0:00: If you think Bitcoin's too risky, think about without Bitcoin where you would be, right?

0:03: There is an infinite amount of money chasing a very finite amount of goods or services, right, so that's the very definition of inflation.

0:10: We're not a public company, but because we have more than 1000 shareholders, a lot of our obligations actually match that of a what I call a public unlisted company, right?

0:20: So by regulation we need to do a yearly audit.

0:23: The everyday person who comes.

0:24: Into a wad of money, might be they've sold a property or they've come into an inheritance.

0:28: Let's say they've got $100,000.

0:30: In your opinion, what is it that you think is the best strategy?

0:33: Stocks are already a high performing asset, but that's only doing 12% per annum.

0:36: Your real estate, I think, going about 77.5% in the past 40 years.

0:40: So without Bitcoin, there's no life raft.

0:42: I'm Matthew Fraser and this is Crypto Collective.

0:45: After making millions with Amazon and e-commerce, I realized that, If I was starting again today, crypto would be my first choice.

0:53: I'm here to help you take your first steps and build real wealth.

0:57: Ready to set yourself up for life?

0:59: Let's go.

1:00: Hey guys, welcome to Crypto Collective.

1:02: Today I've got a very special guest.

1:03: It's Ting Wang, the CEO and co-founder of CoinStash, one of Australia's top crypto exchanges.

1:09: He's here in the studio, and this is our opportunity to ask Ting all there is to know.

1:14: About the crypto space, so welcome Ting, how are you today?

1:16: Yeah, very good, thanks for having me.

1:18: Excellent, thank you so much for coming in.

1:20: I wanted to start off this conversation with about cryptocurrency in general, cos we've got a lot of people here who, as you can appreciate, probably haven't invested in any cryptos or Bitcoin.

1:29: Why do you think people should look to invest into cryptos and Bitcoin?

1:33: Yeah, I think that's a very good question.

1:34: I mean, there's a lot of reasons as to why people should invest into crypto and Bitcoin.

1:38: But I think one of the primary reasons these days is people are looking for more choices in their investable universe, right, so, if you look historically what have people invested in, they invested in stocks, they invested in bonds, and they invested in real estate, and that's basically it.

1:52: I think crypto as a category in the alternative asset bucket, give people a lot of a lot of choices and there's a lot of, I guess, very unique characteristics that underpins crypto.

2:02: .

2:03: Is there something in particular, Tim, that people should consider when they're buying cryptos?

2:07: Cause obviously at Coin Stash you offer, you know, a variety of different altcoins, like, as a part to Bitcoin.

2:13: Is there something that you would say that stands out more than other things?

2:16: Like, is it their market cap, or is it some other attributes that they should look at?

2:20: Yeah, I would say, I mean obviously this is not financial advice, but I would say, for those who are just getting started in crypto, I think Bitcoin is obviously, the obvious choice to familiarize yourself with, I think it's also very important to get a, I guess a, a deep, a deeper research into Bitcoin, right, so obviously there's a lot of books floating around, I mean if, if you're already listening to this podcast as a start, but I think Bitcoin is where I would start, but getting understanding exactly what Bitcoin is and understanding why it's so different, why it has performed so well as an asset class, I think that's very important.

2:52: where do you think then, the, Coins, and, and Bitcoin to a degree, but I think I wanna focus on the altcoins because that's something that's, we know Bitcoin is, is the, is the mac daddy of the crypto space.

3:04: But where do you see altcoins moving into the future?

3:06: Is it gonna become more prevalent, and what do you think's gonna be the big thing with altcoins?

3:10: Is it gonna be layer ones, or is it gonna be the, just simply the tokenization of, of assets?

3:16: Yeah, so the way I see it, I kind of categorize crypto into three buckets, and I always say this, so one is obviously Bitcoin, it has no competitors, it's a digital gold, it's a, it is the pristine capital.

3:26: And then on the other side of the spectrum you have the meme coins, right?

3:29: So these are the coins that let's say, earlier this year, President Trump issued his coin, and then, and then his wife, and then there's there's a lot of meme coins out there.

3:37: So meme coins to me that's entirely opportunistic, so you're relying on, I guess the the the provision of liquidity and then where you're almost relying on someone's personal brand for the coin to perform one way or the other, and then I think the most people are interested in what's in the middle, right, so this is what we call like say the layer ones I think you mentioned and also about I guess there's certain coins that are, have fundamental uses, so the way I look at the, the old coin universe is almost a bit similar to Android investing, so you're looking at, you're picking your favorite startup essentially and what underpins startup is you look at the team, You look at the business model, you look at how they're gonna structure the returns, right?

4:15: So also bear in mind for certain old coins, they also have a company underpins it.

4:19: So sometimes the return may not necessarily come back to the token.

4:23: So, yeah, so oldcoin is a very, it's a very difficult space to understand and because there are just so many varieties and so many options out there, but it's picking your favorite startup and understanding exactly what they, what they do and maybe have a look at the valuation and the market cap as well, like whether that supports what the coin proposes to do is extremely important.

4:42: Yeah, do you as a, as a company with Coin Stash, do you provide any data, You know, if someone was to come to Coin Stash, is there something that they can look at to understand what are the fundamentals behind such coins, do you offer that sort of service?

4:55: Yeah, absolutely, so I mean, when you first come to the CoinStash platform,, I think the first thing you will see is, is how many coins we have, right, so there's, I think, as you mentioned, your some of the other episodes will have will have more than 1000 coins, but when you click into a coin, what gets automatically shown to you is an abstract of the coin, so you have some basic understanding as to what the coin is about, who's the founding team behind it, if there is a founding team, and we also give you data.

5:20: So a few data points include, I guess the, the market capitalization of the coin.

5:25: , and when we talk about it, we also talk about it in fully diluted terms.

5:29: So sometimes, as we know, there might be, let's just say, 100 million, coins in total circulation, but there might be only 10 million that's in circulation right now, right, so understanding what the FDV is, is extremely important, and then we also give you data around, we use trading view, right, so we give you almost, data by the minute, so exactly where the coin prices has been performing.

5:52: Exactly what the market type is, and then all of, all of those tools are available to our, to our customers.

5:59: So Ting, a a lot of people feel worried I guess about the fact that they're, we're going, going back to the investment side of things, you know, they're working hard every single day, they're trying to pick, what is the best investment for their future.

6:10: Now, one of the things I've found with CoinStash is it focuses also on SMSF structures.

6:16: Yeah, why do you think having an allocation to cryptocurrency in your SMSF is important for retirement?

6:23: Yeah, I think, just drawing on something you've said in the past which is SMSFs is almost like a, It's almost a bit of a life, a a a a lifesaver for a lot of people, a life raft, that's what you said, right, so, I mean we're obviously operating in a very high inflationary environment, so if you look at 30 years, into the past, like from the 1990s to the COVID period, we had the benefit of enjoying a period of low inflation and also,, high productivity, globalization, there's a lot of things underpinning the high growth period.

6:56: I think my personal opinion is that era is over, so what people need to be very careful of is, a lot of their wealth is not entirely dependent on their income, it's really dependent on how they make their investment decisions, and if you think about it, one of the biggest investment decisions you can make outside of your family home is your super, and increasingly we're seeing people putting, I guess taking their super out of the retail industry super funds for obvious reasons we can talk about a bit later, but they're putting that, taking matters into their own hands, so they're setting up, obviously what we call SMSFs which is a very unique Australian concept as well by the way, and they're look looking to allocate a significant portion of that into cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, So yeah, so I think there's a lot of reasons behind it, but I think fundamentally people are looking for choices.

7:44: People are looking for superior returns, they're not happy with the with the performances they've seen with the industry and the retail supers, and people are basically taking matters into their own hands.

7:53: And that's, that's not just investment matters, that's also tax planning.

7:57: Hm.

7:57: What do you see, Ting, when, when people come to Coin Stash and they, and they've just set up their SMSF, they now have an SMSF account with Coin.

8:05: Stash.

8:06: What are some of the, main, I guess, tokens or coins that they're allocating it to?

8:11: Is it, like, for my case, Ting, I'm 100% Bitcoin.

8:16: I'm not worried about anything else.

8:17: Now it's not to say I don't own other coins, but that's outside of my SMSF.

8:21: For me, it's just simple.

8:22: SMSF, Bitcoin, it's, it's simple for me.

8:25: What, what are other people doing?

8:26: Are they doing more altcoins, or are they doing more Bitcoin?

8:31: Yeah, that's a very good question, so what we typically see is their first trade.

8:36: , overwhelmingly, the majority of that is Bitcoin, right?

8:39: So we typically see like the first time they set it up, let's just say, the average account size for SMSF on coins, let's just say it's around $100,000 I've seen time and time again people just say, hey, put everything into Bitcoin for now, but that'd be me, that would be you, that'll be someone like you, but then later down the track they may say, oh look, I hear there's something going on with Solana, it's going to be the next Ethereum, so they may then start to allocate, say 20% of their Bitcoin.

9:03: , and then, by the way, you can swap coins directly on Coinstash as well, so they allocate say maybe 20% of their Bitcoin holdings into Solana.

9:11: So I think over time they will start to build a more, I would say a more diversified portfolio, but they always, majority of them start with Bitcoin.

9:19: So really what you're saying is the reason, the reason why I would see people move out of Bitcoin into let's say Solana is because they think Solana's gonna give superior returns than Bitcoin over a period.

9:31: Would that be right?

9:32: Yes, that, that's obviously the the main motivator, right, I, I keep telling my team look, we're here, we're an investment platform, we're here to service our customers, so, we really listen very carefully to what our customers want.

9:42: I think fundamentally, people come to our platform, Not because of all the, I would call it the ancillary features like we always do very good reporting, we'll talk about that a bit later, we can do very good charting and all that, but fundamentally people want to make money, right, they want to be able to invest with Bitcoin and grow, sorry, invest with Coinstash and grow their retirement savings, so yeah, so there's always I guess, signals for people to, alternate from their Bitcoin holdings into the the more broader spectrum, of course like when people are selling Bitcoin to go into a, a salon, For example, even though you would consider it a swap, there would still be a, an internal capital gains tax component they would have to think about, would that be right?

10:23: Yeah, that would be right, yeah, so I think, yeah, so I think the ATO has made it very abundantly clear that coin to coin swapping is obviously a capital gains tax event.

10:33: Yes, and yeah, because I think some people think it's not, if I just swap, it somehow misses this tax event, but that's not the case.

10:41: Yeah, I think people get that misconception because, They feel that if I swap coins, I haven't really taken any money out, right, so, so if I have a, if I'm, I'm hit with a, say $50,000 tax bill, where do I find the money from?

10:54: But like my answer is the ATO doesn't really care about that, that's that's not their problem to worry about, right?

10:59: So, I think if we just go back a few years back in say the 2020, 2021 bull runs, you see people, they, for example, they came out of Ethereum, they bought some NFTs, and they obviously realized that capital gains are exiting the Ethereum positions, but then the NFTs subsequently dropped by 80%.

11:17: So all of a sudden, the tax bill they owe the ATO is more than the entire value of their, their portfolio, so, Well, consider that unfair or consider that, I don't know, a bit, a bit outrageous in a way, but that's just how the current, tax tax systems work in cos speaking of outrageous, we just recently had, The unrealized capital gains tax proposed by the current Labor Party, there's been a walk back on that now, so, not implement the unrealised capital gains tax.

11:48: Do you think just on that note, people need to be worried about any other future changes from from a taxation perspective with superannuation?

11:57: Yeah, I think so.

11:58: I think what people don't realize is obviously a lot of people are very incentivized to, I would say top up their super because they want to have more of their savings in their super, right?

12:09: But I guess from a, from a taxation perspective, you can see how quickly, the, the, the, the government can change their mind around it, right, so when, when the, when the, I guess when the $3 million I realized capital gains tax first got introduced, I mean, there's obviously a lot of a lot of backlash.

12:29: So people are saying, oh, some people are saying, look, it's not my issue, it's not my problem cause I, I'm only at 5000 give or take, it's gonna be years before I hit that threshold, so who cares, we're just taxing the rich.

12:40: But then what people fail to realize is, as inflation catches on, it may not take you that many years to hit that $3 million threshold, and if that's not indexed, I think this is a, thing, right, cause I actually used to work in tax in my old days.

12:53: But if things are not indexed, there's something we call a bracket creep.

12:57: So all of a sudden before you realize, as a middle, middle-class income earner, you are stepping into that tax bracket that it's designed for the highest income class.

13:07: So, so yeah, very, there's some a lot of intricacies in there, but I, I, I do believe, fundamentally believe everything needs to be indexed.

13:14: Yes.

13:15: I, I would also argue, Tim, from my perspective, and you may have heard me say this in some of my, my videos, I believe that superannuation or SMSF structures shouldn't be taxed at all.

13:26: No tax whatsoever, so that people can really save for their retirement and take away any potential burden on the government and the taxpayers in the future during their retirement.

13:36: So the new proposal is up to over 40% tax on bounces over $10 million.

13:44: Do you think that's a good now middle ground from, from a government perspective, or do you think this is too far?

13:49: , I think it depends on how you look at it, cause I think there is some calculations.

13:55: I was just recently in an SMSF advisor event, so they were just doing some calculations, say, over the period of 4 years, so what are we really seeing?

14:03: , and funnily enough for some, for certain people, and I don't know how they arrive at this calculation by the way, but for certain people they actually pay more tax under this, I guess this revised, revised regime, if you consider like from the beginning to finish when they dispose of a, a, a residential property for example, so I think, yeah, I think fundamentally there is an argument to say look, it shouldn't be taxed at all, even $10 million that's, that's too low, because what we're actually doing is we are, we already paid, A lot of taxes elsewhere, right, it's not like we pay zero tax elsewhere, right, so what we're doing is we are alleviating the government from, The burden of having to look after you from you going up on the pension, right, so why should there be some of this, all this extra tax, but I think it comes that that's obviously a bit of a rabbit hole in saying how the government should,, manage their spending a bit better, but, but obviously that's, that's beyond the Word on the street thing is that people are saying that the government should, manage the budget better.

15:01: We didn't say that.

15:03: But so when we talk about inflation, you mentioned inflation before is, is a real big issue, particularly in Australia and people are looking for these other alternatives.

15:11: And I think, you know, I have heard that the hurdle rate is upwards of even 14%, right, so people need to sort of have assets that are going to grow more than that.

15:21: Do you think though that ultimately that fiat currency will be completely debased and go to zero, or is there a world where Bitcoin becomes the prominent, monetary system, but still the Australian dollar is still around and used?

15:38: Yeah, I would say, just judging based on the information we have today, I do still believe Australian dollar is still gonna be used for payments.

15:47: Having said that, I think, There's a real argument to say look, if we didn't have Bitcoin, let's just imagine a world without Bitcoin, right, if we didn't have Bitcoin, and if we say the unofficial inflation is 14 or 15%, where can you go?

16:01: It doesn't give you too many options.

16:02: Your bonds are giving you, I don't know, 5 to 6% at its maximum, your stocks, well, stocks are already a high performing asset, but that's only doing 12% per annum.

16:12: Your real estate, I think we had a lot of discussions around that in your, from some of your previous episodes, it's going about 7, 7.5% in the past 40 years.

16:20: So without Bitcoin there's not much, there's there's basically nowhere to hide, right?

16:24: There's no life raft.

16:25: There's no life raft, yeah, so exactly, so I, I, I think, eventually the Australian dollar and with together with, all of the major currencies in the world, there's a real threat of debasement, that's why when people are investing in Bitcoin today, They're not just investing into Bitcoin in itself, obviously there's a maturing asset class, there's a lot of, still a lot of I guess, price capture to be, price discovery to be done within the asset class itself, but what people are also betting on is the overall macro and geopolitical factors that there's gonna be a lot of currency debasement.

16:56: Yeah, so do you actually think that one day we might see, the US dollar not as the number one, Global currency in the world and it might be either Bitcoin, or is it possibly even China for example.

17:11: Yeah, I think we are already in some ways seeing that right, so I think if you look at, I think it might be even mentioned in one of the, the books you have here which is the Bitcoin standard that the, The, the lifespan for a reserve currency is typically let's just say about 400 years, so before the US dollars were British pounds, but then if you look at how, how the US dollars has been going around, I mean, one day, I think one day it's gonna be, At the end of its term, so to speak, so, and if you look at how the US do has lost its value, not against Bitcoin but just against something like gold, it's lost its value by I think the data says it's lost its value by 80%, even over the past 5 years, and that that's probably some old data as well, which is extraordinary, it's extraordinary, right, so I think if you have something like that, that loses value so quickly, As the current world reserve currency, I think it's not really a matter of how much people enjoy using that currency, it's really about, OK, because there's no better alternatives, but once Bitcoin I guess catches up, once people start to realize OK bitcoin's not just something that's made up.

18:13: That's actually underpinned by the laws of physics, so obviously there's mining involved, then if I think we're already on the, I guess on the verge of achieving that consensus, then people, then it's a no-brainer, it's the pristine capital that we're always looking for.

18:26: Well speaking of pristine capital, There's JP Morgan for example, just recently came out and said that in the US they're now going to use Bitcoin as collateral for lending.

18:40: Do you think this has been one of the, one of the, one of the catalysts I guess you could say for really underpinning Bitcoin as a legitimate asset in, in, in not just America but globally?

18:51: Yeah, I think, JP Morgan, announcing that Bitcoin can be used as collateral for lending, It's obviously, I think two things.

19:00: One is, is due to, it shows there's a lot of consumer demand, especially I think JPMorgan,, it obviously has both a retail arm and also a very sophisticated, very, what do you call it, investment banking arm that services sophisticated individuals, so I would suspect it's those sophisticated individuals that's driving up the demand that, oh, look, I want to use my Bitcoin as collateral to borrow money, say against a house, for example, so I think it's a vote of confidence not just from JPMorgan itself, it's also from its customer base, and I think also secondly, this coming from, I guess, One of the world's largest investment banks just shows how versatile Bitcoin is, so the way I see Bitcoin as collateral, versus a real estate as collateral is Bitcoin, as collateral for borrowing has so many more benefits, right, so as we all know, obviously you can liquidate it, within seconds, whereas if you want to sell a house, by the time you you actually arrive at a deal at a house, then the the price may have plummeted by another 30%.

19:54: So, so to me that's a no-brainer, yeah, Bitcoin is definitely a way superior, Collateral for people to borrow against, and that's not, that's also not an income-based test, it's a wealth-based test, test on your borrowing capacity, which I do believe fundamentally, that's how, how the world should be.

20:11: Yeah yeah, well I just want to break that down for people, Tim, because I think some people might be like, oh, Bitcoin collateral, what does that mean, but for people who have just joined in and unders to understand what that means, it means that,, banks and institutions will actually custody your Bitcoin and lend you cash in Australian dollars against that Bitcoin.

20:30: And and when Ting talks about, you know, it's liquidity or it can be sold quickly, Bitcoin can be sold 365 24/7, unlike if a bank has to take possession of your property, like take it back to get their money back, it could take months to sell.

20:45: So Ting, that leads me then to think about Australian banks, you know, Jamie Dimon, who's the, the, the head of JP Morgan, he's renowned.

20:54: For calling Bitcoin a scam, right?

20:56: Now, I would also fall into that category.

20:58: Last decade, when I was completely uneducated thing, I was calling Bitcoin a scam too.

21:03: But then of course I read the books like The Bitcoin Standard.

21:05: I started doing some research, and, and now I really understand this better.

21:09: Do you think now that Jamie Dimond with JPMorgan has sort of changed and, and has now accepted Bitcoin?

21:17: That Australian banks will follow suit, and do you have any insight into is, is, is anything happening in the Australian bank side of things regarding, maybe even accepting Bitcoin as as collateral?

21:28: Yeah, so the way I look at it is fundamentally the Australian banks are here to return a profit to its shareholders, right, so, and in order to do so, and we also got to realize that banks are not the only one that's able to provide this sort of services, so as we've seen from the, From the, from the GFC because there's certain restrictions put on the banks by the base basal standards, then there's the emergence of non-bank lenders, so I guess, there's two considerations.

21:53: One is the banks are giving, need to give the customers what they want, so if there's, if there's enough demand, as to, if, if let's say if half of, half of all Australians hold the majority of their wealth in Bitcoin, then obviously it becomes a no-brainer for the banks to start servicing their market.

22:11: And then second to that is if the banks for whatever reason are too slow, or too expensive or too, I don't know, not, not versatile enough in servicing that demand, then the customers will go somewhere else, and I believe in Australia there's already, Solutions out there that provides similar services, so I do believe, so the answer is yes, I do believe the banks will catch up, and also bear in mind I think, back in 2021 or thereabouts I think banks like CBA were talking about, I guess having people to be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on their platform, right, but I guess between the, the time that they had the idea, And when the between the ideation and the execution I would say obviously we've come across a crypto bear market so I think that kind of cooled things down a bit.

22:55: But but I think yeah the banks are, I would say the banks are, obviously not the fastest at at at at moving but they're so big that they're so big.

23:05: Yeah, and I think they.

23:06: They can also be a bit opportunistic in terms of understanding, is this going to be a revenue generator for us.

23:12: Cause there's a couple of things, I mean there's so much to talk about even in banking.

23:16: What I see particularly with people that are in my online community at Crypto Collective is there's forever talk about difficulty of getting funds into, Coinstash, like transferring money from their Commonwealth Bank or Westpac or whoever it is, into CoinStash.

23:33: Now, why is that so difficult, do you think?

23:37: And are there solutions that you know coming down the pipeline, are banks gonna start allowing more transfers or, or are they actually protecting us against potential scams?

23:47: Yeah, I think, look, I just want to say from the outset that obviously Coinstash is not the only Australian exchange that's experiencing problems.

23:55: Oh no, that's, that's exactly right, it's it's, it's that a lot of my customers or my clients use CoinStash, yeah, but yes, of course, this is across the board, people trying to get funds into any exchange, they're having problems.

24:07: Yeah, that's right, so I, I think that's a matter of.

24:09: In fact we, cause obviously we have a very what do you call it, we have an in-house account management team, so we do talk to our customers a lot on the ground, like we, we actually call them and we talk to them about their issues, and the issues that you mentioned is almost I would say 8 out of 10.

24:22: So 8 out of 10 people would have the banking problem that you described, and I think from a bank's perspective, they, I would say they don't understand the, the idiosy what's what's the word, idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies about I guess, the risks when it comes to digital assets, right, so, As we've seen what the CBA, what the Commonwealth Bank has done is to put a blanket $10,000 a month, monthly limit on crypto, on transfers into cryptocurrency exchanges, and, look, that may work for say 80% of the people out there because they may not have the need to buy more than $10,000 worth of Bitcoin, and anything more than that might be inherently suspicious, I think that's how the banks see it.

25:06: , having said that, there's a lot of people, like, I would say, say the majority of your listeners may want to deposit a lot more than $10,000 a month, especially if they feel that they're, the the money they have in the bank is losing its value by 15% every year, right?

25:20: So there's that urgency.

25:21: So I think what the banks are doing is they are, they're taking a bit of a shortcut in the sense that, OK, we want to obviously reduce the number of disputes, we want to reduce the number of frauds out there, but so what we're gonna do, we're gonna have a blanket ban.

25:34: On, on this, on transfers into the cryptocurrency exchanges, and obviously it works, right, it reduces the fraud rate say by 80% and they, they, they think that's a, that's a great outcome, but, but, but they just made, I guess, they just made the argument for, for Bitcoin even stronger, right, so why, Why I can't use my money that belongs to me in the bank to do whatever I want with it, so I think that there's a, there's a big challenge there.

25:58: Yeah, Ting, I, I wonder if that's the case, because some people would say it's not really the banks trying to protect consumers against fraud, it's just they don't want to see the money, cash, leave the banking traditional finance system into the crypto system.

26:14: Do you think there's a protectionist type of mentality with the banks?

26:18: I think to a certain degree there is, so the way, the reason I say it is, look, every customer to the bank, you are a, You, you're basically someone that generates revenue for the bank, right?

26:30: And if you have, if you have a, say, 10,000 transactions every month, you have a lot of transactions, but you don't leave anything in your bank account, so the moment you receive your salaries or you sell your business, you put that into Bitcoin.

26:43: The bank is really servicing you for not that much revenue, so all of a sudden you become too problemat too problematic and too high risk, for the banks, so I guess there's definitely an argument to say, look, the banks doesn't want to deal with the headache, they obviously, the, the bread and butter is around, financing real estate.

27:01: So, a, a model customer would be someone who's very much entrenched in the traditional financial system, they come to the bank, they put all of their salaries and savings into the bank and they,, use that for a house deposit and they have a, a massive, I guess, mortgage with the bank, right, so, unfortunately I think that typical profile, and that typical I guess Australian dream about owning a property and have a 30 year mortgage on the property, we we've all seen over the past, say, 5 to 10 years, it hasn't worked out that well, purely because for the reasons we mentioned before.

27:33: Yeah, excellent, if I can go step across back into, The Fiat system, and a lot of people are saying of course that the Fiat's back to going to zero again.

27:45: If Fiat actually does go to zero, what does that actually mean when they say Fiat's going to zero, what in your mind, what does that actually mean, Tim?

27:53: Yeah, I think it just means there is an infinite amount of money chasing a very finite amount of goods or services, right, so that's the very definition of inflation, so, I think the, something that really resonated with a lot of us, people my age is, Yeah, our, our parents bought their property for $500,000 and now we need to buy the same property for, I don't know, $2 million right, so that's in a way you can also see, you can already see how, how I guess the purchasing, purchasing power field has diminished, significantly over the years, right, so for people who are, I guess, asset poor, doesn't matter how much of an income they're making.

28:32: They can never, they can never keep up, so, yeah, I think if we do come across, fingers crossed we don't, but if we do come across a situation where fear is approaching, 0, then that means if you're not invested then you are basically out of the game, you have to be always, chasing your tails even for the basic living expenses.

28:50: Hm, so what would you say then to team who are still maybe on the fence and thinking that, Bitcoin is too risky, right, we just talked about the fiat currency but is, is going down over time and your purchasing power is, is decreasing, but still people maybe think that Bitcoin is too risky, what would you say to those people?

29:07: Yeah, I would say, if you think Bitcoin is too risky, think about, as I mentioned earlier, without Bitcoin where, where you would be, right?

29:14: I think to me it's that it, it is just pure, pure math.

29:17: If you look at, if you believe in the official inflationary data of 2 to 3%, Then you probably don't need to listen, listen to this podcast, but if you switch off now, yeah, yeah, and but if you do believe that inflation is a lot higher than the 2 to 3%, if you do believe that, inflation is not transitory, then basically pure mathematics say that you need to be short in field, and you need to be looking for other ways to where you put your, your wealth, right, so and I think Bitcoin as we mentioned earlier, is one of the very few, I guess, alternative investment assets that people can look at.

29:53: Hey guys, just quickly, this episode is brought to you by CoinStash, the Australian exchange I personally use to invest my SMSF into Bitcoin and crypto.

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30:47: Now, back to the episode.

30:49: Ting, I'd love to know more about Coin Stash and perhaps what some of the things you've got in development.

30:54: So thinking about now moving to digital assets more prominently, what are some of the things that you're doing to make it easier for Australians to adopt Bitcoin and other digital assets?

31:04: Yeah, I think that's a very good question, I think fundamentally if you look at how do we onboard, let's just say the next 2 million Australians onto this digital asset journey, I think one key problem we're trying to solve is accessibility, right, so as we mentioned a lot of people think, oh I heard of Bitcoin but it might be too hard.

31:22: I do want to invest with my SMSF but that involves, I don't know, setting up a, an account and then making sure all my trustees are set up properly, making sure my auditors happy.

31:32: So I think what we build at Coinstash is, I don't really call Coinstash as a cryptocurrency platform.

31:38: To begin with, I want to call ourselves as an investment platform, right, so what we're here to do is we're really, we're really here to solve the investment journey of of the everyday Australians.

31:49: So what I mean by that is, I see the investment journey as broken down into three parts.

31:54: So there's the before investing, there's the during investing, and there's the after investing.

31:58: So, just take the before investing for example, right, we actually see a lot of our customers, they may have a company account, a family trust account, A SMSF account and also an individual account, plus they may want to have some accounts for their kids, so all of a sudden they might have 5 or 6 accounts they want to set up.

32:14: Yes, so what we are very good at doing is we have a strong account management team that help them to set everything up in one go, so we, we get rid of all the pin points.

32:23: All the, I think we all know the the hardest part about crypto is to is to get started, so we help them to get started and then once they, once they do get started then we have this, I guess a very broad range of investable universe, as I, and also as we mentioned we give people a good, some good education, some good just stating certain facts around what each cryptocurrency is about to to give people I guess that introductory level of understanding around cryptocurrency, so that's the during investment journey.

32:50: And then when it comes to after investing, that's the reporting, and when it comes to SMSS there is the audited end of year account balances, so all of, all of this, not only make our customers' life easy but also make the accountant's life easier.

33:02: So, so I think that's fundamentally, I think no one else in Australia is solving that problem, which is how to make the investment journey easy for Australians.

33:10: Hm, that's fantastic, cause I know even myself Dean, I've got personal, an SMSF, a company, there's just 3 there and then it becomes a, a bit of a, I guess a spaghetti nightmare if it's not everything's not in one, so it's great that you're doing that.

33:24: What about things like, you mentioned about being a one stop shop guest for like, investing, would would Coinstash do something like also, becoming more making it accessible to invest into like stocks or shares?

33:35: Yeah, I think that's something we've we've thought about cos obviously there is a, I guess a natural, what do you call it, natural synergies, right, when, when I'm investing in, in Bitcoin, when I'm investing in shares, or I may want to, like some people do invest in Bitcoin, Bitcoin treasury companies, for example, right, so there's definitely a lot of synergies there, I think what's, what's stopping us currently from doing that is obviously the, there's still a lot of regulatory, Uncertainty, more paperwork again.

34:05: That's right, yeah, there's a lot of paperwork to to go through, but I think fundamentally that that's where, that's where I see the, the world is headed and, and I would say outside of Australia, like just speaking to people outside of Australia in the industry, that's already happening elsewhere, like for example I've spoken to this, I guess this Indonesian co-founder, At in Singapore and then he was running a platform where you can buy stocks, shares, gold, commodities, oh wow, almost everything under the investment universe essentially a one stop shop, exactly right, so, so I think yeah it will be very, it will make me very happy one day if we get that re regulatory clarity and then be able to incorporate all of the assets, what sort of timeline would you think on something like that, would that be like a 5 year plan or, or is that a 10 year plan in Australia because of the complexities?

34:54: I would say it's probably gonna, I, I, I hope it will happen sooner than that, I would say probably 2 years once all the digital currency exchanges come under the Australian Financial Services license, then, ideally that opens up the, I guess the, the opportunity for us to participate in the traditional stocks and stocks and the traditional instruments as well, and the reason I say that is, there's always a bit of a,, I guess a bit of a wariness by the regulators that you don't want to mix cryptocurrency, which is at the moment still unregulated versus something like traditional shares and bonds that's regulated, but once everything becomes regulated under the Australian Financial Services license regime, then there should, There be no reason stopping someone like Coinstash to incorporate everything into the one platform.

35:42: Well speaking about being, crypto being unregulated, what sort of measures does CoinStash put in to make it safe for people to invest?

35:49: How do they know they put their money into CoinStash, and they buy Bitcoin, how do they know that it's protected?

35:54: Yeah, absolutely, I think one thing that I pride ourselves in doing is, I almost view ourselves as, we're not a public company, but because we have more than 1000 shareholders, a lot of our obligations actually match that of a, what I call a public unlisted company, right, so, By regulation we need to do a yearly audit, and by the way, the, the annual audit for the past 3 years is, that's all public knowledge, you can find it on the, on the ASIC website, but what I, what it, what it shows is how much assets we have, and how much liabilities we have.

36:28: So let's just say if coins such as, $100 million worth of assets, and then we only have $98 million of customer liabilities, you know exactly that we are holding your assets, 1 to 1, because we actually have our auditors come to our office and then they test, whether we control each of the wallets, right?

36:44: So, so yeah, I think, I don't think there is any other exchange that gives, That level of assurance, there's other exchanges that, that gets their account audited, but they don't get audited on a customer asset level, so this is something that we, I would say I, we we pride ourselves in doing, and then secondly is obviously, we are the, we're probably the only exchange that's still around, that's being found and led, and that's very important, so, I guess you know who I am and but you may or may not know who the founders of a competing exchange is, right, because they've all, obviously they've all made their money, they may not live in Australia anymore, but we're here based locally in Brisbane, our office just on George Street, so, yeah, some from time to time people, we do have people visiting us as well, so I think being based here locally in Australia, And being very founder led and having an audited end of year account balances for our customers, I think that's very important.

37:39: Yeah, I agree with that too, Ting, I know some of the guys up at the Brisbane office there and I think people just like the fact that they can call a, a local place, you know, you can pick up the phone and actually talk to someone at Coin Stash.

37:51: There's one thing I want to jump into which is about buying Bitcoin, or cryptos within Coin Stash.

37:57: What would be the difference between buying something, OK, spot, which is just, immediately, let's say, compared to using like an OTC desk, causes this kind of question comes up all the time, what, what would be the pros and cons of each option?

38:11: Yeah, so I would say when you're trading on the OTC desk for coin stash or when you're buying it on the platform, you are buying the spot product, right, so both, both are spot products, however, the OTC desk is designed for people who are doing larger trades, so, what's considered a larger trade thing?

38:30: Yeah, obviously that's the definition by that differs, depending on which exchange you're with, but at Coinstash what we're very good at doing is, we actually only have a very, Low minimum trade, trade value, which is $20,000 right, so if you go to most other exchanges, their minimum is $100,000 before they even entertain you, the idea of doing an OTC trade, right, but with Coinstash you can go as low as $20,000 and then you enjoy, basically a, a fee-free trade, and the, the only money we make is obviously, we still gotta make money as a business is a, a, a small spread, on the, on the Bitcoin price, so I think that's also one of the, Advantages that we have is to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the most competitive pricing, without having to fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

39:16: Right, and so when someone comes in with $20,000 as a minimum, let's say, to use the OTC desk, what is it that the OTC desk is actually doing?

39:24: Are they putting the, the Bitcoin price to the market and trying to get the best deal, or is there some other method that you're using to get the best price?

39:33: Yeah, so, what we are very good at doing is we actually develop some algorithm in-house to make sure we source the Bitcoin from the best places, right?

39:42: So as we all know, this might be going down a bit of a, a deeper level, but we all know that Bitcoin is settled in US dollars, so the biggest market for Bitcoin is not in Australia.

39:52: Dollars, it, it's just, just by the nature of how the USD currently is still the reserve currency, Bitcoin is denominated in USD.

39:59: So what we are doing is we're basically taking Australian dollars, we're converting that into US dollars, and we find the best price for you, right?

40:05: So, so that's the benefit of, of using our OTC DEX is because you're, you're trading a larger amount, it gives our team, I guess the, we, our team basically runs the algorithm to find the best prices for you as well, and, and that also happens, I mean, not saying we give you a I guess a, a, a worse price on exchange, but it just makes more sense when you're trading large amounts to come to a OTC desk because we, that way we understand your, your needs a bit more, cos there are certain other customers who are not just trading Bitcoin, they might be trading a, a smaller coin, right, and that, Bitcoin may have very limited liquidity, so, when you come to the OTC desk we give you that white glove service and find the best, yeah, liquidity for you.

40:47: And the OTC desk can also handle sales as well, right, so if they, someone holds Bitcoin, they want to sell it, they can also come to the OTC desk to get a better deal.

40:55: That's right.

40:56: Yeah, do you think in the future then, you'll also, I know I talked about lending before, is, do you think lending is also going to be part of the coin stash make-up as well?

41:04: Yeah, I think that's the natural progression of where things are headed.

41:08: , but what excites me more about just lending in itself is, I think lending in itself, that's, that's a market in Australia, but it's probably not going to be the largest market because there's still a lot of people who prefer not to collateralize their Bitcoin or there's certain people, amount of people who just don't have a meaningful enough position in Bitcoin, but what I see from lending is, it gives the opportunity for people to have a, what I call a Bitcoin backed credit card, right, and the, the reason I say that is, if we didn't have lending, Then we can't even, we can't really give you a credit card, can we, because by the definition of credit card is we are giving you a line of credit.

41:44: So, In short, what I'm trying to say is if we do introduce Bitcoin-backed lending, we'll introduce a Bitcoin-backed credit card as well.

41:51: So if Matthew, you come to, you come to us and then if you qualify, if you put, put down let's say 1 Bitcoin aside on the Coinslash platform, all of a sudden you have access to say $100,000 worth of a credit limit on your card.

42:04: So you're spending what we call, obviously the fiat currency that's going down day by day.

42:09: But then you're preserving your capital in the Bitcoin, you are still, I guess, enjoying the benefit of the capital appreciation on the Bitcoin, and then when it's time to pay down your card, then you can pay it from your, your income, right?

42:20: So I think that's a, that's gonna be a very powerful tool, which is the lending combined, combined with the spending.

42:25: So Ting, did we hear it here first, is Coinstash looking at bringing in a credit card system into CoinStash?

42:32: Yes, that's, it might happen soon.

42:34: It might, it might happen soon, but, yeah, there's obviously a few, a few hoops to jump through.

42:38: That's awesome.

42:39: Now, it would, it wouldn't be, it would be remiss of me to ask you this because obviously someone who's the co-founder of Coinstash, you've got your ear to the ground, you know what's going on in, in the, in the crypto space.

42:48: Do you think we are still yet to see a bull run, or, do you think we're maybe topping out and going into a bear cycle?

42:57: I think this, Yeah, let's, let's maybe break it down a bit, right, so if we look at what happened in the past, there's an argument to say, the cryptocurrency, the bull bear cycle happens, it's a 4-year cycle, and that's typically coincides with the time of the Bitcoin halving, and I think based on historical data, the, the bull, the bull market typically ends about say, 18 months after the Bitcoin halving event, right, but I, I do fundamentally believe, This cycle is going to be very different, and my reason as to why is typically when they, what affects Bitcoin price movement is two factors, one is the macro specific factors, and one is the crypto-specific factors, and I think as Bitcoin matures as an asset class, the crypto-specific factors are going to have a lesser importance, and the macro specific factors like things we spoke about, inflation not being transitory.

43:48: , fear it's losing its value rapidly, I think that's gonna have a bigger driver, driving power behind where Bitcoin price is gonna go.

43:57: So, if you think about that, so even though we're almost at that 18 month, time stamp after the previous halving, I don't believe we're going into a bear market.

44:07: Like if anything, obviously not financial advice, but my prediction is we are going to be probably in a more prolonged,, bull market, but you, you're not gonna see obviously you're not gonna see like a 20% price increases in one day as we've seen in the past, so, I guess, my analogy is probably, if you look at gold, right, gold can do, Nearly nothing for a prolonged period of time, but then all of a sudden there might be a price discovery, that's happening as well, so I think as Bitcoin becomes a more mature asset class, it's going to be probably less driven by cycles but more driven by, I guess a lot of the fundamentals we spoke about before.

44:46: Do you think Ting that, Based on the M2 money supply, we've seen that gold has followed the M2 money supply in the on the to the upside.

44:53: Bitcoin hasn't done it yet, and there's a lot of talk about the Bitcoin price, sort of a maybe 2 or 3 month lag.

45:00: Do you think ultimately it will follow the M2 money supply and go up?

45:05: I, I fundamentally believe in that, and, I just can't think of reasons as to why not, right, so because the money printing's still gonna keep happening, isn't it?

45:14: Exactly right, I think in a sense, the reason that, I always have this hypothesis, the reason that Bitcoin hasn't gone up as much as gold in the past say a month or two is also, gold is also in some ways a competitor of Bitcoin, right, cause if you look at, if you don't believe in the US currency for example, you can go to real estate, you can go to gold or you can go to Bitcoin, so we're actually competing for the same capital, but one thing that Bitcoin has, Obviously there's many ways that Bitcoin, why Bitcoin is more superior to gold, but one of the things is, gold, a lot of gold is based in paper form, it's not based in, it's not bullion, gold bullion, right, people aren't holding physical gold, exactly, so there's no, there's very little ways to order the gold is actually, In the ground by being safe safe kept by people at the vault, whereas Bitcoin everything is highly verifiable, so I'll be, I'll be very surprised to see that Bitcoin don't eventually, catches up to the, to the price movement of gold, yeah, mhm.

46:10: Thinking about inflation, it seems to be sticking around.

46:13: Do you think this is a short-term cycle or a structural shift we'll need to live with?

46:19: Yeah, I definitely don't think it's a short-term cycle, and I think, for anyone who believes it's transitory, I think there is a lot of material out there that says otherwise, but my personal belief is that the, I guess that the era that we enjoyed between the 1990s, all the way up to COVID, that low inflationary, high growth environment, that's officially behind us, right, if you look at what happened, since COVID, inflation has been, I guess going on, we all know how, How, how far the, our, our, our dollar goes in the, in the supermarket, so I think, I think the everyday Australians can feel it, but, I think, yeah, just because the way the governments are managing their spending, how the debt has been, how there's record debt in almost like all of the developed countries, I don't think inflation is going to be transitory.

47:12: So what should people do then considering that the inflation is not transitory and it's probably going to continue rising, what should the everyday Australian do to combat that?

47:23: Yeah, I think, first and foremost, the everyday Australians should stay invested, and I think the obvious, obvious reason behind that is, if you look at, How $100 worked for you back in the 1990s versus how it works for you today, if you didn't stay invested then you're basically losing say 10, 15% on your purchasing power, year by year and that's compounded, right, so it may not seem, I mean 15% still seems like a lot, but if you add in the compounding in fact, that's a lot of money that you're leaving on the table, unless you're invested into something, so, yeah, I mean there's, obviously a lot of asset classes out there, but we, we all know that,, if you look at the historical performances, Bitcoin is one of the outstanding asset classes.

48:08: Ting, one of the things that I'm doing personally is I'm dematerializing my physical assets such as properties and moving those into Bitcoin.

48:16: Now in this inflationary world, do you think that's a wise decision considering that most Australians have been brought up on property is the answer to building wealth?

48:26: What, what would you say to that?

48:27: Yeah, I would say, look, obviously this is my personal opinion, but I would say, If you're invested in properties, that's better than just leaving all of your cash in the bank, but obviously it's not the, it's not the only solution, right, I think Australians are very in love with properties, obviously for two reasons, one is the Australian dream to own a home and to be able to,, stay at your house, but also it's about the lack of choices, and there's a lot of Australians who don't realize, outside of properties, outside of the industry super, what else can we invest in, so I think it's more about educating the Australians about OK, the nature of Bitcoin, if everyone can just read the book, the Bitcoin Standard, yes, we talk about the nature of money a lot in that book, right, so, Making sure people understand, OK, properties is good, but it's not the only answer to combat inflation, I think that's important.

49:19: When you talk about self-managed super funds, for example, some Australians have properties in self-managed super funds, and of course some of that guidance is given by financial advisors.

49:30: When do you think financial advisors are gonna get up to speed with the new digital asset, the number one digital asset, Bitcoin, and start advising clients to allocate Bitcoin into their SMSF?

49:42: Yeah, so I think there is a, It's a fundamental driver, I guess behind financial advisors, right, so, obviously they're in an industry that's been around for a long time, there's been a bit, a few shakeups in that industry, so the financial advisors I think on one hand, they really want to service what their customers want, they want to give them what they want, but on the other hand they're also very worried about regulation, and that's especially the case if you are, I would say if you're part of a broader dealer group where you're operating under someone else's license, there's a lot of considerations at play, for example, insurance, right?

50:14: If I, if I'm giving advice on Bitcoin, I might still be insured as an advisor, so by talking to quite a few advisors over the past, Year or so I can tell you that, yeah, they're still very worried about regulation, they do want to be the one that kind of opens up to customers, to really service what they, what, what they need.

50:33: They they do want to understand Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but I think for there to be a widespread advisor adoption, so to speak, there needs to be more regulation clarity, and we've seen that, finally eventuating in the past, month or two where,, Australian, the Australian regulators are looking to bring cryptocurrency exchanges under the existing Australian Financial Services license regime.

50:58: Ting, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come to an end very, very soon, but this is a question that comes up all the time to me, and I'd love to find out your take on this.

51:04: Is this to do with just the everyday person who comes into a wad of money, might be they've sold a property.

51:10: They come into an inheritance.

51:12: Let's say they've got $100,000 and in, right in today's market, they've got the option of putting $100,000 straight into Bitcoin, or they can dollar cost average, let's say $10,000 every single month for the next 10 months.

51:27: In your opinion, what is it that you think is the best strategy?

51:31: Yeah, I'm I I'm, I'm very, I'm actually very conflicted and I'll tell you why, right, so I actually do believe you shouldn't be timing the market, right?

51:41: it's as we always hear the saying is you shouldn't, it's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market, right?

51:47: So if you bear that in mind, The moment you have your fear, you know you're losing 15% every year.

51:54: So what you, what logically what you should do, you should put everything into Bitcoin and forget about it, set and forget.

51:58: In 5 years' time, it won't matter.

52:00: It won't matter.

52:02: so that's what my heart tells me, but I think logically speaking that's a very, that can still be a very challenging move for a lot of people, purely because we're, we're human beings, we're not, we're not robots, we all have our emotions attached, right?

52:14: So for some people it's, it can be a very hard pill to swallow.

52:17: Even if they put $100,000 in and then Bitcoin has a 20 to 30% correction, which may still be possible, but, for some people they don't want to bear that volatility.

52:27: Obviously if you put the moment you put your money in, it's gone up 30% the next day, it's for a lot of people that that's that's game on, right?

52:34: so I do believe, look, I think, It might be a bit of a a cop-out answer, but I think it depends on the person, depends on what your risk tolerance is, and I think if you want to follow your heart and put everything into Bitcoin because you believe that's the, the best strategy given we've spoken about today, then you've gotta also be prepared if there's a 20% drawdown, it doesn't matter, right, cause in 5 years' time, things wouldn't matter so much.

52:58: Yeah.

52:58: Yeah, excellent.

52:59: Well Ting, as we wrap up this episode, I just want to hand over the floor to you.

53:02: Is there anything else that you want to say about Coin Stash or anything else happening in the market?

53:06: Yeah, I would just say, my personal view is stay invested, so obviously.

53:13: There is a a very wide range of investable universe out there, but I think a lot of people, they get into Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies because they fundamentally believe that the other investable asset classes are less, not as superior as Bitcoin and, and the others.

53:31: So I think, I think stay invested whether you invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, That's look at least you get your money working for you, and I think that's that that matters for, that that's that matters the most for most people.

53:44: Yeah.

53:45: Ting, co-founder and CEO of Coinstash, you've ended with very, very wise words, and thank you so much for coming into the studio today, it's great to meet you and appreciate your time.

53:54: No worries, thanks for having me.

53:55: Thanks for tuning in to Crypto Collective.

53:57: If you've enjoyed.

53:58: This episode, the best way to show your support is to leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don't miss an episode.

54:07: You can also find more of me at I'm Matthew Fraser on all social media platforms.