, all of the things that you're touching here, all the people that you're helping. We appreciate you. I appreciate you so much.
And it's the first, but I hope it's not the last because this is an ongoing conversation. Wanna keep people lifted and keep people ready. High frequency. That's right. Have frequency. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, we are putting together 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
So if that relates and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.