Hey pal,
At a recent dinner, I surveyed our table of six to find out who has invested in crypto and what drove that decision. There were four of us, including my wife and me, that have crypto in our portfolio of investments.
I’m not all in with crypto and I view it as an alternative asset, kind of like a Pokémon card. There are folks in society who value both crypto and Pokémon cards and folks who could give a single fuck about either.
My cousin-in-law said he didn’t really care about crypto at first: “What got me,” he said, “was when I heard it described as our generation’s opportunity to get in on something while it was affordable.” I agreed, and it reminded me of the following insight that Scott Galloway shared on a recent episode of Brené Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us (please note: I made a few edits for clarity): “The reason I have economic security is when the economic crisis of 2008 hit, I took all my money and I bought Apple at 13 bucks a share and Amazon at 120 because we let stocks fall. We used COVID as cloud cover to bail out rich people. And that is, we threw some loaves of bread and some circuses for the poor, but two-thirds, at least, of that six or seven trillion dollars went to bailing out the incumbents, and that’s the existing rich. When you bail out the restaurant owner who’s a baby boomer and has a failing restaurant,, you’re taking away an opportunity for the recent 28-year-old graduate of the Brooklyn Culinary Academy. You’re taking away their shot to come in and buy that restaurant for pennies on the dollar. You’re taking away the shot for someone to come and buy their own Brooklyn real estate at $300 a square foot. So when the younger generation sees their wealth as a percentage of GDP in 30 years go from 19% of GDP to 9%, we’ve literally cut the wealth of people under the age of 40 in half. They’re going to create their own volatility and their own asset classes. So they’re like, ‘It’s too late to buy Amazon. It’s too late to buy Apple. All the big games are gone so I’m going to create new speculative assets, such as crypto or meme stocks. I’m going to create my own…’ Volatility is great for young people because they can survive it, they can make more money, they’re willing to take those risks."
In hindsight, I view my decision to start my own business nearly eight years ago as a way to create volatility, and take a big risk in the hopes of a big return. As I get older with each passing year, the more I view the world as unpredictable, and the scarier it is to imagine taking such a plunge.
Your favorite finance friend,
