What's your sort of long-term play with Bitcoin? But if I've got a massive bag of

Bitcoin, like I can just borrow money against that. I don't have to sell that

Who gives a shit? The average Australian goes to work and they just think, if

But they don't even look at the numbers. I only need $100, $120K a year and

I'll be fine. That's in today's dollars. 10 years when you retire, $120K

What's your opinion then, Ben, on diversification with

There's no way I'd buy an investment property now. cost of running

the investment property, the returns, the problems and all that. Fuck,

like that was just stupid. People, they're going to start selling

their properties. They're going to start selling their things. They're going to start selling their business.

They're going to slow down investing in new things because why

would you? That's going to be an interesting phase to go through.

What's that going to do to projects, development, knew

this, knew that. It's not how much is Bitcoin, it's how much Bitcoin do

You get Bitcoin at the price you deserve, but you also only

Like stop looking at the price, stop looking for dips, stop waiting

for peaks, it just doesn't matter. You need to be taking whatever you

What sort of tricks have you found? Have you got some other things up your sleeve? To get more

Bitcoin. I mean... I'm Matthew Fraser and this is

Crypto Collective. After making millions with Amazon and e-commerce,

I realized that if I was starting again today, crypto would

be my first choice. I'm here to help you take your first

steps and build real wealth. Ready to set yourself up

for life? Let's go. Hey guys, welcome to The Crypto Collective.

My name is Matthew Fraser. And in this episode, I'm

sitting down with Ben Vickers. He's a crypto superstar entrepreneur.

We're going to dive deep into what he thinks about Bitcoin property and

It was pretty ballsy at the time, because I know 2017 was

an era where there was a lot of controversy, there was a lot of scams going on.

Look, I remember it was my brother-in-law now, but

he was the one who was talking about it. I

won't say his name, but let's just say he was using Bitcoin on

For certain things. And that's

when I started to kind of look at it and go, well, what is this? And it's like, you

know, it's the nerd's money. It's the computer money. What gave me the confidence? Nothing,

really. But I thought, what's the harm in doing it, right? So what did

I set up on? Coinbase. I think that was the only, maybe

it wasn't the only exchange, but it was the only one that I knew of. Right. And

it was just easy to set up and start doing the transactions. So that's where that all started

from there. So yeah, I just started kind of putting any

spare cash or any money that wasn't required, particularly from the

business because I had the job, just started putting it into those those three cryptocurrencies.

Have you set it up with, so I have three different buckets, that's what

self-managed super fund. And I'm all in, Ben.

I put all of my super into Bitcoin only.

And then I've got a company bucket. And then I've also got

Do you set yours up similar? So I

went self-managed early 2021. And

I put all of that into Bitcoin, which The

wife, I didn't tell her. She said you're crazy. I

just didn't tell her until afterwards. She didn't need to know,

right? And even back then, we didn't

have these bank limitations as well. So I was actually able to move all

of that over in a couple of transactions. When

I went and told the wife and said, here's how much I had in superannuation. Now,

I've gone self-managed 12 months ago. Look at this to this. She

Yeah. So we went through that process. And that's where we ran into the,

well, the bank will only let us move $10,000 over. Is that because it was just

further down the line? Yeah. Because their new policy had come out

saying, you can't move more than $10,000. This is a comeback. Yep.

Yep. So I mean, there's always a way around these

things. It's usually problematic, and it's a lot of administration. But I was like, this is

freaking bullshit. I'm going to find a way around it. So I actually went and

opened another superannuation account with NAB.

That had some loopholes and whatever, but then you could actually literally take

the money from the ComBank superannuation account, move it

to the NAB superannuation account, and then into the exchange. So

Yeah, or whatever your daily limit was for the day.

Yeah, I've actually found ANZ to be the

winner. I haven't had any issues there. And

again, in the company, I think I can go up to a million a

day. So I can just transfer hundreds of thousands at a time in

one fell swoop over the exchange, which is, of course, easy. A

lot of people are finding problems, though, now. They've sort of really tightened down. I

think since the price went to sort of over $100K, sort of like everyone,

as it happens, is the price is really high. I think

I'll buy it now. Yeah. Yeah. So everyone's rushing in. The banks are

just like closing up. Macquarie is another one where I have a self-managed

super fund account. I haven't had any problems. But then new people

now are having problems. So it seems that if you've got a track record already, you're

And they want to keep the money in the system, right? Like, even from a personal point of view. So

that was the superannuation, got that solved. That did take three or

four weeks. And I was like, so furious because the

action that had happened in those three or four weeks. In fact, I did put

it out to all the news companies going, this is bullshit. And

Yeah. But got some airtime, nothing So you were literally featured on

Sky News? Not me. They picked up the story going, com bank customer furious

Of course you have to tell them. Even under $10,000 now, you know, even

if you go and getting $4,000 out of the bank just as cash, it's like, you know,

Yeah. So I got the super stuff sort of, but then I still had the personal problem,

right? Because I was like, we're still putting my personal money into crypto. So I went and opened like

five bank accounts, ING, NAB, HSBC,

because now I can move whatever their limit is from each of

those. So that solved that problem as well. ING, from my

experience, has been awesome. I've never had any issues with limits or

So now that you've got this accumulation of Bitcoin, I've

got to ask you, have you ever sold any

Yeah. So just, I mean, my portfolio would be You

know, 80% Bitcoin, 15% across

Solana, XRP, Cardano, and the remaining five. So Solana, XRP.

XRP has done well recently. Cardano has been average.

Solana is amazing. Yeah. So what

So the remaining 5% on that is the play stuff.

And I'm playing in Doge, Shimmer, pretty much

Or the Milani coin, or any of that. But my strategy is buy

And is that actually what you're doing? Yeah. OK. And you're waiting for the next cycle

top? Is that what you're thinking? That's what I'm thinking. And I mean, I don't mind if

XRP bumping up, take some, move

it to Bitcoin, leave the pull there, that goes okay, then move it over. So it's just kind

So I'm always interested to know from people, what is their long

term play with something like Bitcoin? Because of course, people

say, well, look, you can hold Bitcoin, but then what's the good of just holding it forever? You

can't even you can't use it, or you're not going to use it if you don't say I'm going to

Oh, look, I believe and it's going to be coming soon. I think you

can already do this in the States, right? But if I've got a massive bag of Bitcoin, like

I can just borrow money against that. I don't have to sell that Bitcoin even at

10, 15% interest. Who gives a shit? Because the net across what

that goes up versus what that's costing. So I don't think that's kind of

mainstream here at the moment, but it'll be coming at some point. So

I'm not selling. OK. I can tell you that I've already experimented down

this path. So there is companies in Australia that do it. And

I've just, for my own interest, put up some money, borrowed

against it. And in fact, what I do is I put up, initially

I put up $10,000 into this company in Australia. They'll

end up to 40% LVR on that. So they literally deposit the money back

into your bank account. I then send the money back to the exchange. And

then I buy more Bitcoin. Yeah. And the interest rate

is 9.5%, which I thought was like- They're private lenders. Yeah,

yeah. Oh, mate. Yeah. Need the hookup. Give me the links. Yeah.

I'll tell you. I'll tell you. It's a company called Block Earner. Yeah. And

they're based in Australia. They've been around for a little while. And I just

went in and started experimenting with their processes and what buttons to

press. And it seems that most people, from what I hear, do that. They start off with

a small sum. Then it's like, OK, now I'll move over $100, or

now I'll move over $1 million or something and borrow against that. The

other thing, too, is they capitalize the interest. So there's no ongoing repayment.

There are some other companies in Australia that do say you have to make an ongoing repayment.

So it's basically at the end of a year, it's roughly $4,400, let's

say, that you put in now. You can just roll it over, providing that, of course, Bitcoin

is up. Now, what's interesting, though, is that They

say 40% LVR, but they allow you on

their bandwidth to go up to sort of 50% LVR and still

stay within the healthy range. So of course, with the fluctuations within the Bitcoin

market. And then once it gets to 55%, they'll

say, hey, can you please bring this back into line? And 60%, they'll probably

liquidate you and then give you the change yeah so that's happening right

now in australia and what i've actually realized in order

to manage the lvr you can you take

the uh the 40 you put it back into the exchange you buy more bitcoin but

then you also put that up as collateral as well which then gives you that extra

buffer And then theoretically, you could borrow against that again. Yeah. It's

a sailor kind of strategy, isn't it? Well, except there's no shares involved.

I'm not selling off shares. But I'm trying to, like, all I

do all day every day, I don't know about you, but is think about how can I get

more Bitcoin. Yeah? Is that your strategy? What sort of tricks have

No. I mean, I would, look,

I've got two young kids, 10, 6, a risk averse

wife. You've got them working. They're taking their money

I did buy them a Bitcoin back in 23, so they can thank me for that

But yeah, like if, and

I'm still going to try and work through convincing her of this, but I would like to

sell the property and take all the equity out

of that and put that into Bitcoin and just go renting for the next two to three years.

I sold an investment property in 21. If

you think about it, the cost of running the investment property,

the returns, the problems, and all that, it was just like, I had that property for 12 years.

And I'm just like, what the fuck? That was just stupid in

hindsight now. There's no way I'd buy an investment property now.

That's so interesting, you're saying that, because I've also moved down that line

as well. Yeah. So do you still hold property? And

if you had the situation again today, would

No, no, I would not buy property at all. It's a it's kind

of a hard decision, like for any investment, if someone says, hey,

I'm keen for you to be a partner in this business. We want two

mil, you get 30% of the business. We're looking at 20% year on

year. What's the point? It's not

that it's not a bad idea, but it's like, well, what is the point when I've got all these

options on the table? Where is going to be the best return?

Where is going to be the low impact, low effort return? And

it points to one thing. Yeah. So I do kind of

think about the future on that front to go, well, hang on, maybe there is a bit of concern in

terms of business investment and that type

of thing. Because where's the growth and development going to come from when investors are

looking for return? They go, well, why open up the hotel?

Why open up the restaurants when I can do that? Yeah.

No staff, no systems, no problems, overhead, all this drama and shit. And

it's like, I'll take that all day, every day. I totally agree with

I mean, so I've just sold, I also have

a car collection, about seven cars. And

I've just sold one car recently, Bitcoin. Another one's

up on the market. So I'm sort of slowly going through them. I don't really need

these. I don't drive them that much. I do love them. The

other thing, though, is I've just sold, it actually went unconditional on

Friday, which was a commercial property not far from here. which

still leaves me two more commercial properties. And all

that now is going into Bitcoin as well. But

I think, though, Ben, you've got to bring, I mean, you mentioned before

about you didn't tell your wife. I also have a wife. But

I've also brought her along the journey. And I think for a lot of people, where

a lot of the decisions are being made, particularly about super and their

generational wealth creation, You have to kind of bring

them along. Because the last thing I would want to do is sort of go home and say, babe, I've

just sold all of our property portfolio. And

it's gone into Bitcoin. I don't know if she would really be

too upset, because she knows about Bitcoin now. So

I've sold this one. I've still got these other two remaining. And every day,

I'm thinking, why am I keeping these? Why am I keeping these? Why

am I keeping these? And my wife's like, I really think we

should have just more diversification. Hey, just quickly, if you're ready

to dive deeper into crypto and Bitcoin and build real wealth,

join my free crypto collective community. It's

where I share exclusive insights and strategies and live discussions

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portfolio. Click on the link in the description and join us today. Now

back to the episode. What's your opinion then, Ben, on

So apart from the house that we live in

and own, real estate is out of the question. I wouldn't be

doing that at all. I used to have quite

a bit in the ASX. And over the last 18 months,

I've been getting rid of that and putting it into Bitcoin. Yeah,

just because I'm like, it all points to one area, know what I

Can I ask you, though, because a lot of people would say, well, that's too risky. You

don't put all your eggs in one basket. But would I be right in

saying, though, that as you've been in since 2017, so

as you sort of go down this Bitcoin journey, you

just become more convinced, you read more books, you understand the space

Yeah. Yep, 100%. And it's like, I

think people, some people, particularly when they come new to the space, my

mates have said this so many times, I can just recall, and I repeat it

back to them because they're like, oh shit, Bitcoin's at 67k. I'll

wait till it dips back to 50. I'll wait, you know, buy the dip and all

this kind of crap. And then it goes obviously beyond there

and then they're like, oh shit I missed that and then maybe they buy in and then it comes

back and then they go shit It's going to zero and they

sell and they just get wrecked and burnt I've heard numerous horror stories, but

my view I don't look at the price at all

It's just like it's not how much is Bitcoin is how much Bitcoin do you have? And

I think it was sailor who said it and I love it because I said to my friends as well I was like you

will be paying for Bitcoin at the price you deserve Yes, so when

it is 500,000 and you start buying then that's you deserve that.

How is Bitcoin around your friends? I mean, are

No No. I

think, you know, over the years, I've actually helped a

lot of people see the light and get into it. You know, I've sat with my friends, and

I've gone, give me your phone. Let's set up the CoinSpot account. This is what you do.

This is how we do everything. And then they come back going, holy shit. You

know, I've just dealt money. I'm like, there you go. You don't fucking sell it. Yeah,

I've literally, you prompted me on this before, like not

have I not sold any Bitcoin, but I've only sold And

it was Pepe. Right. Yeah. But that's the only one

I've ever sold. Everything else has been bought. Just accumulated, though.

Do you get bored, though, with certain types of cryptos

and think, ah, you know what? This is not do it. Like XRP, for example. Surely

there was a time during an XRP life

Well, then there was the whole legal case and things. And I was like,

you know, I don't know. If they come through the back end of this, then that's going

to be really good. And then we kind of got through

that part of it and started to make some moves. I

think XRP has got a fantastic use case. I think that

it's going to do well. I

don't like the, if it's not decentralized, I don't like

it. Like someone runs XRP, there's board members, developers. So that always makes

me really nervous. So like I said, my strategy would be like, try and get

these things that do have a good Solana and ETH

and XRP that do have a good use case. good

businesses, ride that upside wave, and then convert across

And there's a lot of positive news coming out about, well, Solana. You

know, Trump coin came out on Solana. There's

now talk, you may have heard that Eric Trump has,

I don't know if he's announced the policy, but he let it slip anyway, that

America will not charge the proposing America will

not charge capital gains tax on any crypto. That's made

in America basically, so Solana is one of them XRP

all these ones you've got I think I think Cardano and

H bar and I think there was the Trump going to because

And so that's going to be super, super bullish because everyone's going to now, of

course, buy up those coins, particularly in the US. And

US is obviously one of the places where most people have, what was it, like 60 million

people have crypto in America. Yeah, it's

huge. Hey, just quickly, if you're ready to dive deeper into crypto and

Bitcoin and build real wealth, join my free crypto

collective community. It's where I share exclusive insights and strategies

and live discussions to help you succeed, whether you're a beginner or

scaling your portfolio. Click on the link in the description and join

us today. Now back to the episode. What's your opinion on

what's happened in America with

I think it's fantastic. Like, I

mean, I personally, I love Trump because I think he's a

he's a business operator, like he gets the basics of generating

money, generating jobs, generating opportunity, and removing

any obstacles in the way that limit people from doing that. So I'm a big

advocate of him. I think they get the facts that

this whole change in the financial space

is going to happen, whether they like it or not. People

are moving into a new direction. And he's like, well, let's get at the forefront of

it. Let's not be the follower of the other big countries. Let's

get in the forefront of it and make it easier to do

Yeah, I'm just loving every day now. I'm just like glued to the Any

app I can find that says Trump speeches and not just even in

the crypto space is like everything else that he's doing Yeah, and it seems like

America is now going to become the powerhouse that it should be. Yeah, and

That's why I'm super bullish this year particularly on on crypto

because everything that he said he was going to do I mean he's he's

talked about the Bitcoin the strategic reserve He

hasn't announced it per se but he certainly put a lot of things in place by

talking about a crypto asset When I got

a digital asset stockpile, it was the term he used they're gonna

start creating that which I think Leaves the door open for not

just a Bitcoin, but could be Solana, you know

So so much positive news there on that space. What is your idea

of? the future for your I

said like wealth creation and what I mean by that is Are

you thinking about generational wealth when I talk about family? Yeah,

So, well, I mean, how I kind of got to this point

was, even though I was on amazing money, I was like,

I'm not going to be able to earn myself into a

comfortable retirement. I'm certainly not going to be able to save to

an early retirement. And particularly when I was looking at

my superannuation account and then kind of rolling that

forward to 65, I was like, This is

nowhere near going to be enough for any sort

of mediocre retirement, let alone comfortable. And

I don't think people are aware of that. And I do have some friends who are in their 60s

and stuff. And I'm like, you're in trouble here.

And a lot of people will be in trouble. And the first thing that they do is go, well, where is

the money? It's caught up in the house. So they sell the house. And

then they've got to fucking move somewhere else into a one-bedroom unit to free up

the capital just to have some runway of cash to live on. So

I was like, okay, if you make your money,

then you need your money to make money. And that is the path to,

you know, freedom really is to find that compounding platform

or product that's gonna get you there. So that's,

you know, I started, I mean, my first stock that

I bought was, I think it

was 2014, a company called FBR, Australian company, they do 3D printed houses.

Put a couple grand into that, I look back six months later, it was at four, looks

back six months later, it was at 10, and I was like, is it

that easy? And that's when I started to really go down that

path of like investing, finding companies to invest in.

But is that because you thought, you were thinking about retirement? I

was thinking about making money. Right. Yeah. And the thing was,

is like, when you start making money, it's like, well, hang on a sec, We're going to get

to a house deposit way quicker than me trying to

save $200 a week out of the pay. It's just not going to

get you there. So finding those avenues and vehicles

of getting money to rapidly grow, and that's when Bitcoin popped up.

And it was a very different stage,

because it was like this new thing. It didn't

have any kind of awareness or structure to it. So it was almost

very risky. But I kind of thought, hang on, this makes sense. like

longer term, and as this evolves and everything else evolves, this

is probably going to solve a lot of problems for the world, which

is not run by the CEO of Xero or the board directors

of Xero, and everything's dependent on how they operate the company and

who works in it, whereas this is not. So that's when I started kind

of put a bit more into that. Generational wealth,

that's what it is. I haven't come from money. It

wasn't the easiest childhood. I went to 27 schools. I left home at 15, started

working full time at 15. So I was like, it's on me to

make it work. And I certainly was

thinking about the future and my kids' future, and I wanted that

Yeah. Because I

think about this all the time is now, I guess, being in my mid-40s is

retirement. I've got essentially 20 years. And

I've got some friends who have similar age to myself. And I've looked at

their super. And I literally said to a guy the other day, I said, Jamie,

you're fucked. You have to do something, OK?

Because I ask myself, why are these people not interested in making money

or retirement? And I think it's because the

average Australian goes to work, and they just think that

if I just work my whole life, I'm going to have enough money in the super. That's it. They don't

even look at the numbers. And even on the

Today Show, they now pop up numbers. And it's so depressing.

They'll say something like, you could just retire

on $300,000 a year. But it's OK, because

you'll be able to subsidize with a pension. I'm thinking, no, that's

not the goal. The goal is not to retire on the pension or even part

pension. The goal is to retire with as much money as possible to live a comfortable life.

And they're now saying that a comfortable life, Ben, is one

holiday. This is in retirement. And you're going to lots of holidays. But

one holiday every seven years. That's what you

are to expect on the average super in

retirement. And you maybe go out for dinner once a month. I mean, the whole thing

is absolutely pathetic. But I'm trying to now convince

people And I don't even know why I've been trying to convince people because

I mean, it's not it's not skin off my teeth Yeah, and you can only help

so much and you can only lead so many people to the water It's

like look you're gonna be screwed. Okay, you're going to have

to do something and at this point in time Bitcoin is

the answer. Mmm Have you had similar sort

of stories with other people? With their super

Yeah. And I think they kind of look at the, I

only need 100, 120k a year and I'll be fine. It's like, that's

in today's dollars. In 10 years when you retire, 120k is fucking

nothing. It's already happening at that rapid rate. So

I think you're right. I think they're not looking at the numbers. They're

not looking at what it will cost in the future. They're just comparing it to what

it does now. They're

going to be in for a huge shock, a huge, huge shock.

And it's saddening. And that's probably why we are trying to help them, right? Because it's

like, I don't want to see some of my good friends or whatever hit

that 60, retire, and then go,

I'm fucked. Oh, shit. Yeah, because now you're in recovery

mode. You're in the- Or you have to keep working. Yeah.

And you see them. You go to Bunnings. You see a 79-year-old there

walking around. You're like, what are you doing here? It's like, well, I tried to retire. Doesn't

work. Now I'm here getting paid a shit wage. The government's

taking half of it. And a big eye-opener for

me, I did some volunteering, probably about 2015, for Meals

on Wheels. And that's where you go and drop off food to

the elderly. And I was just like, this

is sad. It was really, really sad. And that's when I started

just to pay attention to the numbers. And yeah, it's

like looking at where that super was going to land. The pension, forget

about it. It's not going to. That's why the oldies are like turning

their aircon off on a hot day. They're trying to save a couple of dollars. And it may not

even be around in 20 years. Yeah, that's it. Could be completely gone,

right? So yeah, I decided to look at that and go, well,

it's not even about maintaining your quality of life once you retire. Sure,

that would be enough, but don't you want Yeah, it's

totally crazy. Yeah. Don't you want to see like, they

have the ability to, you know, make decisions, the ability to put your,

your kids into property. You see what they're doing now, the boomers are

financing their kids into their property. So now they're leveraging up

their mortgage debt or selling and downsizing to help them out. And it's like, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, You're just taking on more loans and more

debt over longer period of time at higher interest rates Which means they have to be earned

more which means they're stuck in the job Yeah, so it's

I've got it. I've got a question for you Yeah, what about with like? Like

material possessions, right? I'm guessing you're not

driven by material possessions. I I

live a pretty simple life. Do you want to get simple, though?

As you get older, are you going, do you think, I want to

get rid of more things? Because you said you want to get rid of the property, isn't it? And then sort of

Yeah. I think, like, my home, that's

where I live. So I want that to be. safe, secure,

nice and comfortable. But I don't need a mansion on the waterfront. I

don't have any desire for that. I would rather have

the comfort and the peace of mind knowing, I

guess, that I could if I wanted to. Or if we want to go traveling, we can go tomorrow. If

we want to stay there, we can. It's just having that peace of mind and that comfort. I'm

not excessive with anything. I prefer the

simplicity and the peace of mind more than Splashing.

If I'm going to splash, it'll be on those holidays and those experiences.

More like e-experiences. Yeah, 100%. Because it was

one of the reasons I left that big corporate job. And that was a scary moment,

because I was like, all of a sudden, that peace of mind, that security, the

big income check is now gone. So how are you going to replace that? But

one of the things I saw just before I resigned was this couple of

charts on time spent with your wife,

your kids, your friends, your family. And

by the time your kid hits 12 years old, you've spent 75% of

the time with them that you will. By the time they hit 18, it's that

90%. So I'm in that sweet spot with my kids now where they're home every night, we eat together,

I take them to school, I pick them up from school, they come home, they hug me, they love me, they

wanna hang out. But as soon as he hits 12, I'm going to my friend's house for

the weekend. I'm having a sleepover at Bob's. And then all of a sudden, they just

keep drifting further and further away. So I was like, Now's

my time. I can do big corporate jobs down the track if I want to,

but now is the critical point to have that relationship and

that freedom and embed this family time. So whatever

Yeah. I was listening to a podcast. It was actually Chamath and

Tucker. This was like two days ago. And he used

to be in Facebook, and then he went off and did his own thing, the Sri Lankan

looking thing. And he said, I

had all this money. He's probably got a truckload. It'd

be hundreds of millions, right? And I was buying the Rolex

watches and this, that, and the other, because I thought that's what I had to do. And

I never had that. And he comes from an immigrant family, had basically nothing.

And he said, but the more I got, it wasn't

feeling avoided. I didn't feel happier, because I was accumulating all these

material possessions. And those types

of conversations always get me thinking. Am

I happy? I wouldn't say I'm sad. But

I also think maybe I need to downsize more. Maybe I need to

get rid of more cars. Do I really need these cars? Because when

you start accumulating all those sort of things, that's why I look at other people who have massive

car collections. You actually need someone in

your family office that manages the

car collections because what you don't know if it unless

you've got a car collection is now you've got maintenance in all of them then you've got

registration then you've got to get the green slip and the whatever slips you know

what I mean and it's just this constant thing it's like taking up your time yeah

And so it's got to the point for me, I don't even take them out

now. It's like, oh, it's too much hassle. Because then I've got to get them serviced

more often. Then I've got to get the green slips and the blue slips,

whatever the slip, you know what I mean? I just want them out now. So now I'm like, no,

that's gone. That's gone. I suffer

from collections, vinyl collections, CD

collections. Just not because I want

to collect them. I just happen to accumulate them. And then I think, do

I really need these things? And so I always

now bring it back to maybe if I just got rid of everything

and just had Bitcoin. Isn't that weird? It's like this religion now.

Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, I just want

time. So if anything's consuming my time that

is what I deem to be invaluable, that's what I'm trying to get rid

of. Right. And the investment properties were a big one, because it's like the

agency, this, then there's a maintenance schedule, then

it's got to be listed again. There's just all this crap and energy put

into it. And the return was just like, it's not there. So

where can I get? And how much time does Bitcoin take? It doesn't. You

It takes up a lot of mental time. Not

so much physical time. It takes up mental time because I'm

always thinking about how can I get more. And I spoke

to someone the other day who's a multi-millionaire. He

said, I think the same thing. And

it's funny because even Michael Saylor, who now has something in the vicinity of

over 400,000 Bitcoin, he also thinks

the same thing. So it seems that no matter where you get to in

your accumulation of Bitcoin, you're always thinking, I think

Yeah. So I think, how's that going to roll out as

people start to understand and get on board? Because they're going to start selling

their properties. They're going to start selling their things. They're going to start selling their

business. They're going to slow down investing in new

things, because why would you? So that's going

to be an interesting phase to go through. You imagine

people selling their house now. who has had

that house for 10, 20 years, who may have thought about this

Bitcoin or something, who just got a million dollars in the bank, and

they're going to go and buy another place or whatever. They might

be thinking, well, what do I do with this? So do you

know what I mean? They're going to start putting their money in different areas.

So what's that going to do to projects, development, new

this, new that? Is it going to slow down

I think there's going to. There will

always be a place obviously for housing because people want to live somewhere. They

want to buy commercial, have commercial buildings to have a business and what have you. But

I think, and I think there's always going to be someone or

people that just like, I don't, I'm not into Bitcoin. And

you said before that you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve, but

you also only buy Bitcoin if you need to know about Bitcoin. I've

got friends who have, one guy's got about 50 to

100 properties, completely fine. He'd be

in his 60s. He just doesn't need to know about Bitcoin. He's

got so much wealth that he's not concerned about

Bitcoin. And I think that's actually just on a point of

that. That's interesting because a lot of even billionaires right now,

not every billionaire in the world has Bitcoin. And when

they wake up. to the fact that I should be

getting Bitcoin, it's going to be swallowed up so quick,

because they're not going to care about the price. They're just going to buy it up, because I

just want to have some. Even if I don't even need it, I can just have some allocation to it now.

That's it, yeah. Even BlackRock's talking now about up to, I

think it was 5% allocation, which would put them

at, which Larry Fink just even said, would put the price

up to about $700,000, even if they just did that, which

is totally insane. I'm also going through this phase two

now where I have a, much like yourself, I

had a e-commerce business. I've still got the

e-commerce business. And I keep thinking about, do I

want to now buy another e-commerce business to

generate cash flow, right? And to be clear for everyone who's

listening, Bitcoin's not generating any cash flow. But

I don't really want to do the work. Because I

know how much time and effort it's going to take to even

just like test a new product. Or

even if I was to buy an existing business, which is probably what I would do

now, I probably wouldn't start from scratch. I'd probably just find one that was already existing and

just buy that. But then I'm like, OK, well, I'm going to have to

put money into that. Well, and it's still not even

a guarantee that it's going to do the sales as it even was doing last year.

So I'm thinking, I'm just going to put that same money into this Bitcoin and

then actually just kick back and not really worry

about it. I have the same conversation now with my

wife about the Hungry Jacks restaurant. I'm like, babe, when are we going to sell this

store? But here's something that

has come up as well, which is, what else

do you do? And I think particularly for my wife, whose identity

is very much fixed on, I'm a businesswoman, and

this is what I do, and you remove that, now

what do you do? Do you have these similar

thoughts about offloading even your

I was just thinking about this last week because I was like It's

it's gonna be Be harder for me to say

let's put the house on the market Then it will be

So yeah, that's here's the question though If

you had the opportunity today would you sell

You would? Yeah. OK. That's an

Yeah. But look, I'm not the sort of guy that wants

to sit on the beach drinking margaritas and just relaxing. I cannot

fathom that. I've got to do stuff. I can't

struggle to sit down and watch a movie because I'm just like, I'm wasting time. So I

do want to do things. I think it's just about, well,

what do you want to do? So what drives you now, then, to keep

the businesses? So, well, for the customers,

that is the cash flow. So that is my money pool for the Bitcoin investment

primarily. The fired up is, I mean, I love

what I do in that business. Like, I'm helping other

small businesses or companies, like, grow and scale. And that's great. And

then it's also talking to them. Like, it's the holistic thing to go, now

that you've doubled your revenue, or now that you're getting net

profit into the bank that you weren't, now start putting that

into the future. You need to start investing that.

Because whatever the business is, it's like at some

point, whether it's your choice or someone else's choice, it's

going to end. The business will disappear. The

business won't survive. Or you'll sell it. Or something will happen.

But for them to think that, hey, I'll have this business for the rest of my

life, it's like, hmm. Can you be sure of

that? You know what I mean? So again, it just comes back to that peace

But also, I think, purpose in life. If

your purpose right now is to help people, and

that's what gives you satisfaction in life, which clearly it does,

then you're going to keep that business. Even if you were to

halve the profit, you'd be like, I just love this. I

think the struggle at the moment is when

you have a business that is just a business, where there's no

real passion. It's just bringing in cash flow.

You think, how much longer do I want to do this for? And keep

stacking. What advice can you give to people who

Get started. Hurry up. That's the first thing. Then

second thing, this is what I'll be saying to my friends as well.

just dollar cost average, like stop looking at the price, stop

looking for dips, stop waiting for peaks. It just doesn't matter. You

need to be taking whatever you can and putting

it across into this asset. Then I think where

a lot of newbies come unstuck is leaving it on an exchange.

So the cold wallet and the cold storage is a

must. So if it's If

it's not your wallet, it's not your money. People just need to go and Google

FTX or something else like that to see how a

lot of people come unstuck with that situation. So yeah, buy

it and then get it cold storage. Have

cold storage and have a bunch of security layers in

place. Yeah, for me, I've got, you know, The

biometrics, the two-factor, the ledger. You have to give blood.

Got to give blood. I can't wait for when they do that. Prick. Yep,

it's you. So yeah, I mean, get educated. I

was shitting myself when I got the ledger the

first time. I spent however long it was setting

that up. It was complicated, man. And once you start

moving big lumps, your heart's pounding out your chest because

I've gone to the extreme of a separate laptop only

for crypto. I have an encrypted browser,

encrypted email, and I

have then, obviously I use cold storage, so

I've mentioned the Node. I then have some other devices which

I keep, so like Solana or things like that, because the Nodes are only for Bitcoin. It's

just a Bitcoin Node. I'll

use a ledger. So I know what you're talking about, where it's complicated

to set up. Have you used a Trezor before? No. Trezor's way easier.

But I'm not sure if they do altcoins. I'd have to double check. I know

they do for Bitcoin. I have used. But before I had my own setup,

I had the Trezor. And much easier

But then it's like I've got where I keep my seed

phrases, which is then stamped, which is then in like a fireproof

bag. And then I've got other ones

where I've got to get my parents safe and gone to the nth degree. I

think it's just so important because what people forget is

they look at what they've got today and they say, oh, it's only $5,000 or it's $10,000. What

is that going to be worth in 20 years? If you lose that today, what

is the opportunity cost? But

people, they're apathetic as well. They're a

bit sort of blase. I think they sort of think it's a bit like the banks.

If you have your money in a bank, No one really wakes up

in the morning and thinks, I

don't know if I'm going to have my money in my bank today in the Commonwealth Bank. Are they going to steal it?

We don't think that. We just expect it's going to be there. And so I think, to a

degree, that's how they think exchanges are. They think, oh, if I just leave it

on the exchange, everything will be great. It's not until you've gone through what

you've had in your life cycle is You've seen the

FTXs and the list of other exchanges that have gone

We've also seen banks fail, right? We've seen people with banks go down,

and they're like, where's my freaking money? But not in Australia. No.

But they need to look abroad. But they don't. But

They just think everything will be cruisy, everything's easy and you know, the

Yeah, they won't come in for over, they won't do an extra hour shift.

Oh no, cause you know, why would I do that? I'm gonna get paid from, you

know, I've got literally, I know of staff who don't do extra hours

because I'd lose money from settling. Right. Like

what? Yeah, that's how they live. Mm. Yeah, and then they wonder why

they're not getting ahead why they don't have any money And I think to

a degree Ben I'm sidetracking here, but it's back down

to education system Like we mentioned before that in

Indonesia, they're getting taught about Bitcoin Australia's not having

that in Australia Yeah, it's not in the curriculum Yeah. Why is that?

Why are they teaching people about self-managed super or just stocks and

shares? They just want to keep people dumbed down. In

Ben, look, thank you so much for coming in today. Really appreciate you taking the time to speak

Mate, thank you for having me on. Love what you're doing. Keep

spreading the message. I think people need to be well aware of what

the future looks like and how they can play a part of it. We'll keep orange peeling together.

Yep, Bitcoin activists all the way. All right. Take care. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks for tuning

in to Crypto Collective. If you've enjoyed this episode, the best way

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