479 John Dumas

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] What happens when an army officer decides routine isn't enough, drops out of law school and tosses open the doors of possibility with a daily show?

Meet John Lee Dumas, aka JLD, the creator and voice behind Entrepreneurs On Fire. A legendary award-winning podcast that has interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs, including Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris, and Seth Godin with more than 4,000 episodes and still racks up over a million listens every single month.

JLD is the same guy who held command in Iraq, then bounced through law, school, finance, and real estate before having his aha moment at 32: a podcast every day. It started lean, him asking short, crisp questions, stepping aside, and letting guests carry the fire. He didn't stop at interviews. He wrote The Common Path to Uncommon Success, a modern 17 step roadmap to financial [00:01:00] freedom and fulfillment.

He also created fan favorite goal setting tools like the Freedom Journal and the Mastery Journal, each earning Amazon's choice and earning him a full-time entrepreneurial career.

Today, JLD is building a media empire from the beachfront of Puerto Rico, sharing everything from guest interviews to income reports and daily inspiration with his Fire Nation community.

This isn't yet another podcast intro. It's the ignition point, a conversation about discipline, curiosity, and what happens when you commit to lighting up others around you every day.

And before we hop into the podcast, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. We have William, a graduate of Deep Both Mastery, and he says, I didn't have the time for Deep Both Mastery, but I made the time and I'm glad I did.

What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've ever experienced. Or how about Bruce? Bruce says, before Deep Wealth Mastery, the challenge I had with most business [00:02:00] programs, coaches, or blogs was that they were one dimensional. Through Deep Wealth Mastery, I'm part of a richer community of other successful business owners.

The idea shared forever changed the trajectory of the business and best of all, the experience was fun. And we'll round things out with Stacey. 

Stacey said, I wish I had access to the Deep Wealth Mastery before my liquidity event, as it would have been extremely helpful. Deep Wealth Mastery exceeded my expectations in terms of content and quality.

And you know what, my Deep Wealth Nation, why they're saying this is because Deep Wealth Mastery, it's the only system based on a nine figure deal. That was my deal. And as you know, I said no to a seven figure offer, and I created a system that we now call Deep Wealth Mastery that helped myself and my business partners, welcome from a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure exit.

So if you're interested in growing your profits, preparing for a future liquidity event, if that's two years away or 20 years away, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you. Please email success at [00:03:00] deepwealth. com. Again, that's success, S U C C E S S, at deepwealth. com. We'll send you all the information about Deep Wealth Mastery, otherwise known as Scale for Ultimate Sale. That's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders just like you who are looking to create market disruptions.

And they want to lock in their financial freedom and have success and fulfillment. 

That's the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. It has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Send an email to success at deepwealth. com.

Deep Wealth Nation welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. We have a very special guest in the House of Deep Wealth. He's a fellow entrepreneur, podcaster, author, visionary, and he's the one and only host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, which as of this recording is approaching 5,000 episodes. He's doing one a day. Imagine that.

John's always been a visionary, and he recently caught my attention with one of his newest podcasts MSTR today where he is talking all about this mythical thing [00:04:00] called Bitcoin. And that's when I reached out to John and asked him, Hey John, can you come onto the Deep Wealth Podcast and share your experience and your vision of Bitcoin, where it's going, what you've been doing, and what we should know?

And to his credit, he said, yes. So John, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. There's always a story behind the story. John, what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

John Lee Dumas: Well, thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here for a lot of reasons, and I'll say, listen, I'm just a boy from a small town in Maine. Grew up there for the first 18 years of my life. Went to college on an Army scholarship, so I spent four years as an active duty officer in the US Army did a little 13 month tour of duty in Iraq as a tank commander, which meant I was in charge of four tanks in 16 men for my 13 month deployments to Iraq.

After my time in the military, I tried a bunch of things, I went into corporate finance, I went to law school. I was in commercial real estate. Just trying to find my footing to see if I could get [00:05:00] something that tasted right for a career, for something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and frankly, nothing was really answering that bell, so to speak. I mean, I did something for a couple years, for one year, for 13 months, and I was just cycling out of those different careers because they just weren't clicking for me.

And back in 2012, I discovered podcasting as a consumer said, you know what? I feel like there's an opportunity to create a pretty special podcast that is all based around interviewing entrepreneurs.

And I didn't want to just do a show that other people were doing. I wanted to make a difference and I knew the biggest difference I could bring to the world was quantity. So the show Entrepreneurs on Fire was launched back in 2012. It was the first, and to this day only daily podcast in the world interviewing entrepreneurs.

That's my niche. I'm sticking to it. 4,786 episodes later, I'm still going strong. Having a great time. As you [00:06:00] mentioned about 13 months ago 14 months ago now. I launched a show called MSTR Today, which is all based around Bitcoin, which is all based around Michael Saylor, which is all based around his company called Micro Strategy, now called Strategy.

because I just fell in love with Bitcoin many years ago. And then I fell in love with what Michael Saylor was doing with his company Strategy. And I'm just a huge believer in this space in the industry. I've consumed thousands and thousands of hours of content around Bitcoin from people like Michael Saylor.

I've put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of personal study. I've been doing a daily show that I call MSTR Today, which is. All around the company Strategy and what they're doing on a day-to-day basis. So I just love that industry and to me it just really marries well with what I'm doing with Entrepreneurs on Fire.

Entrepreneurs on Fire is about entrepreneurs who are successful, how we can, how [00:07:00] learn from their strategies or successes, their failures. But guess what? When you become a entrepreneur on fire, you probably have some disposable income, some actual money that you've made. Should you just keep that money in dirty fiat and cash and just wash it, melt away as a government prints endless amounts of money and turns your dollars into a melting ice cube, or should you invest it into what I consider is the best store of value that humanity has ever created.

For 5,000 years, that was gold. Now it's digital gold. It's called Bitcoin. And there's a lot of reasons why Bitcoin and my opinion, and many other opinions of who I consider brilliant financial engineers like Michael Saylor it's an incredible opportunity. I've, again, put in thousands of hours of work, consuming the content to learn about it, hundreds of hours applying it myself.

I'm in it for the long run. It's an incredibly volatile asset compared to the dollar, by the way. because one Bitcoin will [00:08:00] always be one Bitcoin, but it's incredibly volatile asset when you compare it to dollars. It's gone from essentially zero to $112,000 since 2008. And it's, in my opinion, over the long run, only going one direction up into the right, not in a straight line, in a very volatile measure and path but that is the world that we live in and I'm excited to talk about that. So whatever, Jeffrey, you want to unpack from that and go into next, I'm happy to discuss.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And John, firstly, thank you for your service back in the day you did what you did so we can do what we do as entrepreneurs. Always very grateful for that and a heartfelt thank you for doing that. And Deep Wealth Nation, when you go to the show notes, we'll have everything that John mentioned there. And by the way, get his book The Common Path to Uncommon Success, a Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment, those F words, freedom, fulfillment, all about that at Deep Wealth as well.

All that will be in there for you. So John, let's now talk about the foundations of Bitcoin and Deep Wealth Nation. If you already know Bitcoin [00:09:00] and you're like, Jeffrey, John, I'm already investing in it. I've been doing it for years. Just hang on. We'll get there. We'll get there, but we've gotta cover the basics first.

So what's interesting, John, almost every single guest, towards the end when I ask the wrap up question, and no spoiler alerts here, we'll get there. But one of the things that they mentioned is, I wish I would've bought Bitcoin. But when I hear that, the reality is people say it, but most people I find are afraid of it.

It doesn't have a great reputation out there if you don't know about it. So fact fiction. What is Bitcoin? What should we know? Walking away from here, very high level, why is it important that as entrepreneurs we know about Bitcoin today as opposed to five years from now, 10 years from now?

John Lee Dumas: I mean, listen, I'm sure you have your disclaimers, but of course nothing in this video that we're doing is financial advice. I'm not a financial Advisor. I'm just a guy that's put in thousands of hours of work to learn about a topic and hundreds of hours of work actually applying that knowledge into the topic itself, which in this case is Bitcoin.

I'm such a believer in it's, for one thing, like what. Is a [00:10:00] store of value. A store of value is something that holds value for you. So can you really consider a dollar any currency in the world, a store of value? Of course not, because every dollar, every fiat, every currency. That's ever been created, goes to zero over time, and the US dollar is the strongest and the best in the world right now.

And it's a great way to, to do day-to-day transactions. And it's a great way to do certain things in this world. But as a store of value, it is absolutely horrendous because it is just a melting ice cube due to inflation and the Fed continuing to just prince. Endless amounts of money. And so when an asset is not scarce, it becomes less and less valuable over time.

That's where Bitcoin comes in. Bitcoin is incredibly scarce. It is 21 million Bitcoin for all time. 99% of Bitcoin will be mined by 2035. That's just a fact. So Bitcoin is just becoming [00:11:00] a harder and harder asset as every day goes by. And with a cap of 21 million in the form of something like a Bitcoin, it is that scarce asset that can store your value, as we were talking about earlier, storing your value.

And in some cases, especially when you're comparing it to something like a fiat currency, like the dollar grow your value over time. One of my favorite graphical memes and just different social media graphic shares that I've seen over time is what did one Bitcoin buy you in 2016?

It could buy you a hamburger. What could one Bitcoin buy you, in 2020 it could buy you a laptop. What can one Bitcoin buy you, in 2025? Well, a Lamborghini or even another way that people can really visualize this is essentially it took and I'm making these numbers up, but it's something pretty close to like hundreds of Bitcoins to buy your average house in 2016. Then it took 50 Bitcoin in 2020 to buy one house, and now it takes three Bitcoin to [00:12:00] buy your average cost house in the United States.

So as you can see over time the dollar cost of everything just goes up, but the cost in Bitcoin and everything has been going down. Now is that day to day, week to week, month to month? Of course not.

Bitcoin's a very volatile asset. It's had many bull markets. It's had many cycles. Every four years there's been a Bitcoin crash of sorts, where it's gone down 50, 60, 70, 80%. That's brutal and that's painful, and nobody wants to be a part of that, but it's just a reality of the asset.

It's a reality of volatility. You never feel like that happens with dollars because you don't see dollars crash 70% over the course of a couple weeks or a month, but you can actually see Bitcoin crash compared to dollars in that same timeframe. Now, of course, that was usually preceded by Bitcoin going up thousands and thousands of percent to then have a correction back to the downside.

But it's this, asset that a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their mind around because, it's digital. It's not something you can reach [00:13:00] out and touch. It's not a bar of gold that you can hold. A lot of people say, well I love gold because you can touch it. When's the last time you've touched gold?

Literally, I'm not talking about your earrings, I'm talking about a bar of gold or a coin that's actually made out of gold. That's just not something that people do either. So it's really a bad comparison. So again, I just love the idea of. Being able to store my value in something that is incredibly finite, that is an incredibly scarce asset, that has an absolute hard cap of the amount that will ever exist.

And that for Bitcoin is 21 million. And think of anything in this world that's valuable, like what's one reason why Rolex watches are valuable is because they limit the supply that they. Make of actual Rolex watches. When you go and buy a Rolex, you're on a wait list because it's not just readily available.

So scarcity brings that in, and that just is shown time and time again when it comes [00:14:00] to collectibles. Like arts, baseball cards, fill in the blank, it's scarcity. That will always win the game at the end of the day. So, Jeffrey, a lot of ways we can go from here. Happy to hear your thoughts and go from there. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So one thing, John, that you've shared with us, and of course Deep Wealth Nation, as John said, this is not financial advice, it's just the two of us sharing our thoughts, our opinions, our experiences. And so John, you've established, okay, over time, and you're calling a currency a fiat.

So Deep Wealth Nation, when you hear the word fiat, it could be the US dollar, it could be the Euro, it could be the pound.

John Lee Dumas: The Turkish lira. The Argentinian peso, which are by the way, all going down.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So you're saying all the fiats over time have gone down effectively to zero. The US dollar being the strongest of them, even as strong as it is with inflation it's also over time, really not doing all that great and comes Bitcoin, which we refer to as energy, and also something that there's only gonna be 21 million of these Bitcoins. [00:15:00] And so for starters, and for somebody in Deep Wealth Nation who's saying, okay, well John, you said when Bitcoin first came on the scene, you might be able to buy a hamburger with a Bitcoin and now you can buy a Lamborghini.

So quite a difference. What's driving the value? Why is Bitcoin becoming more valuable over time? And if we were to fast forward a year from now, 10 years from now, I mean, I'm hearing things like a Bitcoin may be worth a million dollars and then eventually $10 million and beyond. So what's behind that?

John Lee Dumas: It's inevitable. A million dollar Bitcoin sounds crazy to people. That's only a 10X from here. That's not that insane. A 10X from where we are right now. That's not crazy at all. In fact, just not too long ago, Bitcoin was at $16,000, not too long ago at 10XD from $16,000 close to it to where it's at now, over a hundred thousand dollars.

So to think that it might be able to 10X again in five or 10 years is to me, absolutely not. If, but when and when Does it get to $10 million? Not if, but when, and it all comes back down to the main point of your question, [00:16:00] which is supply and demands. Why is beachfront property. More expensive because there's a lot more demand for people that wanna buy beachfront property.

And there's a lot smaller supply than there is of a town in the Midwest, like Kansas. I used to live in Kansas. All we had was flat lands and just the ability to build houses, it was great. Kansas is a great place, but endless amounts of land out there. As far as prime beachfront property, well that's not endless.

There's only a certain amount of beachfront property that can and ever will be built. And of course that supply can go up a little bit over time because places like Dubai are literally creating more land to build more beachfront property, which to me just goes back to why Bitcoin's so valuable.

Because you can't do that with Bitcoin. Gold's unbelievably scarce and Gold's having a record year. And I commend, everybody that's invested in gold, I'm one of those people we are benefiting [00:17:00] from the results of holding a scarce asset, which is gold. Now gold still has a stock to flow ratio of over 2%.

What is essentially happening is, of whatever gold's, total supply is typically between two to two and a half percent of gold's total supply is being mined outta the ground every year. Now, that's not a lot, but that is something. So over time you are continuing to add to the gold supply and you always will.

Maybe someday in the future we'll be mining gold from asteroids or from Mars or from somewhere else. And by the way, that's fine. It's gonna be expensive to do and gold will still be very valuable. But that's just an example of supply and demand. Gold is very valuable because it's very difficult to attain.

Oceanfront property is valuable because it's very difficult to attain and there's a very finite supply of that. Bitcoin is the same way. The demand is increasing exponentially.

Why?

Because people like you and me are now wanting to buy Bitcoin where [00:18:00] you and I were not buying Bitcoin 10 years ago. I started buying Bitcoin five years ago.

You did not. But you're gonna start potentially looking at buying Bitcoin now going forward, so you'll be taking some of that supply. There's companies like Michael Saylor's company Strategy the one that I think is, going to be one of the most, if not the most valuable company in the world in a relatively short timeframe.

And I'm talking five to 10 years. It literally could happen.

And what do they do?

All they do essentially is raise money. Is leveraged debt and by Bitcoin, and they're called a Bitcoin Treasury Company, BTC, Bitcoin Treasury Company. And there's tons of those companies, Jeffrey, that are being created every single day.

There's over 180 right now at the time that you and I are talking. Soon there will be over 200. Soon, there will be over two thousands. And so now there's nation states that are, coming in and buying Bitcoin. Bhutan is using natural resources [00:19:00] to mine Bitcoin. El Salvador is buying Bitcoin every single day literally. There's gonna be a pretty significant announcement on what the US is planning on doing when it comes to their strategic Bitcoin and crypto reserve.

So the demand is going through the roof. The supply is staying the same at 21 million, so there's only one result. Price goes up, not every day, not every week, not every month. There will be massive pullbacks, but over time, I believe it's going to be up and to the right.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so with that said, Deep Wealth Nation, why we're talking about this now is at one point here at Deep Wealth, you may decide to keep your business forever, or you may decide to sell it proverbially tomorrow. And either one is great if you do end up selling it or you get it to the point where you're have some nice profits, you wanna look into other chapters in your life and perhaps travel the world or do other kinds of things.

What are you gonna do with your capital? What does that look like for you? This may be one viable option for you. So with that in mind, [00:20:00] John, I'm gonna mention two names for you. One you've already mentioned, but let's very high level go back to the beginning for both of them and perhaps for Deep Wealth Nation, in a paragraph or two, talk about why they're important, who they really are.

So the first one is Satoshi Nakamoto, and then the other name that you've mentioned is Michael Saylor. So what's the significance, firstly of Satoshi and then onto Michael?

John Lee Dumas: So in a nutshell, Satoshi Nakamoto is the person or persons. Nobody knows if it's a male, a female, a group of men, a group of women, a group of men and women. Nobody knows, but essentially it's some group of individuals or an individual who created the protocol that is Bitcoin. They created the code that comprises Bitcoin.

And one way that a lot of people look at Satoshi Nakamoto is, he or she, or they, they created it. Then they walked away. They said, you know what? This is best if it's just being given to the world. Open sourced. There's [00:21:00] no boss, there's no ruler, there's no company head. It's just going to automatically do its thing as it's coded to do via math principles, and that's what it's going to be for all time.

So Satoshi Nakamoto is just a name designation for whoever the creator or creators are of Bitcoin. Period. End of story. Michael Saylor, he's an individual that launched a company called MicroStrategy in 1989. The company went public in the late nineties and absolutely exploded during the dot-com boom, and then completely collapsed during the dot-com bust, and then essentially from the early two thousands until 2020 he was just a company that was struggling and they were having some good years and some not so good years.

They were profitable. They were not so profitable. They were just like any company going through ups and downs and cycles. But [00:22:00] they survived, which is impressive, for 20 years, from the early two thousands until 2020 his company survived, but Michael Saylor, especially when COVID hit, realized that he was either going to end up losing pretty quickly to companies like Microsoft and Google, or he was gonna have to figure out something different to do.

So he went into basically a little study period in his life. And when he came out of that, he said, essentially, we have $500 million in the bank, which sounds like a lot to your average person, but for a company of the size of MicroStrategy, it wasn't a ton of money. It was a good amount of money.

It was a good start, but it wasn't the end. It wasn't a ton of money when it comes to having to pay salaries and bankroll and funding and all these different things that a company like Strategy of that size had to do. So he realized. They were a ticking time bomb. They were what he likes to actually call it a zombie company, where they were just waiting to either be acquired or to just [00:23:00] fade off into, oblivion.

That's when he decided in 2020 that he was going to take a chance. because it, it was a chance because nobody knew what the future was gonna hold. But he became a die hard Bitcoin believer, a die hard Bitcoin maximalist because he did the work, he read the Bitcoin Standard, he read the white paper.

He did hundreds and then thousands and thousands of hours of individual work to learn what Bitcoin was. And this guy is an aeronautical space engineer. MIT graduate, he loves systems. He loves math. He's who I consider, by the way, the financial engineering genius of our lifetime.

That's my opinion. I could be wrong, I doubt it. But I could be wrong. And he came outta that saying, Bitcoin is the future. And what he did was he let all shareholders know, we're gonna take $500 million and we're gonna buy Bitcoin. Anybody that wants to sell, I'll buy your shares right now from you.

You can get out now before we do this and anybody wants to [00:24:00] stay, you'll be on this ride for us. So who left, Left who stayed, Stayed. They ended up buying what I think ended up being somewhere between 250 to $275 million worth of Bitcoin and that was their first tranche of owning Bitcoin. And by the way, when they bought it was like $11,000 Bitcoin pretty quickly traded down to seven or $6,000.

It was immediately like, oh my god, Michael Saylor just tanked his company. It's the end of the world. It was a horrible decision. Now of course, it came back and it ended up going up to 70,000 and then back down to 16,000, and now it's up to 112,000 and who knows what it's gonna be, a year from now or five years from now.

But if you are like me and Michael Saylor, you believe over time in the long term, it is absolutely going to be higher. His prediction, which. I believe because I believe what Michael Saylor says, and I believe in his math and in what he stands for. Is that Bitcoin is gonna average about a 30% CAGR every year for the next 21 [00:25:00] years.

That means a 30% Compound Annual Rate of Growth every year for the next 21 years. 30%, not a thousand percent, not 500%, 30%. That's what he believes and I believe that's very possible as well. That's not insane. It's incredible, but it's not insane numbers. Bitcoin's had insane numbers for the past 15 years, absolutely insane.

But of course, there is a law of diminishing returns when you become now what Bitcoin is, which is a $2 trillion asset. So Michael Saylor, for the past five years, since 2020, has been figuring out every way he can to intelligently use leverage to buy Bitcoin, whether that be through convertible bonds.

Convertible notes. He now has multiple preferred equities preferred stocks, which are ,called STRF, STRK, STRC, and STRD. He does what's called ATM'g of the Common Share, which means he sells shares into the market [00:26:00] and uses those proceeds to buy Bitcoin.

And he's essentially doing that every single week. So for years now, Michael Saylor has been buying Bitcoin as often as he can. And now, and for the past couple years, he's been pretty much on a weekly cadence where he's buying Bitcoin as much as he can because he knows what's coming because he believes what is the future, which is Bitcoin.

So his mindset is why would I be acquiring as much of the future as possible right now? That's what he's doing. That's what strategy's doing. They now own. 639,000 Bitcoin, which is over 3% of the total supply of Bitcoin that there ever will be. And he's going to keep buying Bitcoin forever intelligently using intelligent leverage with always keeping his MSTR shareholders as the focus of, this is [00:27:00] who I'm working for, this is who I'm trying to benefit the most.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's interesting about Michael he said a few interesting things. He said, firstly, we've all been lied to about inflation. If you actually look to what real inflation is, it's not the 2% or 3% or even 5% that we're told that it might be.

It's actually higher. When you compare it to people actually buy and what they're using and the basket of goods that we're being told, this is inflation really isn't relevant to us. And that led him to what you're talking about, his conclusion that, hey, at this rate I'm gonna lose my company, I'm gonna lose my employees. He was the first company to go all in on Bitcoin and his treasury went from US dollar being the fiat to, okay our treasury is now a hundred percent Bitcoin and that's the significance of Michael Saylor and Strategy. So far, so good. 

John Lee Dumas: So far, so good.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And then what Saylor has done, and this is what you talk about all day long on your MSTR Today, and again, Deep Wealth Nation, go to the show notes you can subscribe to that, it seems like he's on a mission to bring the world into Bitcoin. So if someone doesn't have [00:28:00] the risk tolerance to buy Bitcoin directly, he's now creating, and he said, hey, AI is helping me do this, but I'm creating these kinds of vehicles that have never been done before.

That are gonna take the trillions and trillions of dollars from the investment system, from the financial system and begin to onboard them into Bitcoin.

So he wants to have the world come on to Bitcoin. So let me ask you this from someone in Deep Wealth Nation, they're hearing us talk. They're saying, okay, well what exactly is Bitcoin? Because when Michael Saylor talks, he says it's not a cryptocurrency, and he talks about the blockchain. So what really is Bitcoin?

How do we understand exactly what it is?

John Lee Dumas: I mean the easiest way to understand Bitcoin, because most people do understand gold, gold is something that you mine from the grounds. It's a very scarce asset, and because it's scarce and because other people have attributed value to it, it is valuable. Bitcoin is digital gold. You mine it. Online, you mine it, via computers crunching code essentially, [00:29:00] and it's mathematically finite.

It is scarce. There's only going to be 21 million. So Bitcoin essentially is a commodity. It is a store of value. And if you believe what Michael Saylor and myself believe it is by far the best and only true form of a store of value, of a store of Wealth that exists in our time, essentially in two words, it's perfect money. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's perfect money as I understand it because whoever owns it a government can't take it away from you. And we'll talk about this momentarily, your protection that's in your head. Head in terms of how you're safeguarding this, of who's gonna get access to it.

You can send it anywhere in the world nearly instantaneously. And compared to your example, hey, if I wanted to send a billion dollars of gold. That's gonna be complicated. It's heavy, it's risky. I've gotta figure out how I'm gonna send it. It's gonna take some time. Whereas Bitcoin is getting faster by the day.

It's really in milliseconds, minutes right now that I can send that all day long, every day. [00:30:00] And another example, that's a great example, Deep Wealth Nation. Imagine if you will go back to the 1800s. And you now own 3% of Miami Beach or 3% of New York City, and you fast forward to today, what would that be worth?

For Bitcoin. It goes beyond that, John, and you can tell me if you agree or disagree because with Bitcoin, unlike property, you don't have property taxes. You don't have tenants leaving you in the middle of the night. You don't have storms coming in, destroying the property, and you're having to put all this capital to fix it.

So when you say it's the perfect form, it's because we own it. We can travel wherever we want with it. We can send it whenever, wherever that it is really financial freedom, how are we doing with that in terms of Bitcoin in and of itself, of why it's such a perfect, if I can use the word currency. 

John Lee Dumas: Yes. For all those reasons, you're exactly right. And at the end of the day, there's a lot of ways that you can own Bitcoin. The truest form, if are like a true Bitcoin maximalist is what's called cold storage, where you're actually going onto an exchange, like a Coinbase or a [00:31:00] Kraken, and you're buying Bitcoin, but then you're taking that Bitcoin from the exchange.

And you're transferring it to a cold wallet that you solely own and that cold wallet. And for people that have never done this before, it may be hard to un visualize, but there are tools out there like Ledger and some others that allow you to have and own your own cold wallet, which essentially means that.

You have a 24 word seed phrase, and these seed phrases again are 24 random words that only you have access to. If you memorize those words, then you don't even have to have any written proof of those words and only the person that has those 24 seed words can ever move that Bitcoin. So if anybody ever essentially just came and let's just be brutal for a second, but they, if they came and killed somebody that owned the Bitcoin, that person could not access that Bitcoin. It could not be moved, it could not be [00:32:00] transferred. And of course, if it can't be transferred, it's worth nothing because if you can't transfer it to something for, an exchange of value, it's worth nothing. So it really gives you this opportunity to.

Hold your net worth literally in your head. So anytime you could access a computer anywhere in the world, you would then be able to access that Bitcoin and make moves on it as you want it to. Now, a lot of people don't want that pressure. They don't wanna necessarily have to go through that. because there is some technical know-how, some technical knowledge and some risk in that manner as well.

What if you lose your seed phrase, which by the way it's estimated over 5 million Bitcoin have been lost in ways like that. So is there 21 million Bitcoin? No, there's actually closer to 16 million Bitcoin. And that makes the Bitcoin that are still active, that are still owned even more valuable because there's less that are actually, that exists in this world.

So Michael Saylor's 3%, actually probably five or 6% of the actual supply of [00:33:00] Bitcoin that's accessible. But you can go ahead and do things like buy iBIT which is IBIT. It's a ETF that's run by black Rock you can sell the ETF at any time and it's BlackRock that's doing the buying and the selling of the Bitcoin for you.

So you're just buying the ETF and you're able to just stay very liquid in a much more manageable. It can be in your Fidelity accounts, or whatever your brokerage is, and you can just buy it. And what that's gonna do is that. ETF is going to exactly mimic the returns of Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin goes up 5% or down 4% any given day, that ETF will completely mimic those returns. So you can have access. Two, the returns of Bitcoin. But a lot of purists, and I understand why they feel this way, feel like that's not really owning your Bitcoin. because they'll use the phrase, not your keys, not your coin, which technically is true.

So you've gotta decide what's the trade off. Do I want to go down the rabbit hole and really learn this stuff and [00:34:00] learn how to, get a ledger or get a cold storage's wallet, buy Bitcoin on exchange, transfer it there, store my keys, do this, do that. Or. Do I just want to log into my brokerage account, go to buy an ETF, and 10 seconds later own, what's equivalent to a Bitcoin return.

It's more of like you're gonna be mimicking those returns of whatever Bitcoin has. So there's multiple ways to do it. You can do what I like to do, which is own MSTR. because I know that Michael Saylor is creating an instrument that is amplified. Bitcoin means that if Bitcoin over the course of a couple months, goes up 5%, MSTR is going up 10 to 15%, and if Bitcoin goes down 10%, MSTR is going down 20 to 25%. It's an amplified version of Bitcoin and we won't get into reasons why, because it gets too technical. You really need to start listening to my show or just doing more of a deep dive.

Or by the way, and this is something I shared with you earlier, this book just came out, which [00:35:00] I have no connection with this individual, but it's a fantastic book. It's called The Treasury of Michael Saylor. Anil Patel, and it's a fantastic book. It just gets into what Bitcoin is, why it's so powerful. Why it's a beautiful instrument, why it's the best store of value in the world, why it's perfect money, and then also why Strategy is what it is. Why MSTR has the type of returns that it has, which by the way, in the past five years is over 3000% of a return, which is insane.

Bitcoin's around eight or 900%. Ms. STR is over 3000%. So you can just see the amplification of that. But again, you gotta remember, it goes the other way too. So, if there's a Bitcoin bear market that's coming up, MSTR is going to perform even worse than Bitcoin performs, no matter how bad that is.

So a lot of great resources out there. I just, I love this topic. I love learning more about this every day, [00:36:00] which is why I'm out here. On this terrace reading this book today because I love it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay. So John, let's take a quick step back for Deep Wealth Nation. So you've shared some terrific insights for the purists out there who want direct access, direct control over Bitcoin. You're saying that we can go on to an exchange. And we can buy the Bitcoin directly. And then we have some choices we can put into cold storage that we control.

I know there's also services out there and it comes with some risk and some cost where someone else is gonna hold it for me. And of course the danger there is that a reputable company?

What happens if they go bankrupt?

What happens if there's some kind of cyber threat and it takes them down or it gets stolen.

All those kinds of things come into play. Or I can own it myself, but now I have the responsibility of, okay, what are those 24 magic words?

And if something happens to me, heaven forbid, how is my family gonna get access to that?

So it takes some time, it takes some preparation. I'm hearing you say it's some technical know-how before we go to MSTR.

If someone wants to go down that path, what would be some resources that you can recommend?

John Lee Dumas: [00:37:00] Yeah, I would go check out Coinbase. They have a great knowledge tutorial where you can just watch videos on all these topics. They walk you through every step of the process and if you have a big enough account, they'll even jump on a call with you and guide you through.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so I'll go to someone like Coinbase, they'll walk me through it of how I can set that up and I take it that's from my own storage and then you're saying, hey, if you don't want that, if you want to have something that you can just with your existing broker, log in, see what's there.

You can go right after this episode, you can go and get some, you have some of the ETFs like iBIT, and there's others out there as well. But there you can just buy it and you don't own the Bitcoin itself, but the company owns it. And now as Bitcoin goes up, it goes down you're now a part of that. And it's relatively easy to buy, relatively easy to sell, but it's not owning the Bitcoin directly. So we've talked about some of the downsides of the Bitcoin directly. If you lose your passphrase, if you haven't documented it securely and something happens to you, the family can lose out. For the ETFs that I'm buying, like iBIT and others out there.

[00:38:00] Before we get to MSTR, what are some of the downsides of having iBIT or other ETFs?

John Lee Dumas: I don't really personally believe there's that many downsides. It is just the one obvious downside that a lot of the purists point to, which is the government could technically freeze BlackRock's assets or freeze fidelity or freeze specifically your brokerage. For instance, if somehow you get accused of something by the IRS, whether that be tax evasion or something, or whatever it might be rightfully or wrongfully, your assets can be frozen. If they're on a brokerage a Fidelity, a Charles swab, fill in the blank, they can freeze your assets. And if you own, FBTC, which is Fidelity's Bitcoin ETF, that would be frozen. Now, nobody can freeze your Bitcoin if you have it on cold storage.

And you have the passwords in your head. Nobody can freeze that. They can do a lot of things. They can throw you in jail. They can do this, they can do that, but technically they [00:39:00] can't freeze your assets and you could, do some interesting things an example, that is used quite often and again there's no perfect solution to anything ever.

What if a lot of the Jewish individuals that were prosecuted in Germany back in World War II, what if they had been able to just leave the country without trying to take their gold or their jewelry or their artwork, which got confiscated, like all of that was confiscated.

Well, if they could have just put all their Wealth into Bitcoin back then, which of course was impossible because it didn't exist, but they would've been able to just, if they could find a way out, they would've been able to take essentially all of their net worth with them, which would've been, pretty much a game changer in that scenario.

So that's the argument. There's just, there's pros and cons to whatever you do around it. You just have to figure out what are you most comfortable with. And I would just say that frankly, if you're not expecting to get in any trouble with the law going forward, which of course most of us have that belief because we're law abiding citizens, [00:40:00] then you're gonna do fantastic, in my opinion, owning something, like FBTC, and you're gonna get the exact returns of Bitcoin, but without the counterparty risk of you storing it yourself. So you need to think what makes the most sense for you.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So what's your risk tolerance?

What's your technical skills and what makes you your family comfortable?

Then you can make some decisions. So you have Bitcoin, then you have the ETFs, and then you have companies like MSTR, and there's gonna be many others coming through. You already said this close to 200, and there's gonna be more than that, but MSTR specifically this is something that you've latched onto. In fact, that's what your whole show is on MSTR and the Treasury Tightens, and you're focusing on MSTR and companies like MSTR, like Strategy who are coming on board now and saying, okay, we've taken our company and our treasury is now a hundred percent Bitcoin and we own all these Bitcoins.

Now, from that perspective, we're buying into Michael Saylor, the man himself, his vision, and no pun intended, his [00:41:00] strategy, on strategy, maybe pun intended. And so there potentially could be a downside to that. So for a naysayer out there, John is saying, hey, yeah, Michael Saylor, he's brilliant. He's done really well for himself, but it's in his vested interest to get people bought into Bitcoin because it helps him, it helps the company, it props up his wealth.

And perhaps this is all just one big show at the end of the day. What would you say to those people?

John Lee Dumas: I'd say those are absolutely concerns. Those are real concerns. That is a reality. At the end of the day, you have to say, who am I going to trust?

Am I gonna trust nobody?

And that's fine.

Am I only gonna trust myself? Well then maybe you just wanna do cold towards Bitcoin and just. Hold that yourself and just be happy with the Bitcoin returns, which will likely be fantastic.

And I do that with a good portion of my net worth. But I also have other portions of my net worth that I say, you know what I really believe in Michael Saylor. I really trust [00:42:00] Michael Saylor. That's me personally. Am I putting 100% of my net worth with him? Absolutely not. 50%? No. 20%? No. But am I putting a significant amount of money with Michael Saylor and MSTR, am I investing heavily in his company?

Yes, because I truly believe what he's building, and I truly trust him. If you can't get there, then that's an investment you should not make. If you don't trust that Elon Musk is guiding Tesla in the right direction, don't invest in Tesla.

If you don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is guiding Facebook in the right direction don't invest in Meta. If you don't trust Mark Zuckerberg, don't invest in his company. So this all comes down to you making a decision for what you think is best for you, for your financial future. And for me, I've done the work, I've put in the efforts.

I'm a huge believer in Michael Saylor. He is the financial engineering genius of our lifetime. He is wealthy beyond measure to me he is elevated above personal Wealth and personal [00:43:00] gain because he has way more money than he'll ever want or be able to spend. He just has proven to me that he's just looking to build the biggest and best company in the world.

That's his passion.

That's what he's doing, and I think he's gonna succeed.

Jeffrey Feldberg: When we look at Bitcoin and companies like Strategy, and a lot of people compare that to what I call the dot bomb era, where anything Internet was just up and to the right, as you said earlier, in terms of their charts and their value, and it's going there and now seemingly you have these companies that are a 100% Bitcoin backed treasury. People are saying, well, but that's all there is. And the value that's being assigned to them, it doesn't make sense. They're not making a product like Apple or doing services like a Google or some of the others in there.

How long could it really last?

Saylor, said I was first very cynical of Bitcoin. Then when I got to know it, I spent the 200 hours getting to know Bitcoin, got into it, and it was like, wow, maybe I should just be buying some more before my neighbor buys it. So you go through those cycles but to people that are saying, well, it just, [00:44:00] it's not sustainable that a company like strategy could be the most valuable company in the world, more valuable as we record this today than Nvidia. Apple, Google, and others simply because it owns Bitcoin. What would you say to that narrative?

John Lee Dumas: I would say, because Bitcoin's gonna become by far the most valuable asset in the world. And if you are owning a massive amount of the most valuable asset in the world, you are going to have a valuation of your company to be astronomical. That's just a fact in the reality. And until companies like Nvidia and others decide that they're going to, hold some of their treasury in an asset like Bitcoin, we'll see what happens with them. They're always gonna be at counterparty risk. China just came out and said, we're no longer gonna be buying Nvidia chips. Maybe another company comes out and has a better chip than Nvidia at some point. Maybe that doesn't happen. NVIDIA's an amazing company.

They might do amazing things. I own Nvidia, I'm wishing them the best. I think AI's gonna be incredible and I think you can get the theme here that I [00:45:00] am betting on a good number of horses. because I think. A lot of these horses can win. I think all these horses can win. I definitely think some of them can lose.

One thing that I have the highest conviction in is Bitcoin because to me, in my opinion, there is no counterparty risk with Bitcoin. It is just a finite store of value that has now got to the point of no return. End of story.

Jeffrey Feldberg: John just talking about that, and we talk about AI and we haven't talked about this yet. What's interesting, there's a narrative out there that says, hey, when AI really becomes everywhere, AI and Bitcoin are a match made in heaven. Because right now for a bot to do a transaction on a credit card, you got the processing fees 2% to 5%.

It takes time and there's a lot of friction. With Bitcoin, it's virtually frictionless and the costs are really irrelevant in compared to what we have today. So Bitcoin can really power AI. Through the internet in terms of whatever future services are coming down the line, yet another reason of why Bitcoin is gonna be leading the way.

But let [00:46:00] me ask you this before we start going into wrap up mode and a few more questions with that. You're never a profit in your hometown. My kids, they're now young adults and they have a clean slate and I'm encouraging them to invest. And I tell them every day, , if I knew what I knew at your age. It would be a whole different story.

Maybe I wouldn't have needed my 9-figure exit deal, and one of the questions that they say is, Hey, that's great, but why shouldn't I just invest in the S&P 500? I can get an ETF. It does great. It's the proven thing. Yeah, you're saying Bitcoin, but look how volatile it is, and it's up and it's down and it's just so new.

What would you say to that narrative?

John Lee Dumas: I would say, listen, the S&P 500 has proven to be a wonderful investment for a long time. It's likely gonna prove to be a wonderful investment for a long time going forward, but essentially the S&P 500 is like 7 to 10 amazing companies in 490 dead companies. It's just a fact, almost all of the returns of the S&P 500 come from the Magnificent [00:47:00] Seven plus a couple more, that's it.

So in my opinion, if I was to be going back in time, I would much prefer just owning my own basket of the magnificent Seven. If I was gonna invest in this S&P 500, why not just invest in Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Facebook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the way down.

That to me, is much more appealing. And if I was young and I did the research and I know what I know about Bitcoin, I would say, why not also put some of my net worth, a percentage, not a massive percentage, but a percentage and something that's probably gonna be going up forever, which is Bitcoin.

That's to me, an absolute no brainer.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So we've talked about a few different kinds of off-ramps here that someone can do. And so we said, okay, you can buy Bitcoin directly, you can go buy a Bitcoin ETF. And now we've been talking a lot about Strategy and MSTR. And MSTR we have the STRC, the STRD, the STRD, and other ones.

So. Low hanging fruit here. And again, this is not financial advice, just you and I talking someone [00:48:00] who's new to this, but saying, yes, I'm gonna take the orange pill, forget the blue pill, forget the red pill. I'm taking the orange pill, otherwise known as Bitcoin. I'm gonna go into Bitcoin and I'm gonna do something.

In terms of an investment, where would they start? If they had, let's just use a hundred basis points, the a hundred basis points, it could be a hundred dollars, it could be a million dollars, it could be everything else in between. I about a hundred basis points. Where would you be dividing that, John In terms of MSTR or STRC, STRK, STRD, what would that look like for you, knowing what you know?

John Lee Dumas: If I had a hundred dollars that I wanted to invest today, and this is me John Lee Dumas in my personal situation and I'm like, I wanna invest this a hundred dollars. I'm putting $40 into MSTR, I'm putting $40 into Bitcoin, and then I'm putting $20 into STRD, which is strategies, high yields.

It's almost a 13% yield product. And then I'm probably every quarter when Strides [00:49:00] paying out its dividend, I'm probably sweeping that into both Bitcoin and MSTR. Those profits.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth nation, there's how John would spend his a hundred dollars or a hundred basis points, whatever that would be. There's the ratios for you that you can think about for yourself and do what you feel is best. That's what John feels would be best for him and some great insights there.

So John, my goodness, so many questions to ask.

We're bumping up against some time. It's a tradition here on the AL Podcast. I have the privilege and the honor for every guest. I ask the same question and it's a fun question. Let me set this up for you, John, when you think of the movie Back to the Future. You have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time.

So this is the fun part, John. It's tomorrow morning. You look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door open, it's waiting for you to hop on in which you do. You're now gonna go to any point in your life, John, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, Hey John, do this, but don't do that.

What would that sound like?

John Lee Dumas: I would go back to, probably [00:50:00] myself at 22 years old when I was just starting my career and making money, and I would just say listen, have a long-term investing mindset, dollar cost average every week into investments that you believe in and never touch them.

It was the two best performing investors are ones that forgot their password. So had no access to their account and those who died.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Lot to be said. Death and forgetting passwords go to high returns.

John Lee Dumas: We are just programmed as humans to make bad decisions, and when you take away the ability to make bad decisions, then you're left with pretty great results.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, the human condition. A lot to be said for that. And John, for someone who wants to learn more about you, what you're doing, where'd be the best place online for them to go?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, head over to EOFire[dot]com. That's my headquarters. That's where all the magic happens. I have a great podcast called Entrepreneurs on Fire, where I interview entrepreneurs seven days a week. And then I have my show MSTR and the Treasury Titans, which you can [00:51:00] just look up on YouTube just by typing MSTR or my name John Lee Dumas.

It's a great show.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation doesn't get any easier. It's all in the show notes. It's a point and click. Well, John, it's official. It's a wrap. Congratulations, and as we love to say here at Deep Wealth May you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

John Lee Dumas: Thanks, brother.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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Thank you so much. 

God bless.