Transcript
Speaker: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Behind the PFP. Today, we have a very special guest and fellow lunatic. I am happy to introduce my dear friend, Hutch. Now, Hutch is an ex -trad -fi -turned -de -fi -degen and recent commodity bull. I'm multi -talented, and I'm still straddling the fence of all of the above.
Speaker: I'm excited to delve into that a little bit deeper, but thank you so much for coming on to have a chat with me today. We met. Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker: under maybe not the best of circumstances. It was the lunar crash that brought us together, but it's been an interesting few months and I've had a really great time getting to know you and it's been fun to bounce ideas off of each other. So I wanted to start off by giving our viewers a little bit of background on you. So tell me about, you know, your chat pie background and what kind of led you down the crypto rabbit hole.
Speaker: I've always been interested in money and the flow and exchange of money and not so much the trading aspects, but more so long -term investing and store value. And again, just cashflow and using cashflows to your advantage.
Speaker: And I heard about crypto a long time ago, so I tend to go out to Las Vegas every June and July and play some World Series of poker events. Usually the smaller events, but I have played the main event three times, cashed in at once, made it past day one every time.
Speaker: All the poker guys, especially the higher stakes poker guys were really, really into Bitcoin and then later Ethereum. And so, you know, I just kind of thought, you know, I get why they're doing it, but it's kind of more so they want to be off the grid and want to stay off the grid. But I just didn't think it was going to take off a big mistake.
Speaker: Big mistake and had a really good family friend that talked about commodity bull like he sold all his belongings in 2006 and moved to I won't docs where but moved to a foreign country and predicted basically 2008 predicted it would be a lot worse than it was and thought the world was coming to an end sold all his possessions for gold and silver and bought some real estate down there and
Speaker: he really got into it kind of early I want to say like 2015 and try to get me back into it and I just I didn't see I didn't see it gaining traction and more so in 2017 I saw the run up I kind of took notice and it kind of came back to earth almost as quickly as things ran up and obviously the the bear market there just kind of rumbled along for a lot of years and then when
Speaker: When 2020 and 2021 happened, I started seeing what was going on, taking notice, and then when things went parabolic in early 2021, I thought to myself, you know, I've seen this before in TradFi, and it seems like there's some real institutional money behind this now, you know, with everything happening now with the FTX and exchanges, like who knows what that was, but I could tell there was some
Speaker: There was some real volume coming in. And so I thought I'd do some more research. And then it finally clicked. I finally got it, whereas I get it. I see how this is the future, especially coming from TradFi and seeing how inefficiently things are run. Lots of paper, lots of people that may not be necessary. And just the flows of information, I thought, this makes so much sense. So long -winded answer, sorry.
Speaker: Now, when did you discover Terra Luna and UST and that whole ecosystem? Yeah, so it's really interesting. That friend that I was telling you about, he told me about it very, very early. So he got in the teens, and then it fell to the four and fives, and so he got some more then.
Speaker: I was watching it and I was watching GoDown, but it wasn't really easy to get Terra Luna. I was doing the Coinbase thing. I think I was doing another one. I had some Kraken, but Kraken didn't have Luna then. Actually, I had some Binance US too. They didn't have Luna then.
Speaker: you know, everybody told me I could go to KuCoin or I could do it the DeFi way. And honestly, that just kind of scared me. And it kind of reminds me of where a lot of people are. A lot of normies that are kind of interested. It's kind of they're used to like custody their money at Schwab or TD Ameritrade. And I thought, you know, the exchange, they'll keep it safe. Coinbase is too big to fail. I don't know if I want to do all that weird stuff in 24 words and all that. So I don't know if I'm ready for that. And then
Speaker: And then in the summer, late summer, I was like, okay, you know what, I think I got to figure this out. Oh, and Coinbase started doing RapLuna. So I started with that. I actually started with RapLuna. It wasn't until September, I think it was in September, I was like, okay, I got to figure out this DeFi stuff. And that's actually when I got my first Galactic Punx. Since your show is called Behind the BFP, Galactic Punx,
Speaker: were my first NFTs and started following Joe, Spherix. And she was really, really putting out a lot of good information and just really staying on top of things with the Terra Luna ecosystem, but really into galactic punks. And so that kind of got me. And I thought, you know, I saw the vision of Terra Luna and I thought, if this is going to be as big
Speaker: as I think it is, or it certainly could have been, I want to have their first kind of blue chip NFT project. So not really a big NFT guy in general, but I do love the galactic punks and I love that community. And I still have mine. I actually bought this one after the crash just because I love what Angel Protocol is doing.
Speaker: with charities and bridging the gap because that's really what I'm all about as far as bridging the gap between TradFi and DeFi, centralized finance and decentralized finance. And they were doing a really, really good job and providing a great service for people. So when this angel punk came on sale for like $700 worth of wonk, I was like, okay, even though I'm wrecked, I'm getting it.
Speaker: You know, that's a great story and you actually took one of my later questions because a very important question on behind the PFP is what is the story behind your PFP and that is a very good story. Thanks. I think you know that I have an angel galactic punk as well.
Speaker: Yeah, tell your stories really good. I know this story, but I think it'd be great to hear because this is a really cool story. Like you're saying, we kind of met under bad circumstances, but I've heard this analogy before where it's almost like we're victims of a shipwreck. And as hard as that was, there's always kind of a special bond, but your galactic punk story, your angel punk story really embodies this. So tell it, please.
Speaker: Yeah, so in May, when the sky was falling, I'm in a big lunatic group chat, which is not nearly as active as it used to be. But during that week, I couldn't talk to my family or friends. But we would get on these group face times, five or six of us. And we would just sit on the phone and talk till 2 or 3 in the morning. And we just didn't know what else to do. We weren't even talking about crypto. But on one of the nights, my friend, everyone lost everything.
Speaker: gosh he had I don't know five or six galactic punks and he's just said everyone send me your your wallet addresses I'm gonna send you all a galactic punk and we were all in a daze and my friend sent me the angel galactic punk and he said to me
Speaker: One day, I hope that this makes up for everything. This is going to be a relic. This was something so beautiful and so special. And just if you think back to that time, we really had no idea what was happening, what was going on. He had just been liquidated for, I don't even know how many thousands of Luna. And at the peak, I don't know how many his five galactic punks were worth. And it was just absolutely surreal.
Speaker: time and the fact that out of all the galactic punks I got the angel I think that was really special to me so I am grateful for that. Absolutely I mean I still actually hold on to mine and that was my thought when I originally bought them and I had that thought when things were crashing I don't know if I just needed to kind of cling to some delusion but you know if you think about this time in crypto right this this bear market is a little different in that
Speaker: The exchanges are crumbling, which is horrible for crypto, and it's horrible for the public and this kind of smear campaign that's evolving from it. But it really points us towards the ethos
Speaker: that Satoshi started which is really all about self custody and everything else and you can say what you want about Luna people say all kinds of things, but the vision was there the vision was solid in terms of, you know,
Speaker: If there is a need for decentralized finance and decentralized money, then there's certainly a need for stablecoin. People want to have something with some stability without the volatility. And it's such a young asset class. It's such a young, you know, ecosystem, like all of it, all of crypto. And and you just want to be able to hold some of your money. So the
Speaker: The vision behind Luna was sound. And again, like my thought was, you know, this blue chip NFT project, I want to be one of the first ones. But if you think about it, Luna was the first domino to fall and and actually contributed to a lot of this with three hours crypto. You know, it's it's it's just kind of like they're saying Sam may have been involved. And so it's just all this stuff is so incestual. You know, the Luna.
Speaker: the Luna ecosystem will be looked back on as a historic event. So hopefully, who knows? Maybe I just have a bunch of crazy, stupid, illiquid JPEGs. If so, so be it. I've certainly, you know, playing poker, doing stocks, doing like, I've lost money doing other things and you know, it is what it is. You know, I think it's got a beautiful story behind it at this point. You know, is it different than any fun Pokemon card I've had or baseball card? It's all a collectible and there's a really interesting story.
Speaker: behind it. But you brought up an interesting point that I don't know if he's talked about enough. We can talk about the crash a bit more, which is something I wanted to discuss as well. It's very hard and very sad, you know, we all lost a lot of money was very depressing time. But one thing that I struggled with is, and the reason the community was so
Speaker: There was this beautiful idea of decentralized money, right? You had Tether and USDC, but they were centralized and we were so united in this vision. And so it was one thing to lose money, but it was another thing to lose our faith in something that we believed in so strongly.
Speaker: fail that that was heartbreaking in a different magnitude and one thing I think a lot of the lunatics have struggled with and I've seen everyone just kind of disperse and well what is going to be the future of crypto now and what do I believe in now that is what we believed in so strongly and we haven't quite figured out a solution for it yet we need you know something to kind of
Speaker: unite again by, and so I've just been thinking, yes, it was sad to lose money, but just that faith and that passion that was driving us, that's something I've been really reflecting on recently. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I was disappointed too. I was disappointed that it was able to crack so easily, and a three and a half billion dollar attack isn't that easy, but I'm surprised
Speaker: I'm surprised that it kind of caved as quickly as it did. It's experimental. I'm a big boy. I'm not blaming anybody. I don't hate anybody. I did my own research and I took my own risk. That being said, we were in a little bit of an echo chamber because this exact thing did come up. It came up on a regular basis.
Speaker: you know, we, in our best thinking, we thought it was a lot more remote of a possibility than it was. But yeah, like what I think what I saw, you know, doing Twitter spaces, we did a lot of Twitter spaces, I did videos, you know, got to know a lot of people just interacting on Twitter, without even meeting people. It turns out I met people after the crash at the I call it the lung conference. So there was a big Luna conference that was planned. And that's actually where Jade and I met in person. But
Speaker: There was a big Luna conference planned in June and obviously the crash happened May 9th. The conference, I think it was Osmosis, Osmosome was there and there were other bigger conferences there but a lot of us converged and got to know each other and again it was kind of like the survivors of a shipwreck.
Speaker: time mentality, but it was great. It was actually very healing for me. And, and I know I, I kind of needed that, not so much closure, but just like, Hey, I'm not alone. And I think a lot of people can feel like that. And it's also, I think really cool why you're doing what you're doing. Like I've,
Speaker: You told me today and congratulations, copying emoji. You deserve it. You're getting a lot of views from your last interview as well. You should because a lot of people are connecting to this kind of human side of crypto, which you don't get there. It's permissionless. It's anonymous. It's it's right. Everybody's in and on and remote and it's all code. And that's all fine and good. But we're still human beings. And we still crave relationships. We crave community. And and we did have that in a big way. And it's, you know,
Speaker: I haven't found anything like it in crypto since. I'm rooting for projects to survive. It seems like a lot of the Luna people have gone to different places in the Cosmoverse, whether it's Osmosis or Adam or Juno or spinning up their own chains like the Kuji guys. I'm rooting for them as an ex -Lunatic. I'm rooting for them to make it.
Speaker: with all these kind of headwinds that we're facing. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see who can come out the other side, who can make it through to the next bull run and hopefully mass adoption. To go back a little bit, you had a fun story about when you went to the Washington Nationals game. Yeah. I was just hoping that you could tell it because I think it's a fun
Speaker: So which I mean that that that night was fire. I mean, it was like it was one of those nights. First of all, that was that was meant to be for people that don't know. So Tara Luna sponsored the Washington Nationals. They're the kind of the club seating, the really expensive club seating. And so so we go to this game and think about it like Luna's
Speaker: high, like near all time highs. We're all on top of the world. We're at this baseball game and we're actually talking to employees and somebody who's part of the owner's family and telling us that like, yeah, by next year we'll be accepting UST, the stable coin.
Speaker: Stadium wide and we were talking like, you know, are they going to have little QR codes where they can get a free beer as long as they pay download a wallet and pay in UST and we're just we're thinking like think tanking through how to do this and going all around the stadium and it's like really nice food and free drinks. I don't drink but everybody else was and I was just happy to be having fun and
Speaker: Nobody is, all of a sudden, all of us lunatics were like in the restaurant area. And I'm like, it's already the seventh inning. The Nationals were getting their ass kicked. It was like zero to seven. And I was like, I need to go out and see some of this baseball game. Like we had great seats. I mean, they were good seats. They weren't great seats. It was behind the plate.
Speaker: So Westy and I and Steph, I'll just leave it at that. Steph, one of the terabytes guys. We said, yeah, let's go out and check out the game. And so the Nationals were losing so badly. Like a lot of the homies, a lot of the locals just left. And so we just get down to like second row, center stage. We kind of knew we were on TV, right? But there was nothing to cheer for. And then finally, one of the guys hits a home run. One of the Nationals hits a home run. And I was like, yeah, let's get up there. We were like, yeah.
Speaker: Come on, let's go.
Speaker: And so we were like really rowdy about it. Like, cause we knew we were on TV when he was running it in. Uh, and actually went back later that night and found the clip. I was, it turns out they were so rowdy. They didn't show us when he was running it in, but you got to see me in the seat, like right as he's like swinging for the home run. But, uh, the, one of the ushers comes and he says like, Hey, you can't be in those seats. Those are Mr. Bainbridge's seats. And I was, I was like, well, where are Joe Kwan seats? Where are Mr. Kwan seats? He goes, I don't know, Mr. Kwan. I was like, you will.
Speaker: You will know Mr. Kwan. So we just kind of ambled back to our seats. But when I was telling you that story, I said, I'll bet he knows who Mr. Kwan is now. I'll bet he knows for a different reason. But yeah.
Speaker: I just, I love that story and I love the conversations that you were having. And I think that speaks to, you know, where it was going and just that excitement, right. And just, you know, just seeing like how excited you are telling that story. You know, I think it's been long enough now that we can look back and we can laugh and be excited about.
Speaker: That exactly shows how exciting it was because all of us lunatics were sitting around like a few tables, people having drinks and nibbling on stuff, just talking about all the different things. And that's part of the reason why Luna was so popular is because so many of the best builders were going on that chain because it was more user friendly to build than on ETH. Obviously, you know, Solana was seen as being centralized. And so
Speaker: as more and more builders came there were just tons of integrations everything how it interplayed um not just like ways to make money obviously that was a big part of it but just the ease of use and the functionality of it all was second to none and it's kind of cool to see them now really kind of riding that horse like before is riding the stable coin horse and now they're just realizing that they're
Speaker: a big value proposition they have was just user friendliness because you're never gonna get massive option without user friendliness and just an ecosystem of functionality of apps of utility, if you will.
Speaker: Now, one thing I wanted to ask you about, you made some great videos, great strategies, how to borrow on anchor, be Luna versus every other kind of Luna. What inspired you to make those videos? Is that something you think you'll do again? You helped educate a lot of people and you're such a natural at it. And did you just do that for fun?
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's that's a great question. So thank you. And yeah, I mean, it's it's it's bittersweet for me, because I love doing that. I love I love teaching. So my wife's in education. And, you know, I work in finance. And she, you know, she told me one time she goes when I was she saw me, she saw me give her presentation, she goes, You know what,
Speaker: you should be a teacher." And I said, honey, I am a teacher, right? I am a teacher, right? Just different, you know, and there's no education for money. So it's hard for me, you know, I since have had offers from a couple of different groups to be kind of their dedicated
Speaker: video person or content creation. And I was flattered, but I politely declined because I have to be inspired. Like if I have kind of a quote and I have to put something out every week, it's probably gonna suck, right? But if I'm inspired,
Speaker: Yeah, I'll just do it and I'll do it for free because I believe in it, I like it, I use it. Now, in this case, I was wrong and a lot of people got wrecked. And sometimes I feel very bad about that. I've made sure to disclose it's not financial advice, but unfortunately, my passion translates. And I think sometimes it can be electric and contagious. And so I've been really careful since the crash
Speaker: not to put out stuff, you know, just kind of willy -nilly. Like I really need to, before I do it again, I really need, I'm gonna disclose even more risks, like over -disclose risks, and be sure it's something that I am all in on. And at this moment, at this moment,
Speaker: you know, I'm just not there at this moment. Like I'm still wrecked. I'm still rebuilding financially, licking wounds. That being said, we talked about it a little bit. I am releasing a video about a 4 chain, which is a chain that's been around. They were kind of hanging with the lunatics, if you will.
Speaker: And thought change really, really interesting because, again, going back to the ethos ethos of self custody. They've been about that the whole time. And so what they do that nobody else does that's really, really unique. Don't think of it as an exchange, but think of it as something like a uni swamp, where you can go in a decentralized manner and get
Speaker: exchange different coins. But in Uniswap, it has to be all Ethereum base are wrapped, right? And with 4 Chain, you can do it with all the native coins, which is revolutionary when you think about it. So not investment advice, everybody has to do their own research. But I found it interesting enough. And I've been hanging out on some Bitcoin maxi spaces. And one of them was saying, I really want to do some tax loss harvesting for people that don't know. That's where you
Speaker: sell an asset that's down to monetize or lock in a loss. So you can actually get a $3 ,000 annual deduction against your income. And then all those, whatever you don't use, any additional losses, your future capital gains will be tax -free because they're just kind of absorbing those losses. And so I said, well, you can. And he says, I don't want to go on an exchange. And I said, well, there's Thor chain. And of course, you know, yeah.
Speaker: but Bitcoiners are kind of against like anything on Bitcoin. And what they, you know, I said, it's like, it's like an hour round trip maybe and Bitcoin's the slowest just because the way that the transactions work, but it's like, I actually did it live with Chad to like,
Speaker: put Bitcoin, I actually turn it into ruin Thorchain's native token. And so I just wanted to film that and I'll put it out there. But it was just something I thought may help some people who want to monetize these losses without going on an exchange, for what it's worth. I mean, I'm a huge Thorchain fan. I don't know if you know, I'm the OG Thor Chudet.
Speaker: I did know that and that was some of the early posts. I remember you with the sweatshirt. It's funny because they offered me the same sweatshirt. I was on some space and I answered a trivia question or something and they're like, here do this and you have to send Eve for the shipping. And I was like, it's cool, man. Just keep, just keep the sweatshirt. I never got the sweatshirt, but you did. And you were, you were wearing it in your tweets. I remember that.
Speaker: I really do love the sweatshirts. The LP University one is very soft. And the Runa sweatshirt is a relic. It is a relic again. Yeah. Yeah. My Runa sweatshirt and my Galactic Punks. I mean, those are just... I got my Terra Nationals because it says Terra and then it says Nat.
Speaker: or no, loon, l -u -n little, nat tics with the hashtag. And so I got two of those shirts, one I wear and one I keep as a relic, actually. That's so cool. I think it's just so cool to have a conversation with someone that knows how cool that is or just understand.
Speaker: Most people don't care, but you and I know how cool it is. We care, we care. And what's also cool is we found a few people around our area where we've been able to get together and stay in touch and kind of get through that really difficult part where we can go out and have fun and find our own little community. And I'm very grateful.
Speaker: Yeah, me too. I always try and carve out the time to do it because it's enjoyable. It's enjoyable to hang out. I haven't been as connected in the cryptoverse. I had to go back to my roots in TradFi to rebuild and everything, and it's good.
Speaker: kind of neglected my business a little bit, getting so into crypto because I was so convinced it was like the next big thing. Thankfully, I didn't lose billions like Mark Zuckerberg, but like I did lose a lot for me. So I have to go back and rebuild it. But I want to keep, I need to keep connected enough because I do, I still believe it's the future. I definitely believe it's the future.
Speaker: So speaking of some of the other things that you've been working on and the retirement strategies, we've done a couple of spaces recently where you've been educating me about all the crazy things that we can do crypto and commodity wise to take advantage of these tax harvesting is new. How did you get into this and are you going to do more
Speaker: educational spaces like this, because I don't know if you know this, but I got so many messages afterwards saying, who is this guy? Touch is awesome. Can I take him to lunch? I so agree with this.
Speaker: You know, so that's a great point. Again, I love doing this, so I actually used to do that, like, oh my gosh, another shipwreck. So I used to do that with the Voyager community. And I, yeah, I know, I know. So I used to do a big key who was kind of like, he would do spaces every day and it became kind of a mashup space with lunatics and Voyager people to shipwrecks. But yeah, I used to do spaces
Speaker: And they would go on for hours. And I would just, and I love doing that. So open offer, if you want to do it, I feel like we ham and egg it pretty well together on spaces. I love talking about that stuff. I love helping people. I can't give financial advice, but I can do financial edutainment.
Speaker: Right. And as long as everybody understands that I'm just whatever I'm just speaking theory.
Speaker: and that everybody has to verify everything for themselves with their own counsel, tax, financial advisors, everything else. You know what? There is a huge void of that. And thankfully I know enough about how traditional finance works, how taxes or at least American tax system works, how tax advantage retirement plans work, whether it's doing traditional or self -directed and how crypto works and how that can tie in with precious metals.
Speaker: silver or gold or whatever that is. So I love doing that stuff. And I'm just, I get busy, but once you kind of get me going, like, you know, like I kind of just go until people run out of questions or it gets stale, but that's usually been like two to four hours. I see that we're gonna, we're gonna keep drawing you back in. I see just the excitement and you, you've been just having this conversation and I want to keep pulling that. Let's do it.
Speaker: I think we should. So what would you say has been your biggest accomplishment in the crypto space? My biggest accomplishment in the crypto space? You know, I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know if I have a lot of monetary accomplishments. I mean, I'm down, I'm down. Like at one point I was up big and I'm down. And so I actually look at that as a failure because had I been taking some of my tradify advice, I would have taken some winnings off the table. I would have diversified more instead of concentrating more just because, you know, as my highest conviction bet, which was totally erroneous. I do take pride in the fact that that channel,
Speaker: The channel I spun up, it's Hutch on Crypto, it's still there. I haven't put anything up for a while, but I did that relatively quickly and became kind of known relatively quickly for the information I was putting out. And so we're talking a period of a couple months.
Speaker: And so, you know, I, I'm proud of that. And again, like part of me, it's bittersweet cause like, gosh, if I would have just kept my mouth shut, you know, like there'd be less people who got wrecked, obviously. Right. And it's not like, uh, whatever. Like I was some kind of paid chiller. Like I was, I was not, I was not getting paid. Uh, there was, there was one series of videos.
Speaker: where I got offered a thousand dollars. I was told I was going to get paid a thousand dollars. It was for a project. I totally believed it. And I was just stoked that I was going to do the videos anyway. And now I was going to get paid and I never got the thousand. And I was like, I was not going to ask like that project still exists on other chains, but I just, you know, felt like insult to injury. Like, Hey, where's my thousand bucks?
Speaker: But at any rate, I'm, I'm proud I was able to put out meaningful content for people that at least help them and obviously if you know there was not a coordinated attack. You know, it would help people make a lot of money, like I did, I did do that for a while until I, until it didn't. So I'm very proud of that.
Speaker: You know, I was proud because I was starting to get in with different projects that I believed in. Some of them that still exist, you know, I just let them know I had to kind of take a step back and look my wounds and obviously, you know, they were talking about offering me money or tokens and now all of a sudden their budgets got strapped and they had to go. But I was really, really excited to be getting in.
Speaker: on the business side of things, you know, not simply for profit, but to actually have some influence in how things are shaped. Like I had some really cool ideas that, you know, I'm not a builder, I can't build anything. Like I can't, like my wife, like we get a new, like whatever, like electronics, she'll put it together. I can't do that.
Speaker: My daughter, like we get a piece of IKEA furniture. I paid my daughter. She's awesome at that stuff. I just hope I can't. So I can't build, but I can think and talk and strategize. And so like I was really excited to kind of get in and I still want to be there. And I'm still in talks with some of these projects. It's just early right now. And I can't add a ton of value. And like I've been there when they say, hey, can you, we want to run a couple of things by you. Like I've been there no charge, but
Speaker: You know, my value proposition is educating and talking and promoting things that I believe in and that I use personally. I really feel like I just, I have a feeling that the universe is calling to you to get back into this, making this educational. Every answer you're giving me is leading me to hear you were doing the same thing. It's interesting. I would love to. I mean, I really genuinely love doing that. I don't know if you can hear that, but it's very apparent to me.
Speaker: I appreciate you saying that and I hear it too, like now that I'm saying it. And you know what, like it brought me a lot of joy too. Yeah, I can sense it so much. So on the flip side, you've talked about, you know, some of the biggest challenges we faced. So I have an idea, is the biggest challenge that you faced and what helped you overcome it? Yeah, I mean, just like really obviously it was,
Speaker: It was a balloon crash. I mean, people took their lives. I was hurting. It was beyond just the money. I was spun out there for a little while. We could see on Sunday night that there was going to be some volatility. We had no idea what was going to happen Monday morning, May 9th.
Speaker: But I actually had some leverage positions on an anchor and mirror. And so the way it works is mirror opens pre market hours. And so I'm not East Coast, I'm West Coast. And so I had to get up at three in the morning to manage those positions.
Speaker: And then it happened. And I kind of closed that day. Dank you are who's awesome video content creator was just a great ambassador for the space and just put on a space and just listened and just facilitated and people were venting and people, you know, people were confused and like, and he was like,
Speaker: The, the grace that he had that day, and because I was spun. And I listened as much as I could. I tried to sleep, and again is like since I got up the earth the other morning at three in the morning, I got up again and it was like it was like, right still just being hammered.
Speaker: I actually, so I liquidated, I got liquidated. And then when I had left, it was the poker player and me, the, uh, a little bit of trad fisense came back where I just said, you know what? Even if this comes back, it's going to take some time and I just need to salvage some scraps and, and, and live to fight another day. Like, um,
Speaker: I think that I did that and then I had to take a bunch of sleeping aides to get a good night's sleep. But I talked to Lucky Luciano and I said, cause we were doing spaces all the time and there was a big void. There was a huge void other than Dank you are doing that space. You know, there were some tweets coming out of the powers that be, but there was not a lot of direction. And I said, I can't even think straight right now, but I'm going to make sure I get some sleep.
Speaker: And I said, let's wake up the next morning and let's do a space. And I go, I don't know what's going to happen because we were both big voices. And so I don't know if people are going to be mad at me or blame me. But I said, let's just let's just be there. Let's just talk. And and we did that. And that was so healing. I was actually driving out to the desert. I had some friends that were they were actually built. They still are building this really cool retreat out in the desert. And so I was like,
Speaker: like a two and a half hour drive and I was just doing spaces the whole time. And then they actually just needed help like with physical labor demo work, like just breaking shit, literally wrecking shit is what they needed help with. And that's what I did that day. But that morning after finally getting a good night's sleep after like 48 hours of very little fumes and just your head spinning and losing a lot of money and like seeing just like carnage, it was, it was like war. It like felt like war.
Speaker: And then doing the space. I cried on that space like other people, you know, we're talking about there was like one guy was he he was talking and then he started his guy knew we interacted with kind of hinted that he was thinking about taking his own life and like I just was like,
Speaker: I was like, dude, don't even fucking think about it, right? My father took his own life. So it's like really, it's really hard for like, that's like a really real thing. So I was like triggered, like in a kind of a tough love way, but it like, it worked in that moment. In that moment,
Speaker: like I hope it bumped him and it was just like it was like I had to stop and I was like emotional and but it was like it was that was really really it was like the hardest thing but that was kind of like the beginning of healing but then it was you know I was kind of going through life a little bit in a trance for the next call it two or three weeks and then like I said when we all got together at the LUNK conference
Speaker: That was kind of the closure slash it's gonna be okay moment that I needed. Wow. I mean, we talked about this several times that I still hadn't heard from you in that much detail.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's real shit. I like you. You asked me if I wanted the questions before and it's like, you know, I'd rather just not be scripted and just like what comes up comes up. No, I mean I like I just hearing about that I just.
Speaker: Hearing, it's really hard to share your stories. And I didn't know that about your dad. And just remembering, I'm so sorry to hear that and having someone say that to you. And when you're hurting and going and being strong for other people at the same time, when you yourself are coming from that place, it's just an impossible situation. What do you think is the silver lining, if any, that you have found
Speaker: Um, it's probably the community. Like, you know, if you look back, like it was, it was that day when I was wrecking shit. Um, like anytime it's weird, like when I've done, like when I've moved or like, uh, when I was younger, I did like, like odd jobs or like manual labor.
Speaker: a lot of times i find it's like metaphorical for like often time what's going on through my like you're moving is kinda like cleaning house and like maybe there's some house cleaning the needs to be done but i'm like i was literally wrecking shit that day with a sledgehammer like they had like there was this huge built out like
Speaker: awesome tool shed woodworking thing in their garage if you were into that kind of thing, but they wanted to kind of create a space in there and turn it into like a rolling game room with like rolling ping pong table pool table. They chalk out a pickleball court inside this massive garage. And so they were like, all right, man, take out your aggressions. And as I was putting the scraps in a pile, I was like,
Speaker: That's my life right now, like look like the pile of scraps, right? And that's how it felt. But again, like kind of when you're alone on an island and even though I was in that space. But like if you look at what we could salvage from that, like, like really, OK, yeah, we got some airdrops or whatever. But a lot of it has to do with the relationships. Right. Like that that is a silver lining. And it's so paradoxical because when you think of crypto, like that's
Speaker: that's antithetical to crypto, right? It's all like blockchain and Kobe trust, hey and on, right? But the magic really happened for me, that silver lining was with the relationships. And when you go to these conferences, it's like, it's a lot of, it's still a very small incestuous community. It's a lot of the same people. And you see the love, right? And you see people hooking up with, like not hooking up, but like whatever, seeing each other,
Speaker: Yeah, they haven't seen each other since the last conference and you can see like the joy and the connection there. So it's kind of interesting. One thing that's really strong about you and the people that are here, I know that the lunatic friends, the majority of them that kind of got me into this space, like they've all gone. They're not in crypto at all. My chat that I had to mute because they would go off 30 times a minute and like think straight, right? And now it's crickets.
Speaker: making a message once every 72 hours, you know, they've all left the space, there's just one or two people that are still kind of into it. But the fact that you're still here, and, you know, you still want to learn, you know, I think maybe we all, you know, not as active as before, we all needed to take some time, right and figure things out, but you're still committed, you still want to learn. And a lot of people
Speaker: They couldn't do it. Maybe they were trying to blame other people, but it sounds like you took a lot of responsibility, right? And that's - Code responsible. A healthy way. I'm really big on responsibility, just so you know. Like a lot of people, it's weird. A lot of people, like I heard this once said to me that, like, cause a lot of people would kind of go through life presenting their parents for this or that or whatever. And somebody told me that,
Speaker: You know, just do the best you can as a parent because your kids are gonna find something to resent you for anyway. No matter what you do, right? And just like do the best you can. And then the same person told me that essentially your parents owe you nothing, right? If you think of like other animals, right? Like the turtle legs or whatever. It's like, they kind of leave you in the dirt
Speaker: And the rest is on you, right? And so it's really kind of interesting at like, I'm all about personal responsibility. Like if I'm going to do something, in fact, like when I'm on spaces now, whether it be crypto space or chat via space or whatever, and I'm asking somebody for advice, guidance, whatever you call it, like I'm just asking them their opinion.
Speaker: like i have this disclaimer it's like i'm a big boy i take responsibility for my all my own stupid decisions and and and if i have some really big wins it's not like i'm gonna send you some bitcoin or whatever so like right like yes like i mowed nothing like i i am
Speaker: I'm eventually going to be worm food. And so are all of us. And every day we're above ground is a bonus, right? Yeah, sorry. That was deep. That was kind of dark. No, no, that's exactly what I want. And I really want to say thank you because you're a big reason that you've helped me get through this time. And I know that there's a lot of people that are still
Speaker: hurting people that I talk to, whether they say it or not. I've put myself out there and been a bit more vulnerable speaking about my experience. And I know from the responses that I've gotten, others feel that way. They just maybe don't share it. And I think it's good to kind of share our experience. And you are a great example
Speaker: hearing your stories being so positive you know and just talking about it like it's okay to be sad life life goes on and you have such a great attitude so you know not everyone wake it up here and talk about their experience in such an open way so i just want to honor that and say thank you very much because for the few lunatics that will watch this video in the depths of a bear market i think it'll really help them so thank you hunch
Speaker: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. And I probably should be more sad. It reminds me of that kids movie. I don't know if you've ever seen that Inside Out. Have you ever seen that? No, I don't think so. So it's about the little girl that has to move from like Minnesota to San Francisco. And like the whole movie kind of takes place inside her head. It's like, there's all these characters in her head that are emotions like joy, anger, sadness, fear. And they're all they're kind of fighting for control over mine the whole time. And it's a very funny movie. But there's some like,
Speaker: My kid, that's the only movie my kids have ever seen me cry in. And so it's like, there's one scene where she's like growing up. If you've seen the movie, you already know what it is. But it's like, oh my gosh. And they're like, I never see you cry, dad. Because I do, I kind of stuff that stuff down. But the kind of the moral of the story is,
Speaker: Like who saves a day in the end is sadness. It's like just being allowed to grieve. Like sadness comes and they just kind of give her controls. I'm like getting emotional. They give her controls of the little girl and then the little girl is like kind of made whole like by finally accepting that. So I probably should be sad more often. I'm not the best at that. But like at least I got a little glimpse today and that's probably healthy for me, right?
Speaker: What I am good at, like what I do like to do, what we talked about, like, you know what, there are other lunatics that are hurting or people just like, not even just lunatics, but people in the crypto, anybody in crypto right now is probably hurting financially to a degree. And so I would love to do more spaces where I can just freely share the education that was given to me.
Speaker: about merging, because let's face it, even if you're full DeFi, you can't be full DeFi, you're still spending fiat somewhere, like talking about how TradFi DeFi meets, I really feel that that's what I'm all about, and that's what I'm good at, and so I would love to do more of that, especially if it would help people, right? I'm probably not the best, you're a lot more vulnerable to me, and it's like,
Speaker: Like, you would be great at that. And I'm good at educating on what I'm good at. I would love to do that more. I think what I've noticed is there's very few people that are consistent. And that's what's important. And that's what people look for. I'm not either. I haven't been showing up as much, right? Certainly not when I was a lunatic. But I would more. I'm just busy. But I love doing it.
Speaker: Yeah, I see that question in here. OK, let's ask a couple kind of fun questions. All right. If you could have dinner with anyone in web 3, who would it be and why? Satoshi. Why? I mean, he's the OG, right? And let's face it, what he built
Speaker: is fricking brilliant. It is DeFi. Yes, it's volatile. It's a young asset. Yes, it has 80 % drawdowns, but it's decentralized. It's permissionless. It's anonymous, pseudo anonymous, whatever you want to call it. It can cross borders, right? By memorizing a poem or whatever. It's amazing. And it started this whole thing. Like there is no web3d without him. So without a doubt, Satoshi.
Speaker: Do you have a theory on who you think he is? I started to go down that rabbit hole a little bit. I haven't studied enough to do an educated, to really give an educated guess. Like I saw that other people said it was probably the same person and no. So I need to be more educated before I speak. Some people are kind of adamant, some people are not so generous. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what crypto slang do you find yourself accidentally saying IRL?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot. Getting rekt. Getting rekt is one, aping in, right? So. Can you give me an example of when you would use aping in? Yeah, yeah. Silver, so precious metals were bleeding and
Speaker: a little bit in August, a lot in September, less so in October, as I had cashflow coming in and I, in DGen style, and this is not for everybody, I did go on margin, knowing that I would use my DCA money to pay down the margin loans, I ate into a lot of paper silver, a little bit of physical silver. All right. I only, I did not know you could open to silver. I thought it was mean coins all night.
Speaker: No, hell yeah, you can. You learn something new every day? Yeah. Now this next question, I'm 99 .9 % sure I know the answer to. Okay, shoot. What do you, I'm gonna laugh. What do you enjoy doing in your free time? Yes, you know the answer. Besides pickleball.
Speaker: Besides pickleball? Maybe tell us how you discovered pickleball and tell everyone about your extreme passion for pickleball and what you will do to go out of your way to play pickleball because I've never heard of someone who has such an extreme passion for anything like you love pickleball. Wait till you try it.
Speaker: We still got to do the meetup group pickleball. So yes. Okay. So there was a lot there. So how did I find it? I found it. Um, so this is kind of crazy. So my family, my wife and three kids and I between 2016 and 2017 put all our stuff in storage, bought an RV, moved into the RV, towed a Ford Explorer around the country for a year. That's so cool. It is cool. Yeah. You didn't know that. Um, and then, um,
Speaker: We found a pickleball court in an RV park. And so we brought tennis rackets. We stuck at tennis, but my daughter was getting into it. So we would bring the tennis rackets to hit with her. And we're like, oh, look, it's a tennis court. It's kind of small. It's kind of small. And then we asked them to pickleball. They gave us the gear. It was kind of cold. It was in New Mexico in March. So it's still kind of cold. We were the only ones there playing. Nobody was playing.
Speaker: And actually, the first time I played, I didn't do it right. I was playing tennis. I was overhand serving. I was coming right to the net, going over the kitchen line, playing singles with my wife. And I was like, I'm wrecking you. And she's like, I think you're doing it wrong. I think you're cheating. I'm like, no, no, I'm awesome at this. And read the rules that night. I was like, oh, I was totally cheating. So got into it more so. We actually didn't play again. That was towards the tail end of our trip.
Speaker: When I got back home, a friend of mine, who's actually a neighbor, we play singles tennis and he, he's from Spain. And I was like, Hey, when are we going to play some singles tennis? He's like, no, Pico ball, Pico ball. I was like, all right, let's try it. And then I just really got into it. So why do I go out of my way to do it? You know what? It's so the main night.
Speaker: right after I got liquidated. I had a game plan and I was like, and I was managing that. I managed like a Banshee that day. Like I was on it, like everything I taught, everything I learned, I was like, I was in the video game and I was like staying one step ahead and then until I couldn't and got just liquidated. And then it was just like this, like this depression hit me.
Speaker: And I was a little late for my game and I was like, oh, I'm not gonna go. And I was like, you have to go, like you have to. And I didn't have to, there was enough guys, like there were six of us rotating in.
Speaker: but that was very therapeutic. And so like it allows me, I'm able to be so present in that moment. Kind of like what people say about meditation. I just think too much when I meditate, but like when I'm playing pickleball, I'm so focused on that moment. Same thing when I play poker, like it's stressful to some people, it's relaxing. I'm just very focused on the eight people at my table or whatever and what's happening and watching every movement. And so it's just very, it's kind of a meditative thing plus the exercise helps.
Speaker: Wow. I mean, you really love pickleball. Every time, for the record, for anyone watching, every time I talk to Hutch, he's like, hang on. I'm just on my way to play pickleball. Or, Oh, I just finished playing pickleball. So it's kind of a, an inside joke and it's fun to know the reason why. Yeah. Wait till you try it. All right. Um, okay. So for the next few questions, this is, um, kind of shorter answers. Just the first thing that comes to your mind is really what I'm looking for. I call this quick take.
Speaker: Definitely. All right. So you make life -changing money on a main coin or maybe solar in your case. What's the first? It's harder to do with solar. But you did. You did, Ethan. What's the first thing you buy? I would book a killer trip. That's what I would do. I would book a killer trip. Where to? Where to? You know what? I would love, I would love to take my whole family to Europe. Do the training thing. Just go all around Europe.
Speaker: I love that. Yeah. When I interviewed myself, that was my answer as well. Oh, cool. Cool. So maybe I'll see you there if we hit it on the same meme coin. Okay. What is your favorite book? You know, one just jumped out of me the other day, but it was Siddhartha. Have you ever heard of that book? Yeah. Herman has high school. Yeah. And I read a long time ago then, but I've always loved that book. I haven't read in a while.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I'm gonna go with that one answer. Yeah. All right. This is, this is a fun one. Who is your web three crush? My wife. You know what? She, she was by default a lunatic as well. For her to support you through that. She did. She wanted to smack me upside of the head at the end, but she's been incredibly supportive throughout. So.
Speaker: All right, well, she must be a lovely woman. She is. Pickleball or Twitter spaces? I've done pickleball with earbuds. True story. True story. All right, so pickleball and Twitter spaces at the same time. Yes, why do you make a juvie choose? I'm all about and. Let's go pickleball and Twitter spaces. Earbuds. All right, well, then that's going to make this next question interesting. Silver or Bitcoin? I'm going and again.
Speaker: You're supposed to pick one. I see utility in both. I'm sorry. I like, I'm not going to do that. I see utility in both. All right. DCA or lump sum? Dynamic DCA all day. The Cephi -Martin -Gales style DCA is the way. All right. You want to give us a quick rundown of what that is?
Speaker: Sure. Yeah. So Martin Gale for people that don't know is the, uh, it's a gambling strategy and it's kind of a dumb gambling strategy where like you, it's, it's crazy town. Like people, people get wrecked because there's, it works in theory, but they get wrecked because casinos know this. And so they set a maximum table limit, but it's like, you go and you bet $20. And if you lose, you bet 40. And if you lose, you bet 80. And if you lose, you bet 60 and 60. And if you lose, you bet three 20. And that works. If you have unlimited bankroll.
Speaker: and there's no table limits, but it doesn't work because there's table limits. Now, the fact that I don't have unlimited bankroll, and this was software that Lucky Luciano and I were building, we were doing with spreadsheets, to where you could plot out your dynamic DCA if you were doing it with margin. Now, I don't recommend it for
Speaker: If you're risk averse, don't do it. It does definitely increase your risk. But with the silver, I wouldn't have been able to DCA as much as I did, but I did it knowing that I would have cash flow coming in.
Speaker: You know, like with Reg T margin, where you get liquidated if you lose 50%, or excuse me, you get liquidated. Yeah. If you lose 50%, if you only, and I'm not saying to do this, but I'm just saying in theory for simple numbers, if you only borrow 25%, your whole portfolio has to lose half of its position before you're liquidated one cent. So if you're DCA something like 10%, 15%, like in theory,
Speaker: if you have the money to DCA down that margin loan, why just DCA when it's like when it's high, when something's on sale, ape in, ape in and then use your DCA to pay down margin. But what I do now is I used to like wait for a bottom and then it would never get there. And now I force myself that something's on my watch list to do a Seffi style of Lee's nibble, bite, ape in lower gets.
Speaker: I love that. Nivel by Eben. Yeah. Yeah. Calling bottoms is a, is a tough strategy. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. These are not one word answers. I'm so sorry. Information. I can't not like it's such a treat. Um, and I want to share it with everybody. All right. Complete this sentence. Sure. Crypto Twitter is. Crypto Twitter is a decentralized community of a not.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: There you go. There you go. All right. Just a couple of last words. What excites you the most about the future of crypto and web3? What excites me the most is if it were possible to fulfill that vision of decentralized money. I'm not attached to a stable coin. I don't think one exists in life. Even USD has lost its peg to inflation. But having a community, excuse me, having decentralized money
Speaker: and everything that Satoshi intended and having that be prolific, that excites me the most. Web three, more so how that permeates utility even in centralized finance because I see the duality and I'm not sure the two can ever merge. I'm not sure if the powers that be will ever adopt the Bitcoin standard or any other token for that matter, but I can see both.
Speaker: And what's one thing you wish people knew about you or that you hope people take away from this interview? Gosh, I mean, I kind of bared my soul on this interview. So I mean, that's more than I was planning on doing. But I think you nailed it, Jade, as far as, yeah, what kind of kept showing up for me and you is that I need to be out there more sharing what I have to offer.
Speaker: And, uh, and I just, I need to schedule it. Maybe you could do it with me. That'd be easier. And then you could schedule it and people will come and that would be fun. So, but regardless, it's not your responsibility. I need to, I need to be out there just sharing insights that I have more. I would be happy to. And again, I just, I have this feeling.
Speaker: It's so present for me. I'm so glad that we have this conversation. Even if no one watches it, I'm so happy because I feel the energy from you that you were just meant to get back into it. Even me doing these interviews, if no one watches them, it's brought me so much joy. Wait, how many views did you get today?
Speaker: Well, today I got a lot, actually. And it's funny you brought up Danko because Danko commented on my YouTube video and he said, great job. And I can't believe it because I watch him and I'm a big fan. He's awesome. You should do an interview with him. Absolutely. Danko's a stud.
Speaker: add them to the list but it's just given me so much joy and something to be excited about again and I am so excited about that you know and I've just been kind of doing that for fun and I want to share that and I know that what you are doing gives you joy and then me just taking this little bit of action I can already see the positive results that will come from it and it's it's it's not a secret but it is a secret and I was stuck in just this funk
Speaker: the last few months. And it really is all mindset. And it's just something to be excited about again. And I really hope that we can get the community excited. I can just share some positive vibes. And yeah, I interviewed Ben Cowan, who I've been following for two years. He's my crypto idol. I can't even believe he came to talk to me. But the whole point of this was just to talk to normal people. We're not normal.
Speaker: Well, it's a tough act to follow if I'm going in between Ben and thank you. You're going to have like six million views, six views, 60 ,000 views. But but at any rate, I will say this. So on the next day of the crash, excuse me, it was though it was the Wednesday before that Twitter space. So one day was the crash and whatever.
Speaker: Um, sometimes God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, we'll talk to me like in song lyrics or license plates or whatever. Just like, give me a little nugget, like just enough where it's like, okay, that's, that's a little God shot. That's what I needed. Wow. That was cool. What happened to the screen right there? Wow. Um, but I remember it just, uh -huh. Yeah. Just enough, but like not so much where you can say, see, look,
Speaker: right? I believe the synchronicities that are there that I mean. So the license plate said, creative one like CR, ATV, and then one. And it was like, I got that God show because I was in such a funk. And I remember thinking like, however rec you are financially, however down you feel, like your gift, like the gift that I gave you like,
Speaker: the universe God gave me to be created. Like you're going to come out of this by being the creative one. So that's what you're doing here, right? That's what you're being creative and like people want that. People need that, right? It helps them be more creative. So like, if anything, it's an inspiration. Keep doing it.
Speaker: Thank you. That means so much to me. It really, really does. You've been a big inspiration to me. And this was such a lovely conversation. I really appreciate you opening up. And I'm excited for people to watch it, especially all the lunatics that are near and dear to my heart.
Speaker: All six people. But you know, I do really feel like there's a vibrance in the community. It does seem like there are some stories and I think, you know, I was talking with some of the guys at TFL. It seems like maybe they're going to do some more events again and get everyone excited. So I hope that
Speaker: big part of that. Looking forward to the videos. Thank you so much for having a chat with me. I'm so proud of you and me and everyone that has hung in there. We just need to give ourselves a pat on the back. It's been a tough year and I'm excited for all the places we're going to go. Heck yeah! Like what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Creative one. Let's just keep building in the way that we know how.
Speaker: Yeah. You're right. We're not normal. We are lunatics. And once a lunatic, always a lunatic. That's right. Thank you so much, Hutch, and we will chat soon. Good times.
