Welcome to the prosperity gap where we discuss the financial gap that exists between where we are and where we should be. It's time to bridge that gap.
Hello everybody and welcome to the prosperity gap, the show where we talk about finance, different things that can help you achieve financial success. My name's Dave Hall. I'm the host. I'm so excited for today's show today. I Have Thomas Walsh with me. He is a cryptocurrency educator, teacher, instructor. Thomas, welcome to the show.
So hello. Thank you for having me Dave.
That was , I look forward to this show for a long time because you have some skills, you have submit knowledge and information that not only interested me a lot but I know is going to interest our listeners. So you are an instructor in cryptocurrency or a trainer of cryptocurrency. Talk a little bit about what got you started in this industry.
Well , uh , crypto currency is uh, something I was really interested in over six years ago. It's been almost seven years and it's a new money coming out that really a is going to be a peer to peer system where people can use it for trade, they can bypass banks. Maybe people uh, think good or bad about that. But it , uh, the, the amount of regulations you've got on you is a taken away and you have the power to uh , use it for trade locally and globally.
And a lot of places around the world are looking at it as an interest, as a new money, but also a, there's a blockchain technology behind it that's going to do some amazing things and that's uh , it's endless what that can do almost like the Internet.
Thomas, what is it that got you excited about this when you first got introduced to cryptocurrency?
I really liked the fact that a cryptocurrency gives you back some of your freedom for what you want to do with your money. You don't have to go to a bank and beg them to order $10,000 cash so you can go pick it up or the fractional reserve of where they take all your money and loan it out where it's not even sitting in the bank anymore. So cryptocurrency doesn't mess with your investment once you've put it in and your storage and then you end up storing it yourself or on an exchange.
And I really like the fact that nobody is messing with your investment.
Thomas, what's this journey been like for you? I mean, if you go take someone like myself, I'm a CPA. When I got into the industry, there was all kinds of books. There were classes I could go to college. I mean for cryptocurrency. I assume a lot of this has had to been a trial and error and learn as you go.
Holy Cow. Let me tell Ya. Seven years ago there was no youtube videos on crypto currency . There was private instructors and Wall Street trainers that I would have to pay to help me , uh , even get into this , uh, industry. So it's been a a crazy 10 years that , um, a lot of the people that had begun in it were gamers and techies that really knew like computer code, just a crazy stuff to learn.
And uh , it's been a tough road and I do see it [inaudible] [inaudible] a lot easier where the retail investor will eventually have an easy time. But [inaudible] it's been tough and uh, I've stuck in there because I really believe , uh , where it's going.
Well let's talk about the guy that's getting in now. Obviously you had a rough process as far as trying to educate yourself and reach out to various sources for some of it's just getting involved in cryptocurrency worst , some good ways that they can learn about cryptocurrency, the industry, and better educate themselves now.
So the first thing that I want to tell people when they do want to reach out and start learning about cryptocurrency is be careful where you get your information because there's some paid providers that want to steer you in an exact, a direction towards their company to just learn about their paid products. So a lot of good places to go. Our uh , free information on the Internet through Youtube.
And you do have to try to get your friends, your family and certain services to kind of weed out the information that's paid for and directing you towards just their particular products so that you still gotta be careful out there. And you do have to kind of take a consensus of what's good and what's bad out there.
Now unfortunately, we've gone through a period of time where people didn't do their homework, they didn't go out and get the information they needed. They saw a market that was changing and many of them got burned. They ended up losing substantial amounts of money because they didn't understand what was happening. Is there still an opportunity for people to make money in cryptocurrency ?
Absolutely. The, the, the number one question or a problem I have with new investors, they say it's too late. You know, Bitcoin hit 20,000 and it's over and you know, yeah, it's been going for 10 years, but it's just begun. You know, we don't know what the ending price will be when it gets to a stable point. Um , it is starting to stabilize a little bit already after 10 years. But a lot of people say, well, it's too late. It's already hit 20,000 and come down and I'm done.
Well, the media has killed bitcoin over 66 times in their news articles saying Bitcoin is now done, it's dead and it is just begun. So honestly , uh, it's not too late. Yes, there's high cycles and low cycles just uh , we'll help them learn those uh, cycles and uh , retail investors need to [inaudible] to not only learn but live, buy , buy low and sell high. And a lot of them don't. They panic after a couple months. [inaudible] they sell when they're mad and that's they gotta be patient.
Thomas, I know in talking to you, this is something you follow very closely. Is this volatility of the market going up and down and what's happening for a general consumer like myself, it can be very overwhelming because I don't understand bitcoin as well as you do or cryptocurrency as a whole as well as you do. What do you say to those people that are wanting to invest but yet look at the volatility of this? How do they know when they've hit the bottom?
How do they know what you know when it's high and need to be selling?
Well, it's funny because a lot of people shy away from cryptocurrency because they say it's so volatile. But man, that's your great opportunity if you can catch some of the wave going up and get out. And that's part of the training that I do with my one on one with my customers. And it's absolutely invaluable for people to get a, a tr, a crypto training , uh , that they can learn when the waves are going up that they're buying in and , uh , get out or a hold through certain cycles.
So there are different ways of day trading or buy and hold. Um , and they have to learn to be patient through the downtimes , uh , so that they don't drive themselves crazy.
No , I know, I was introduced to bitcoin probably about eight years ago. I don't know the exact time I had one of my clients come to me. Maybe it's not been quite that long. Maybe it's, you know, four or five years ago as before it really took off and he was looking for a $200,000 investment. They needed $1 million in total hit, but up like 800 grand, he says like , if you'll just put $200,000 in this thing, I think we can make big money.
But I didn't understand it at all and I wasn't willing to take that risk on something I didn't understand. Well now obviously looking at it today, I would have made tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars off of that original investment. How has that industry changed for you over the last, say , 10 years with what's happening with cryptocurrency during that time?
Holy Cow. Uh , bitcoin started, you know, 10 years ago and we've added over a 2000 coins since then. And all the coins besides bitcoin are company owned. And those companies, some of them have some fantastic products are coming out built on blockchain and they're going to do some amazing things for , uh , I can just go through a myriad of , uh, products and services that block chain . And they're , uh , they're coin companies, they're backed by their coins are gonna do.
And it's fun when you get your feet wet with crypto even, you know, like I did six, seven years ago, I bought into Bitcoin, you know, a little over a hundred dollars. I just bought a few just to see what it was and then start learning about it so you don't have to go all in.
Yeah. And I think that's really the biggest advice I would give to people is just what you were saying right there. Start small. There's no reason. But like myself, I mean, $200,000 was not a wise investment for me. Again, it would have paid off in this situation, but so many times for investors that wouldn't have and something we need to be very careful with and not just put substantial amounts of money into this.
Thomas, you talk about blockchain and we look at blockchain as being the main backend source for cryptocurrency, but it's my understanding as well the blockchain because it's an accounting system is going to be used for far more than just currency. Would you agree with that statement?
I think , uh , in the long run that people are really going to be more comfortable with blockchain than they are with each crypto currency coin because there's a lot of companies out there that have small ideas with small coins and they may not survive in the next 10 years cycle. But blockchain will, blockchain is an idea that's as solid as the internet protocol. Honestly, blockchain is going to change so many things and it's a whole nother issue we can get into.
But just the way the blockchain works, that it's a , uh , it's a transparent , uh, accurate, a permanent ledger. You can go look at how things are verified. Blockchain is amazing and it's going to change how businesses do things and account for things as simple as from farm to table or from a product to pharmacy. Everything's going to be authenticated. It's gonna . It's amazing.
Yeah, and I think that's something prosperity nation, many of you may not understand is that this blockchain , and we don't want to get into a whole discussion about that. I want to definitely focus on crypto currency , but understand that blockchain will change for sure. My industry, because it is an accounting system that's basically allowing people that, you know, all the transactions check transactions, but as Thomas says, it's going to affect the world that we live in.
So don't think that it's going away. Don't think that it just came and it's going to be a fad that's going to disappear, that technology is going to change the way we live and the way we think. Well, so let's get back to the crypto side. Thomas, if you look at the next 10 years, what do you envision for this industry as we look at going into maybe 2030 or the future?
I think we're gonna see a lot more companies come on with their products and building upon the blockchain. So they're going to get implemented. Right now, a lot of these companies are still startup, you know , this is like , uh , buying into up there in their garage or IBM, you know, Microsoft, everybody knows these names, but when they were in their garage, nobody could care less. Honestly.
Blockchain's going to take some of these companies up to where they are a household name and we know it not because of crypto currency , but because of blockchain . So yeah , the next 10 years, you know , we've got 10,000 ATM is out there in the world that are just crypto related. We're going to see more people being able to go and , uh , use just an ATM for cryptocurrency or were we gonna see point and click to get in and out of crypto currency .
Amazing things are gonna make it super easy to use and , uh, implement , you know , into business. A crypto currency.
Thomas, what do you think the turning points going to have to be to allow that to happen? I know I have clients that accept bitcoin as a method of payment on their websites. We see that, you know , people accepting it, but it definitely has not gone mainstream yet. What is going to be that tipping point that will allow it to get to where we can see this period of time where cryptocurrency is being used as a medium of exchange.
The medium exchange is definitely coming, but it has to , uh , people are really slow to implement that part of it. So we're s we're so in the early days of cryptocurrency, we're just a little baby and we're crawling on the floor. So, you know, we've got a long ways to go, you know , uh , but it's going to be a trust issue.
And when people see how easy it is with point and click, then you're going to see people starting to use it a lot more and business that are gonna find out that they're going to have a lot more freedom to use cryptocurrencies because it can be used around the world and its exchange rate runs 24, seven, seven banking with crypto currency never sleeps. So yeah , you don't have to wait for transfers for three full business days.
It's, it's gonna help they , even small businesses and person to person, ah , transfer your money and when it becomes point and click, that's when [inaudible] the implementation is going to be huge.
And I would assume a lot of it's going to have to be regulators, better understanding the cryptocurrency. I know for myself, dealing with the IRS all the time, I actually have talked to a number of IRS agents about cryptocurrency and they still don't really understand it. You know, we talk about, obviously they understand what it is, but it's how do we regulate this money?
How do we make sure, especially on the government side, that they're getting their piece of it, ensuring the people are paying their taxes and doing these things that I would assume as they better understand what's happening, that the acceptance is going to become much higher for not only you know, for them, but also throughout the country, throughout the world. Because they'll be able to say, yes, this is something that's working. And then that trust factor goes up, good or bad.
And unfortunately it's government agencies get involved and start saying, yes, we can validate what's going on here.
Right. And the thing with cryptocurrency , uh, with what we're talking about here with implementation is a of people are waiting on the government to decide if it's a regulated for you to use.
And by Nance is a big exchange around the world and they are just implementing a new exchange just for the United States , uh , through the regulators , uh , through the securities act and all the other regulatory agencies with the United States, they're coming out with their own us only exchange here in a month. So there was already big companies with keeping the crypto currencies through.
Their exchanges are coming to the u s through the regulators and they're [inaudible] getting it ironed out. But it's just happening now.
Yeah, it's very interesting for me as I've sat down with these IRS agents who just see how difficult it is to understand it and sometimes to track, you know, the biggest issue obviously for the government is that they want to be able to easily track what's going on and want to make sure that they can understand financial transactions are happening so they can avoid things like money laundering and those types of activities.
But it is very interesting for me to see how that's improving and how, yeah. And unfortunately as the government gets involved, how sometimes that's what it takes to really bring something mainstream.
Well, that's where our confidence factor goes up when we start ironing out a few little details with the IRS and the regulatory bodies of the United States. Uh, it's really, you know, once we get that and point and click, it's really good to make mainstream crypto currency, a household use and a business to business. It's, it's common. Well, we just , uh , we can, we can know that we can get in early.
Yeah. And it's cool to think that we could do that . Could be so simple. I guess that's what I see in it is really making, as you mentioned earlier, that that financial transaction much simpler than what we're doing today. I mean, very few of us carry cash anymore. We just use our cards. And if you can just use cryptocurrency and know that I could pay that immediately, that money would be transferred. There's a end-to-end accounting system that ensures that everything is handled correctly.
To me, that sounds like much easier and a much better life.
Well, you remember when credit cards first started coming out, you had to slide it through a machine with some copy paper in it and they'd have to have you sign it and they'd mail it off. Well, that was the early days of credit cards. And now you just, you don't even have to swipe your credit card. You , you basically , uh , uh , just kinda touch it to , um, a point of sale machine and it takes your money.
Well, cryptocurrencies , uh, you know, in its early days and it's, it's difficult to use and a , the technology is gonna make it that easy to just a point and click , uh , [inaudible] touch. It's common.
Thomas, are there events out there that people could go to as well? Are there summit's big events that they're having in the crypto world for people to understand it better on a scale?
Oh, that's funny. On a global scale, there is a crypto currency convention around the world every two days. Uh , you can go on to a lot of websites and look up cryptocurrency conventions and you can find them. Uh , literally every two days there's somewhere in the world you can go to a cryptocurrency convention and you talk about getting in on the ground floor with uh , some amazing information and people crypto currency conventions are amazing.
Well, I know that there was a lot of people, I've made a lot of money. There's obviously been those that haven't made money that got into late, didn't understand what they were doing, got into a process that maybe even short term definitely didn't make money longterm . Still wait to see. But for those that made substantial amounts of money, I know there are many guys who became millionaires, multimillionaires as a result of this industry. What are they doing with their tax stuff ?
For some of them actually moving away from the u s to help them save some of the tax money that otherwise span.
Well in the crypto world, we have a , uh, a new nickname for Puerto Rico and it's becoming a called crypto island. So it's exciting because as you know that there's some , uh, tax advantages and there they're amazing for people that know the windfall that they're gonna have in crypto currency , uh , for them to move or ah , begin their process of moving to a place that they're not so heavily taxed and they don't want to go outside the United States. Well, Crypto island, Puerto Rico, hello.
Yeah , it's very interesting for me to see that process. I have a number of clients that are in the industry that have come here, brought their wealth and I know they're talking about building a utopia here at their own community where they could all hang out together and crypto would basically be, the meeting may change for everything. They do. Very excited for me to see if this all actually happened to see this process. But you definitely realize that it's something that's here to stay.
It's affecting people's lives. When when people start making financial decisions and tax decisions based upon profits that are coming out or something, you realize that it's a legitimate product that really has some longevity to it with what's going on in the way it's going to be around in the u s
absolutely. And we're excited to see what happens with the communities going to Puerto Rico because the crypto community is going to have a lot of free money and we really feel like they're going to be a huge windfall for, for Crypto island of Puerto Rico, for them to give back and help their , their new country. They're new.
Uh , I learned , you know, so we really excited to see that they're not just going to go down there and hide that they're really , uh , going to be part of a community that they want to be a part of and , and help.
That's awesome. No , it's very awesome. I look forward to it. Love the people that are coming and the knowledge of their brain , their creativity, their brain . I think that's one of the great things that I love about the crypto industry is everyone that I've met is forward thinking. They're really looking for the future of what the future holds, how it can be much different than the past in the world that we've lived in before and how they can make it better.
Well, and how many times , uh, you don't even hardly hear people talk about the freedoms that we have in America getting better. And honestly , uh , the tax situation and the national debt is not getting any better. So when you've got something like Puerto Rico and their advantages to help these people out, it gives you a place to go and it helps you, you know, if you've got a better tax situation, if you've got a money that is permissionless, you get to use this whatever way you want.
Um, there's a lot of good people out there that are going to do good things with it.
And I get very excited for Puerto Rico because that entrepreneurism is something the island can continue to have continue to use because these guys aren't going to come in here and just take their money and do nothing with it.
They're going to invest in new technology, new opportunity, new creative things, and as that happens, you're going to see some really amazing stuff, I believe, come out in the island of Puerto Rico from these guys that were able to make it rich based upon their investment and forward thinking with the cryptocurrency market.
Absolutely, and I really think a good people with good money do good things. So it's, I think there's a great future for people that have invested in crypto currency that know that there's a better life for them and a better life for people that they can help.
Yeah, absolutely. Tom , one of the questions I didn't cover as we went through earlier in this podcast was regarding the number of companies that are bringing cryptocurrency to the market. Obviously there's hundreds and maybe you mentioned there were thousands of them that are out there trying to get into the market. I assume that at some point there's really not a space for all of those, or is there, you know, can all of those companies end up bringing a currency to market that lasts?
Or do you think there'll be a few big winners that will come out on top once it's all said and done?
Well, when we actually look at certain sectors of , uh , the cryptocurrency world, there's, there's only a couple of big players right now in each sector. So if they're helping with transportation or with being a , a , a quick money transfer or , um, you know, helping with the pharmaceutical or medical fields , uh, there's a few companies in each field and you can look them up. They're all categorized of all 2100 or companies out there. Um, yes, a lot of them aren't gonna make it.
But honestly, once things get regulated and the point and click and people start using mass adoption on cryptocurrencies, we're still just getting started. There was a company out there that we don't even know their name. That's going to be a household name in 10 or 20 years. It's common .
No, I agree with you. I think , uh , it's going to be an exciting time. Very exciting to see what happened , see how this process works. So as we end the podcast, Thomas, any parting thoughts? Anything else you'd like to share that you think people ought to know in regards to cryptocurrency that would help them as they get themselves involved in cryptocurrency and look as an investment option for them?
Well, I do want people to understand that they're going to hear a lot from their friends and family. And these aren't professional investors or advisors and they're hearing so many of the bad things that the government or the media is trying to tell you. And it's a lot of, it's not true. It's not too late. It's not mainly used for illegal activity. You know, it's not too late. Uh, just , uh, find some good information out there. Take it consensus, start learning, get your feet wet.
Just jump in a little bit and see what it is and what it can do for Ya .
Great Information. Thomas, thank you so much for being on our show today. I really appreciate the opportunity to talking to you and allowing our listeners to learn more about cryptocurrency .
My pleasure. I really appreciate you having me .
You have been here with Dave Hall and Thomas Walter . We've been talking about cryptocurrency. You have been part of the prosperity gap r a podcast on financial literacy.