My Take On Crypto and NFTs

0:07

You're listening to Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman. Yo, yo, what is going on everybody? Isaac Mashman here, and welcome back to another episode of Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, the podcast that is all about helping you become a more capable individual through me sharing my experiences and knowledge in business, life, and personal growth. Stoked to be talking to you guys today about this subject, as it is something that I really haven't expressed my viewpoints on firmly in one place ever before. Now, before I jump into the subject matter, I would like to remind you guys of my fee for listening. This isn't monetary.

I'm not asking you to buy anything and I'm not selling you my course. I would much rather you, however, share this podcast episode with a friend, a business partner, an affiliate, somebody that you know that you believe can get just as much value from this episode as you did.

1:11

This is the way that the show grows, as I'm not running a bunch of advertisements and wasting your time. I'll say this once again. There have been plenty of shows that I've listened to, that I've been fans of for years. I understand and respect the decision to monetize your podcast, but when there's an advertisement every 10 minutes, it can become cumbersome to somebody who's listening, and I'm just not here for it. There's a reason I don't listen to the radio, and there's a reason why you don't listen to the radio either, because of all the advertisements. You want to be able to be in control of what you're hearing and how quickly you're consuming that information. But anyways, today I want to address the current investor market. Now, I do need to preface this with this stereotypical claim.

1:54

This is not financial advice. I'm not telling you guys to base your future financial decisions on what I'm about to tell you or what I'm going to be discussing, because I do want to give you guys an unbiased and mainly logic focused perspective on where I am putting my money, where I am making my investments, and what I'm steering away from. Now, there's no denying that as time progresses and as society moves forward, technology is going to get better and better. New use cases for technology are going to come out and problems are going to be solved as these technological solutions really come into the focus, into the mass market.

Over the past decade, we've seen the rise of cryptocurrency. We've seen the rise of Bitcoin going from literally pennies for one Bitcoin to $50,000 and $60,000 at its peak.

2:48

As of today, recording this episode, I believe it's probably hovering around $35,000 to $36,000. Now, I have never been one of these guys that is 100% bullish on cryptocurrency. I'm also not one of those guys that is 100% skeptic either. I believe that skepticism has its place, and I believe that it is important to do your due diligence and research before making any investment, obviously. You want to research the quantity, the supply and demand, the risks, and I would also say don't invest more than you are willing to lose when it comes to cryptocurrency and even the stock market. Now, something that I have recently really developed a keen interest in is real estate, and not so much the multi-unit homes and buying houses and such.

That's something that I'll get more and more involved with as my business scales, as my net worth scales, as my income level scales, and I'll buy an apartment complex.

4:34

I can say that I'm associated with Mr. Grant Cardone. I know that you guys are about to say, oh, here we go. Is this spiel going to be like [Uncle Gene], going to be like Grant? No, I have my own opinions. I've done my own research. I agree with Grant Cardone on a lot of different things, but my beliefs do not align 100% with his. But he does speak a lot of truth in what he normally discusses. So I've really seen this need, this necessity for real estate, because there are in fact a set amount of houses in the United States, and there is a set amount of property in the United States.

You can never create more land. Bitcoin is a fixed asset. You have 20 million or however many bitcoins exist, but there are other cryptocurrencies that are infinite.

5:21

They're not finite. Infinite to where more and more and more can be created. The actual reason for cryptocurrency would be a decentralized way of making transactions, allowing you guys, or allowing us as a consumer market, to be in control of our financial decisions and paying in a set coin. I view it almost like a video game where you have a currency in game that you can exchange for other assets or liabilities. You have a million dollars of Xcoin in this video game, and it has a value in that video game for another amount. That is the ideal use case for cryptocurrency today, but many people are leveraging cryptocurrency as investment vehicles. Currency does not mean investment. A currency is something that you can leverage to make more of by investing into an asset.

7:06

You're not about to go up into the store and use Dogecoin to buy furniture, or use Dogecoin to check out your groceries at Walmart. That's just not going to be the case. Now, in the future, cryptocurrency is going to become more widely adopted to where you are able to go and use Bitcoin or Ethereum or any other crypto in order to make these said purchases, versus the fiat dollar bill that we have in our wallet or on our credit card. Because the dollar amount in a bank account is virtual. We deposit a piece of paper or a check, and the bank system just goes in and adds a zero, and all of a sudden, there's a speculative number in this account, but it's a firm number. It's a number that the bank put there, but it doesn't really [exist].

7:50

It's not really based off of how many people are holding on to it and how many people aren't. Yes, interest rates can get involved, and I don't want to get extremely technical in this conversation, but when it comes to cryptocurrency, it's really just about not so much supply and demand, but how much interest is there, the sense of community that exists around a specific coin. I've seen coins like Floki and Moon and SafeMoon and [Shiba], which was the rip off of Dogecoin. It's like, all of these different things are claiming that there are use cases for these coins, yet if you do your research, you're like, anybody can say that this has a use case, but are people actually using it for that? Are people actually using it for renewable energy? Are people actually using it for X, Y, and Z?

8:36

The chances are 98% of people are not. They're using it to make money and using it as an investment vehicle because they can get rich quick. Now, I'm not saying every coin is a get rich [scheme]. There are plenty of cryptocurrencies, I'm sure, that have positive use cases, and I'm not here trying to sound like a conspiracy [theorist]. All I'm here to do is say that I'm not a firm believer in cryptocurrency in this market yet. In the future, I believe that it can evolve into something magnificent and something that, although it wants to be decentralized, is going to be forced to become centralized because of regulation, because of the government, and because of these different things, which, based off of who I've listened to and what I can [gather] and what I believe would be the case, I think having regulation is actually a benefit, because now there are going to be regulations on the pump and dump aspects and the Ponzi scheme aspect.

Jordan Belfort and a lot of these people went to jail in the 90s and the 80s for manipulating a stock. Now you have the 16 year old influencer who's manipulating a coin, and certain people are losing thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

9:42

The average consumer is losing hundreds because some influencer told them to do that. There's no real consequence for that action. I think that's scary, especially for people that might not be as educated in a specific area. They're going to listen to somebody they trust, which is understandable. You're listening to me and you are taking and consuming and appreciating my opinion because you trust me. That's why I know and I'm aware that the information and what I'm talking about has to be coming from a place of logic and coming from a place of, I'm not telling you to do this and I'm not telling you not to do this.

Here is my opinion. Here is my system of beliefs, so to speak. On top of that, something that I am not bullish on at all is the entire NFT craze, the non-fungible token or whatever it stands for.

10:34

Pretty sure that is what it stands for. I know that NFT is something that can never change. It's something that is a proof of ownership. It's like, hey, this is yours, you own this. I think that again, with cryptocurrency, there are some amazing positive use cases of almost being similar to a stock in a company. You can own a share of that stock, or you can own 100% of that company by owning 100% of those shares. You can own X, Y, and Z tokens or percentages of a musician's song, so you can earn royalties off of that by being an owner. So I see that as a use case. But the one thing that I don't see is how one ugly [picture is worth that much]. Excuse my rather biased opinion here.

11:19

This is my own perspective, and I know art is subjective and art can be up for interpretation, but I don't see how one pixelated [8-bit] JPEG can go for $1.3 million and be sold, or go for $200,000 and 500 Ethereum. I just, I don't understand that, because yes, you can screenshot it. You can, other people can rip that off, and you have the rights to this image and there's copyright and then it's like, this is yours. But I believe, again, that goes back to the sense of community and almost being a vanity metric of saying, I'm a part of this club. I'm a part of this group.

Then next thing you know, it's like you are gaining value on that investment, quote unquote investment, because there's additional interest. It doesn't mean that more business is being generated.

12:10

It's more interest being generated. Typically with a stock, the way that a stock goes up is not just off of interest, it's off of how much a company is growing, how much an establishment is growing. Is an NFT really growing in this form of an ape? Is it really growing in this form of some polar bear that's pixelated? There is plenty of art in this world that is beautiful, that's gorgeous. But I would rather have something that I could hang up on my wall that has history to it and didn't take an artificial intelligence five seconds to generate or to evolve or to mutate. I don't want you guys to click off of this and think that I'm just a skeptic that's yelling about these things.

But I'm genuinely concerned. It's not that I don't understand it. It's just very simply like I'm viewing it from a realistic set of eyes of, yeah, the world is evolving and the world is changing. But what has been around since the beginning of time and what will continue to be around? That's going to be real estate. That's going to be companies. That's going to be these other investments and other investment vehicles that I know will not fail. There could be a rug [pull], and all of a sudden cryptocurrency crashes and people lose millions of dollars because of the founder or because of some hackers, all of a sudden they own a hundred percent of the coin and everybody else loses money.

13:31

I'm not saying a hundred percent of the coin. That's obviously a fallacy, but you know, the system shuts down, the government steps in, and a coin gets, you know, completely torn apart. There are going to be lawsuits, but then again, if it's decentralized, how can there be a lawsuit? Because how can we hold somebody accountable for their action? The entire point of Bitcoin was to become anonymous, Satoshi, the guy who created Bitcoin [pseudonymously]. It was anonymity. It was being able to change the world while also remaining anonymous. I see that these people are hopping on this bandwagon, and it's not because they're genuinely interested. It's because they genuinely want more money.

They genuinely want something that is an easy way to make money and exit, a way to become a millionaire through NFTs or cryptocurrency or these coins.

14:19

That's concerning to me. It's not my place to necessarily be concerned because you will have the ability to make your own decisions. But I would rather take $200,000 or $100,000 or even $10,000 and put it on a down payment of a home or a renovation or put it into my business and scale. I understand too that a lot of the people that are making these massive, massive investments are wealthy individuals who have multiple streams of income that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I read somewhere that Justin Bieber spent 500 Ethereum on an ape, one of these NFTs. The kid's worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

He's not going to be complaining over 500 Ethereum. But when you have the average consumer or the average person [with an interest], a hobbyist of the profession, thinking that they can spend a couple thousand dollars and it'll change their life.

16:38

But I'm going to be making investments into companies when I can. I'm going to be investing continually into the stock market, marketing companies that I believe in and companies that I trust. I'm going to be buying more parcels of land in communities that are growing, pieces of land that have the opportunity for growth or the opportunity to be bought out. I'm going to be getting my business and getting my other streams of income to the point where I'll be able to get multi-unit properties. That sort of thing, to where I can get these different passive forms of income, and income that, in certain situations, has tax benefits.

Having a tax-free event is something that cryptocurrency isn't able to do. This is something, yes, I will admit, that I learned from Grant Cardone, because whenever you are getting involved with something, you want to learn from the people that know the most.

18:16

These are my beliefs and I'm simply explaining in this podcast episode, these are my beliefs, and I see again a use case for cryptocurrency in the future. I see use cases for NFTs. I'm not a skeptic on all of these different things. But I also see a need and a necessity for more rental property, more land, more real estate, more companies that are publicly traded, more investments, and there are other things that have my attention, to my eye. [As] I begin into another topic, I feel like it wouldn't be fair if I didn't have this very brief discussion on the metaverse. I understand there are people who believe that I am uneducated by saying that, oh, I believe that in the metaverse you have to be stuck in your headphones 24 seven, in the Oculus Rift and the Samsung goggles, in order to be in the metaverse.

19:05

I understand the metaverse. You don't have to be trapped in this virtual reality. It's all around you, seeing certain things in front of you that you can only see by wearing a piece of technology. I get it, I understand it. I was born in this century, like I understand, I've seen technology change and grow and advance. I'm a huge video game nerd. I'm a geek. I love all these different things and I love technology and science fiction. But at the same time, I'm not going to spend a million dollars on a fake virtual piece of freaking land. When I made this announcement back earlier in January that I bought my first two parcels of land, it was obnoxious and almost offending to me how many people were like, oh, in the metaverse or real life?

19:54

Come on, bro. Did you buy it in the metaverse? What did you use? Did you use [The Sandbox]? I'm like, dude, this is real land I can stand on. This is land I can put a shovel in the dirt and I can build something on. This is land that I can rent out to a real person face to face to put a mobile home on or an RV or to camp on. This is real property that I can stand on and actually put my fingers in the dirt, that I can feel the dirt underneath my toes. I'm not investing in the metaverse, I'm not investing in some fake piece of land that is online in a virtual world.

Demand [and] adoption for that, yeah, it's right around the corner. I get that technology is advancing at a rapid exponential rate at this point, where it's fascinating.

20:45

But look, you've got to live somewhere. You can spend your hard-earned money on fake parcels and fake land and NFTs and cryptocurrency and you can make money off of this. Don't forget, you've got to pay capital gains. But guess what? I'm going to be buying the land that you need to sleep on. I'm going to be buying the land that the servers are required to run on. I'm going to be buying the land that I can build something on so you can go out and grab something to eat, so your DoorDash person can pick it up from a restaurant. I'm going to be buying the land that you need to go ahead and stay on whenever you're traveling, the hotel.

I'm going to be owning the land that you need to go ahead and stay in, regarding an apartment complex. That is going to be the game that I'm playing.

22:12

What I'm talking about may not be 100% [right about where] the world's going, and might not be 100% accurate. These are my observations. These are the things that I've researched. These are the things that I've found. These are the things that I've seen. These are the things that I hold dearly to my heart. I feel like the metaverse is a conundrum to me because there's already such a massive disassociation with technology and social media. I already feel disassociated enough with social media. This is me being pure and honest right now. I do not need to be more disassociated by having screens and such projected in my reality.

I see the use case, I see the value, but at the same time I see what is going to be around a hundred years from today. I think if I could say anything, I want to be able to pass on a billion dollar or 10 billion dollar real estate portfolio.

23:10

I don't want to pass on some Bitcoin in a wallet. I want to pass on something that my kids can walk on. If I have kids in the future, they can feel, they can cherish, they can enjoy, they can surf on, they can swim in the ocean of the beachfront property. I want to pass on that to my future generations or to the people I care about. I don't want to pass on coins in a wallet or some virtual land that is great if you're living there. Yeah, great. That's what I believe in. These are some of my perspectives and some of these things might change.

Right now, at the time of recording, it is January 30th, 2022. It's coming out on Monday, which is tomorrow, January 31st. Come 2024, my perspective might change.

23:57

I might look back at this and be like, man, Isaac, I regret saying any of that. Will that be the case? I doubt it. I doubt it. I'm pretty confident on how I'm going to feel in the future, but I'm not completely writing that fact off. So with any investment you make, be smart, be wise, do your research, do your due diligence, and don't believe every single person who says this is a great investment. I saw something about a guy, he's like, I never expected to see Bitcoin fall this low again. He's like, if I convinced you to buy in at $50,000 a coin, I'm sorry.

Now, will Bitcoin rise above 50k again? Possibly, probably, I think it will. But at the same time, if you're giving out advice and people are making investments off of something that you're telling them, then aren't you partially at risk because you made that recommendation?

24:48

That's why you always have to be careful with what you're recommending. I'm only going to recommend something to you that I believe in. I know it's 100% a fact, this goes down to business and your specialty and your expertise. Be careful. Be conscious. Exercise your rights to research. Your right to research. That's something I'm going to coin. So that being said, guys, I appreciate you sticking around for this episode, to Chase the Vision and continue excelling in 2022, and always remember to chase after your vision. Much love.