part of the show is that I answer Questions from the people I talk with and you gave me a good one I didn't want to I didn't want to step in on this one too early with that ira question So your question is what advice? Do you have about the tax burden on your investments and how to lessen them? Hi everyone. And welcome to the thing we never talk about a podcast about personal finance for weirdos. My name is Tim Iseler.
I'm a certified financial planner and I run my own independent financial advisory firm and Durham NC. But before that, I spent 18 years in the music industry, working as an audio engineer in both recording studios and touring with bands. And, I'm also a weirdo. So what do I mean by that? This show, like my business, is for people who chose their professional paths based on following a passion or a dream.
That includes artists, musicians, authors, podcasters, athletes, and really anyone who decided to turn a skill or a talent into a career, rather than pursue more conventional cookie cutter options. And no shade on cookie cutters, the world needs cookies. But it also needs weirdos, and those people need ways to talk and learn about the most forbidden topic of all. Money.
The Thing We Never Talk About aims to bring some of those ideas and conversations into a public space and help people who feel out of step with the mainstream make better decisions with their money. Today on the show is one of my best friends, Jeremy Lemos. Jeremy's a touring audio engineer and we've toured together many times over the years with bands like Iron Wine, Dirty Projectors, and Neutral Milk Hotel.
Before that, we started out in the independent Chicago studio world of the early two thousands. And we're in a quote unquote band together called deposition field, which you can find on your more reputable streaming services, Jeremy's also one of the first people I knew in the touring world who knew anything at all about investing. I'm really, really stoked to share this conversation with you and listen, Everyone says it matters. So I'll say it up front.
If you enjoy the show, please like, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, let's get into it. Jeremy, thanks for being here. Thanks for doing this.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, man. let's kick it off. What do you tell people you do for a living?
Hmm. I usually tell them I'm a sound guy, because any other way to explain it, people don't really know what you do, and I feel like somehow that's a thing that people know
If they don't get it, how do you explain that?
I usually explain to people that artists travel around and the house person may be good, but then there's certain. details about each individual artist where having their own person can make a big difference to them. So at a certain level, artists usually hire someone to help them take care of those problems. And that is, that is what I do.
That's very diplomatic on behalf of all the house engineers out there.
Yeah. It's not like people that work at the club are bad, but they just might not know. Every artist has things that are very specific to them and something that might work with artist A would get you fired for artist B. So just knowing what they need can make all the difference.
That makes sense. What's the market like right now? Let's say just generally post pandemic. It doesn't have to be 2025 specific.
well, that's a two parter. I feel like right now it seems pretty quiet. People are complaining on the internet right now and people are reaching out to me asking for leads. but I think that's just this year. post pandemic, it's been.
wild because everyone had to take two years off and then everyone during those two years made new music and is trying to make up for not making any money for two years so when the gates opened up again after the pandemic lifted a lot of people retired a lot of talent left the business and it's been gangbusters for me and almost everyone I know you can work as much as you want because everyone is on tour everyone is doing projects and a lot of people retired during the pandemic so it's been very
very busy last year was One of the busiest years i've ever had
Do you feel like in classic supply and demand fashion, because there is so much need for audio engineers, has the compensation kept up with that demand?
Yes I also feel like there's a lot of younger artists who have become popular very quickly post pandemic and they're looking for people to solve their problems. I mean, you can make a lot of money being on tour even as like a middle band, but you still have to have people, like the infrastructure.
I think what you're known as being able to solve a problem, you can, you can work a lot for younger bands, but I have been lucky for one way or another where I've been working for the, almost the same people I've been working for, for 20 years. I think a lot of people in my position that work with artists that are good, stay, tend to stay with those artists and those types of the people that do what I do end up getting swooped up by people and. Don't leave those positions for a long time.
Okay, that's a good segway. how did you get started in the music industry?
Ha! Uh, well, I started doing this because I had to. I had no intention of ever doing this for a living. I just did it because there was something inside of me that had to go see bands, live, breathe, eat bands. I was just so interested in music. And unlike most people, I wasn't in the band. I just ended up being a technical person around them because I've always been into the tools, I guess. When I was younger, I was really into photography. I really liked record collecting, technical things.
So getting into recording and being on the technical side of helping artists, that was just a real natural fit. And it just. It kind of happened naturally.
Which came first for you in terms of mixing bands at shows and recording bands?
Mixing bands at shows was first just because Especially when I started, the studio was still kind of like a magical thing. This was before you could record things on your phone or even on your laptop. It was still, there was a large, uh, barrier of a normal band going into record with someone like Steve Albini. It was a really, really big deal to go in and get a day of studio time. So when I first started out, it was because it's where I also.
got my foot in the door in the first place was at the punk rock club where I just worked at the club with all the bands. So it was definitely live sound first. But I think I got paid 50 a show. So it was five bands for 50. And this was a long time ago. But still, you just, you did it because you were hanging out with your friends. And being able to do that for any amount of money was just still magical at that time.
Okay, so you're mixing five bands a night for 50 bucks, where is that, the Fireside?
yeah.
Fireside Bowl, classic.
first professional job was the All Ages Bowling Alley in Chicago that somehow had nine shows a week, five bands a show for years and years.
In that situation, living in the city, like, you obviously must have had a very lean lifestyle at that point. How were you thinking about money and then how were you getting by?
Well, when you are a kid and you have those kind of jobs, well, I moved to the city because I got hired by a studio, and I was making 450 a week as an assistant in the studio. And to me, that was what I needed to make it in the business. And it's interesting that I don't remember really stressing about money. I mean, you definitely lived paycheck to paycheck and you were wearing thrift store clothes and you were drinking beers for a dollar. you didn't have a cell phone.
You didn't have an internet bill. You really had, you know, heat, electricity, rent. So your bills were almost zero, but you definitely weren't putting money away for your future because when you're 24 years old doing that, you are just getting to the next Friday.
Yeah. When did touring come into the picture?
Touring came into the picture almost by accident. I started traveling with bands I was recording if they wanted to. Oh, we're going to New York and back. And I said, I want to go to New York and Philadelphia. So I would just sleep on the floor with them. I did it for, you know, nothing. but my roommate.
Ended up joining a pretty popular band and they needed a crew person and I, I mean, it's such a cliche, but you just say yes to something and you keep doing it until people don't realize that you didn't know what you were doing the first time. So I kind of faked it in there and Once I started touring with them, they were pretty well known, and I've just been doing it ever since.
Are you comfortable saying the name of that band?
Oh, it was Sonic Youth. My roommate, I lived with Jim O'Rourke, and we made a lot of records together, and he ended up joining that band. And then when their monitor guy left touring to have a child, they needed a new person, and that was that. And they're the kind of band that they would much rather hire a young person. that had a good attitude than hire a pro grumpy person. But I started touring with them and I still work with, they're still my friends and I still work for Kim.
I did a big tour with her last year, 20 years later. So I'm still, still working with them.
How big of a deal was that for you? Because I know through you, through being friends with you for many, many years, I've met all the people in Sonic Youth and some of them several times. And, That's, absolutely huge for me to think of me at, you know, 15, 16, that someday I would be, having a martini with Thurston Moore was like, fucking mind blowing, right? How was it for you in that moment?
Because Jim is, was, is pretty well known in the underground community, but Sonic Youth was really, to the extent that they could be mainstream, like they, they had, They had, another level of fame than Indie Rock Famous.
And they were, they were the ones that could dip into the big world and not have to have a big hit or like an embarrassing MTV video or whatever they were. They were the band. Once I started working for them, I was over the gate and you know, after I started working with them, I started touring with the yeah, yeah, yeahs. And Karen O literally called Kim and said, do you like this guy? And Kim said, yes.
And once you get Kim Gordon to say that you're fun to tour with, and you're, that's all you need. No one, you don't need a resume or anything like that, but no, it was not lost on me. It might have been a little bit lost on me since I was so young and I had no idea, at the time. But no, I don't think it was lost on me. a friend of ours recently, suddenly died. And it has put a very large reflective, I've been reflecting a lot of the past 20 years.
And when Steve Albini died, I think to make the point that you were talking about Sonic Youth kind of hit me more with Steve. cause I keep wondering if I should be saying we or I, even though you and I have very, very similar upbringings, but we were friends with Steve. He was such a pillar of the community. And the thing that hit me the most was I was mixing a band at Primavera, which was the huge festival in Barcelona. And Steve was in the audience and I was mixing the breeders.
And that was a job I got because Steve said I was cool. And Steve texted me and said, it sounds exactly like it's supposed to sound. You're a legit, great sound man. And that was the thing that got me. How did I ever get to this point when I was 24 years old and just the idea that I could be in the same room as these people was amazing to me. And 20 years later, they are texting me and telling me I'm doing a good job or that they.
actually respect my opinion on helping them and that was the, that's still, that's still wild to me that I can help people like that. And I think that helps doing what I do for so long, is if you can work with people like that, that are still inspiring and generally good people, I think you can do this for as long as you want. But if you were dealing with people that were not nice and didn't trust you, I feel like that would be very difficult to do for a sustained amount of time.
when did touring become the main thing guess you said you started doing live shows, but we were both working in studios in Chicago in the early 2000s, you started touring in a big way with Sonic Youth before I ever started touring in a big way. But I know at some point it just became, for me, it became too much to go on the road, come home and do a record, go immediately back on the road. So when did it, for you, when did touring become the main thing? Or the only thing.
I had a big advantage because working for Sonic Youth, they didn't tour a lot. They basically waited their daughter, we figured out her daughter's school's website and we found out whenever Kim and Thurston's daughter had days off. And we would, the Sonic Youth touring schedule would basically be to the day whenever their daughter had time off from school. So for many years, I worked in the studio and just didn't book sessions around the summer and spring break and Christmas break.
So I had a few years where I was doing both. I think I just started getting offers of better artists and running a small business. I mean, I loved the studio. I loved the gear. I loved the people that I did it with. But running a small business like that is not easy to do. I mean, there's a joke about the easiest way to make a million dollars in a recording studios to start with three million dollars. It's kind of a hard, you know, it's, it's a lot of work.
And I ran a studio for 10 years that broke even, and we were one of the more successful studios in Chicago. It just by Not going under for 10 years. So that was that. and the people I worked with are fun and I love traveling. I still love going to Australia. I still love going to Japan. I still like going to Europe. So I still, I still like it.
Let's sit back to the present day. How do you think about money now?
Well, it's much more of a concern. I mean, us talking about being 24 and living on 500 a week. Somehow I didn't worry about money, but now that we're older and there are more expectations, I don't have any kids to save up for, but just the idea that. I can't fly to Japan forever, and I don't know how, you know, at some point are people going to hire a older guy that's not lifting amps like he used to?
I still love doing this, but I, I want to get to a point where I can just say no to certain things, and I don't have to feel like being the freelancer and just, your answer has to be yes all the time. And I feel like my version of retiring is just, Saying yes to the things I still want to do. And if I had enough money saved up where I wouldn't have to feel nervous by saying no to something, I feel like that is me thinking about money now is that's, that's where I want, that's where I want to be.
Do you have a number in mind where you're like, If I had this much, then I could start, you know, being a little more choosy about saying no to things.
Yes, definitely. I mean, there's always a point where how comfortable do you want to live? Like, I mean, the pandemic was very eye opening that you can get by on very little. And I realized that I can actually be happy with very, very little if I need to be. So that was a kind of a relief. there's definitely some numbers that you could just. be done doing this forever. But there are certain, there are certain things that I would, there's certain things that I still do that I would do for free.
I mean, don't tell everybody, but there, there are certain things wouldn't do for money. So,
Yeah. how did you come up with your number?
well, you just, especially post pandemic, you realize what is your level of happiness? You know, like I don't, if you can live on that pandemic level and realize how happy you are. I mean, if I had that income coming in every year. That would be enough. That would be enough for me. I don't know. I guess everyone gets used to their current situation, and if you are happy with your current situation, then you'd love it if you could just still live like this and not have to work anymore.
That would be ideal. I mean, I I guess that's how I came up with the number.
What are some things that you do or enjoy that are cheap to free?
Every time my wife and I go out to eat, we have fun. It's fun to have a couple drinks and get fancy entrees and then the bill comes and it's kind of mind blowing. Like, it was good, but my asparagus is better than that and your kimchi pancakes are better than these. And My margaritas were at least as good as those. So being at home with my lady and spending three hours cooking and listening to podcasts and listening to records is I could do that quite a few nights a week and be very happy.
So it's not necessarily free, but if you go to the market and buy your own groceries and cook your own food, I mean, it's very, very. Quite a bit less than going out to, going out to eat or getting takeout. So that's, I think that's what I like doing the most.
yeah. It's wild how, I know you're familiar with the concept of anchoring cause you're the one that explained it to me, but if I go to my local wine shop I spend 30 on a bottle of wine, like that to me is a very nice bottle of wine, I'm usually looking for something lower than 30.
Yeah.
But if I go to a restaurant. I'm looking at a glass of wine. I'm looking at like, you know, 15 to 17. So it's just like different mental math depending on the situation. That 30 bottle of wine is a screaming deal when you compare it to two glasses of wine at a decent restaurant.
Yeah. And don't get me wrong, going out is fun, but my wife is great and we, sous chef for each other and we just make it a, make it a thing. Put some records on and that's a pretty fun evening for us, so. It's win win.
How do you decide at this point in your career how much you charge?
I've never been good at this. something that we never talk about is usually what how much people make. I feel like there's a, it can be a really big disparency between what certain people make and they could even be on the same crew doing similar jobs and there could be a crazy amount of money difference between them and whenever you talk about this stuff it's usually two people getting upset instead of both people being happy.
So a lot of times people never talk about it, but, uh, you kind of, you and your buddies hang out and you kind of realize what certain positions can get away with or what the going rate is and certain things and touring people usually make more money than house people because you work for the band and making more money on the road. So there's kind of a home.
rate and a touring rate and then certain jobs are fun and I don't mind charging less for that and certain jobs like being in charge of multiple semi trucks and dozens and dozens of very highly paid union people, like those are, I'm not gonna do that. I need to, you know, I'm not gonna do that for my budget rate, that's for sure.
Up something really good. And I want to make this distinction. I think it's a very important distinction that before you go on tour, I think it's a great idea to talk with your peers about money and what's a fair rate and what you should ask. But I really believe that once you're on tour, you should not be talking to the other people in the crew about money. Cause somebody is going to find out that they're not getting paid enough and.
it might be you or you might be the one that lets it slip that, Hey, you know, actually, actually the guitar tech is getting paid more than everyone. And then there's all of a sudden there's animosity. So I think before the tour starts, when you're negotiating, that's a great time to be very, very transparent with your friends. But once you're on the road, I think you have to button that stuff up.
Yeah. And once you come to an agreement on a rate, you can't beat them up later. Once you're after a few shows or
Yeah,
like I said, I think it's talking about that stuff, loose lips on the road. I think you just get, everybody's going to get. upset because you never know the situation or the artist couldn't live without you and had to get you and they're paying and then someone else's buddy got in and they're making half as much and yeah
Yeah. Nobody feels good. Like you don't feel good when you realize that somebody else. Isn't getting paid enough. know, when you, when you hear what someone else is getting paid and it's way below market rate, you feel bad about that.
or the other way i've heard rumors of people that i worked with that were making crazy crazy money you realize like how in the world can that person be complaining about the catering or something and I know how they're making that much money?
yeah, it goes both ways. what are one or two things that you think you do really well with your personal finances?
well, making a plan and sticking to it. the only reason why I'm doing okay now is because I paid myself first. I try to tell all my friends you have to consider your future self as one of your bills. You pay your rent or your mortgage every month, you pay your cell phone bill, you pay your internet bill, and you pay your future self. And you have to just consider that an expense.
And I've been doing that for a long time and maximizing As long as you consider your future self one of your bills that you have to consider, I think that's how I've been successful. Because I think a lot of other people pay everyone else first, and they leave themselves for last, and I don't think you, you can't do that. And if you, as long as you pay yourself, you'd be really surprised at ten years of paying your future self how far you can get just by sticking to the plan.
What does that look like for you paying your future self? are you putting that money into investment accounts? Are you putting that money into IRAs?
uh, yes. IRAs. I try to tell everyone I work with, because you don't normally talk about this stuff with your coworkers, and a lot of people that end up in the music business did not go to college, definitely didn't go to business school. No one has ever talked about compounding interest. They're talking about guitars and stuff. So IRAs being a little chunk where the government isn't going to take the money away from you. They're actually giving you a little bit to play with for your retirement.
And I think that that is a, for me personally, that's something I have to do every year. That the government gives you that amount of money that you can have for you. So I feel like that is something that everybody should be doing. As much as they can afford it. But they, like I said, you should put that as one of your bills for the year. Pay for your health insurance, hopefully, and pay for this every month.
Great. What does, happily ever after look like for you? Are you on the road? As long as you can or are you on the road as long as it's viable? How do you think about that?
Uh, I think as long as, as long as the people that I love working with are still around and asking me to go on tour with them, I'm going to do that. since the pandemic ended, I've been working for Mavis Staples and she is She's the greatest, full stop. I will do shows with her until she doesn't do shows anymore because she's the best. So as long as I'm still working with people like that, I'm still going to do it.
But at a certain point, I don't think I'm going to want to work with new young bands I don't know. And my wife and I will move to the country and have a really big garden and live happily ever after.
That sounds like a good version.
Yeah, yeah.
cool. So part of the show is that I answer Questions from the people I talk with and you gave me a good one I didn't want to I didn't want to step in on this one too early with that ira question So your question is what advice? Do you have about the tax burden on your investments and how to lessen them? And I think that's a great question. And one that know a lot of people in the touring world. Aren't really schooled on. I think a lot of people just generally aren't really schooled on this.
So I want to make two distinctions. One is you mentioned your IRA, the government doesn't get to touch that. Right? So with IRAs, they're called tax deferred accounts and the same with 401ks, the same with health savings accounts called HSAs and educational savings accounts called 529 plans, when you put your money in there and you invest it. The government doesn't take any taxes as long as you keep your money in there.
So you don't, nobody needs to worry about the taxes for any of those kinds of tax deferred accounts until you take your money out. That's the only time that would happen. And if you take money out at the wrong time, there can be penalties. there's usually percent mandatory penalty plus. any taxes you should have paid so you could easily lose, you know, 30, 40 percent of Whatever you take out immediately.
So in terms of the tax burden on your investments, that doesn't really apply to anything in those tax deferred accounts, like IRAs, there's. What you could just call like a regular brokerage account, an individual account, a taxable account. Those are kinds of investment accounts. So an IRA is just an investment account that has a tax preference. Other investment accounts don't. And every year.
You have to pay taxes on capital gains that you realize, and you have to pay taxes on dividends that you receive. And there's two different tax rates, but they're the same for both dividends and capital gains. So I'm just going to talk about capital gains for now. so if you've owned something, an investment, for less than one year, It's considered short term and any capital gains are just taxed at your regular tax rate.
If you've owned it for longer than a year and a day, it's considered long term that is always given a favorable tax treatment. And it, the tax on maxes out at 20 percent regardless of your income. So you could make a million dollars a year And sell some investments. And for that portion of your income. it's long term, you're only going to pay 20%, even if you're in the highest tax bracket.
So, some strategies to lessen that burden is to pay attention when you're selling how long have you owned the specific shares you're going to sell. if you've owned an investment for more than a year, it's going to get a preferential tax treatment. Less than a year is not. It's going to get taxed at the same as your regular income.
And then the other thing if you've bought the same investment multiple times, like say, if you're, dollar cost averaging into an index fund or something like that, where every month you're putting money into the same investment, should pay attention to, which shares have the most unrealized gains. the shares you bought 10 years ago a lot of unrealized gains because the stock market's gone up a lot in 10 years, but the shares you bought last month. Have almost no gains or maybe even some losses.
And so you can sometimes, depending on your investment accounts, you can pick and choose and say like, I only want to sell this share. That has very little capital gains. and another thing you can do it's called tax loss. Harvesting you can sell stocks that have lost money or investments. I shouldn't say stocks. You can sell investments that have lost money to offset your gains.
So let's say, let's say you, Put a bunch of money into whatever, I don't know, some startup that totally tanked and you lost a thousand dollars on that investment and you have another. Investment and you want to sell it and there's a thousand dollars in gains. If you sell both of those. thousand dollars you lost and the thousand dollars you gained they cancel out for income tax purposes.
So you pay no taxes and that's how you figure out your capital gains as you add up your gains you add up your losses and Whichever one is more that's what you report and you can report up to three thousand dollars of losses every year have that deducted from your normal income.
the realization of that was really eye opening to me because my philosophy, like I said, was save, put it in there, put it in there, leave it alone, leave it alone, leave it alone. And we're finally at a point now where we're thinking of what are we going to do with all this and realizing that you have to time it right. If you're going to move anything around, you have to do it the right way.
And Sometimes when you lose money in the stock market, it's not even necessarily a bad thing, because then you can sell something that you've done well on, along with something that you've lost money, and it's actually good for taxes. And it's kind of upside down thinking, but sometimes investments that haven't done very well are good for a tax season. And that was really eye opening for me.
There's you can also think of it too like somebody like you where could be one year where you're on the road, you know, 250 days a year and another road, another year where you're, sitting at home 250 days a year. And you can think about, when to sell based on that, So let's say, you just figured out my income for 2025 is going to be 15 grand less than it was last year. could sell equivalent of 15, 000 worth of gains. So not 15, 000 worth of investments, but 15, 000 worth of gains.
Yeah, well, yeah, I think a lot of that, once you have something going, you have to start thinking about things like that. And like I said, that was very eye opening to me, but I think anybody starting out before worrying about that stuff. Get a plan and have that go for as much as you can pay your future self.
And then in the future, you can figure that stuff out, but it's always good to have an eye on moving that stuff around when you're actually going to think about selling anything or doing anything with it and do the, doing the right thing. Tax wise.
Yeah. Like trying to optimize the tax impact is that that's like an optimization. It's something you do if you're already performing very well. If you're just socking away a small amount of money every year, or, you know, maxing out that IRA, and that's all you're able to do, you don't have to spend a lot of time on tricky strategies, but if you're in a position where after 10 years of investing, like you have a serious amount of money.
And now the small mistakes turn into big mistakes, then there's room to look at optimizing. But if you're just getting started, it really isn't something you need to put a ton of work into.
Yeah, that's good advice.
You also, you also mentioned that you wanted to talk about crypto. do you have in mind?
it's just, it's everywhere. Every podcast, every news service, every New York times update. It's just. I feel like the threshold of that being a weird fringe thing that your one buddy was into is over. And I just feel like the, there's all these rumors that the government is going to start being involved with it. I just wonder if I'm, if I've already missed the boat on that, if I'm too old already, or if that's.
Ha ha ha.
It's so much more of a thing. I just want to be able to know more about it. And it's just, it's such a wild west thing. Like it doesn't stop for holidays. It doesn't stop on Sunday. It's just always going.
Yeah. Well, you brought up a lot of good points. It is very much a Wild West thing. So, there are a lot of people headed West looking for gold and made money. And there were, you know, a hundred times more that went West looking for gold and lost everything they had. So I think terms of an asset class. There's whatever the potential is in the future. At this point, it remains very speculative. most people I know are very, very risk averse with their money.
And especially a lot of the people who asked me about crypto, they're otherwise extremely risk averse, but because they've heard a lot of interesting things, they want to try it. And.
exactly.
Right. And so, number one, I'll say I'm not giving investment advice right now. Like, I'm not telling anyone what to do with their money, but I would only recommend it to somebody who is extremely risk tolerant because there's zero guarantee. It's a completely unregulated space. it could all collapse and you could lose everything. So if that is an interesting proposition, you know, for some people that is.
Another approach would be to say, you know, it's easier than ever now to get started in a low tech way. I'm not endorsing something like Coinbase, but you know, that's available and it's at least easier to transact than like having your own crypto keys and everything like that. And way to think about it is, is there some amount of money? if it goes to zero, you don't care about it and you're just willing to see.
So like for someone that might be hundred dollars or 500 and just say, I'm just going to put 500 in if I lose that money. Okay, but I just want to find out and you really, you really, really have to think about it as a completely speculative investment. And if that's okay with you, then, then it's a risk you can take and, or pick a dollar amount where you're like, I'm okay if I lose all of that, but I wouldn't recommend.
somebody who's just sort of crypto curious that they sell their apple stock to buy bitcoin You know apple is a highly regulated well run money printing machine
That's not going away.
right it'll go away eventually, but it's not going away because a meme coin that has holds no value. And I also think the thing you said About the U. S. government.
I want to be agnostic about this particular U. S. government, and I don't I'm gonna be agnostic about what type of crypto, you know I don't particularly Think we know who's going to win or if there'll be just one that win What crypto is built on is a thing called blockchain which is basically a open ledger that the longer a transaction is in the ledger, the harder it is to erase.
And I really feel like once there's like a, you know, J. P. Morgan coin, You know, like the, the infrastructure on which, which cryptocurrency is built, which is this blockchain technology, once that's adopted by a mainstream it's going to be so efficient because you don't need. You don't need, your branch manager and three tellers to run a crypto blockchain, you know?
So as soon as someone like JPMorgan Chase gets a hold of it, they can lay off 90 percent of their staff and do all of their business on the blockchain. Because you just don't need them.
So I really think there's going to be mass adoption, but I think there's going to be mass adoption in a profoundly unsexy way, where it's basically like of doing everything, keeping our books the old way, now we're keeping our books this way, and we eliminated, you know, a huge part of our workforce and increased profits in the process.
Wow. I have never even considered what you have just explained. That's pretty incredible. Hmm.
so, take for example, I'm just gonna make up a coin. A Tim coin. I just made a Tim coin. And one Tim coin costs one dollar. And the system that allows people to trade that Tim coin, don't actually have to run it. it's set up, the system runs itself and people buy and trade Tim coins without me hiring a staff. And if you think about it that way, if a bank did that.
And, you know, obviously banks are highly regulated, so they'd have to make sure that their version of their coin meets all of the regulation. But once they do that, they just cut down their labor force in a radical way. Or like once the U. S. government issues, you know, U. S. treasury coin guaranteed worth 1 forever. It becomes a very, very functional platform, but it's also not the Wild West anymore. It's, it's boring.
That's very interesting perspective of Wild West. Yeah,
Cool. you feel about this?
good, good, good. I mean, your perspective on Bitcoin is very, very different than your Nate Silver's and just, you know,
Are you familiar with a thing called the endowment effect?
No,
The endowment effect is a cognitive bias by which the thing that you already own seems more valuable to you if you had to go out and buy it again. So like,
that makes sense.
yeah, like, A guitar that I own. It's more valuable to me because I own it, but if I had to go out and buy it again, would I do it? I don't know. And if you already own Bitcoin, and especially if you've owned Bitcoin for a long time, and you've seen the value just go up and up and up and up, very hard to separate your personal feelings about value of that thing, because you've already experienced the value of the thing. up and up and up and up.
it would be, I think it would be the same, like you and I both know you know, certain people, famous Chicago singer songwriters who took to collecting guitars And now some of those guitars are worth six figures But that's just a story you're telling yourself about the value of the, that piece of wood. And long as everyone believes that story, it's worth six figures. And when people stop believing that story, it's not worth that much. And that is very much where we are with crypto.
That's not to say that there won't be. It won't continue to be legitimized. It might be, nobody knows.
You know, it's pretty smart way to think about it.
cool. Well, Jeremy, thanks so much again for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, this was fun.