S17 E44: Marc De Mesel on Early Bitcoin Investing & Polygamy
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0:46Vlad CosteaHello there and welcome to the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast. This is Season 17, Episode 44. And we are live with Marc De Mesel, who is a legend in the Bitcoin space and the Bitcoin Cash branch, especially because he's like a saint for that community. And this episode is sponsored by OrangeRock, LayerTwo Labs, Cake Wallet. There's going to be a giveaway of $100 from Cake Wallet, so start typing your numbers in the chat. SideShift.ai and Braiins Hashpower. Hi, Marc. It's really good to see you. We met in Amsterdam and you let me drive your fancy Tesla Model X.
1:24Marc De MeselHi, Vlad. Yes, it was a pleasure meeting you. It was interesting to talk to you and indeed a very pleasant experience driving that car together, you behind the wheel while the car was driving by itself. But yeah, I was also made aware of your work and impressed with all the guests that you've had over the years and how long a podcast can be. That's very interesting. You really seem to dig deep into the crypto world and I'm honored to be invited on your podcast for an interview.
1:58Thank you so much, Vlad.
2:00Vlad CosteaWell, thank you for the kind words. Now let's roast you.
2:04Marc De MeselYes, you're welcome.
2:05Vlad CosteaLet's roast you. Let's start with this. So a lot of people talk about selling their Bitcoin Cash in 2017 in August after it launched or in November when the price went up. And a lot of Bitcoin Cash fans say that they kept both versions of the coin. They kept their Bitcoin and they kept their Bitcoin Cash to see which one is going to succeed. You're actually one of the people who sold their Bitcoin to buy more Bitcoin Cash. So when people were saying that they dumped their fork, the BCH, you're actually one of the people who sold their Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin Cash from them.
2:41Marc De MeselThat's right. And that was in hindsight, financially, not the best move I've made in my life. I've made a few more blunders like that. This was a very painful one. Financially it was, yes. Luckily, I made my money in other ways and I can't complain. But my investment in Bitcoin Cash has not worked out and has been really, really tough. So yes, actually, I was immediately jumping on that bandwagon even before Roger Ver because I was surprised how long it took actually to start supporting Bitcoin Cash.
3:22But at the time when Bitcoin Cash launched, they started with a futures market already. Was it? Which platform was it? I don't remember. But you were able to actually buy already BCH before the launch and flip it for BTC, which I did. I thought at the time like, wow, this is going to be, I thought actually BCH would come out as the winner and that actually a value would flip from BTC to BCH. But of course, that proved very wrong. But yeah, at the time, the exchange rate even in the futures market before it was launched was already around 0.2 or so BCH for 1 BTC.
4:15I thought that was cheap or 0.1 it started maybe. And so 10% the value of Bitcoin at the time. At the time, Bitcoin was around $3,000, I believe. And so BCH was around $300 even in the futures market. I thought that was a steal, a great deal. However, we are now many years later, nine years later, and the price of Bitcoin Cash is still the same $300 whereas BTC went from $3,000 to $80,000.
4:44Vlad CosteaOh, you can say it's a better store of value, right?
4:47Marc De MeselYeah, it is. And Bitcoin BTC proved to be a better store of value. Well, are you talking about Bitcoin Cash?
4:55Vlad CosteaYeah, yeah, yeah. The price is the same. So it's a better store of value, except that you lost to inflation, like a lot.
5:00Marc De MeselYeah, that's the problem. Inflation has been really bad. Like, I thought inflation was around 5% per year, but I changed my mind on that. Actually, looking at the numbers again, half a year ago, it's just not 5%. Since 2020, since the COVID inflation that they created there, actually, the money supply, double, triple tear. But in the end, I believe inflation has gone up to about 8%, 9%, even 10%, you can say the past five years. So I mean, $300 at the time is certainly not $300 today.
5:36You would need, if you count 7%, 8% inflation, about 10 years, then you need about double as many dollars to have the same. So you should have like, if Bitcoin Cash would be worth $600 today, you could say like it kept its value, or maybe $800. But at $300, you lost a ton of purchasing power. I think my microphone checked out. Is my headphone checked out?
6:05Vlad CosteaOh, well, I can hear your microphone. I don't know about your headphones.
6:10Marc De MeselSo I can hear my headphone also actually, so it's okay. So yeah, that didn't work out. However, prices can change very fast in the world of crypto. I mean, literally in one week, Bitcoin Cash could be at $800. So keep your hopes up that your purchasing power is preserved, even with Bitcoin Cash in all those years. It is still possible. But up until now, no, we certainly lost that war. And it's an interesting discussion to have why we lost that and what the future holds for Bitcoin Cash.
6:47I'm still very interested in the topic. But I have, I'm now invested a lot less, of course, than I used to be. The amount of coins I have is 20 times less than I had at the peak. And yeah, I invested so much money and so much time into the project. And it didn't work out. But I still hold some coins and I still give some support because you never know. The world is a place where unexpected things can happen. And that can certainly also be the case for Bitcoin Cash.
7:27Vlad CosteaI did hear. So the reason why you are such a legend is that first of all, you bought a lot of it. And secondly, you paid for development. Like you didn't just wait for it to go up. You actually invested in people who wanted to build stuff on it. And especially, I think the moment when a lot of people gave up on Bitcoin Cash was in 2020, when the XEC Amaury's Bitcoin ABC fork happened. And you were there supporting the developers who stayed with the project. And that's kind of rare because a lot of people either lost interest altogether in the project or they went with Amaury because they believed that he's like the founder of Bitcoin Cash and therefore maybe he knows something that the others don't.
8:16Marc De MeselYes, indeed. Like up until then, I was just an investor. But then as I saw this conflict erupt, I started to speak up that I really did not agree with what Amaury was planning for Bitcoin Cash. He planned to introduce a, they call it dev tax. But I don't think that's really nice to call it like that. It's actually a business model as has Dash introduced as one of the first where a piece of the minted coins goes to the development team to use for development of infrastructure and even marketing.
8:57And Dash was the first to implement it. And Zcash also has such a system. And I think it is a smart system. And it's something that is lacking in the cryptocurrency world is a proper business model. And I think who was also there in Amsterdam has pointed that out a lot. If you can remind me his name.
9:24Vlad CosteaFrom Dash?
9:25Marc De MeselNo, Justin Bons. Justin Bons. But also from Dash, Joel Valenzuela was also there in Amsterdam. And actually, Joel Valenzuela, I will confirm it, that's really a great model.
9:37Thanks to that, he has been paid for his work by the Dash community for many years and has added value to the Dash project because there is a treasury that's funded from the blockchain. And so the idea that Amaury came up with was not a bad one to do the same for Bitcoin Cash. But the problem is that the way it was implemented was a little bit too dictatorial. He was planning to send the funds all to himself and for him to decide where the money would go.
10:14That's the first problem. The second problem, of course, is that you're carrying the Bitcoin project with Bitcoin Cash. It's not just a new coin where you can just experiment with all kinds of things and implement all kinds of novel ideas because you're carrying the legacy of Bitcoin and you're trying to develop and build Bitcoin the way it was supposed to be built and thought out by Satoshi. And then actually, this good idea does not really fit with the project. Satoshi was very clear about how he thought the business model would be working for Bitcoin.
10:59And he believed it was just by voluntary donations that it would succeed in having all the expenses met. He didn't really say that, but it was implied because that's how it was built.
11:23And it can work also. And that's what we focused on. And I think Bitcoin Cash did a great job with that. And actually this was an idea that was already thought of by Mike Hearn, who left Bitcoin as one of the lead developers quite early. He said that the Bitcoin project failed. Was it in 2014 or 2013? No, 2016. Okay, only then. But he did come up with a solution as well. And he said that what we are missing really is a funding model where people fund the development.
12:11And actually, I think it was his way of saying like, guys, the Bitcoin project is now funded by other people that you don't want to be funding it. You should have like a system of funding where money goes to the development team and they get paid for what they do. Because otherwise others will do the funding. Higher powers will do the funding and they will hijack the project. He didn't say it in so many words, but he did came up with a system saying that you would need some kind of system where people can present projects and can ask for how much they would need for a certain project.
12:55And then people can actually vote, basically just give donations to the project that they support. And that system was then set up by Bitcoin Cash. But this was after the split. So because indeed Amaury, he had this idea that he would implement this in Bitcoin Cash. But yeah, I and others really did not want that because it would have made Bitcoin Cash to fail because he didn't set up in a, let's say, democratic fashion, the funding system. And so the money would go to him and he would continue to basically rule the project with a hard hand.
13:41And that would not have been a success for Bitcoin Cash.
13:50Vlad CosteaThat's a very good principle and I very much respect it. Like you guys did not want to give up on the original design and you wanted to keep it going in the way that Satoshi left it. For the record, Mike Hearn, whom you mentioned, was on the Bitcoin Foundation board and I think he was in charge of, let me check, law and policy committee. So I just wanted to be sure that this is accurate. And he left in 2016 because he was a proponent initially of Bitcoin XT, which was proposing to double the block size every couple of years for like 20 years.
14:29And that would lead to like 20 gigabyte blocks, if I'm not mistaken. So very large in the end in 2036 or whatever. And he was also a proponent of Bitcoin Classic, which was another idea that I think was much more conservative and only wanted to immediately increase the block size to two megabytes and then maybe do another increase whenever necessary. But it was much more reasonable, I think, at the time to say, well, let's just have two megabytes now and then we'll decide later if we need something else.
15:04He decided that this is a failed project. He published an article that's called The Resolution of the Bitcoin Project in January of 2016. It was because of that article that I decided to not buy Bitcoin at the time and I regret it. And I wish I would have Mike Hearn on the show one day just to discuss this and tell him, you know, you're the reason why I got cold feet. And I said, you know, you were smart for not buying in 2015 or whatever when it was like the bottom of the bear market because he called it failed.
15:37But yeah, I also want to give a shout out to Keith, who's in the chat. You know who you are, Keith. It's good to see you. And what else? Oh, let me put up a couple of ads and then we're going to continue the conversation. First, I want to plug SideShift. The CEO of SideShift is actually Andreas Brekken, and I think he's one of the smartest people in Bitcoin. He was able to figure out how to navigate this fork environment and he tried Lightning, he tried big blocks, he tried pretty much everything and he was agnostic.
16:12He never picked sides. And he's also the CEO of shitcoin.com because he couldn't own bitcoin.com so he decided he should buy shitcoin.com. But anyway, SideShift is a very cool and useful project. You can go there and swap between coins. And what I usually tell people is to swap your stablecoins for something that cannot be confiscated from you. Something with which you can make payments without fearing that there's going to be a treasury that will seize your funds. And that can be Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, whatever it is that you like.
16:48Just get rid of those CBDCs and get something that you actually own on SideShift. And the other ad is for LayerTwo Labs, which is building another hard fork, Bitcoin, which is going to be called also eCash, but this is ECX not XEC. And it has drivechains, which is an idea for two-way pegged sidechains. You can already go to ecash.com and download the wallet. And there are a couple of faucets where you can claim some free coins that you can use for playing. And on the 31st of October, which is white paper day, and it's going to be Bitcoin's 18th birthday, eCash is also launching, crediting all BTC holders with coins one to one according to the amount that they currently hold.
17:37So it might be a good idea to stack as much Bitcoin as you can, withdraw into self custody, and then see how you can claim your free coins. Maybe in early November, it's not like this is going to expire anytime. You can get some free coins and then try the drivechains, dump them on the market. I don't know. It's your choice how you're going to use it. But more information is at ecash.com. Sorry for interrupting the flow of the conversation, but I was saying that I very much respect how you treated this first adversarial hard fork of Bitcoin.
18:14You decided that you don't want to experiment with stuff that other projects already have. You want to expand the design that Satoshi left us.
18:24Marc De MeselYes, indeed. And I think it was the right call, because, of course, up until today, Bitcoin Cash did not prove to be a success. However, compared to the alternative, which is then, I believe Amaury Séchet split off then and started this project under another name. The name escapes me now. But in any case, it was not a success, of course. But of course, he also lost the Bitcoin Cash name. And it's a bit the same as what happened with Bitcoin Cash itself. When you lose the Bitcoin name and the Bitcoin ticker, you have a big disadvantage.
19:07And the same happened at the eCash. He called his new project eCash. It's a fork from Bitcoin Cash. But yeah, I think it was not a success. I've not followed it up closely, but it's probably another coin that will die. And of course, that happened also with the other forks from that fork away from Bitcoin Cash. Well, we have the BSV community that also that project is really also dying. There was another one too. But to get back at what Bitcoin Cash came up with after Amaury left.
19:43It's called Flipstarter. And in this is like Kickstarter. It's a system where people can fund different projects, but it was well done in that you're not just asking for donations. No, you come with a project and a price like how much it will cost. And then people contribute voluntarily. They pledge a certain amount. And if it reaches the amount that the developer wanted or the marketeer wanted, only then all funds are released from the different wallets of the people.
20:19So it was also non-custodial. And it still is because it's still active Flipstarter. And yeah, it was well done. And so we focused on that. We did a lot of those projects were financed that way. And today they have a follow up platforms called Fundme.cash. But I have to say, like I stopped really actively investing and donating to different projects in Bitcoin Cash. I went back to just being an investor and not an active, you could say, leader anymore because of other problems. But I think that it still has the beautiful foundations of how Bitcoin should be developed.
21:11I think they've done that very well. The foundation is there, but in order to become a success, yeah, they will have to stand out. And I think they are doing that now. So I did increase my investment a little bit again in Bitcoin Cash. But I think, yeah, it is a long shot. But yeah, that was a very interesting period, how that went, the split with Amaury Séchet. And also before the split with the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision project that was led by these two people, Craig Wright and another guy from, that was also quite something.
22:00But yeah, I've wondered always, why did Bitcoin Cash fail? At least it failed in... It failed in really being valued by the market. That's a sure thing. It failed in that compared to other projects. And I think that one of the explanations is that the different splits caused the community to become too fragmented. It always lost some key people in every split. And that really is costly in having a successful project. And I also think that, yeah, the way Satoshi had really thought of how contentions should be resolved via basically miners voting with their hash power.
22:58The idea was that miners voted their hash power, but then when the vote is decided, actually people do stay together and they don't fork off or split off. That's the idea, but it can be used, forking off or splitting off can be done as a last resort, but it should not be done over smaller differences. People should stick together. I think that was a bit the idea, but that didn't really happen. People are quite, yeah, they believe strongly in one side or the other side, and they rather split off than to basically accept their loss and stick together.
23:49And of course, I did the same with Bitcoin Cash. I believe there was no point of sticking together with Bitcoin BTC when the decision is that they are not going to scale the blockchain and transaction fees will be expensive. Like for me, that was clear, like, no, Bitcoin cannot become a success like that. We need cheap transaction fees to do everything we want to do with Bitcoin. And so I was convinced that that's why I invested in Bitcoin Cash early and long, that there is no other way.
24:20The miners have clearly voted one way for small blocks. So, I mean, the only way left is to split off and fork off. However, what happened later than with Bitcoin Cash, it happened the same with different other ideas. The first one was Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, which was the reason why what they wanted was extreme fast scaling of the blockchain size. But of course, like that's also not really, according to the developers of Bitcoin Cash at the time, that was not actually desirable for several reasons that I did not understand.
24:58That was too technical for me. But that's why they've split off. But even some people that I thought were interesting people leading the Bitcoin Cash community at the time went with Bitcoin Satoshi Vision and were lost to the Bitcoin Cash community. But yeah, that's a pity. That was a loss. And the same indeed happened then with later with Amaury and eCash, where they wanted to implement such a dev tax or a treasury system. Also, some valuable people were lost there. So, yeah, that's probably why Bitcoin Cash is a relatively small community today.
25:41But I think another main reason, and I've also shared with the community a lot why I think Bitcoin Cash and why I have lowered my own investments also. What I really don't like is that it's not finding adoption because and I think the main reason for that is that the focus has been wrong. Focusing on merchant adoption has been what the Bitcoin Cash community has done a lot over the years. But brick and mortar merchants, it's just not economically feasible to really get traction there. And I think the Bitcoin Cash community lost a lot of time trying to find adoption that way.
26:23That didn't work out. And so, but I think they've now realized that also, and now they're really focused on trying to build, trying to develop Bitcoin Cash in directions that makes the coin and makes the blockchain valuable to use and easy to use. And so they've been busy with allowing smart contracts in an easy way. They're also busy with offering valuable privacy on the blockchain. And yeah, I think if they keep going, they might find that adoption. Maybe it will be by who knows, AI agents that have to pick a blockchain.
27:08Which one will they pick? Maybe they pick Bitcoin Cash and you do find that adoption. But of course, that's also a long shot. I mean, there are other blockchains also focused on that. But yeah, these are my thoughts a little bit on Bitcoin Cash.
27:27Vlad CosteaWhat I want to argue here and something that I think I've been saying for many years is that in August 2017, you had, first of all, the separation between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and then you also had the activation of SegWit. So by September of 2017, you had a blockchain with eight megabyte blocks, which was a copy of Bitcoin. And then you had another blockchain which continued the original chain with four megabyte blocks. And what I'm trying to say is that SegWit did increase the block size, even if it was not explicit, they did increase the capacity of the blocks.
28:08And initially, the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash was just not that great. Like you only had eight megabyte blocks. It wasn't like it came with a lot of features or it was more of a political fork than it was a technical one. And I think for a lot of people looking at it, it was just hard to justify like, okay, how much throughput do you actually get with these eight megabytes? Of course, the next year there was a hard fork and the capacity was increased, I think, first to 32 megabytes.
28:39And I think I've heard Amaury make a case that you should not increase the block size too much. There's like a sweet spot where it's best to keep it. And right now, I think Bitcoin Cash has like a dynamic block size, which means that there is a hard cap on the block size. But if you're willing to pay more to get into the next block and you're willing to pay a lot, you're still supporting the economy of the system. And there's going to be like an adjustment with that specific block to allow you to have what you need and what you're willing to pay for.
29:17But my original point is that the differences between them were not so evident in 2017, but they became more evident in 2018-19, especially as the upgrades for Bitcoin Cash kept coming. I think initially it was two hard forks every year and now it's only one per year, but it's still significant. They added a Schnorr signature transition before we had that in BTC. So 2019, I think there was a Taproot upgrade. There was the CashFusion upgrade. There was the activation of Satoshi-era opcodes, something that we're trying to bring to BTC also, but it seems like there is never a consensus for it.
30:02My point is that Bitcoin Cash has done a lot of good upgrades over the years. But initially, and ironically, it's also the moment when the price was the highest in 2017. There wasn't that much of a difference.
30:19Marc De MeselYes. Yeah, I was not aware. I never looked at it that way, that actually it was not enough of a difference to really justify flipping or going that way. Yeah, makes sense to me what you're telling me. Maybe they made a mistake there in the way they forked off and not allowing more capacity immediately. That's certainly possible. Yeah, it's the first time I hear that argument.
30:54Vlad CosteaI think it was more about people not liking each other and deciding that they want to have their own space to experiment instead of waiting for the others to agree with them. I think there is more of this than actually saying, well, we really need eight megabytes now. Maybe there was a need for eight megabytes in December of 2017 when people were paying $100 fees or whatever, but eight megabytes was still not going to cut it. So no matter how you look at it, it's just not enough throughput for anything that the project was aiming to accomplish.
31:34Marc De MeselYeah. You had these high fees already in December of 2017 or 2018?
31:43Vlad CosteaNo, it was 2017. It was the same year. Some people are speculating. I mean, this is like wartime stories where both sides are implying that the other one was evil in some way. So from the Blockstream side, there is this story that Roger and Jihan and I don't know who else, they were trying to spam the Bitcoin blockchain to increase the fees to justify the utility of Bitcoin Cash to be able to say, well, this one has $100 fees and you can wait for days until your low fee transaction gets confirmed.
32:20And if you go to Bitcoin Cash, well, everything is going to happen within 10 minutes. So that's the story about it. But my point is that even if Bitcoin Cash had all the activity on BTC around the time, it was not going to be so much better. It only had 2x the throughput after SegWit. Maybe that most actors did not activate SegWit and they were still running the legacy software, which was one megabyte. That was still eight times more on Bitcoin Cash. It was not like 100 times better.
32:54If you're paying $100 for your fees, you would have paid with the same volume, eight times less on Bitcoin Cash.
33:02So it's still a lot. It's not like you're gonna pay a few cents, given the same demand for block space.
33:13Marc De MeselYes, yes. Makes sense. But I think that actually these high fees also happened on Ethereum. And I think it's normal to happen. It was normal to happen. So yeah, maybe they did play some games there and spam the blockchain to make them even higher, but there was a fundamental problem. Undeniably so. Like maybe they wouldn't have gone to $100 per transaction, maybe only to $10. Maybe only to $1.
33:45But even $1 makes no sense. It's such a pity. And it's so obvious that it's so bizarre for me that that was not done. And so, yeah, many years late, like at the time, I couldn't really name it, what exactly was happening. But of course, it makes a lot of sense now, many years later, what happened. Like it was the way Roger Ver has titled his book. It really was a hijacking of the project. Like sabotage is the right word. I mean, it's really sabotage. I don't disagree with that.
34:22Vlad CosteaI do believe that we were lied. The expectations for Bitcoin was okay. In 2017, I don't recall anyone talking about this becoming a store of value and not making payments with it. The argument was that, well, we're not going to increase the block size to put everything on the blockchain. Let's build layer twos. What does that mean? It means sidechains and the Lightning Network. The Lightning Network never actually took off. We have seen it improve over the years, but it's still not what they promised it would be.
34:58If you read the Lightning white paper, it's kind of evident because it says you need 100 megabyte plus in block space just for every visa user of the year when the white paper was written, which I think was 2015. So in order for these people to open and close one channel per year, you are going to need 100 plus megabyte blocks, which is a lot. And we never got that in Bitcoin. Also, lots of reliability problems, lots of issues with the design. Liquid turned out to not be a sidechain.
35:36It was a federation. We have all seen how the federation was exploited about a month ago. And it seems like the goalposts kept moving and people said, well, you shouldn't make payments with Bitcoin right now because the fees are high, right? So instead of making this on-chain transaction, maybe I think the Adam Back argument was use tabs, which means just add up numbers until you have a large enough amount to justify the transaction on the blockchain and then you can make the payment. But then they said, well, never sell your Bitcoin, never spend your Bitcoin, never do this.
36:13Like it was a psy-op to turn this into a collectible. And now we're at a point where spending is very discouraged. And you had guys like Samson Mow and Jimmy Song even as far back as 2018, 19. They were saying, well, why would you want to pay with Bitcoin when you can just tap your credit card and you're going to earn points. And with the points, you can buy more stuff. So why would you want to sell your Bitcoin? Just save in Bitcoin and then spend with your debit card.
36:43And I'm like, OK, but that only increases the demand for banking services, for the kind of currency that we pretend that we want to replace. And then there was the next wave, I think in 2020, of people saying, well, never sell your Bitcoin, borrow money against it. And it's like, OK, they say it's a speculative attack against the dollar. But on the other hand, yes, you're increasing the supply because they give you some US dollars. But you're also increasing the demand because you're going to pay it back in the same currency.
37:18You're going to pay it to merchants. You're going to increase the velocity of the currency. And then nothing happens to Bitcoin. Nobody's going to use it for any payments. Nobody's going to onboard any merchants. Nobody's going to fund development or whatever. It's just staying there doing nothing. It's really painful. Like, it seems like there was... So I do agree with the hijacking angle. Maybe not with all the details of it, but watching the project evolve over the years has been very disappointing. It almost feels like we have been fooled. And all this time the banks have become much more convenient.
37:57Now you have Apple Pay, you have Google Pay, you have Revolut and whatever, which has made banking more friendly. And payments are not as difficult as they used to be. On the other hand, you have stablecoins, which emerged using the same technology, using the same wallets, same narrative. And somehow they became the CBDC. The US is not going to have a CBDC officially. They're just going to encourage the free market to come up with their own digital dollar or whatever, which is going to be used globally.
38:31Right now, maybe the entire global south is on USDT. And it sounds beautiful when you think about it. You're like, wow, the technology that Satoshi gave us created a digital dollar that lifts people from, let's say, Nigeria out of poverty or whatever, because their national currency is depreciating much faster than the dollar. But then you read the freaking white paper, you go to bitcoin.org, I think it's bitcoin.pdf, and you're going to see that this was about payments and this was about eliminating trusted third parties.
39:11What do you do with stablecoins? You increase the trusted third parties, because you have to trust that someone owns the collateral or whatever it is that guarantees that your digital token is going to be worth one dollar. Bitcoin was created to eliminate trust, or maybe not eliminate it, but minimize it. But when you're dealing with stablecoins, you're maximizing trust. You're dealing with someone that you need to trust that is going to maintain the treasury or whatever, so that your token maintains its peg to one dollar. And it's crazy.
39:45It's almost like we got brainwashed to forget. And what I hate the most, and I'm going to stop the rant after this one because I can go all day. Please feel free. I like your rants.
39:56We used to preserve Bitcoin history up to a point. Like we knew who got in, who did what. Nowadays, if you ask the average person, like who's Gavin Andresen? And they're going to be like, oh, it's the guy who got fooled by Craig Wright. You're like, are you aware that he created the multisig transactions? Are you aware that he maintained the project? He was like the head of the Bitcoin Foundation. He supported, he basically found talent to work on Bitcoin. He went on every libertarian podcast in the U.S. Promoting Bitcoin. And yeah, he did a very good job up until the point he got bamboozled by Craig Wright. Like he did an excellent job. But most people are not even aware. And then you realize that there's so much more that they don't know because the big money guy who comes in is also able to just erase the history that happened before him.
40:51Most people will not remember the Silk Road or SatoshiDice or the stuff that happened in the early days. They will just think, well, this is the store of value because Michael Saylor says so.
41:03And this guy is smart because he bought a lot of Bitcoin and he seems successful and whatever. And who are you to tell me that he's not right? Like you're just this guy on the Internet. And this is where it gets very frustrating because you're out of arguments once they bring it to. Well, Michael Saylor has billions of dollars of Bitcoin. And what do you have? It's almost like people take advice from the guy with the Lambo in the streets. And that guy basically has control over their thoughts.
41:35It's amazing.
41:38Marc De MeselYeah, but in this case, he didn't build... Bitcoin is not his. It's not that he built that wealth by himself. Different from, say, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. They are very rich, a very high net worth that commands authority justifiably. So if you're able to build so much wealth, then I think you do deserve more to be listened to. Yeah, maybe. Sorry, but in the case of Michael Saylor, that's not the case. He's not... He didn't build much wealth for himself.
42:25He's just running an idea, running a company that yet has to prove whether it's going to be a success in the long term. And he does have a track record where he has in the past gone from a hero to zero in the previous boom, the dot com boom. He basically did something very similar where he went hard on a certain idea and leveraged and then blew up and lost his investors all their money. So I think that there's actually
43:07Vlad CosteaA headline of him. Sorry for interrupting. You can find this. The newspaper was called The Daily. I think Daily News and the headline. There's a picture of him on the first page. It says lost six billion in a day. Subtitle hotshot tech CEO loses fortune as his company stock plunges one hundred and forty points. See page five. So it's not like this guy came out of nowhere and has no track record or whatever. He's apparently a very reckless person who lost a lot of money. I think this is the year 2000.
43:45Yeah. 21st of March 2000. It was like the collapse of the dot com bubble. And he was one of the people who lost. And now he came back and he's using some of the same tactics, of course, with new technology. And he hopes it's going to be different. Like people were making fun of him back in the day because he was acting like a cult leader. Like he's building a church or whatever. And nothing much has changed from this point of view. It's just that he channeled his energy somewhere else.
44:15Marc De MeselYes. And it's a very risky strategy. What he does is he borrows money and then he invests that in Bitcoin. He promises a certain kind of interest rate to the borrowers and he invests it in Bitcoin. That only works as long as the numbers go up. If the numbers go down, it doesn't work. So it's a simple business model that can fail easily. So it's just very risky. And also like, yeah, I mean, if it's true that he did acquire so many Bitcoin, that means that it's a very concentrated position by someone who does not have strong hands.
45:03Because the idea of where does the currency get its value from, it's by the users that hold a pile of it because they need it to spend money. That's where the US dollar, its value comes from. It's the people that use it. Everybody wants, if you look at on average how many US dollars the people have, it's like for the United States, it was around 10 to 20, now it's probably 20,000 US dollars per person. Why do people have 20,000 dollars? Because they needed to pay bills and they want to have these amount of dollars.
45:40And so that's created the demand. And that's what keeps the value intact. The moment that changes and people don't want to have all these US dollars anymore and they want to sell them for something else, then actually the value will collapse. And that's what's called hyperinflation. What you often see with fiat currencies is that certainly a fiat currency starts to lose a lot of value in the market. Why is that? It's because its holder is starting to dump it and then it loses a lot of value.
46:13The same is true with cryptocurrencies. And so, yeah, I mean, if you would have lots of people holding some Bitcoin because they needed to spend, then they have strong hands. However, if they only hold it because they believe the value will go up, that's not a strong hand because, you know, when the value goes down, they will change their mind and they say, actually, I don't want to hold this because I lose money with this, let me sell it. And so, of course, you have some investors that have strong hands, but the average investor does not have strong hands.
46:46And then if you have an investor like Michael Saylor who actually does, it's not even up to him whether he's going to keep it, it's up to the value. If the value goes down enough, he'll have to sell it to pay back its debt. So those are certainly not strong hands. So I think that's a very dangerous investment strategy to be holding an asset where the value can be really dropped through the floor. So, and I've been predicting this way already for a long time about Bitcoin BTC, always said the same, like don't invest in this, the fundamentals are not good, but the value continued to go up over all those years and it has proven to be a good investment.
47:35So I've been wrong for a very long time. Actually, I started saying that I started already investing in altcoins in 2012. 2012, Litecoin came out, Peercoin, these were the first altcoins. And from the start, there was hatred towards these projects by Bitcoiners. And I thought that did not make up. At the time, Stephanie Murphy was someone who's also famous in the Bitcoin community and was open to altcoins. And I thought that was admirable because there should be a free market in cryptocurrencies. That's the idea. They are private currencies.
48:20Everybody can start one. And so a competition between them will lead to a flourishing market and is needed to take over the old market of monopolized currencies, fiat currencies. They can only be beaten if you have a real free market of cryptocurrencies keep competing with each other. And so I invested already from the start in these altcoins, just for this idea, but then later, when it became clear that Bitcoin is heading the wrong direction, is not doing the things to remain competitive in the market, to remain a currency that you can, that everybody can use, that is attractive to store, but also to use, to make payments with, and for developers to develop new innovative ideas on top.
49:14They were not working towards that, to the contrary. And then it was clear to me like, this is not like that. It's just like you have to compare it with companies in the free market. If you run a company like that, you may hold out for a little while. Like Apple has been doing that already for some years now, innovating very little and still being able to keep its head above water because they have a strong, you could say a very strong position to start out from, being the inventor of the smartphone and such, and even over time have not lost market share, but gained market share in the smartphone sector, while really like not innovating much.
49:57Okay, you can do that, and sometimes that works, but it's risky and sooner or later it will fail. You do, and Elon Musk understands this very well, you need to be at the edge, like you always need to make sure that you're innovating and staying ahead, otherwise you're gonna lose out sooner or later. So for me that became clear in 2016, 2017, all these discussions where the leadership of Bitcoin BTC says all kinds of nonsense like that. Like for me as an investor in the free market, I'm like, oh, that's just nonsense.
50:41But cryptocurrencies have a very strong network effect, similar to social media, for example, social networks, they have a very strong network effect. It's very hard to switch to another network because you miss the users there. And so Facebook, for example, is a social network. And yeah, I mean, it's been not so attractive for a long time, and it has now finally also really lost its appeal, like it's clear that other social networks have become bigger, taking over, but it's a slow process.
51:27And in cryptocurrencies, that's to be expected also, just like in fiat currencies, a dominant fiat currency has a strong network effect, and you have to really mismanage it badly before people are saying, okay, now enough is enough, I'm going to start using the competitor that's happening now for the US dollar, because they, for example, they just blocked whole countries from using the US dollar, like Russia can't use it, and they are excluded from the SWIFT banking system.
51:59Like, okay, you start doing things like that, people are really motivated to start, they have to basically start using another fiat currency, and so you're going to lose that market. But yeah, Bitcoin BTC has had a strong advantage of being the first one and being the leader, and still has a very strong market share, about 50%, I believe, of the value of all cryptocurrencies is Bitcoin BTC. But I've been making the case, like it's... it's been going down, and it will continue to go down, and that has happened.
52:38Because this discussion started when Bitcoin BTC was 90% dominance, we're only at 50%, but we're a lot higher than I would have expected. But if you would have asked me in 2016, 10 years ago, where will Bitcoin be in 10 years, I would say it will be off the map, like it's not possible to survive like this, but clearly I was wrong. But yeah, we may see the way that goes is, it could be that it goes very slow at first, and then suddenly you reach some kind of tipping point, and then suddenly it goes very fast.
53:17That's certainly how it could go also with the Bitcoin dominance, and how Bitcoin is perceived in the market. So I think it's very risky to invest in it, because that could happen. And there are two ways for it to happen. It can happen because during a bull market, altcoins outshine Bitcoin, and I've long predicted, I think Ethereum is very likely to become bigger than Bitcoin BTC. And at that point, Bitcoin BTC will take a very big beating because people, like the common man that now supports Bitcoin, because people, even AI will advise you, you know, if you're going to invest in cryptocurrencies, you should also invest in Bitcoin BTC.
54:05So because it's still perceived as the leader, people still invest in it. But once another cryptocurrency becomes bigger, I think that could also lead to a toppling off, an accelerated decline of Bitcoin BTC and its valuation. That could be one scenario how that happens. It could just be during a bull market, actually, that altcoins just outshine Bitcoin a lot more, and that has happened before already. However, afterwards, they've given back those gains, most altcoins, and Bitcoin has proven to be certainly as good of a choice, but that could change in the future.
54:53But yeah, we'll have to see how that goes. Another scenario how that's possible is during a bear market. It may be that actually Bitcoin sells off a lot more than before. For example, because of how Michael Saylor has set up that structure. I mean, if you reach a certain kind of lows, he will have to sell. And so he's sitting on a whole pile that may have to be sold at the bottom, jumping the price even lower. But that's not the case with the other cryptocurrencies, where the holders do not have loans that they need to pay back to keep that coin.
55:34So, yeah, I mean, there are different scenarios possible where suddenly Bitcoin BTC really loses a lot of its valuation compared to the other currencies. Or gains a lot less in valuation than the other cryptocurrencies, and that it may start a chain effect of the market realizing actually it's over for Bitcoin BTC. It's not the leader anymore, and Bitcoin BTC may end up in the gutter just like so many other cryptocurrency projects. That's been my prediction, but up until now that has not happened.
56:13Vlad CosteaWell, it's hard to kill the king.
56:19You have some amazing questions in the chat that you received, and I do have to read them out. But before that, I'm going to serve the listeners some more ads because that's what keeps the content free. So I'll start with Braiins Hashpower, which is the place where you can rent hash rate. So if you want to mine Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV or the upcoming eCash hard fork, then you can go to Braiins with a double... no, hashpower.braiins.com, with a double i, and that's where you find this sort of exchange-like interface where you can pay like $50, $100 for a few hours of hash rate that you can direct anywhere that you want.
57:03It's much nicer than NiceHash. Braiins used to be called Slush Pool. It's the first Bitcoin company ever, basically, because Slush Pool was invented in 2010 or whatever when Slush spoke with Satoshi. And I think it's much cheaper than buying your own hardware, and especially if you live in a place where electricity is expensive, it makes a lot more sense to mine like this, either with lottery tickets or with some sort of purpose. I'm not saying that you should 51% attack BSV, but you can if you really want that.
57:40I don't know. Whatever. You can direct your hash rate anywhere you want with Braiins Hashpower. Check it out. Also, OrangeRock is a trading platform by the guys who delivered Bitcoin.com, and what they're doing right now is to provide perpetual trading without KYC, without limits, without anything that might restrict you from doing what you want with your money. Also, it's self-custodial, so you don't have to worry about them confiscating your funds. And if you think you're smart, you can even trade with leverage, but I don't recommend that.
58:14It's kind of like gambling. And it's more likely that you're going to get liquidated than actually make some gains, so be careful with that. But the URL is orangerock.com, and you can check it out. Give it a try. I think it's available on iOS, and they have an Android and a desktop version of the software that's coming out, so keep your eyes peeled. And last but not least, there is Cake Wallet, which is giving this special giveaway where I've asked Marc to write a number from 1 to 100.
58:48Let's reveal the number in 10 minutes or something so people are ready. If they haven't already registered to the contest, they can write a number from 1 to 100 in the comments. Ten minutes from now, we announce the winner. I mean, the winning number. I don't think I can scroll through all the numbers in the chat right now. But Marc, you have some amazing questions, as I said, which we're going to address for the next 10 minutes and then go back to them. There's AlphaArc84, who says, if Satoshi came back tomorrow and said BCH was never the plan, would you buy the dip or finally take the L?
59:25That's funny.
59:27Marc De MeselThat's a great question. Buy the dip of Bitcoin BTC then, and he would be joining Bitcoin BTC again as a developer is what the idea is here?
59:39Vlad CosteaWell, if that happened, actually, I think the price of BTC would go down, because part of the value proposition is that this has no leader. So if the leader comes back, he's going to be like, well, wait, what's he going to do now? Sell his coins? Panic. But he can also sell his Bitcoin Cash. He has that. He has BSV also. He has XEC also. Lots of options for Satoshi.
1:00:05Marc De MeselYeah, well, I would at first be very skeptical because it's very unlikely to happen. So I wouldn't actually believe that to be true. And I very likely be a hoax or something where for some time people believe it, but then it goes away. And so I think the opportunity would be in Bitcoin Cash in this case, because Bitcoin Cash would be named by Satoshi as not being the plan. So that would cause a crash there probably. So I would probably buy that. I would see that as an opportunity.
1:00:40If later it proves out to be true and it really is Satoshi and he's really joining Bitcoin BTC and things are really changing in Bitcoin BTC where they actually start to really develop the project again. And then, yeah, I would reconsider actually investing in Bitcoin BTC. Yes.
1:01:04Vlad CosteaYou have another amazing question from someone named Rohit7576. He says, Marc, I got a quick question. What's one investment opinion you hold that makes even other contrarians look like you've lost the plot?
1:01:19Marc De MeselYeah, I just saw this question. I think it's a great question. Thank you so much, Rohit. I really appreciate that. I share my portfolio publicly. And yeah, but I don't share the smallest positions that became losers, and I don't talk about them anymore, neither. So if I would share some of those positions, people would think I lost the plot, but it's just basically leftovers in my portfolio. For example, I still have old investments like Byteball that rebranded to Obyte. However, the project is hanging on the main, the inventor, the creator, the starter of the fund, Tony.
1:02:03I don't know, did he gave up or not? He's hanging in there. It's barely surviving. I still have investments like that. That, yeah, I mean, you would be indeed. I wouldn't, but I can't share the, I don't share those investments anymore because I would, I still have it, but I wouldn't make that investment again. So yeah, I think if I share that as an investment that people justifiably would say that I lost the plot. But when you look at investments, and these are very small exposures because they already went down a lot in value.
1:02:38But if I look at investments, and I think you're more looking for that, like contrarian investments that people really don't understand today, and therefore they are an opportunity, then I think my picks of Chinese technology companies today are most interesting and maybe also some puts that I'm taking in now on the market on technology and AI. And these are all quite new positions that I'm taking in that I think can play out a lot. Like, for example, XPeng is a company I started investing in. These are competitors to Tesla that also have full self-driving, but the Chinese stock market has gone sideways for 30 years.
1:03:27People think it's uninvestable. When I share with just a common man that I'm investing in Chinese companies, they say, but like what you're going to do if there's a war breaking out with China, and so they are immediately worried about these things. And you notice like nobody is investing in China. Indeed, the market has gone sideways for 30 years, and these technology companies are worth 10 times less than their US counterparts. That's just objectively true. While they are conquering the world, while they are more and more you see Chinese EVs, it's clear they're taking over all these European car companies.
1:04:06That's a done deal. The only survivals will be Tesla that maybe can hold out, but even that's a long shot because Tesla wants to make money and they are already leaving the car market. The premium segment, they already said, they stopped production. So they just handed over to the Chinese basically also. So the car market, it's clear like in 20, 30 years, we're driving all Chinese cars here and nobody is investing it today when the numbers are clearly fast. It's fast growth every year, 20, 30, 40% growth in these sectors while the stock market is depressed, the Chinese stock market.
1:04:46So I think it's a great opportunity that maybe you can look at every month I share my portfolio. And so if I get new positions in those things, you will hear about it. So I think that's interesting.
1:05:01Vlad CosteaOne more question and then we're going to reveal your number. So last chance for people who have not joined the contest yet, write your number now.
1:05:13So MadamMaze33 says Tesla has been a long-term holding for you. What still keeps you in the stock after periods of underperformance relative to the broader market?
1:05:25Marc De MeselYeah, indeed Tesla itself went sideways for five years almost. But yeah, that's the typical pattern of Tesla. It goes sideways just like cryptocurrency. It goes sideways for five years and then certainly does a 10x. And I think with Tesla, that's certainly still possible that you see another 10x. Of course, it's already overvalued based on the actual business numbers. It's already overvalued, just like all these US stocks, they are very richly priced. But Tesla is one of the companies that really can indeed tenfold its revenues again.
1:06:12And if just valuations stay the same, well then the valuation metrics stay the same, that P/E ratios and P/S ratios remain very high for these type of companies, then well, if it tenfold its revenues, it will tenfold its market cap too. So I think that's still possible with Tesla because the robotaxi is genius. And it was a very long shot, but now it's clear it's working. It works. And there is no one else that can compete with it. So I mean, they are doing a careful rollout now.
1:06:49It's not scaling fast. It's scaling very slow. So it won't 10x the revenue. But in one year's time, they could start scaling it very fast. And then it becomes clear to the market, their revenues will explode. Not just revenues, but also profits. Because one robotaxi is making a lot of money per year, a lot more than selling cars. So it may transform transportation. And instead of people buying cars in the West, many will just order a robotaxi. And so they will take over the Uber market where people now, many people in cities just order an Uber.
1:07:32But it will go a lot further than that because the robotaxi will be a lot cheaper than Uber and a lot more available and a lot more pleasant to sit in. And so it can really, yeah, it can still do a massive, a massive move. And that's why I'm still long Tesla. But I'm not long Tesla just the shares, I'm long call options via a hedge fund. And so it's a bit more risky strategy. But, but yeah, I think that can still play out. And I sometimes update people on that fund and it's funded so, so few people invest in it.
1:08:12I can't believe it. It's a very small fund. But it's managed by someone who has been becoming rich himself with options, who used to be the Emmet Peppers, the biggest salesperson, the best salesperson in Interactive Brokers, knows everything about options, running his own fund here. And the track record is there. He already did it with that fund, hundredfolding. But now that's five years ago and actually investors that entered typically at the top lost a lot. So it's not easy, but I think it's an opportunity here still.
1:08:51And it's an exception because for most US stocks, I think it's very expensive. But yeah, I still hold a smaller position. It's about 5% or so in Tesla. I think it's still a shot worth taking.
1:09:07Vlad CosteaYeah. What you described there with not owning cars and getting your robotaxi or whatever reminds me of that slogan. Like you will own nothing and you'll be happy. But what you can own right now is $100 from Cake Wallet. So let's try to be optimistic. Show us your number, Marc. Drum roll. Drum roll. Oh, 69. 69. It's one of the most obvious ones. There's probably someone who said 69 in the chat. I'm sure that there must be. If you asked anyone like what's the number from one to 100, I think 21 if they're in Bitcoin and 69 are some of the first choices or their birthday or whatever.
1:09:56But I did see a 69 and I want to give them a shout out. I'm scrolling. Yeah, Alison Daz, Alisandaz. I'm not sure how you pronounce this, but you are the winner. You're the one who said 69. Congratulations. You get $100 from Cake Wallet. I'll contact you or you can write me after the podcast. Now you have more amazing questions, Marc. And I'm going to continue this series of asking you audience questions. And then we can talk what I want, which is a bit different, but I want to make everyone happy.
1:10:33There is AlisonFDZ33, who says, Marc, with recent CME Bitcoin Cash futures announcement and the sharp price reaction, has your thesis on BCH changed at all?
1:10:50Marc De MeselYeah, so I thought my thesis of Bitcoin Cash was that it would take over Bitcoin because it offers continues to offer cheap transactions and thereby it allows innovators to build things on top of Bitcoin. And it will be adopted as the payment currency because transactions are reliably cheap. However, that didn't really happen.
1:11:21So, yes, my thesis has changed. I think that Bitcoin Cash will have to be a lot more competitive. It's very good that it's built, it's Bitcoin, it's Bitcoin, but I think it cannot escape the reality that you need to be competitive in this market. And so even Bitcoin needs to continue to innovate and not be stale. And Bitcoin Cash is forced to do that now. They are really trying to survive. And what can you do? Stick to, hey, we just do Bitcoin well, but we want to just stay with, not do too much innovation here or should we innovate?
1:12:14The answer is clear. You should innovate. For example, privacy. Actually, privacy is very important. And it's the USP of cryptocurrency. Why would people, indeed, as Vlad also said, no traditional currencies, fiat currencies, banking system have all improved a lot. So they are a lot more user friendly these days. Why would you use cryptocurrency? There is only one answer that stands, and that's because it's the only way to have privacy online. If you want privacy online with your payments, you have to use cryptocurrency. There is, traditional banking cannot offer that ever.
1:12:55Vlad CosteaLet's unpack a bit because honestly, and this is going to get me some unfollow or something, but if you have your money in a bank account, it's just you, your bank and the government and whoever you choose to tell that knows about the money. It's not like your money is in a public address that everyone can see and can check and can know every time you're making a transaction. So in some ways, the banks from this point of view are more private than holding Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash or whatever it is that has a transparent ledger.
1:13:30So you should not expect that you have privacy with these networks. What you get is maybe some deniability, which means that you can claim that it's not your address or you can claim that you got hacked and somebody else sent the funds from your address. You can make these claims, which may or may not be plausible, but you're not going to have the kind of privacy that does not reveal this information in the first place. People can see that on an open ledger and especially now with AI, it's much easier to analyze and keep track of addresses and see every time some funds are moving and what amounts to which address.
1:14:08You can do long-term tracking and figure out what's happening there. I don't think you have much privacy. Maybe that's part of the reason why this did not get picked up too much in commerce because it's kind of a bad design for that.
1:14:27The merchant who receives the payment from you should not be able to know how many coins you own in your wallet and yet they can see that if you don't know how to manage UTXOs. There are some issues with this. From this point of view, I think banks have actually better privacy, but not better than Zcash or Monero or something that actually implements a way to protect your privacy. What I'm getting is that what Bitcoin gives you is the resistance to censorship. If you want to make a transaction, there's nobody around the world who's going to say, I know you can't send these funds.
1:15:07As long as you're paying the transaction fee and there's a miner that picks up your transaction, there's nobody that can deny you the right to send money. That's where it matters. That's where it makes a difference. The fact that nobody can take it away from you. You hold it in a private key. Of course, someone can beat you up and steal your private key or whatever or make you unlock your wallet. But they can't remotely hack you. That's kind of the point. Just because they see the money there, it doesn't mean that they can just get to it and grab it.
1:15:39Sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to add an additional argument.
1:15:45Marc De MeselYou corrected me indeed. Well, privacy is not the only USP. What you mentioned is true. That's also a very strong USP. There's no censorship possible. Like you're able to send it. You don't need approval for a bank. You don't need an active bank account. It's very easy to grab a phone, install an app and send cryptocurrency. So it's not censorable. That's indeed another USP. And you also mentioned custody. There's no counterparty in between and that's also a USP. You really can own it yourself and be sure nobody can steal it.
1:16:25Which is not the case also with traditional payment system and traditional currency, except maybe then for cash. But the problem with cash is then you cannot pay, use it online. So online, it does offer something that fiat currencies do not offer. And it's indeed non-custodial. It's non-censorable. But also if you want to do private transactions online, I mean, more private than what banks offer. Because with banks, you cannot do certain payments. If you want to buy some weed, you cannot even invest in a marijuana company that's legal companies.
1:17:12I live in Switzerland and I cannot even invest in companies that are active in marijuana, for example, in the United States because the Swiss are of the opinion that is not moral. And so no Swiss can actually invest money or send money for such an investment. So I think that to answer the question about Bitcoin Cash and what's my thesis on it. I think that Bitcoin Cash really has to also offer, continue to innovate and try to find traction thanks to implementing innovations. And so, for example, smart contracts could be one, privacy could be another, but it cannot remain stale.
1:18:00It needs to look for, need to continue to develop and try to look for a successful use case that's adopted. That's really in the end what every currency needs. It will have to find a use case where it's popular and where it builds a network monopoly and where you really need that coin to be able to do these type of things. And you cannot do it with any other coin. And only a few coins have achieved that in the cryptocurrency market. Monero achieved that in the dark markets.
1:18:33You really need it if you want to make payments there. Ethereum achieved that in the smart contracts, DeFi market. You really need Ethereum to get, for example, a collateralized loan against your cryptocurrency. Well, you need Ethereum. So, and that's really the job, just like any company needs to find a real product or service that's successful in the market and that they can build a business on. It's the same for cryptocurrency. So yeah, that's my thesis for Bitcoin Cash. They still need to succeed in that. And I hope they do.
1:19:13But they have some extra firepower and that's why I still invest in them also. Like they are the real Bitcoin. I still believe that to be the case. Like what's the real Bitcoin? The one that is built the way it's supposed to be. I believe that to be Bitcoin Cash and the only one available. So that still speaks for it also, but it's not enough. But that may make the difference. Why it's picked by, for example, an AI agent that needs to choose between different ones. Which one do you pick?
1:19:52Well, this one has this advantage. This one has that going for it, which others don't. So yeah, that's how I look at it.
1:20:06Vlad CosteaYeah, I respect your point of view. And you actually have a question about this, the upcoming one, which says, so it's from Ria Lopez 64. And Ria Lopez says, looking back at the 2017 fork, what did you see in Bitcoin Cash that most BTC maximalists missed or dismissed?
1:20:34Marc De MeselI think BTC maximalists, and they are a dying breed, their eyes open up as the years go by and something else happens in Bitcoin BTC that they say, but how is this possible? You cannot do that. Like, this makes no sense. And then suddenly, they realize, but it's not adding up. And then they realize, oh, no, like, it's this is not, this cannot, I cannot continue to support this. And only then they go back to history and they see the signs that were on the wall that they missed.
1:21:10So what BTC maximalists missed in 2017 that many of them have now realized many years later is that the arguments are not, that it's not, actually, I have heard many, many, many cases. Still years later that say like a store of value, a cryptocurrency can be a store of value only just like gold. And they use the comparison to gold. Look, gold is a store of value. So Bitcoin BTC can also be just a store of value. But if you think about that, you can easily see like, that's not adding up.
1:21:52Like gold is a store of value because the US dollar is the transaction currency. They, they live together in this world. And gold is still valued as a store of value because US dollar is so bad in being a store of value. So people have to use the US dollar or other fiat currency in other countries to make payments because it's by law designed like that. They have no other options. But you cannot save money in that fiat currency. If you put it on a savings account, you lose value every year, even after getting the interest.
1:22:28You can see like, you cannot even save for a house that way. Like people that save for a house that way, after five years saving, they're like, and I can still come buy a house and I'm not even closer because the real inflation is 10%, but they get 2% interest. So every year they lose 8%. And so then you have some intelligent people in this world and organizations that say like, okay, the US dollar, they understand like actually you can't save money and that. So what should you do?
1:23:02Well gold, you can invest a piece in gold actually, and that will keep its value because the government can print more of it. And so you have a continued demand for this physical metal gold because that's the closest form to money, to fiat money that is very liquid and where you can actually store value and then you take it out again to spend it. And so that's the old system. And then to say like, oh, the new system of cryptocurrencies, we can do the same. Yeah, but no, because cryptocurrency can be both a store of value as well as a transactional currency.
1:23:35And those will be the ones that win, of course. Who wants to be bothered with having one currency to spend and one to save your money in? People don't do that. What they do is like they pick currencies that they like, that they need, and then they keep that. And only when it fails as a store of value, they will look for something else. But these two functions will be combined in the world of cryptocurrency. So I think that's what they missed in 2017, that it's not possible.
1:24:09Of course, that's not proven yet today. But in the long term, I think it will become clear and also proven with Bitcoin BTC that no, you cannot have a currency that can just get its value as a store of value unit, just like gold is today. You cannot have that. Other cryptocurrencies will become bigger that offer both to be a payment system as well as a store of value. Those will out-compete the currencies that are just a store of value. That seems logical to me.
1:24:42Vlad CosteaOkay. I just realized looking at Twitter that you forgot to retweet this and maybe some of your followers did not see it. Let me check.
1:24:54But in the meantime, you have a question from Aaron Dzax. I'm not even sure how you pronounce that. Dzax? I don't know. But he wants to know what was your first real exposure to Bitcoin? What made you decide it was worth serious capital back then?
1:25:14Marc De MeselI was listening to a Freedomain podcast from Stefan Molyneux in 2009, 2010, and I heard Bitcoin drop. The name was dropped, but I rejected it. People ask the question, what do you think of this Bitcoin? And I studied it and I said, so it has a fixed supply. Nobody can print more of it. That's good. But I thought that wouldn't work because the value would go up and then people would hoard it because the value goes up. So they would never spend it. That was actually a popular theory about currencies.
1:26:01It's called Gresham's law. And what was believed at the time was that the worst currency will be spent first, whereas the best currency will be hoarded and be taken out of circulation. And so that was one argument. They said that that won't work, that design. But the biggest thing was, of course, like it's codes. Like they say they can't issue more of it, but who knows? Like it's just code. So it will probably be hacked or failed. And then suddenly there will be a lot of circulation that will fail the project.
1:26:33And then also the legal thing, like the governance will never allow that. Actually, they will probably jail the developers because at the time there was a clear monopoly and everybody that starts their own currency is jailed. That's how it was in 2010, 2011. There had been just some recent projects where they had, for example, what's the name, e-gold or something. So they allowed people to pay each other with e-gold and that was just rolled up.
1:27:10But it kept popping up in that Freedomain Radio podcast. And so I said I was looking for a good investment because I was failing as an investor also. I was not making money. I was very diversified. I was only making 5% when inflation was 5%. And so I realized, like, if I want to become successful as an investor, I have to, I cannot just protect what I have. I cannot just be diversified. I have to make a calculated bet. I have to take risk and I have to risk on things that make sense and that have a high probability of going up.
1:27:49And so I looked again at this Bitcoin and I said, actually, even if it's true that it will fail, the story is so good that it will first probably tenfold before it fails because this is like the holy grail of currencies. So, I mean, I cannot, I should give it a shot and I should just get out quickly enough before it collapses. And so that's how I then invested 5 to 10% of my portfolio into that at a very early stage. Bitcoin was only $13 at the time.
1:28:29I started watching, it was like $8, $9, $10, but the price was moving up very fast. So by the time my money was on an exchange, then it was already $13. And so that's when I bought Bitcoin, risking a piece of my portfolio into it.
1:28:48Vlad CosteaDo you remember what exchange it was?
1:28:50Marc De MeselYeah, it was Bitcoin-24. It was the biggest exchange in Europe, the biggest Euro exchange, but actually it was just a teenager running this from his own personal bank account. And so not long after, actually, he was shut down, arrested, bank accounts frozen, and everybody lost their money, including me. And I lost the piece there. But yeah, that's how it started. For me, and what also convinced me was the amount of transactions. That was very important. Like, I could see the amount of transactions going up fast. And I said, like, that's really strong evidence that this thing is used.
1:29:35Like, I should, I should invest in that. And that's also what convinced me to actually sell. Of course, I sold and bought and of course, I made the mistake of selling way too much in the beginning. But when I then exited, finally exited, and I also have still that video online where I say, look, no more Bitcoin for me, only altcoins. That was early 2017. And I already sold all my Bitcoin, actually, for altcoins. And it is only in 2017, in the middle of 2017, that Bitcoin Cash then forked off.
1:30:13And then I just sold some altcoins for Bitcoin Cash. It was already early 17, I decided to get out of Bitcoin because, yeah, I mean, the amount of transactions is the strongest evidence you had at the time of something being successful. And that was just impossible that that would go up, given the decisions they had made, that they would not scale the blockchain. And so you would actually hit a plateau to the amount of transactions that are able to be processed. So yeah, that's also the reason why I exited in full with conviction.
1:30:48But yeah, I overlooked a few things because clearly, from a financial perspective, I missed the ball there. And I think someone like Roger Ver, for example, is a much better investor than I have been. And why? Because he actually doesn't do that. Like he just invests in some projects, and he keeps it. He's not trying to... Even with Bitcoin BTC, he did that very well. Yes, after some time, he also started to support Bitcoin Cash and invested in it. But he never went full retard like I was to really sell a project in full and go into another one quite hard.
1:31:31He's very slow in making these movements. And that really has paid off. As an investor, it's usually a very wise approach to not be too convicted and take things slow. Building up positions, you might do faster than an opportunity, but selling out of positions usually pays off to take your time. And the market usually stretches a lot further and a lot longer than you would expect yourself. And so yeah, that's interesting insight that I got over the years.
1:32:07Vlad CosteaI guess sometimes the more sophisticated and calculated you are in taking risks, sometimes you lose trades like Bitcoin. I think Roger sold his Lambo and bought Bitcoin under $1. And he just kept it. And that's how he became a legend. But he was a millionaire before Bitcoin. And that's the thing that people forget. There are a lot of people in this space who became rich because of Bitcoin. But he really... I don't think he needed that. For him, it was just something extra.
1:32:42Marc De MeselOh, yeah. Well, I think, yeah, he was a millionaire before because he was running internet businesses. That's true. But I would say just starting out also. But what he did by basically investing all his money in Bitcoin, where it was around $1, that was absolutely crazy. And only because he had such a strong basis, understanding philosophy and money, because he had read many books about this, and being a very strong idealist himself. And it just came all together for him that he had money and you didn't, of course, need much money then, had to buy a big stash of Bitcoin.
1:33:33And that money that he had, he was willing to risk all in something that was extremely uncertain and experimental. And where nobody else led the way, he's a very original and independent thinker. And he is also very courageous, actually, to be able to do that. I think people don't... It's always so easy in hindsight to say, hey, there was an opportunity. And if I was there, I would have done the same. That's not true. It's not true.
1:34:15And if I may put in a little pitch here, I think, yeah, privacy coins are the opportunity now in cryptocurrency. And it was interesting for me to talk with the developer of Zano, because I never met him, one of the lead developers, there are two guys, and I noticed that he was actually afraid investing in that project Zano, because he said, like with these AI agents these days, like they can find vulnerabilities in your software so quickly and privacy coins are extra vulnerable because of a lack of a public blockchain.
1:34:56Even if it's hacked, even if new coins are issued and printed, you can't see it. And it may take many years before you spot it. And in the meantime, the project is drained. These are extra risks that he saw. But at the same time, you could tell, like, he feels like it's very risky to invest in a project, privacy coins and Zano in specific, even though he's on top of it. And the same was true in Bitcoin at the time. Like, the lead developers, everybody would say, only invest what you can afford to lose.
1:35:33That was everywhere. And just some play money, put some play money in. This is play money. Like, you cannot seriously invest in this. Like, that was how everybody talked about Bitcoin in the beginning. And so even people that believe strongly in it, even people that understood technically that it could really lead to something, would risk very little of their own money in it. And so, yeah. But Roger Ver was not like that because he understood capitalism better and the world of entrepreneurship and investing. He understood that better.
1:36:10And he had the courage, not afraid to lose it all, which man at young age of his caliber have. But very few others do.
1:36:24Vlad CosteaI think he was like 31 years old when he bought his first Bitcoin. So he did have some life experience, which I did not. I'm 34 right now and I bought my first Bitcoin almost 10 years ago. I was very young and stupid. And I have no, I don't know. It's very hard to describe what it's like to be 20 something and not know anything. I was 21 when I first read about Bitcoin and I thought it was a stupid idea. But I didn't have much money anyway.
1:36:57So I don't think investing back then would have changed my life on one hand. And I don't think I would have kept it. That's the other one. Like when you see that you made $100 on it, you'd be like, yeah, I'm going to take this and buy drinks to my friends and go out with a girl or whatever. That's what you do when you're 20. You don't think too much. So yeah, Roger was reckless because he just threw money at something that was not proven yet. Maybe for him a million dollars at the time was not that much money.
1:37:32I don't know. I'm just speculating. I'm not sure how much his Lambo was worth, but he sold it and bought Bitcoin. Maybe it was $600,000 or whatever. No, no, no, no.
1:37:45Marc De MeselOkay. My estimation is that he was actually not a millionaire, but he did have maybe a million savings that he could invest in something. And you sell a Lambo at the time. The Lambo that he had was a Gallardo. I mean, at the time, second hand, maybe you can get $100,000 from it. So instead of being able to invest $500,000 or a million in Bitcoin, he was able to invest more by selling also his Lambo. That are the kind of numbers that I would estimate that he was able to invest at the time.
1:38:20But that was, of course, more than enough if Bitcoin is only $1 and you're the only one buying really because he was not competing with others yet to buy. I wouldn't use the name reckless, actually, because reckless is risking something you cannot afford to lose. He could afford to lose his savings in full because he had successful businesses that were earning him income. Even if this Bitcoin thing fails, he's not going to go broke. He had an online business that was successful. And so he was able to still pay his rent and build a family, even if that investment went wrong.
1:39:11So I don't think it was reckless. I call it courageous because when you have saved your first million, very few people want to risk that. It's very hard to save your first million.
1:39:23Only people that are very convicted or very idealistic are willing to risk that all in something new like what was Bitcoin at the time. And it's the same today. Like, what's the future? Well, I think some privacy coins will be a privacy coin that will actually become the biggest coin. That's what I think right now. But am I willing to invest all my savings into one privacy coin? No, certainly not. One percent.
1:39:54Vlad CosteaI do wish I went all in on Zcash last year. Someone told me it's like Bitcoin in 2013. And I was like, yeah, sure. I heard that a lot. But now I'm like, man, I wish like it was $40 a year ago. Now it's like 1600. That's a 40X.
1:40:12Marc De MeselIndeed, that was the big win Zcash. But of course, it's with hindsight, it's like, indeed, if you would have just put 10% of your portfolio into Zcash a year ago, you would have done extremely well. But even that, very few people would dare to do. And of course, that story is like, it's too late. That's gone. I mean, and for the opportunity for Roger Ver was also gone a year later. He did take that when the uncertainty was the highest and when nobody else confirmed his vision and opinion, he did take that risk.
1:40:51And it's the same today. Like in five years, there will be big winners or even in two, three years, there will be big winners that not today, very few people want to invest in. And it's a difficult business, difficult industry. But I think also we should say a little bit more about AI agents because I noticed that that's really a major innovation. And it's my impression that, you know, the way it goes in life is that, you know, we all try to become a success, but we fail.
1:41:24But then there is something new comes along. And because you have that experience of trying and failing, you do it better with the next thing that comes by. And I think, yeah, AI may make a difference for many here in where they failed in the past. In cryptocurrency, when they do implement these new technologies that AI now offers and they combine the two that they actually can become a success. So that's also an interesting thing that's happening now.
1:41:57And with the privacy coins, too, I think like that's another shot because so many are left behind. But I think that privacy will become very important. That's also a point of contention. Because people believe that these transparent blockchains are OK and that governments will only allow that and that these privacy coins will not be allowed and they will be pushed out of the market by laws and not be allowed. But, yeah, I think it may play out very different similar to how it played out with Bitcoin at the time because I also thought at the time, OK, they're not going to allow that and it's going to be outlawed.
1:42:47But they did allow it. And it's the same of privacy coins today. What are they going to do? Are they going to outlaw it? Just like it's happened already in China and even in Dubai, it's outlawed. I believe you can own it, but you cannot use it. Will they also in the West outlaw it and make it impossible for privacy coins? I don't think so. I think it will continue to be allowed. Of course, they will fight it, but they won't be able to stop it or be willing to outlaw it.
1:43:21And that's what makes the difference between the West and the East, how the East approaches markets in China. Yeah, I mean, you do have great banking system there. It works a lot better than in the West, but you have zero sovereignty in China. The government can shut down your app and it's over and out for you. You don't can't even rent anything. Anymore. You sleep in the streets and in the West. We don't want such a system. We understand that the power of government needs to be limited.
1:43:53And I think thanks to that privacy coins will continue to be allowed and therefore will be the choice of preference for people that do want cryptocurrency. They do want to make payments in cryptocurrency that they want that privacy. And they don't want like years later, like somebody digging into their transactions. The tax authorities or someone, who knows, trying to find out their net worth or what transactions they did. That's the risk you take with using transparent blockchains. And people, I think, will learn over time that you know that that cannot take such a risk.
1:44:31You have to use privacy coins just to protect yourself. It's not to hide, but to protect yourself against actors who will be looking left and right. To take something from you.
1:44:48Vlad CosteaI agree with that. And I want to know before I ask you the next question from the audience, because you seem very popular with people. Did you announce that you were going to do this interview and they jumped in the chat? You get more questions than the average guest.
1:45:04Marc De MeselThat's great. No, actually, I'm like, also, I don't find my X very popular on my YouTube channel. So I'm very happy to hear that.
1:45:18Vlad CosteaSo what's in your privacy coin portfolio? Which ones did you choose and why?
1:45:27Marc De MeselSo, um, yeah, I realized it because I learned from the past in the past. I take one favorite, and then I go for that. And I lost so much opportunity that way investing in NXT instead of Ethereum like that's like a difference of 1,000-fold versus zero. So now I learned like, okay, I have to invest in a basket. I have no idea which one will be the winner. And so I invest in all basket. Of course, Monero was the first one because it's the leading privacy coin in adoption.
1:45:57But Zcash is the second one. Because, yeah, of course, I didn't like Zcash so much because the system is complex. You have a public blockchain, a private system next to it. And actually, the way it's set up is people will actually not use the privacy much. They use the public blockchain without even realizing. But then when I talked with experts in the field, they say like, actually, Zcash does have the best technology, the best privacy technology. And so I said, okay, then I'll invest in that, too.
1:46:32I invest in Zano because actually Roger Ver, when I visited him on the island in Mallorca, where he was banned to and where he was stuck and was out on bail, but could not leave the island. I visited him a couple times for the first time, actually, that I saw him in real life because over the years, we only worked a little bit together with Bitcoin Cash during the Amaury Séchet split-off of eCash. That's the first time where I worked with him a little bit together and we invested together in some Bitcoin Cash companies.
1:47:11But we never met. We never befriended. But when he was stuck on the island, I said, I'm going to visit him and see if we can help him. And that's where I met him personally. And he made a great impression on me. What stood out the most to me is that I would be so stressed being in a situation where a government goes after me and my life is at risk. My freedom is at risk. But he's just so hardworking and chill and relaxed. He's, of course, a workaholic.
1:47:41I didn't know that, but I would guess that, but someone who's so successful, that's confirmed he's a workaholic. He's working all the time. But he's also like, he was just busy talking about Zano, which I never heard of. And it's a privacy coin. But I was already interested in privacy coins. I had invested also at the time early in Monero, but then I sold again. But privacy, yeah, I did understand that that's very important and lacking. But yeah, he was so enthusiastic about Zano. And so I started investing in that because I thought, OK, privacy coin is certainly a good idea.
1:48:29But if Roger Ver is behind it, that's, I mean, that's, Roger Ver is a marketer like no one else. He's driven by idealism, and he knows how to sell a story like no one else. He's so enthusiastic about things. So if he would start talking about Zano, then, of course, my investment would be a success. However, that didn't happen because he was able to resolve the case and he's free now. But he can't talk for three years, so we won't hear from him. And the US government has made sure that he can't say a word or they might still jail him.
1:49:08So sadly, he's not talking about anything anymore. And we miss him dearly in the cryptocurrency world. But that's how I got into Zano. And then I invest also in some other coins just going through the list. Firo is a project that's built like Zcash. So it has also great technology, but that's a much smaller project. It's a much bigger risk that it will fail than these bigger projects. I also invested in a smaller coin. It's called Pirate Chain a little bit. And that said, maybe I missed some, ah Dash actually.
1:49:49I added Dash also recently, but it's not for the privacy features actually. So it's not actually part of this list, but I added Dash for another reason. And that it does have a business model. And the price, of course, very cheap. Now it's up a bit. But, but I mean, this is a project also, like Bitcoin Cash, that has really done very poorly price-wise, but that continues to be built and has a business model. A piece of the inflation goes to the marketing and development.
1:50:21I think that does make sense. And of course, it's because of Joel Valenzuela I've met over the years. And he's like the only person that I know that lives on cryptocurrency and is still a big fan of Dash. So I added that also recently to my portfolio. But yeah, so these are, I could say, the privacy picks.
1:50:44Vlad CosteaIt's interesting that you have a fork of Zcash, which is Pirate Chain. What it did was to fork Zcash and make it private by default. But the issue with Pirate Chain right now is that they did not upgrade to the latest version of the shielded pool. As far as I know, they're still using Sapling, which is from like seven years ago or something. So they, I don't think they have the money to be able to keep up with Zcash. Zcash keeps upgrading. They have something major every couple of years.
1:51:18And the other one is Firo, which used to be called Zcoin. Back in the day, there were two papers in 2013 and 2014. The first one was called Zerocoin. And it was supposed to be a soft fork to improve the privacy of Bitcoin with zero knowledge proofs. And then the same authors of the same paper came up with Zerocash in a few months, and they considered this to be an improvement. And that's how they got the Zcash idea. They started working on it for a couple of years.
1:51:50I think Roger was actually, bless you, was actually the first or second investor in Zcash at the time. He was introduced to Zooko by Gavin Andresen. So this, it was such a small world, right, where you have the cypherpunk who spoke with Satoshi and worked for David Chaum, who is Zooko, who wanted to find money to start a new project that's called Zcash. And he searches for someone rich like Roger by going through Gavin Andresen, who was at the time the maintainer of Bitcoin Core. So if you have stories of toxicity or whatever from before 2017, it was more toned down.
1:52:31People were working together. There was no shame in saying, well, I want to start a new project that's different in this way. And where was I going with this? Yeah, Zerocoin actually launched the week before Zcash. Actually, Zcoin. That's what it's called. Zcoin launched the week before Zcash. It always had like a smaller team of developers and less of a budget. But some people were trying to basically trade Zcash before Zcash came out by launching Zcoin. And I think part of the Zcash team is still angry at them for doing this because they think it took away some steam from the project that they were about to launch.
1:53:12In the meantime, Zcoin rebranded to Firo. And they also added something else, which is called the Lelantus protocol, which is their own invention. So right now, it's like a different beast compared to Zcash. But it's like a cousin of Zcash that decided to be born a week before. It's quite interesting. And Zano is designed by one of the guys who worked on the CryptoNote protocol. I've had him on my podcast like two times. And he says that he worked with Nicolas van Saberhagen, who is the creator of the CryptoNote protocol, which later became, I think the first one was called Bytecoin.
1:53:57And then Bytecoin forked because of a community fight. And part of this branch became Monero. And I think Monero is one of the few cases where the community fork is more successful than the original project.
1:54:15Marc De MeselYes, yes, yes. Yeah, that's interesting. You know a lot about like all these technical details.
1:54:23Vlad CosteaMan, I've been doing this podcast for seven years and a half. And before that, I was a journalist writing for Crypto Insider. It's my job to learn this stuff and know and talk with people. But I also did... I'm not sure if you're aware. You were in Amsterdam, but I don't think you saw my presentation. But two years ago, I went to the Bitcoin Nashville conference where Donald Trump spoke. And Robert Kennedy and all of these politicians were doing whatever. And after I saw that scene, I said to myself, first of all, I feel like I'm in the wrong place.
1:55:00I don't recognize this community anymore. This is not what I signed up for. I don't want to listen to Trump to tell me what the future of Bitcoin is going to be like. And secondly, I came home and I said to myself, I think privacy is gonna get huge. Why did I say that then? Because it's the thing that's missing from Bitcoin. It's the thing that these politicians really like that it's this open ledger and this proves to them they're going to say, well, you can't do crime with Bitcoin or whatever.
1:55:31You can, but whatever. What I'm trying to say is that I realized when I came back from Nashville that privacy is going to get huge. And I just so happened to buy some privacy coins at the very bottom of the market. At the time Zcash was like $30 or something. And Monero was $200. And I also bought some Zano because of Roger. Just like you, I was attending a conference in Spain in Palma de Mallorca since 2021. I've been every year to that event. And in '24, two years ago, so my third time going to that conference, Roger was also there.
1:56:15And I was like, hey, Roger, I had just interviewed him a few months before and I got canceled by my Bitcoin friends because of that. And they blocked me and they hated me and whatever. I was like, hey, Roger, you remember me? I'm the guy who interviewed you. I'm also in Spain right now on the same islands. Like, you want to meet, say hello or whatever? And I was surprised that he showed up. I guess he was kind of lonely on that island and he didn't have too many friends.
1:56:44And he came to one of the parties of the event and he asked me to download the Zano wallet. And I did. And he sent me, I think, a dollar or two of Zano just to show me how it works. It was kind of cool. Like he used to do this with Bitcoin back in the day. It felt like more of the same. But, you know, I haven't spent much time in the US. There was no way for me to meet him back in the glory days of Roger being Bitcoin Jesus.
1:57:13But it felt like that. And I was like, OK, so this is a thing because Roger seems to care a lot about it. I went home. I looked more at it. It's more like, so it's the same technology as Monero, except that it does tokens and you can do some DeFi stuff with it. And I was like, OK, maybe it's like Ethereum for the Monero ecosystem. So did Ethereum become successful? Pretty much. Yeah. Like a lot of people hate it. I used to hate it, too. But when you look at it, like not ideologically, but practically, you're going to be like, well, it did a pretty good job given the circumstances.
1:57:56I think NXT was better, by the way. But for some reason, the market chose Ethereum.
1:58:03Marc De MeselAh, so you also followed that at the time.
1:58:07Vlad CosteaNo, I didn't care too much. I was just a stupid student who was reading news. But NXT had these like gray-haired developers, right? People in their 40s who had experience and they were like, yeah, we're like experts, you know. So if I was to choose between this 18 year old guy from Canada who's half Russian, who speaks in a funny way and acts like, I don't know, he's funny on camera. Without meaning to be funny, like people think that he's this autistic genius or something. So if I had to choose between that and the developers from NXT who looked very professional, I guess I would also invest in NXT because it looked like it actually has a chance and these guys know what they're doing.
1:58:53But for some reason, the people went with Vitalik's invention. I guess it was mostly the Canadian meetups and a lot of people who were early Bitcoiners were going to the same meetups in Toronto at the time. And I mean Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin and some of the guys who were early in Ethereum, like some of the co-founders. It's possible that they had the support of this large Bitcoin community that was already established and it was very easy for them to launch a new project after that.
1:59:28Compared to these guys from NXT, maybe they came from a more professional programming background but they didn't have the same support from the Bitcoin community. So maybe that's why it did not succeed. Sometimes it's not about the tech itself, it's about the people backing it. And that's a hard pill to swallow.
1:59:48Marc De MeselYes, but also I think that it's a major innovation with inventing the ICO. And that also was... No, that was Mastercoin.
1:59:59Vlad CosteaI'm sorry. That was on Bitcoin 2013. The first ICO was on Bitcoin. It was called Mastercoin. Later it became the Omni Layer. It's where Tether first appeared as a token. It was being traded on the Bitcoin blockchain. For some reason, Bitcoiners hated Tether and they were like, no, do this somewhere else. So it went to Ethereum and on Ethereum it became bigger.
2:00:25I just have to stop and reflect on this. It wasn't called ICO maybe. Maybe that Ethereum called it the ICO.
2:00:36Marc De MeselJust the initial coin offering. I remember that they launched that at a certain valuation and I thought, that's too expensive.
2:00:47I'm not going to participate in that. So, but also it was not really according to the Bitcoin philosophy. The Bitcoin philosophy was like when you launch a coin, you can mine it. And so it's not like a company where you can sell coins as the developer or something. No. And the way Ethereum was launched was more like, okay, a piece of the coins are created at the beginning that will be offered and that will fund the team. And that was also something that I think helped them becoming a success because, I mean, people participate in that. They want a piece of it.
2:01:33They participate in it. So you have immediately a bigger distribution and visibility thanks to that process. So yeah, I think that might also have played. But yeah, what you say, of course, that's the biggest thing. Of course, indeed. There was also, I didn't understand it at the time, but, and I still don't really, but NXT had operational software. You could launch your token there. You can't launch. And so that's why I went for that. But with Ethereum, it was just promises. And then they were talking about this is Turing complete.
2:02:12And so that seemed to be something very attractive to attract other developers to build something on top of it, which NXT did not have. And the way I understood it is that that really explained why it was such a success. Because many other developers start to build on top of it because of this Turing completeness thing that I still don't understand. But yeah, that's how I understood why that's how that all went.
2:02:42Vlad CosteaMarc, you still have a bunch of questions in the chat and we still haven't talked about one of the topics that I advertised, which is having a polygamous relationship and having lots of kids. How much time do you have now?
2:02:59Marc De MeselYeah, I have time left. I love talking more.
2:03:03Vlad CosteaOkay, that's good because I booked like only for the next 10 minutes and was hoping that you don't have something else to do.
2:03:10Marc De MeselNo, I have not planned anything else. So I'm happy to talk more. It's two years ago also that I did an interview. So the longer the better.
2:03:19Vlad CosteaI respect that. There's Kel Evan 18 in the chat. He says, looking back, what is the single biggest assumption about Bitcoin or crypto that you got completely wrong?
2:03:33Marc De MeselWhat is this? Can you repeat it? I'm sorry. I was just looking at the calendar here. Can you say that again?
2:03:39Vlad CosteaYes. So what is the biggest assumption about Bitcoin or crypto that you got completely wrong?
2:03:48Was it NXT?
2:03:53Marc De MeselBut I think he's asking Bitcoin the biggest assumption that I got wrong and not to be the project that I picked wrong or not.
2:04:07Vlad CosteaOkay, what's the assumption?
2:04:14Marc De MeselWell, maybe like the speed of progress. Like I would have thought after 10 years that actually it would have been adopted a lot more than it has. And I think that's still also a bit dangerous in the whole thesis. But people don't use cryptocurrencies with the exception of some edge cases. But I'm talking about the West and the East. There are some exceptions like in Dubai, people do use it. But that's because you have many Russians there that came there and they couldn't use banking systems anymore.
2:04:59So they were forced to use cryptocurrencies. And Dubai is also a melting pot of many people that use... Yeah, I mean, cryptocurrency is used there. But yeah, it's quite rare to find that. Like, for example, I've been a lot in Africa that it's not used there. Not now. Not now. 10 to 15 years later after it was invented, it's still not used. And also not in the West, like in Europe where I am, Switzerland, it's not used. And yeah, so that's really something that I really got wrong.
2:05:45I thought that actually it would be used. But it's not. It's only in certain cases where fiat cannot really be used, that it is used. So I think I got that wrong. Yeah. And that's yet to come.
2:06:09Vlad CosteaWhat's interesting about your statement about Africa is that first, there is this guy, Ray Youssef, who has spent many years popularizing cryptocurrency use, Bitcoin, stablecoins, Ethereum, whatever. He was the CEO of Paxful for a while. And then he left Paxful to create Noones, which I guess is popular in Nigeria and people used it to swap maybe gift cards or whatever it is that people want to use locally using these cryptocurrencies. So I'm surprised that from your experience, I guess you spend more time in Kenya. And that's what you saw.
2:06:51And I remember seeing a video from this young streamer. His name is Speed or IShowSpeed. He does flips. He's crazy. He does a lot of stuff. But he went to a shop in an African country and he wanted to buy himself some diamond earrings or whatever. And he asked how he can pay for it. And he asked, do you support Apple Pay? And they said no. And then he asked, do you accept Tether, USDT? And they said yes. And I was surprised. I was watching that and I was like, oh, I guess this is maybe it's the worst thing to adopt.
2:07:28But on the other hand, it is sign of adoption. And a lot of people in the global south, the southern hemisphere, they use USDT for payments. I've heard cases from Venezuela, Argentina. I've actually been to Argentina and I tried to pay for something at a Bitcoin conference, the largest Bitcoin conference in Argentina. It's called LaBitConf. I tried to pay for a YubiKey that I saw at a booth. I wanted to buy one and I was like, do you accept Bitcoin? And they said no. I was like, what do you want then?
2:08:02And they said, well, USDT. So how do I get USDT? And they said, oh, it doesn't matter. It can be on Binance. We're going to take it. I don't have a Binance account. It was a deal breaker in the end. I didn't know how to do it. Maybe I should have swapped it, but it was just my foolish pride at the time. I was like, OK, this is overpriced anyway. You know, like the grapes are sour suddenly. I don't want it anymore. But it's still part of the experience that you deal with people who don't want your Bitcoin, but they want USDT.
2:08:37And it's weird to me that you went to Kenya and you have not encountered any degree of adoption.
2:08:43Marc De MeselYeah, but this is, of course, it's five years ago I was in Kenya. I left there four years ago. But and I'm not like up to date. I didn't do any research and it's very, very little. It's just so I do what you're saying, I believe to be true. And therefore, my statement was false. And like, actually, you do have a wide, it's really starting to pick up adoption, but it's just in the form of stablecoins. But they are running on cryptocurrency networks. And you can pay those stablecoins using Ethereum or another network.
2:09:19And that's in the interest of cryptocurrency like that. That's actually cryptocurrency. And the step to use a real cryptocurrency has become a lot smaller. When people use stablecoins, actually then for them the step to save their money in a real cryptocurrency instead of USDT or to transact in a real cryptocurrency, the step has become a lot smaller. So I think that's a major success. That's also why I saw in Dubai actually that you can pay with stablecoins there. And that's I consider that adoption. So, no, I think that's indeed a good counter argument that indeed, actually, I'm overlooking this and adoption is happening.
2:10:04Vlad CosteaYou have another question from Daniel Rowan, 44. He says you've supported BCH for years while most of the market moved the other way. At what point does conviction become stubbornness? And how do you personally draw the line?
2:10:23Marc De MeselI think indeed, you should be, the difference between conviction and stubbornness is like, what are your arguments? Like, what's the evidence of success here? Because if you cannot prove, show any evidence of success, and you stick to your investment, that's very foolish, the same as with a relationship. You don't have any evidence of success in the relationship, but you still love her, you still want her. That's very foolish. You need to have some like actual points that you can say, but on this level, it's doing well, or she's doing well.
2:10:58And like, you need to have some points where you can say and other people can confirm like, yes, indeed, on that level, it's okay. Or this didn't work out, but actually, that could still work out. You need to have irrational arguments to be able to make. That's the difference between conviction and stubbornness. And so, same with Bitcoin Cash. I think the arguments in favor, some of them are there. You have the negative arguments, we know those. The arguments in favor are also there. I went already through them in this podcast.
2:11:33And then you have to see like, okay, how strong of a thesis is this? What's the risk-reward ratio? And how much can you allocate that? And for me, Bitcoin Cash used to be, I think it had a very strong case, and so it deserves a big allocation. Now, I think the risk reward is not so good, but it's still worth to have some, but it's also personal because you have to look at pain also. The pain of missing out, fear of missing out, that counts, that's personal.
2:12:07And for me, that's very high for Bitcoin Cash. Because I invested so much time and money already ended in the past, if I now sell everything and it takes off, my pain of missing out will be a lot higher than another person. So I have to take that into account. And that's why I have an allocation a little higher than I would recommend to others. It's about 5% or so. But a project like Bitcoin Cash does not deserve 5% allocation of portfolio. I believe it deserves 1% or 2% because it's something that's very unlikely to succeed.
2:12:44But if it succeeds, it's going to pay off big time. And so a small investment in things like that makes sense. Small investment and then don't look at it and who knows, it may pan out very big, but very likely it will go to zero. So that's the kind of allocation that I think Bitcoin Cash deserves. And of course, so many projects deserve. And it's only different to a project like Ethereum, where you can say like, this has a strong network effect. Like, I mean, any company launching something on the blockchain uses Ethereum.
2:13:21Like almost every real company will use the Ethereum network to launch their token or like this has a strong network effect in its favor. It will be hard to beat that to the ground. So the allocation can be higher because the risk reward is better. But most projects in crypto are a long shot. And so it makes a lot of sense to have basically an index approach, which people don't do in crypto. But an index approach makes a lot of sense. Everybody knows it's from the stock world where the idea is you don't know who will be the winners.
2:13:59But if you have an index approach, you will catch the winners as well as the losers. That makes a lot of sense in cryptocurrency. Also, except if you're someone like Vlad, who knows a lot about the details of a project. Like, for example, if you really know what's happening in that community and what sentiment, what's being developed, who are they talking to? Is there growth in certain ways? What are their plans for the future? If you really know a lot about these things, then, of course, you can make a much more educated decision about how other the chances of a project to succeed.
2:14:40But most investors have no clue. And if you're looking at a list of coins, and the only thing they know is like a few sentences of each project. And that's, for me, also true. And so then you need to take more of a index approach where you bet on different projects, a small amount.
2:15:00Vlad CosteaYeah, I mean, I do have a lot of information. I don't tell people that they should take investment advice from this show. I mostly ask about what's being developed. But I think I've made a lot of people money, especially since I interviewed the Zcash people last year. And I know at least a handful of people who met me in person at conferences and they're like, man, I listened to your podcast with Zcash and I bought some and now I'm rich and whatever. Maybe not rich. Maybe they just made enough money for whatever.
2:15:37But yeah, not financial advice, but I'm very picky about the projects that I feature. And sometimes they just happen to blow up. Another question for you is actually about Zcash. This guy says Zcash is ruling the market a lot of NFT projects.
2:15:55Now, a lot of NFT projects are building on Zcash. What's your thoughts on this mark? So what do you think about the fact that some NFT projects decided to build on Zcash?
2:16:08Marc De MeselOh, I have no opinion, educated opinion on that. NFTs I don't know anything about. I just started following that a bit when it was a hype. And then later I didn't follow that anymore. So I didn't even know that NFT projects are built on Zcash. So I can't give any educated opinion on that.
2:16:29Vlad CosteaYeah, so Zcash has the transparent side and has the shielded side. And the transparent side is just like Bitcoin. The shielded side is basically a large liquidity pool where you can only see how many coins are there, but you don't see like who transacts with whom. You can only see that there is a transaction and that's it. That's the largest extent to which you can get information from what's going on. And some people realized, OK, Zcash is popular, so let's do NFTs on the transparent side, which I still think is adoption.
2:17:04Like people use it for something. Maybe it defeats the purpose because NFTs are supposed to always be there and remain transparent. Maybe it's a nation state attack because if NFTs become valuable, this is going to be like a blackmail against making Zcash fully private in the future, because people will say if you make it fully private, we're not going to be able to trade these multimillion dollar NFTs. So who knows? Could be interesting in the future to see what's going on. But for now, it's very early.
2:17:39Marc De MeselYeah, I would say careful like this is not in order to make money, you have to be ahead of the market and not follow the market. And yeah, I mean, that doesn't seem like an opportunity to me, except if you're an NFT expert, then maybe there is an opportunity there. But for me, I found the success of Zcash much more interesting as as a confirmation that there is that indeed what you also say that privacy will become big. And I think the reason why Zcash is pumping so hard in price is not, of course, because of adoption.
2:18:21It's because some people with large pockets have decided to build a stash. And why? Probably because they have the same opinion that cryptocurrencies need to have more privacy and Bitcoin is not offering it. Ethereum is not offering it. There are problems also with mixers. There are legal problems with mixers. So Ethereum has a problem with privacy. Cryptocurrency projects really need to find a solution to how to build privacy as part of the experience. It needs to be private standards. But then you have the legal problems. That's actually the fully private ones like Monero.
2:19:08There's extra legal regulations coming that's not going to fly. If it's fully private, you need to have solutions where some information is revealed. And so Zcash has danced that line very well where they have offered privacy, but at the same time are compliant to regulations that are coming up more and more where some information needs to be shared. And I think thanks to that, they have attracted some people with big pockets, and that includes people with also not big pockets, with brains like Naval Ravikant as a hero of mine, very smart person.
2:19:50But he also embraced Zcash for these reasons of that privacy will become very important. And these are thought leaders that then convince people with lots of capital to they want to invest in crypto. What are they going to invest in? Naval Ravikant makes a lot of sense about Zcash. Privacy is important. So voila, the capital goes to there and that's why this pump is happening. But what's next? Is this well founded? I find the fundamentals of Zcash personally not so strong. Like, yes, I believe that to be true that they have the best privacy technology, but at the same time people don't really use the privacy that's available there because of the double system they have.
2:20:34And it's complicated. It doesn't work half of the time is my impression. Wallets have a problem with that technology.
2:20:41Vlad CosteaNo, that's like a very old argument. It's been... it's not true. Maybe this was true up to three years ago, but now they have a much easier user experience with wallets. It's basically because the cryptography is so complex that they needed more computing or they needed to make their signatures smaller to be able to work on mobile. For a long time this was the case. And if you look, there's a website that's called ZECHub.com where you can track. Okay, I'm gonna open it and then I'm gonna. Oh, it's not .com. ZECHub.wiki.
2:21:23They don't own the .com one. Maybe that they should buy it. And there is a visualizer here where you can see what's going on with the network and how many coins are shielded. And you're gonna be able to see on a chart.
2:21:39Oh, come on. I usually find this very easily and now they made their website more complicated. So ZECHub shielded.
2:22:01It used to be only like maybe a few thousand coins that were in these shielded pools with Zcash until a few years ago. But since last year, the supply of Zcash that's shielded has gone up. Now I think it's like one third of the supply that's shielded and it just keeps rising. Because it became much easier for people to do this. The coins that are not shielded are most likely on exchanges and institutional balance sheets. And that's why they're not shielded. But I think most users by now, they downloaded a proper wallet and they're able to use the shielded transactions.
2:22:41And on the topic of adoption. So I actually have this on my phone because I check it sometimes and I send it to Monero people when they say that Zcash does not take privacy seriously. So I'm gonna look for it. But what really happened with adoption is that they got integrated with DeFi services. Which is very smart because it's very hard to get the network effects go from shop to shop and convince them to accept something. So they said instead of trying to get people to accept Zcash directly, they're gonna integrate with stuff like the Maya Protocol and NEAR Intents.
2:23:20So that you can make a payment from your shielded Zcash into these liquidity pools. And then these liquidity pools do a swap. They take their half percent and they send USDT or Bitcoin or Litecoin or Ethereum or whatever the shop owner wants to their wallets. So what's happening here is that they have swaps built into their wallets. And you can send directly your shielded Zcash. And the receiver of the transaction, let's say that you're buying shoes or whatever, is gonna see that they received coins from this liquidity pool.
2:23:56So this way they will not know exactly what coin you used, how much of it you own, and all of this information that you would know if you paid with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, whatever directly from the base layer. So from this point of view, it was pretty smart. Right now there are 4.9 million Zcash that are shielded and the supply is 16.9 million. So that's like a quarter, 25% of the supply is in shielded pools. And it looks like this. It's like a parabola.
2:24:31Not so long ago. So let's look at 2018. They had 200,000 Zcash shielded. Last year, 2025, it was like 3 million maybe. But now it's 4.9, so almost 5 million.
2:24:555 million out of 16 is not that bad, to be honest. And the thing is that the trend keeps increasing. It's not like it's hard nowadays. It's just that some people have become lazy or they keep their coins on exchanges because they trade it. Yeah.
2:25:24Marc De MeselSo then it seems indeed that their privacy technology is used and also does not cause technical problems. So I was wrong about that.
2:25:41Vlad CosteaNo, you're not wrong. You're maybe a bit early with your information. Because I remember meeting some Zcash people in Prague like four or five years ago. I think it was five years ago. And they told me that they still don't have a wallet that has shielded transactions and it's such a challenge for them to do this. And what it took for them was just on one hand the hardware became faster and more powerful so you can have this on mobile phones. On the other hand, they also optimized their own technology to make signatures smaller and make it possible for you to sync the block filters and be able to use a mobile wallet in a private way.
2:26:27Because that was the big challenge. And now they have it figured out. There's even, I think last week they launched on Ledger so that if you are a Ledger user you're able to hold your shielded Zcash which is kind of a big deal. There are millions of Ledgers out there that were sold. And I don't have a ref link. And I don't recommend Ledger by the way. You don't buy Ledger.
2:26:51Marc De MeselYeah. Yeah. So, well, I find it difficult. Like actually I'm considering selling some of my Zcash here since it went up so much. But I know that that could cause to regret later. Because overall, I think the cryptocurrency bull market has just started. I mean, we're halfway. I think Bitcoin was the first part in 2023. Bitcoin started to go up a lot from 16k to 100k or higher. 115k was a peak or something if I remember it correctly. And then corrected strong. And people thought up until two months ago, this is the end of the bull market.
2:27:40But I thought, no, altcoins have done so poorly. That happens at the end of a bull market. That didn't happen yet. Bitcoin dominance has not collapsed yet. So this bull market is not completed and we still have to see altcoin season. And so I expected that to be next. And I think that's what we have started now is the last leg of the bull market where altcoins outperform Bitcoin. But valuation is still very low. If you look at the Trolololo chart that I often share via my X account, you have, we're still at serious undervaluation.
2:28:20If you look at crypto valuation, we're at 3 trillion today. But if you look at the trend line, where cryptocurrency should be today, it's a lot higher. We're still seriously undervalued to trend line. And the same is true for altcoins as a group. Actually, it's even worse. And so to be selling now Zcash to lock in some profits that even though it went up already a lot, may prove to be way too soon. And so I find that difficult. But I think I will stick with my decision because, well, Zcash, well, first of all, it went up a lot.
2:29:03Like, that's a fact. In like, how much? Three months or a year, it went up 30-fold. That's a major success. What sentiment in the market sentiment in the market is that, well, the Monero community is hating on Zcash going up so much. But I think it's also like people are, what I noticed, I woke up two days ago thinking about, damn, I should have bought more Zcash. And I know, I know that that's the sign of a top. If I start to feel like, oh, I should have bought more.
2:29:43Like, why didn't I buy more at the time? Why? Because I already sold a piece actually very recently before the rise around $500. I sold like 30% of my Zcash and a bunch of other coins. Also, I sold like 20% because I want to invest in Chinese EV companies. And so I lowered my cryptocurrency exposure from like 47% to 42%. But of my Zcash, I sold a big position like 30%. So I have that pain as Zcash goes up. Like, why did I sell it so early?
2:30:20That's the pain. But then I even woke up in the morning thinking like, how many coins do I have? And I should have bought more coins. And I know that's like a really strong indicator. That's when you need to sell. And the inverse is when you're thinking like, you have pain because it just went down a lot. And now you're looking at your position. You're thinking like, you're not looking at the amount of coins you have. You're not interested in that. Instead, you're looking at how much money you lost and how it sucks and how you regret having invested in this.
2:30:57Well, that's when you need to buy more. I don't have that feeling now. But I did have it three months ago about many projects. And that's why I ended up also selling a piece at the wrong time. But now it's the inverse. It's like, with Zcash, it's like, you know, I'm very happy I invest in it. But I wish I had invested more. And, okay, I don't have the tendency to invest more now. But I'm sure there are a bunch of people in the market now buying Zcash because they don't want to miss out on this trade after it already 30 fold in one year.
2:31:35So, yeah, I find it difficult decision. But yeah, about the fundamentals, I think I'm wrong to say they are not strong. They are strong of Zcash fundamentals. However, it's likely priced in at this point. And for others, maybe not so much. For example, Ethereum. Nobody's talking about Ethereum and how great of an investment that was because it went sideways five years, and it was not a good investment. However, the fundamentals are strong there. We could see an Ethereum next and Zcash may go sideways for half a year.
2:32:10And Ethereum pumps or Solana or maybe the privacy coin sector pumps and coins like Zano that also did poorly the past year. And the smaller coins, Firo, Pirate Bay. Performance was very bad up until now. Like, and even Monero...
2:32:27Vlad CosteaYou call it Pirate Bay, but it's Pirate Chain.
2:32:30Marc De MeselSorry, Pirate Chain. And even Monero did not do so well. It's okay. But so, like, everybody gets their light in the sun. And even if Zcash has good fundamentals, very likely the sun will shift to some other coins, even if we remain in a bull market. And they will pump a lot while Zcash starts to go sideways for a while. I think that's likely to happen. That's why I think, yeah, it is smart to sell some. And if you switch them to some other projects, maybe I think that can increase your returns.
2:33:09Vlad CosteaOkay, just for the record, let's look at the Zcash price to see if you're going to be right in a few months or in a year. Right now, one Zcash is $1,486. So let's see. Next time we talk, we can address this issue. You also have another interesting question in the chat from Victor Noir. He says, Marc, if you had to rebuild your entire net worth from zero today with the knowledge you now have, what would you do differently in the first three years?
2:33:47Marc De MeselIf I would build up my net worth now, what I would do is I would just invest in those things that I see an opportunity in. And so my portfolio would be empty. And I would be just cash and I would invest. And that's what I'm doing. Like, I do take new positions. And now in these Chinese EV companies, that's what I would do. I would start, I would just continue to do that. But now with no existing positions. And the same, I would buy some puts.
2:34:20I'm buying that now also on different markets that have pumped a lot. So, for example, I just bought some puts and I'm still building that position in Intel. Also in Korean stock market has pumped a lot. So I'm buying some puts there. And also in the sector of AI semiconductors index, I buy some puts because I think that the global market, the US stock market can have a strong correction, temporary correction of 30%. And these high flying stocks can correct very strong. And if you have some puts in your portfolio, they will be the only positions that make money because cryptocurrency will go down too if the US stock market corrects.
2:35:07And then if you have only a small exposure, let's say 3% in puts and it goes up to 10% of 20% of your portfolio, because the rest goes down and this goes up, then you have some cash to invest. Because you have to sell those puts then clearly that played out well. But that means you have cash to invest now is something that went down, which would be then the US stock market, but even emerging markets like China will probably go down even more than and I can build that position.
2:35:37So I would just continue to do the same, but I would actually at this point, would I invest in crypto? I would, because the Trolololo chart shows that, yeah, I mean, we're still seriously undervalued. So I would also buy into crypto, but not with 40, 50% of my portfolio. No, I would not do that at this point in time, because crypto, for example, compared to this Chinese EVs. I mean, of course, I'm not a fan of the Chinese dictatorial regime. But if you look at the risk reward of crypto versus Chinese stocks, I think I would say just roughly estimated is similar.
2:36:24And so they deserve a similar allocation. And I don't have that feeling impression anymore that the risk reward of crypto is greater than, for example, this. No, I don't have that. So yeah, I think that answers it.
2:36:45Vlad CosteaYeah, that's a good answer. I'm surprised you didn't say you would just buy Zano and Zcash or whatever.
2:36:53Marc De MeselI would invest in some crypto indeed and some privacy coins, but would I do immediately 50% as I have now? No. But three months ago, when the market was depressed, I could justify a bigger allocation. However, I wouldn't have dared. So maybe I put 10, 20%, maybe 25% at the maximum 30%. But that's and I would have to push myself very hard to do that. And that would be very scary. Maybe I would do that. But then I would have to do the same with these Chinese EV stocks.
2:37:32And so it's just, it would take time to take in that position. I would do it maybe 20% each. But yeah, I would. Yeah, I would do that, but not with as much as I'm invested now.
2:37:49Vlad CosteaYeah, that's fair. I was looking at the other questions for you. But there's a remark from someone named nfthunter2338. He says Bitcoin or bust. He doesn't get it. It's funny. Anyway, Dr.
2:38:07Marc De MeselYeah, he says if he doesn't get it. Yeah. He just goes all in on Bitcoin. I believe. No.
2:38:18Vlad CosteaI don't know. He hasn't left another message to explain anything. He just says, oh, he says below, does BTrash still exist? He's just trolling the chat.
2:38:30Marc De MeselYeah, yeah. So BTrash. So he hates on Bitcoin Cash. Yeah, this as we've seen a lot in the past, they call it BTrash and other names. They're just name calling a project. And I think he seems to be frustrated. That's why he says Bitcoin or bust. He believes Bitcoin BTC is everything and something like Bitcoin Cash is nonsense and he should not invest in it. Yeah.
2:39:04Vlad CosteaThere's a more interesting question from someone named Dr. Kirkeso. Kirkeso, I guess. Kirkeso. I'm not sure how you pronounce that, but it's a doctor. And he says many people who made early Bitcoin money eventually diversified heavily into normal assets. Why have you stayed so concentrated in high conviction, high volatility ideas?
2:39:29Marc De MeselI would say that I've done the same because only half my portfolio invested in crypto and the other half not. However, the other investments you could say are also high volatility ideas.
2:39:52For example, these Chinese EV companies, of course, is volatile and that these are high growth sectors is volatile and have some other investments, I invest in hedge funds. One is small caps, that's also volatile. The other one is call options on Tesla. That's also very volatile. And I have another fund, it's a hedge fund, more focused on commodity sector. But I mean, that's not volatile actually, and it is a 15% exposure of my portfolio, but only one five at 15%. But I think that's why I call my portfolio Holy Grail portfolio.
2:40:33I think the trick to success to build because I have had an extremely volatile portfolio in the past by investing mainly in cryptocurrency. I had years of multiplying my portfolio and years of several, three times I lost 80% or more of my portfolio and that's very painful. So most people can't stand such extreme volatility. And I also had it, especially with the last one, where in 2022, I lost 93% of my portfolio, the biggest ever, because I started playing with leverage and made some huge mistakes.
2:41:07So I really have pledged to build a portfolio in a different manner, not with big concentrated positions in crypto, I used to have like 80% in crypto. I won't do that anymore, but instead have different, non-correlated, great investments. Each one of them can be volatile, but they have to be non-correlated and they have to bet on different things so that if one plays out, I make enough, I make the return. And my goal is to have a 20% annual growth rate, compound annual growth rate per year after inflation.
2:41:45That's my target. If you succeed in that, you do very well, of course. And that's not so easy to accomplish it. I still have that, but it becomes harder and harder to get that, but I think I can continue to achieve that if I have only good investments, because the problem is when you want to build security, what people often do is they take bad investments like real estate or bonds or market leaders that they think are safe, like the stock index, like S&P 500 stock index, they consider that safe, but that's not safe.
2:42:21This is actually a very concentrated position is something that's very likely to have very poor returns over the next 10 years. And it's the same for bonds or for real estate. Most real estate is priced very high compared to the income of people and it has already become unaffordable, but the same is true for S&P 500. So people, they try to build safety and you also see that from early crypto investors and early tech investors, that they will, what they will do is they will sell a big piece and then they go invest in real estate or something to solidify their capital to say, to put it more safe, but they lose growth with that.
2:43:12Like you cannot grow if you put it in real estate or bonds or S&P 500. I mean, yeah, in the past it has worked out for some people if they use lots of leverage in real estate and the economy was growing, but what worked in the past won't work in the future. Same with S&P 500 and same with crypto, like anything, you have to look at it like, will it grow a lot in the future? Because only then you're going to make money there and you can't say that for many things.
2:43:46But many people build security in their portfolio by selling their great investments and then buying basically bad investments that are considered not volatile and safe. But then that's the way to basically lose growth. So what I try to achieve is different, like, yes, I don't want to have a big concentrated portfolio position anymore in crypto, but I want to invest in other great investments that also have the potential to tenfold and that are not correlated to crypto. That's what I try to build and that's what I believe I have in my portfolio still.
2:44:25And I think that's a smart way to approach it.
2:44:31Vlad CosteaYeah, I mean, 20% is very ambitious and if you can accomplish it, you're a successful investor.
2:44:40The other question that you got is from Mark Evelyn. I'm not sure how you pronounce this once again, but he says, between Bitcoin, Tesla and Bitcoin Cash, which one has taught you the most about human nature?
2:45:00Marc De MeselThat's a question for a philosopher about human nature. Maybe I can say a little bit more about women, their human nature. I've studied that more than just general people and their nature. But I would say that Bitcoin, I find it very interesting, the power structure of this world and how things work. And when I invest in Bitcoin at the beginning, I thought, like, they will never allow this to happen. And at one point I thought I was wrong, like, actually they do allow this to happen. But now, years later, we can say like, no, no, no, they indeed did not allow this to happen.
2:45:44They just did not do it openly. Openly they said, yes, you can do it. But behind the doors, what they did was they hijacked the project. And the powers that be made sure that Bitcoin did not take over the banking world. And they did that very well and they succeeded in that. Indeed, Bitcoin is no threat anymore to the banking world, but they actually are failing if you zoom out, because indeed, in the West, stablecoins are not used, but in the South, the global South, as you say, actually stablecoins are used and they are used on cryptocurrency networks.
2:46:27And so the big innovation that cryptocurrency brought, they were unable to really sidetrack that. And so, yeah, the powers that be, they have their ways to try to sabotage things so that they don't lose on the right side, but on the left side, they will put some chips down as well in the new thing to make sure they don't miss out. And I think both of these forces are happening when it comes to Bitcoin BTC. So maybe that's a little human nature insight, but I don't know if that's answering the question, if he was hinting in that direction.
2:47:14Vlad CosteaI don't know. It was about human nature and you answered what's in your nature to answer. Ronnie FDZ wants to know, do you have an actual guardian angel costume at home or is the title just honorary?
2:47:34Marc De MeselAnd why is he asking that?
2:47:38Vlad CosteaBecause I think I called you like the guardian angel of Bitcoin Cash.
2:47:43Marc De MeselNo. Okay. Okay. And I don't have the guardian angel costume, but if you have one, you can send it to me because I have some pretty girls that I could have it wear and look even prettier. I received this name because of my contributions in Bitcoin Cash and it did really invest hard. I gave a lot of donations to the many projects that tried to build on Bitcoin Cash, but this is now years ago. I spent a lot of money on that, but actually this was to no avail.
2:48:23I would say I helped start a project, the Read.cash, Noise.cash, but a lot of money basically was lost to supporting these projects that end up failing. And that's how it goes when you're investing in entrepreneurship. You do have to try many things for something to hit and succeed. And it's the same in the world of dating and women. I mean, there are different approaches. Some people do approach it the religious way and the conservative way of basically not having any experience with the other sex and then choosing at young age for someone and sticking with that person for the rest of their life.
2:49:19That is one possible approach, but yeah, that's not been my approach. My experience is quite different. You really don't know how things will pan out and you have to bet on different horses and be surprised to yourself how investments or how women respond to the different challenges in life. Some for the better, some for the not as good. Things can fail and some things can succeed. But if you bet on different horses, then something will work out. And yeah, that's my approach.
2:49:58Vlad CosteaI like how we're slowly getting there to the point where we're going to talk about girlfriends. But before that, Arnold02p wants to know on a scale of one to I donated another bag to the ecosystem. How strong is your Bitcoin Cash addiction these days?
2:50:23Marc De MeselMy BCH addiction has gone down a lot because I just noticed something really went wrong in 2022 during the cryptocurrency crash. I noticed that Bitcoin Cash did not go up as much as at all that I had hoped for and predicted. I predicted Bitcoin Cash to go up from at the time it was still $300-$500 to I thought $30,000 in 2020. That was my prediction. But two years later, cryptocurrency had gone up a lot in 2021 and Bitcoin Cash peaked out at only $1,500.
2:51:09Then it corrected.
2:51:10But I was wrong the whole year. I thought we're still in a bull market, but we had started the bear market. But also I played with leverage and I got margin calls and had to sell crypto to meet my margin calls and I chose to sell Bitcoin Cash. A very big part of my position was lost there in these margin calls. But I consciously chose to liquidate Bitcoin Cash more than Ethereum because it just didn't happen what I had hoped for it to happen. That it really would gain traction and take a piece of the Bitcoin market and that you would see developers come and really start building on top of that.
2:52:01My position was liquidated a lot during that year, 2022, and then later I just had a big hangover. I took it a lot more carefully. I would say that my BCH addiction died in 2022-2023. Since then I have been sober.
2:52:31Vlad CosteaCrazy how that's even possible. You have another question from Christopher-Y7Q6L and he says, if your portfolio had a dating profile, would it put love's long walks on the beach and deeply unpopular cryptocurrencies?
2:52:56Marc De MeselLet me check that.
2:53:07That's too complicated for my brain. Can you get it?
2:53:12Vlad CosteaSo people put descriptions on their dating profiles, right? And they say, well, I love long walks on the beach. And this guy wants to know if you would put that and also that you like. Let me read that again. So I know deeply unpopular cryptocurrencies.
2:53:31Marc De MeselOh yeah, indeed. And now I get it. If I would have a dating profile, would I write that there, that I love long walks on the beach and that I like investing in deeply unpopular cryptocurrencies? No, I would certainly not put that there. I know how the minds of women work and that wouldn't make their pussy wet. So I would certainly not put that there because I know I would have zero attraction with that.
2:54:03Vlad CosteaBut let me ask the follow-up question. What do you think has a lot of attraction and gets the ladies wet?
2:54:13Marc De MeselBut for the ladies looks is first, I do believe that to be true, you really need to look good. And money is second. If you can also make it look like you have money in your pictures, that will help a lot. And I think if you look at it, like on the scale of like how important is it, like for a man, the looks of a woman is like 90 percent. Like it's everything. And how much money she has doesn't matter. Or you could say maybe 10 percent or what job she has is maybe 10 percent.
2:54:52But for a woman, it's more like the looks is like 60 percent. And then what kind of job you have or how much money you have is like another 30 percent or so. So it's for them a lot more important than for us. But looks, I think like I've long thought I've long actually underestimated looks is also very important. And so you really need to look your best if you want to attract the opposite sex. You really need to not neglect that. Like that's the easiest way to get no interest for a woman is neglect your looks.
2:55:30But at the same time, you also need to I mean, you need to use the tools. Women, the way they operate is that for women, it's very important that you have resources. Because a man without resources is useless. But how can you show that you have resources? Well, it's done the cliches, the cliche way. It's done the cliche style. Like you need that need to show in your pictures or in your description that you have resources. That means you have either a good job or assets. But you can't say it directly like that.
2:56:12You could say it directly like that, but it can also show in your picture. But yeah, these are important things. So I mean, women really don't care that you love long walks on the beach. So there's no point saying that and that you invest in unpopular stuff. There's also no point in saying that because they don't understand that that's the key to making money. They only want to see the results of you making money, not how you make it, because they don't understand that process. So if you say I'm an investor and in my case, I can say I'm a successful investor.
2:56:55That's enough. That will make some pussies already wet. If you also look good, however, if you look bad, then you can say you're a successful investor, but you still have a problem because the ones that will respond will look bad also.
2:57:13So if you want to overcome your bad looks with money, you're going to have to bring something else to the table, such as game, for example. If you really don't want to look your best, well, you can, for example, develop your qualities in the humor department and make it. You may not look great, but if you have money and you can make a woman laugh, she might open up to you. But you need to develop your skills in humor then.
2:57:50Vlad CosteaWhy did you stop? You spoke about humor and then suddenly you had like a pause.
2:57:57Marc De MeselI was just thinking, am I answering the question? I forgot what the question was. I went on a tangent.
2:58:03Vlad CosteaIt's more about what you would put on your dating profile.
2:58:07Marc De MeselYes. So in my case, well, I actually, I never used, I was very unsuccessful using dating websites. So the correct answer for me would be I don't use dating websites because I totally failed in finding someone there and I did not stood out at all. But this, I tried that in my twenties and I was not looking good.
2:58:34I had added a lot of weight and you could see in my pictures that I was not handsome and more like a beta male. And then I was not so confident. So probably in my description, they could tell also that I'm not so confident. And so I could only get the interest of ugly chicks. And I had a few dates and the ugly chicks were, well, looking OK on the picture. But in real life, I mean, these pictures were five years old or they had gained some weight.
2:59:05And I remember only one such a date. And it was a disaster. I was so unhappy. So I stopped quite quickly with these dating websites because it was just so pointless. And it's only many years later that I now understand why I was so unsuccessful. But I changed strategies. I told myself this, I'm going to focus on making money because women, they want, they want, you need money. And if you have money, you can have beautiful chicks and otherwise not. So the next 10 years, I was focused on just making money.
2:59:41Sometimes maybe I got lucky here and there, but not, not nothing, nothing, nothing big to talk about to happen. It's only after I made money then when I was 35, 36, 37, thanks to investing in crypto that I said, OK, now I'm going to start focusing on women. And then first thing I started with is improving my looks, starting to lose some weight. And but I also got confidence because I got, I was a successful investor. Now I was, I got more confidence from that. And that also led to me losing some weight and then starting to dress better and then starting to study how you can get women.
3:00:23And I studied this one guy, Corey Wayne on YouTube, who had many videos. How can you approach women and go on dates? And he had an approach very different than dating websites. But his approach was called approach that you should not you should stop women, but not in the club, not in the club. There's too much competition there. You should stop women that you find attractive in the mall or in the library, places where they don't expect to be approached. And that's where you can actually get telephone numbers for women that are attractive.
3:01:02And he had a whole system that I followed. And that's how I got started by getting numbers from women that are attractive by doing a big numbers game and basically having to stop a hundred women saying, hey, I think you're beautiful. What's your name? Could I get your number? Maybe you can go for a drink sometime. And that's how I got numbers then. And then you go on and then you learn how to deal with women because they have all kinds of tricks to basically avoid being with you and how to separate the chaff, the good ones from the bad ones.
3:01:48There are a lot of things there that I learned from this Corey Wayne guy, and that was that led me to being successful with women.
3:02:00Vlad CosteaI think the best dating advice that I can ever give in this lifetime is to never take dating advice from women. Like if you ask them what they like, they tell you something which is not necessarily true. It's not what they want. It's what they maybe they appreciate, but it's not what they want. And they will not tell you what they want. That's the thing. They never tell you what they want. You have to guess that unless it's food.
3:02:30But even in that case, it's a guessing game. But for the listeners, for context in this conversation, I got to tell them that you're tall, you have blonde hair, blue eyes. You know that there are a lot of guys out there who are maybe less handsome than you are, less good looking and maybe even less confident. So the fact that you're telling the story and you're describing yourself as someone who had no confidence and was dating the ugly fat chicks. I mean, that's depressing. It is very depressing.
3:03:09You had no success on dating websites. Maybe that there are too many guys with blue eyes and blonde hair in your country. I don't know about that. But in my country, you would crush like, yeah, girls would be like, oh, he's so good looking.
3:03:26Marc De MeselYeah, yeah. Sorry, I missed the piece there because I got a call here. But yeah, I agree with that. But now I look also better. Like I can show you some pictures of me.
3:03:36Vlad CosteaNo, you don't have to show me pictures.
3:03:39Marc De MeselSo but like I do look better now for my age. I look good. But that's also because I so so I can certainly look worse than this. And I like but I agree that my looks are OK for my age now and and that many men have to do with worse looks and how can they find someone.
3:04:03That's a very good question. And I think that, well, I've actually also added other strategies to to be able to find multiple women. Like I have multiple women now, young women that are willing to make babies with me. But I think for the most man, they don't, of course, try for that. They would be happy to just find one that they find attractive and that wants to stay with them. And that's a challenge for many men these days. So I can give some tips what I think they should do.
3:04:38But one of the things I did myself was I actually went fishing elsewhere. I'm not even fishing here in Europe amongst the white woman because I was not successful with them. So I had to actually approach because when I started cold approach, when I was already 35, 37, and I'm also more attracted to women that have a brown skin. That was already the case when I was just interested in white women, then it was the white woman with brown hair that I was interested in or the white woman more from the south Spanish or something with a more brown tone on the skin.
3:05:21So I had that preference already, but like I was just not successful with white women very much. And I noticed that immigrant women that are brown or black race, I was just more successful with them because I like younger women. So when I approach a young white woman or a young brown or a young black woman, I will have a much higher success rate with a young brown or a young black one than a young white one. So that's how I veered towards the other race is because I got a lot more higher success rate there.
3:06:01And I find that notable that so many white men are not interested at all in black women, for example. For me, it's fine. They're all for me then. I'm okay with that. But I think they're missing out because it's so much easier to find a beautiful black woman than to find a beautiful young black woman that wants to make babies. It's so much easier than finding a young, beautiful white woman that wants to give you babies. On the scale of 10, it's at least 10 times easier, if not 100 times easier.
3:06:37However, it comes with extra costs, of course, if you want a woman to also make money so that you can put your income together. You can forget about that if you go after the black one, of course, if you go after an immigrant one, you'll be paying the bills.
3:06:55So that's not for all men these days. But I think your audience, they are invested in cryptocurrency. They're more well-off than the average man. They probably have some savings and they're able to actually find an immigrant woman or go travel and find them abroad and have them as a housewife and mother of your children and be the sole provider. I think most of your audience is able to do that. And that would lead probably to a successful family a lot faster than being on dating websites in the West.
3:07:34I mean, that's not going to work.
3:07:39Vlad CosteaRight. So how did you get from trying to find a girl on a dating website to having multiple girlfriends? Was this always your dream or how did you get to Polygamy? Since we're small, we're told this fairy tale about becoming the prince who's going to marry the princess and, I don't know, save the world and whatever. So this is like every boy's dream, to find the perfect girl and settle down and start a family. But somehow, not only that you rejected European women that you feel have failed you and they did not appreciate you and made your life harder, but you decided you don't want only one.
3:08:23I don't know. How many girlfriends do you have right now?
3:08:27Marc De MeselI have, you could say, three and a half. So three that have signed up and that are with me, but then I have a half where I'm working on, but it's not a done deal.
3:08:44Vlad CosteaWhat do you mean a done deal?
3:08:47Marc De MeselI mean, she didn't sign up to get pregnant from me yet.
3:08:53Vlad CosteaBut you think that she will?
3:08:57Marc De MeselMaybe. We will see. Maybe. It's not clear. I mean, it can jump off also still. That's not clear. So, but to answer your question, it's a very interesting question. I think the answer to that is that I got my heart broken by a white woman. I was crazy about one in my 20s. She was actually my childhood love and then we got together when I was 20. But she basically, yeah, I was chasing her more than she was me and loving her more than she was me.
3:09:30And she ended up basically choosing an older guy and get pregnant from. Actually, just choosing an older guy above me. And then I was still crazy about her for another five years and 10 years. It was easily would go still with her when she came back. But yeah, that was a big waste of time. And then in my young years, I did also the friendship approaches some women that I like them, I'll be their friend, but I didn't dare to go the sexual route or kiss them.
3:10:03And then I waste time with this woman because in the end, they don't choose me. They choose another guy who's more aggressive in his approach or more smart in his approach. But what happened was that when I started following this guy, Corey Wayne, he was explaining that you shouldn't when you're looking for a girlfriend, you shouldn't just be busy with one. Because like when you approach woman and you ask for telephone numbers, you shouldn't stop when you have one telephone number because you don't know if that's going to pan out.
3:10:45You will see it's best to actually have keep looking for more numbers and keep working on different woman. Try to go on a first date. Try to go try to get a first kiss. Try to go on a second date and escalate. And try that with different woman at the same time because most will drop off. And if you do find one that you really like, then you can say, okay, actually, I want to go monogamous with you and settle down with you. So then you can also stop the other relationships that you started.
3:11:19That's his approach. And I copied that. And I really liked that. I was like, oh, I'll go on a date on Tuesday with this one. And then on Saturday, I go on a date with the other woman. I really liked that. And what I noticed to my surprise was that these women don't care, actually. It's not a put off for them. It's actually an attraction to them. I would have thought the way I was raised is like, that's infidelity. You should, of course, never see two girls at the same time.
3:11:50You only choose one and you go for her. And you shut up about your interests for any other woman. You keep that a secret because she won't want to hear that and she may dump you for it. However, that's not true. Women are not like that. Women, if they are really interested in you, they will ask you, they will try to find out if there's any other woman in your life. And if there is any other woman in her life, she will not go away. No, she will do even more her best to become yours.
3:12:24Because she will feel now that, oh, I'm not the only one that's positive. Like, actually, if there are other women liking you, that's actually for her positive news. That means she's not wrong about you. It means there are other women that can also see the value of you. And so she was right to be going for you. And actually, often you will see that what happens if a woman likes you and another woman sees that she likes you also. So women are more like social group animals, much more so than men.
3:13:01And so, yeah, that's an interesting dynamic that I discovered. Like, I never had a woman leaving me because I also am seeing other women. That never happened.
3:13:19So, yeah, I really enjoyed that process of actually dating multiple women at the same time. And then the next step was that I then followed this Corey Wayne, his advice, and I found a good one and said, okay, I stopped the other ones. But then I saw the relationship with this lady and she was from Mauritius. It was a black lady, but it looks more Indian. So Indian black. And then we had the relationship. And after one year, I noticed that things were starting to get boring.
3:13:58Like I had experienced in the past with relationships. Usually after one year, it becomes boring. And instead of going out to sit in the couch more, I'm gaining weight. The lady is gaining weight. She starts to eat more. My attraction is going down, but we're still staying together because while we love each other now, we like each other and it's getting comfy. But actually my sexual attraction is going down. And then at year two, it's gotten so bad that basically the relationship ends. And that's happened here also.
3:14:30And I said to myself, you know, next time I'm not going to get rid of the other woman because why should I? Actually, polygamy does exist in this world and it can work. And why shouldn't I try that myself? Because I really like dating multiple women and being in a relationship with just one woman then later on is not actually, it's not an improvement. I would like to try polygamy where I actually keep the relationship going with several women at the same time. And that's how I got into that really.
3:15:09And then shortly after I realized that I won't be able to pull that off in Europe. So let me go to Africa where they have actually a polygamous culture. And let me start that there. And that's how that happened.
3:15:29Vlad CosteaRight. But how do you approach polygamy? Is it only for yourself and then you find these women and you have kids with them and they stay loyal to you and then you get another one because you want another baby? Or does it go both ways where they can go have fun?
3:15:45Marc De MeselNo, no, no. They cannot go have fun with another man. That's also not polygamy. Polygamy means the man has multiple women and the woman has one man.
3:16:00The name for what you describe is maybe polyamory, where you can have multiple partners, but the women also. But I don't believe, I mean, it depends. You have some very liberal men that are okay that their woman gets fucked by another man and they even get off on it. But I would say that causes a problem when you want to make babies, because I do want it to be my baby and not another man's baby that I'm raising. And so if she's going to sleep with another man, then she might get pregnant from another man.
3:16:43And I don't want that. Also, I will lose her. Not only will she have a baby with another man, she will also go to the other man and she will lose her interest. Actually, women are not able, they are able, but I mean, you shouldn't really, actually in Kenya, I've seen that they are part of the culture because they are so poor at the bottom of society. 80% of society is really poor. And so actually what happens there is that, and they joke about it, you have a man for your rent, and then you have a man for taking you out, and then you have a man for doing trips with.
3:17:22So actually, women having multiple men to cover part of their expenses is actually, that happens there. But if you're able to pay for the woman in full, then you shouldn't accept that there are other men because you're paying all the bills. And you should have also sole access to the vagina, and you should be the father of the children she's bearing. It should be your DNA that is procreated and not another's man because you're paying the bills. You provide for her, you protect her, so it's with your DNA that she needs to procreate and have your children, your blood.
3:18:09So it's a selfish thing and healthy, selfish thing to want as a man to not share your woman with another man if you don't have to. But that's the question. Are you indeed a good enough provider to have a woman fully to your own? If you do, you should also insist on getting that exclusivity.
3:18:34Vlad CosteaThere's a guy in the chat who said that this is his goals. He agrees, he says, "I agree, comma, my goals."
3:18:45Okay, so how many kids do you have right now, Marc?
3:18:49Marc De MeselSeven, so that's not so many actually, but I'm still working on it.
3:18:57Vlad CosteaHow many do you want?
3:18:59Marc De MeselI would like a very high number. I set a very high goal, 30.
3:19:05Vlad CosteaWhy 30?
3:19:06Marc De MeselIt's just a number that's so high that you can say it's crazy, but actually it depends from what perspective you look at it. Can I provide for that? Yes, I can afford it. So why wouldn't I do it? I believe it's good and it's fun. And it will be rewarding to have that. If I can achieve it, it's good. I could say 50 also, or I could say 100 also. But I mean, 30 is something that I think I could achieve if I continue to work another 10, 20 years in adding women and babies.
3:19:53Vlad CosteaHow many babies do you have with one woman?
3:19:58Marc De MeselOnly three. With one and with the other one, two. And then I have two women with one. Kids.
3:20:07Yes. And so that's the composition.
3:20:15Vlad CosteaHow do you pick the women? Like, do you go to Kenya? I suppose because since you had some legal troubles that you solved like three years ago with the Kenyan government that I don't know what the charges were, but it seems like it was like a big chapter of your life having to deal with that. Is that the country where you go for finding your partner? Or have you searched in other places? Like, I don't know. Is it different by religion? Is it different by culture where you have more success?
3:20:50Marc De MeselYeah, so I moved to Kenya. I lived there a couple of years and that's where I found my first girlfriends. But yeah, I had to leave the country because of the corruption there. I was accused of false accusations made against me. And it became dangerous there as a problem of these African countries. Very corrupt. And there is no rule of law. And sadly, that affected me also. But yeah, and then I found also one girlfriend via the Internet because I became a celebrity there. I was all over the news there giving large amount of money to my girlfriends.
3:21:35And then they accused me of money. Laundering and they froze that money. And then they want to, they're still trying to steal that. We're still in court cases dealing with that. But at the same time, it made me a celebrity there because, oh, wow, this guy sent so much money to his girlfriend. I want to be his girlfriend also. So I got a whole bunch of DMS and I ended up finding another girlfriend that way just by becoming a celebrity there. But yeah, I'm not setting foot anymore there.
3:22:06Of course, sadly, that's not possible anymore. But yeah, there are many, many African countries and it's a bit similar in that as a white man, you have a very big edge there. And that's true also in some Asian countries and just Latin American countries. As a white man, they know that, well, you're a much better pick than the local man for different reasons. And so you just can get you don't have to be a celebrity. You can get a lot more beautiful and younger woman there that are willing to give you a baby or to build a family with you than you are in the West.
3:22:49Because when you're white, you're perceived as rich. Even when you're just an average income guy, you're richer and responsible because white guys have the reputation that they will provide even when you break up with him, they will actually still support, pays child support. And that's unthinkable there. Like that never happens. That's very rare for when they break up that the man will pay child support. No, when the relationship is over, the guy is gone and you can manage it on your own. And you have to find a new guy to convince that, you know, I have kids already, but I'll give you a kid too.
3:23:33And then you take care of me and my kids. That's how it gets. It goes there. So they know they have more financial security and they know, and that's of course a bit, that's a bit the negative I would say, but they know that white men are also more helpful in the household and black men are, or brown men are, and the less abusive. There's a lots of beating, beating is still common there, beating your wife or beating your girlfriend. And so, I mean, yeah. So for these different reasons, if you're a white guy, even if you're older and not good looking, you still have a big edge.
3:24:16You still can get a lot more beautiful young woman there than here. So, yeah.
3:24:25But yeah, so I continue to travel. I've been to Ethiopia recently to look for a new girlfriend, to add a girlfriend, but I was not so successful there because there's a cultural problem with monogamy... polygamy. Yeah, they really don't seem to go for that. And so they don't really go on a second date after they hear about that. The culture is very different than sub-Saharan Africa because Ethiopia is just above the Sahara and it's not sub-Saharan. Sub-Saharan Africa is, in my experience, easier than the north of Africa.
3:25:05The north of Africa, yeah, the culture is different and it's not so easy, polygamy. And as a white man, you don't have such a big edge there, it seems.
3:25:18Vlad CosteaThat's interesting. So there are only a few countries where you can have success.
3:25:24Marc De MeselYeah, it depends indeed. For me, it depends clearly on the countries, yeah.
3:25:30Vlad CosteaSo how much money should you have to be able to have two or three girlfriends from, let's say, Ethiopia or Kenya?
3:25:43We're trying to determine stacking goals here. How much money should you make or invest by the end of the year or until next year if you want to reach the mark level of being a womanizer?
3:25:56Yeah.
3:26:00Marc De MeselI think, okay, I've not thought this through, but okay, if I would have to start, you start by going there. You don't use online dating and all that. You go there, you just go to a mall and you approach a woman you find attractive. You ask for the number, you go on a first date. Very quickly, you'll find a girlfriend and have some experience. You need money to travel there. You need to be able to not be stuck to a job in the West so that you can stay there, spend time there.
3:26:39Or you need to be able to take holidays to do that. But that's how you can get started with your first relationship and you can start several relationships at the same time. But you will also notice like it's a jungle out there and black woman, I mean, the moral standards are lower in Africa than they are in the West. So, I mean, cheating happens more there, lying happens more, stealing happens more. So, I mean, you will have to go to some learning process as to find a good one.
3:27:18You'll probably be misled a few times, disappointed a few times. But I mean, I think you can add, I find women there more easily how much money you need. You will have to send money. So, they do expect you to send money. If you don't send money or you have to give money when you're there, but they need to receive money. How much?
3:27:54I mean, $1,000 is meaningful for them. If you give them $1,000 every three months, you can certainly keep them around. But it depends, of course. But then they will also want, if you can give more, that's the better. They want to build a house for their parents, that cost a lot more. That will cost you $30,000 or $50,000 to give like these kind of amounts that will make them very happy. Then you will, you're certainly a keeper, even if you're a cheater, you're a keeper.
3:28:37So, yeah.
3:28:38But I'm not cheating. I don't have to. I can just tell them, I tell them from the start, it's a polygamous relationship. So, if that's not for you, then we're not meant to be. And indeed, half of them actually say no to that. But the other half is okay with that.
3:29:00Vlad CosteaAnd by okay, you mean that they're going to end up living together and they stand each other or do you keep them in different places?
3:29:09Marc De MeselNo, yeah, no living together they don't want. And that's a hard sell. However, it also depends a bit how you tackle that. Because I never approached it like that, but I'm pretty sure you could tackle it like that it's possible. But there's lots of resistance, actually, women will try to get a monogamous relationship, they will go, they will say, yeah, it's okay, polygamous, but the problems will come when you the first one you add after her drama will enter your life. And you will have to stand strong to keep your polygamous relationship going, because you will fight to make you give up on it.
3:29:49And she will only give up on her battle when she realized there's no point that I'm going to lose him if I keep trying to get him just for myself. So yeah, I mean, it's not an easy accomplishment. But if you stick to your point, then they do stick around also. What was your question?
3:30:16Vlad CosteaIt doesn't matter. I was just thinking that usually, so I've heard men who become Muslim, so they can have four wives. And that that's something that can work in some parts of the world. I've heard men who search for nannies in Thailand or something. And that's how they get married. They find a lady who's looking for work in Europe, and they find that and it's fairly easy because they have the leverage when it comes to money. But you're possibly the first European who tells me that he went to Kenya and he picked up so many girlfriends and you keep them in different places.
3:30:54So it's not like they're under the same roof. And I guess you visit them like a few days a month or something and you just keep switching places. You don't have a place that you call home. How are you going to raise the kids this way? Because you have lots of kids. Obviously, you don't want them to be educated by the state, right? So how are you going to do a good job with this if you're not with them?
3:31:19Marc De MeselWell, so the way I approach it is that I do want to build one family. And so, yeah, they have their own place, but I want them to live close by to each other and so that they can help each other, meet each other so that we can spend time together, of course, whenever possible. And so I do, yeah, I try to bring them over to Switzerland, where I live, and or if there are other ways to bring them over to Europe so that they can start a live in Europe.
3:32:00And yeah, we are one family. It's not that it's like separate women that don't have no contact with each other. Of course, it's very easy to build it out, but I'm not interested in that. But that's what women would prefer. Like for women, that's how it's actually also done in Kenya, for example, where open polygamy has become rare, but it's very normal for a guy to have multiple women separated from each other and they lie about it. So, and it's only after five years that the, or when he dies, that they find out actually multiple women, but there is clearly something going on because there's clearly a secret life going on if you are looking into it.
3:32:48And so that's how they do it there. But I'm much more interested in a real polygamous relationship where ideally I would want them to live under the same roof, actually, I think that's the best. But yeah, that's a very hard sell. And so they are very happy when they have their own house, but they're okay to live close by and basically be a group and be nice to each other and help each other where possible and do things together, such as trip togethers or activities together on a Sunday or invite each other's home for events.
3:33:22And that's how I do it.
3:33:26I forgot what else I want to say about that.
3:33:36Could you remind me maybe you were talking about the Thai approach that you have different nannies from Thailand or from Philippines, and that that's how they have multiple women. You've heard of that?
3:33:49Vlad CosteaI've heard of this. I've also heard of men becoming Muslim so that they can go to Morocco or something and have multiple wives. But that's also complicated because you get your first one and you can't get married to another one unless you have permission from basically your first wife is the gatekeeper. And she gets to decide if you're allowed to marry that woman or not. She has to give you the permission.
3:34:17So it works like that. If you're lucky, you're going to get all four. If you're not, you're stuck.
3:34:22Marc De MeselOkay. Yeah, that's giving the woman way too much power. Like she basically can keep you in a monogamous relationship. I would certainly not sign up for that. But I'm not marrying my woman because polygamy is not allowed in my culture. But I am allowed to have multiple girlfriends at the same time and make babies with them. That's legal. And so that's how I do it. And that means that there is no marriage possible. And the way I sell that, because that can be a problem. Some women really value marriage a lot, is that I give them financial security.
3:35:03So I do buy a house for their parents. I do give them financial gifts on their name that they can start to invest themselves. And of course, you can only do that as a rich guy. But basically, that's how I also sell them the idea, look, we're not going to get married, but I'm going to build my financial security for you. And that's also why I did these large gifts that then were blocked by the Kenyan government and they are trying to steal. And that was from my bank account to the bank account of two of my girlfriends that lived in Kenya.
3:35:47But I don't give a say to the first one. I did learn the hard way that they need to like each other because after I found my first one in Kenya, I added a second one, but the second one was not nice to the first one. The first one was also not nice to the second one, but that's to be expected. But the second one is supposed to be nice to the first one. And that was not the case. And so that escalated in a big conflict.
3:36:14And that's how I learned, look, if I'm adding women, they need to be nice to the existing ones and they need to be submissive to the existing ones, not only to me, but also to my existing girlfriends. They need to be submissive.
3:36:27And that I've learned the hard way. So I pay attention to that now that those that join, that they are liked by the existing ones and that they behave well. That has been, became important. When it comes to schooling, yes, I do separate my time over the different houses. And indeed, I see my children less than in a normal monogamous relationship. And I approach that a bit old school because actually, we used to, when we were making many children, when a household had on average eight or 10 children, the father had a very different role in the family.
3:37:14He was not there to spend quality time with the children. We were also at the time more poor. Usually the man would work from morning till evening and would actually have a much lesser of a contact with his children. Maybe on Sunday, they would go to church together and the father would give the beatings when necessary. But hey, quality time that didn't even exist as a word at the time. The father was the guy that is there to correct those that were too naughty for the mothers to handle and to give fatherly guidance and direction.
3:37:55He was the head of the household, but he didn't do it with time. He did it with his money and with his authority. The time was what the mother spent in the children. She was home and she spent all the time on the children. And yeah, I approach it a bit that way also. Like I do, of course, spend some quality time with my children, but not as much as I think people would, the average modern man does today know. Because I think that actually we have, quality has become way too important over quantity.
3:38:36We are actually going into extinction as a race. And so we don't need to have, we really need to have more children. And so the reason why people have few children is because they, there are different reasons, but one of them is that they have too high of a, they want to invest, they want the life for the children to be too good. And that costs too much. And then, of course, they don't want many children. Because the children are too costly. I think that you already do a lot by creating children and providing for them.
3:39:23Quality time can be less than what modern life is expecting from us. And so that's also what I do. And the same, actually, with the relationships, man, woman, I believe that women actually don't really need the man at their side as much. And actually, like, these kind of relationships were not successful for me when I approached this romantic way that we are learned, like how should a relation be that you should like be there by the side of your woman. And even to help her with household stuff and to be her emotional support and to be her friend.
3:40:13And it's all too much and it creates a relationship where the woman loses her attraction for you and she will dump your ass because she will tell that it's gotten boring and she's not so attracted to anymore. Like, it doesn't lead also to successful relationships. This is something that's really very interesting for me as an experience is that I don't deal with the problems anymore that they used to deal with in the monogamous relationship. My women, they keep their interest in me just by there being other women and that I cannot spend too much time with each and that they have to fight for their time with me is enough for them to remain interested in me.
3:41:01Even when in other areas I can slack and they will complain a lot. Yes, but they will stay.
3:41:11It's an interesting dynamic.
3:41:15Vlad CosteaIt is interesting because you know how women can be and they get very jealous and possessive and they want to have 100% of your time and attention. And also, they can do stuff to you like blackmail you and say, if you don't do this, I'm going to do harm to you. I'm going to damage your reputation. I'm going to post this picture of you. I'm going to, I don't know, talk to the other girl and tell you that you're a horrible person or whatever. They can plot behind your back.
3:41:46So the fact that you could survive these phases of jealousy is kind of amazing. For how many years at this point?
3:41:55Marc De MeselI started in 2018 with this, you could say, so that's eight years now, nine years or ten years actually, because I started a year before that. But I'm very much a boss and an authoritarian figure in my relationships and towards my woman. And actually, I'll dump them. If they don't, if they are not good girls, it's over. And so I use that instrument because I realize you can't beat women. You can't punish them because you go to jail. These old ways cannot be used anymore. But what you can do is leave them.
3:42:38That's still legal. If you leave them, they lose you. And if you do offer value to them, then they will lose that. And so I use that as an instrument to put limits to how badly they can misbehave. Of course, I also talk, I complain, I can raise my voice. That does happen in extreme circumstances when they go way too far.
3:43:16But most of all, like I just put a stop to the relationship when it goes too far and I let them suffer on their own. And that helps for most to become better girls. But some are happy to say bye. Also, that happens. They are not into to come back, especially also because I give them money. So they can actually have a good life for a couple more years without needing me. And some do choose that. But then usually after a couple of years, that's over too.
3:43:53So I think also in the selection, it's very important. And I can take my pick by going to Africa. I mean, there are, of course, when there are red flags, I just say no. And that's also an approach you can actually take in the West. When you're desperate, you have to accept everything from a woman. But if you have choice, you can say no. And that's the advantage of also, you have to have the capability to basically replace someone or have otherwise you have no leverage. And so you have to learn how to find women that attract you.
3:44:40That's very important. Otherwise, yeah.
3:44:48And I think making a comparison with children is very valuable because children can do exactly the same. Children will test you. They will try to get away with all kind of stuff. And it's you as the father that needs to say no and you'll be punished and to punish them until they behave correctly. You can do that with children. You can also not hit them, but you can put them in the corner and let them suffer there for as long as you want until they have learned their lesson and until they behave correctly.
3:45:27And you have to do that as a father. Otherwise, you create spoiled kids. You cannot let your kid misbehave and tolerate that. That's going to lead to bad results. Everybody knows that about children, but it's the same about women. Women will do exactly the same as children. They will test you and they will act first. First, they will try it step by step. First, a little step. If you don't respond, a bigger step. If you don't respond, an even bigger step. And before you know it, they will act like they will be your worst nightmare.
3:46:08So you have to raise your woman also in that and learn them what is acceptable and what not. And it's actually a job that you need to do.
3:46:26Vlad CosteaYeah. So in the beginning, the promise of this process, like a polygamous, polygamous, how do you pronounce that? Like the kind of relationship where you have multiple women, it sounds like too good to be true, right? Like, oh, it's like what every man dreams of. Like you can have all the cake in the world and not get fat. But of course, you're going to have toothaches and you're going to get fat and you're going to have high blood pressure and all the issues associated with having too much sugar.
3:47:04And yeah, it's a sport, I guess. It's something that you have to get good at and something that takes skill because not everyone is made for this.
3:47:15Marc De MeselYes, true. I hear that often. Like how can you do it? Like I even have a hard time with just one woman. How can you have multiple women? I would never want that in my life. And I get that response, actually. That's the most common response I get from men.
3:47:39And that's true. Like a woman is, it offers a lot of beauty, but it also offers a lot of suffering. And it's the same with children. But like there is an art and a way and a science to actually get a good relationship where the woman is, for the most part, beautiful and the ugly parts are not so big because they are kept in check. And the same with children. I mean, you can indeed raise your kids in such a way that they are not too much of a headache to you and not too demanding to your life.
3:48:28You can do that. You can do that with women too.
3:48:33But a lot of the things we learn in modern life are really wrong. We learn the wrong things and we basically spoil women and we spoil kids. And due to that, we can't have much of that. We have to look back at how men were acting, how life was. If you want many children, you have to look at how were families at the time that had many children? How were children treated? And it was a lot more disciplinary and a lot more authoritative.
3:49:14And, yeah, I think that the same is true if you have multiple women, you have to, but it does take the time. Like when people ask me, what do you do all day Marc? I say I invest, but that's only a couple hours per day. I mean, every day I spend certainly as much time on my women than I do on my investments, financial investments. But on my children, I would say I don't spend as much time as others would, because I do think that the way it should work is that the man is there to support the woman and the woman is there to support the children.
3:50:03That's the right way. If the woman is well set and everything is well organized, she can do most of the work with children. But yeah, your job as the father is to make sure everything is in order. It's the meta stuff around it that takes the time. And that's usually work, office work.
3:50:31Vlad CosteaYeah. How do you manage? So let's know. Actually, I have one final question on this topic. And it's more about culture, because when you're dealing with a culture where cheating is the norm, and you're not there full time to see what they're doing, and they also act in a spoiled way. And they're like, No, I want you all the time. And if you don't do this, I'm going to break up with you or I'm going to leave with the kids or whatever. How do you trust that they're honest?
3:51:00If they come from a culture where they are willing to do anything just to break even or have the kind of life that they desire, how can you be sure that they're honest to you and that you can trust them?
3:51:16Marc De MeselYeah, so I do like, it's only in the beginning, but that can take a few years that they still live in Africa. I do try to bring them over. But it says with any relationship, you get an idea whether they are cheating or not by having an intimate close relationship. And then you will notice that how close they are at cheating. And you notice that in all kind of fine details. Are they watching other guys when you're with her? Is she talking with other guys in her WhatsApp?
3:51:56Does she have male friends? Who does she go out with if she goes out? And how does the girlfriends or the family members that she goes out with, what do they do when they go out with? Do they also cheat or not? And I often talk about that also. I often make jokes about it. Like I just met a new girlfriend. She's still in Africa. But I express my concerns and I make it very clear. I really don't want you to cheat. And we have daily short contact.
3:52:34And I can tell that she cares about that. And so she's keeping me up to date. She's told me how she went out. Okay, she's sharing that with me. I'm making a joke also.
3:52:54Don't watch the other guys too much.
3:53:03But this is just a new relationship. It's normal. I think the cheating becomes a problem, especially when you have a longer relationship. And the problem is, of course, also STDs, sexual diseases and getting pregnant from other guys and STDs. And yeah, you can get a sense of that. If you have a close relationship with someone, you know what she's doing in her life. And so you know, actually, if there would be any cheating, where that could have been. For example, you know the dangerous points. Maybe she goes to the gym, then you know that's a dangerous area.
3:53:49So you want to know about what she's doing in the gym, who she's talking with, who she's hanging out with. And from time to time, you talk about that and you want to know the people that she's talking with. And you want to hear the stories about them. And that's having an intimate relationship that you follow up closely on what's going on in her life. I think that's your best guide. And if you notice that there is secrecy going on, if you start to get a suspicion that she's hiding something, I mean, you need to get clarity or you need to take a distance yourself.
3:54:26I mean, like I'm saying moral values are lower in Africa than they are in the West. That's true, but that's an average. Like you still have many honest women in Africa. Just on average, not as many as in the West, but you can easily find them. If you keep an eye on it, you can easily find also very intelligent people in Africa. I have my best employees are from Africa. They are black. Like you do have high talent professionally and you have very, very respectable women there also.
3:55:04But you have to look for them. But you can't get a sense of that. Just like you already know if you had some white girlfriends or you know how the conversations are going with someone you can't trust or someone who is hiding something. You know how that goes. And actually, the red flags are all over already before there. Women will already, before they cheat, make it clear that they're going to cheat. It's how they talk to you. They will talk disrespectfully to you before they cheat. They will not be sweethearts that cheat on you.
3:55:49Vlad CosteaYou never know. People can pretend. But let's move on to the other topic, which I think is interesting. I started the interview telling the story about how you let me drive your Tesla Model X, which is the one with the doors that open like this, vertically. But not like the Lambo doors. It's like this, more like vertically and sideways at the same time. We were in Amsterdam and you were driving and I was looking at the fact that you're not really touching the wheel and you're analyzing how the car is driving itself.
3:56:24And you just asked me, do you want to get behind the wheel? And I was like, man, I'm not sure. I don't know this city. And you said, oh, it's easy. You just watch it and if it does something wrong, you just press the brake to go to manual mode or press the acceleration for it to go and continue in its self-driving mode. It was not reading the street lights correctly all the time because in Amsterdam you don't have green lights. You have arrows that are white that show you where you're allowed to go.
3:56:54And it was weird. All my reflexes as a driver had to be forgotten and I just had to watch that thing go and trust that it's making the right calls. And it was also a novelty. I could see other drivers looking at us and just me sitting like this or like this with my fingers crossed, not touching the wheel. And I want to ask you, when did you start investing in Tesla and what drew you towards this specific brand? Because it's not the only electric car. It's not the first electric car.
3:57:35I can think of times when it did not look like it's going to be such a big player on the car market.
3:57:45Marc De MeselYeah, I looked into Tesla and I heard about it in 2013, 2014, 2015, but I noticed there was a lot of hype around it and the stock also I think had gone up. And so my interest was not piqued. But I noticed and when I came back, like we had the bull market in cryptocurrency, 2018 was very good. But then, yeah, in 2019, I was looking for other investments and I noticed that with Tesla sentiment was really bad. People were hating on Elon Musk. And I also made some videos about that.
3:58:29I thought I was exaggerated. And actually I could see his vision was, I mean, the guy was clearly a genius already. I mean, it was 2019. That's 10 years after he, 15 years after he took over Tesla and started SpaceX, 15, 16, 17. So he had already proven himself.
3:58:54But sentiment was very negative. The Tesla stock price had gone sideways for five years. So I thought it was a real opportunity to invest in Tesla finally. And so I did for half of my portfolio. And that was a very good call. And that played out very quickly, very well, because in 2019, it started to go up and in 2020, it went up a lot during COVID.
3:59:23Yeah, that's how I got into the Tesla stock. The vision of Elon Musk was at the time different than it is today. His vision at the time was that he would create cheaper and cheaper EVs and they would take over the market because EVs are superior than gasoline cars in many ways. And I could follow that reasoning. I agreed with him. It was indeed by that time already clear that battery technology EVs had won from the other alternative such as hydrogen. And that, yeah, in the long term, they're just superior because of what Elon Musk was explaining also at the time, like acceleration is a lot better.
4:00:14These engines are a lot more reliable. They don't break like gasoline cars. These engines, they are very complicated. And of course, yeah, actually the charging process is better than the fueling process.
4:00:34And yeah, so that was clear to me that over time, these cars would become cheaper and therefore take over the market. However, there were also some opinions at the time, even. That was already in 2010, 2011, 2012. Educated opinions that Tesla would not make it from the Chinese car manufacturers because in China, you have a lot of competition, a lot of brands. And at the time it was thousands, now it's maybe hundreds. But there was a very vibrant market of EVs there. And Tesla would not make it with their very expensive models.
4:01:14And because they started with very expensive models, but actually in China, they started with very cheap models. That's how they got traction in the market. But Tesla approached it the other way around. They started with very expensive models.
4:01:31But yeah, they did go to cheaper models and they did get a higher market penetration thanks to that. And then in 2019, they had just introduced this first cheap model. It's called the Model 3 then. And it was a very big investment in manufacturing. Extra manufacturing. And there was a risk of the company to go broke there. Elon Musk is also very transparent in that he will communicate it like that in the media, scaring investors even more. But yeah, he just speaks what he thinks and he doesn't care about investors.
4:02:17And actually he makes it just extra hard for them. Which is for me attractive because it creates also an opportunity. So yeah, that was the thesis at the time. And that's how I entered. I was lucky with my timing also. It played out so quickly. But today, the mission has changed a lot. He's not aiming anymore to create cheaper EVs. Instead, he has put everything on FSD the past few years. And now a robotaxi. That's his big vision for Tesla that we won't drive anymore. And that will just be driven around.
4:03:00But yeah, I didn't see that first. And of course, they're also betting now big on the robots, humanoid robots.
4:03:08And yeah, the guy is unbelievable. But basically for him, it's already a done deal. Like he just gonna do robotaxis with Tesla. But the next big thing, he's already fully focused on that, which is humanoid robots. And indeed, that's a much bigger market than EVs. But I think like the Chinese also have a good approach. People that want to own their own car in the future, they will have Chinese EVs. And that will be half of the market and the other half of the market.
4:03:43Vlad CosteaNo, I'll keep my gas car. Oh, which one? So right now I have a Lexus. But I'm also thinking about getting something like my childhood dream car. Like ideally, if I get rich, I'm gonna get a Toyota Supra.
4:04:04Marc De MeselLike, why do you have to get it? Yeah, that's an expensive car.
4:04:09Vlad CosteaOh yeah, the one from the 90s goes for even 150,000 euro right now in Europe. Especially if the wheel is on the left side. Because that's the European model and not too many of them sold in Europe.
4:04:22So that's like the perfect kind of scenario where I'm successful and rich and whatever. If I'm just the normal guy like I am now, maybe I'll get something like a Toyota Celica or a Mitsubishi Eclipse or something that I used to play with in Need for Speed games in the early 2000s. And just tune it out and maybe spend like 10,000 euro just to make it fancy. Make it look like it comes from the movie The Fast and the Furious. And yeah, I'm gonna keep that in a garage, drive it during weekends or whatever.
4:04:59But I have like a soft spot for the engineering behind these cars. I don't care too much about German cars or American cars. They're nice to look at. They just don't make me feel anything. But when I see these Japanese cars, that's what gets me going. That's what makes me like, wow, I want to drive this. I want to stand next to this. It's like something with which I can identify. It makes me smile just thinking about it. Beautiful.
4:05:33Marc De MeselYeah, and I hope you realize that. And I also had a passion for Lambos at the time I had a Lambo and I've got so much pleasure driving that car, maintaining it and just getting, you get self-confidence driving a car you love and people are watching you. And yeah, it's a really great experience that I can recommend if you have some money to blow. It's worth it.
4:06:00Vlad CosteaI mean, no offense, the Lambo is a money pit. You spend a lot of time in the dealership servicing it. Yeah, yeah.
4:06:10Marc De MeselI even lost the engine, like the engine blew up. I had to replace the whole engine. That was very costly.
4:06:16Vlad CosteaAnd also, especially if you're in Eastern Europe, where I come from, and by the way, dating in Eastern Europe is very different from what it's like in Western Europe. Like the women are very honest to you and they say they don't like you to your face. They don't waste your time. I mean, some of them do when they tend to do that, but we're more honest with each other. But also our roads suck. Like if you drive a Lambo, even in the capital, which is Bucharest, there are certain parts where there are potholes.
4:06:44And if you hit a pothole with that Lambo, you're going to smash part of your body kit or whatever, or you're going to scratch your rims and that hurts. It hurts when you're driving like even my Lexus. It hurts, even though I know that it's a car that's more like a sedan is made for bad roads. It can take it, but you still feel bad when you do that. When you're driving a Lambo, you hit that. Man, it's going to be a costly accident. And if you have to go to the insurance company every time to use that policy, you're going to get screwed and pay a lot of money for your insurance.
4:07:25Marc De MeselYeah, but yeah, that's cool. And it's interesting to hear that the women are direct in Eastern Europe. I love that. That's really nice. Do you like that also?
4:07:35Vlad CosteaOh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's part of the reason why I'm still here. Of course, I was not successful so far, but my point is that I do like that people tell you to your face what they think about you or what they think about a situation.
4:07:55It's very obvious when they're trying to lie to you, but I think a history of being occupied by the Ottomans and the Russians and I guess we also had some dealings with the Germans in World War II. When you have that kind of history, you learn that you shouldn't scam the guy next to you, your neighbor or whatever. We're very honest with each other to the point where we're not polite. And I've seen that in Poland and Czech Republic also. These people, they tell you exactly like when you're stupid, they call you stupid and they have no process of either feeling regret or else feeling like, well, I shouldn't have said that.
4:08:43It's very different in German countries. I'm not sure if Netherlands is like a mix of French culture and German culture from some points of view, but I'm not experienced with the culture there, but I don't think people are this honest. I've had my experience with German people and with Swedish people when I was a student in Sweden for six months. Everyone in the bus every morning was smiling at me and I had no idea why. I was like looking at that person smiling at me, looking at that person smiling at me.
4:09:22And then that's when you ask yourself, do I look funny or do they like me? But it's neither. It's just that since they're kids, they have been told that when they make eye contact with a stranger, they're supposed to smile. So it means nothing. It's just that part of their culture and showing that they're nice and welcoming, they're going to smile. And it's weird. In Eastern Europe, nobody smiles at you unless you make them smile. Like you have to earn the smile. It's not that.
4:09:51Marc De MeselMm-hmm. That's interesting.
4:09:55Vlad CosteaYou need a Russian girlfriend or Ukrainian or Romanian. It's a different experience.
4:10:01Marc De MeselBut are they open to polygamy?
4:10:05Vlad CosteaSome of them. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Some of them are very materialistic and they're going to be like, well, as long as he provides for me, I don't care.
4:10:16Marc De MeselOkay, that's interesting. Yeah, because I heard from someone that actually that's a hard sell, because the parents don't want them, the daughters, to be in a polygamous relationship.
4:10:27Vlad CosteaNo, they don't. But I think a lot has changed, especially with university students these days. I think the bigger difficulty is not their parents. It's convincing them to have kids. That's the bigger challenge. Most of them don't want kids. Serious. It's kind of a problem in my country, at least. And on a small scale, I can think of my classmates from high school or university. I look at their Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Less than half of them are married and have kids. And that's a problem because I'm 34 at this point.
4:11:10They're 34, too. We're going to be 35 next year. It's not going to get any easier.
4:11:17Marc De MeselNo, it needs to happen. Because, yeah, especially the women, they need to do it now or it's not going to happen ever.
4:11:29Maybe you send them a DM like, hey, you know, I just want to, you know, you remember me from high school. I just want to send you a reminder that if you do not create a child the next three years, four years, you're never going to have children for the rest of your life. Please, for humankind and for yourself, make an effort to make a child.
4:11:55Vlad CosteaThat's how you get blocked.
4:11:57Marc De MeselMake at least one. You will not regret, I promise.
4:12:01Vlad CosteaThat's how you get blocked. There's so much brainwashing, man. And I guess, you know, much better, like with shows like Sex and the City and Friends and whatever, they see these examples of women who are very happy not being in a committed relationship and not having kids or a family or whatever. They're like, why should I bother? Look at these people. I want to be like them. I want to get a job in a corporate setting or whatever. Work, drink during weekends, have fun, sleep around. And then when they're 40, I guess they have more of a thought, like a reflection moment.
4:12:48And they realize, OK, something went wrong here. Maybe I should change the way that I live. But who wants to wait until they're 40? And the other question is who still wants them at 40? That's the other issue. Because as a man, you want healthy babies. And it's not that you're a horrible human being. You just don't want to risk bringing into the world the baby who has autism or certain issues which emerge when you have a baby later in life.
4:13:25Marc De MeselYes. And at 42, it's over. At 43, it's over. If you look at the statistics, the fertility drops through the floor at 42. That's your last chance to get a baby. And at 43, it's over. So that's very quick for a woman. I'm already 48 soon. And I mean, yeah, that's really the disadvantage of a woman. A man can waste 20 years not making children and still in his 40s and 50s can make children. But a woman cannot do that. And so they're also wasting 10 years now with studying in their 20s and dating around with handsome boys that will never ring them up or marry them and don't even want children with them.
4:14:15And so it's only when they're 30 that they realize, hmm, I have to get serious. But they don't get serious enough. And by the time they're 35, they're still not serious enough. And it's only when they're 40, 45 that they realize 50, damn, but it's way too late. And even at 35 indeed, it becomes a real problem. If you do come to the insight only then, like, I really need to settle down, find a man. I mean, yeah, you've been programmed in such a wrong way that you're such, like, you're not a catch indeed.
4:14:51Not biologically, it's still possible to make a child. But the biggest problem is how they think is really a problem for a man. Like a man, what's the benefit of having a woman? Well, if she gives you massages, that's really nice. But will she give you massages?
4:15:12Probably not. Will she cook your meals? Will she clean your house? Will she raise the kids and let you do your work when you're providing? No, she's not raised like that. She's not trained like this. She thinks that she should get some crappy little job that pays little. And then she does her duties. And the man, even when he earns double or triple, he should do half of the household.
4:15:42And yeah, these expectations are wrong as a man. It's really a lot of work then, what you get. A woman, that's a lot of work. A house, that's actually more work than even when you're single and you have to do everything alone. It's less work than having such a wife or such a girlfriend.
4:16:05So yeah, women have not learned to serve a man. They don't know how to serve a man, how to please a man.
4:16:14They think they don't have to do that. They think they are equals when they are not actually equals.
4:16:22In the financial domain, they are subordinates. They are less. They make less money than the man. So they are not equals. And in the home, they should work more than the man because the man works more outside the house, brings in more money. So they should work more in the home. These are fundamental concepts. How is that in Eastern Europe? Do the women get that or they also don't get that?
4:16:51Vlad CosteaI think, at least in my mom's generation, they had kids early, they got jobs and they focused on career after having kids. And they also cook. There's a very big home cooking culture that's still around. And it's still not unpopular to ask your girlfriend or something to cook for you. And they're supposed to know. And it's like a tradition to teach from the grandmother to the mother to the daughter. To teach them how to sew, how to cook, stuff like this, some basic stuff about just managing the household.
4:17:38So I guess in some ways it's better than in your experience, but it's also deteriorating over time. I think ideology is weird and strong and it effectively works. But also disagree with over financializing relationships to the point where you say, well, I make this amount of money, which is more than what you make. So if you want to be equal, you're going to have to do this kind of work. I think if it doesn't come natural that you contribute to the relationship, then it's never going to work.
4:18:16It will just feel like an obligation towards someone, like a job or something. And that's what people hate. They hate their job and they're trying to find excuses or ways to escape it.
4:18:32Marc De MeselOkay. Yeah, I'm getting harassed here by my girlfriend because I'm supposed to pick up the kids in school. So there you go.
4:18:42Vlad CosteaOkay, Marc. One last question from the chat. What is your plan if there will not be a bigger alt season this cycle?
4:18:52Marc De MeselMy plan is the other investments that I have. I hope they work out or at least one of them could work out and my overall returns will be okay. That's the reason why I put some Zcash for sale. I hope price goes higher and my orders are filled so that I can take some money out of this market and invest in something else that I believe in. That's how I hedge myself against this unlikely but certainly possible scenario.
4:19:23Vlad CosteaOkay. How can people follow you and keep up with your plan to always beat inflation and have 20% gains every year?
4:19:34Marc De MeselI don't have that every year. It's just on average. My returns have been very volatile annually. But yeah, I think the answer is the way I do it, my Holy Grail portfolio, that's how you can get and you but you can just do that yourself. You just have to, yeah, it's a bit what I also do with women, like you shouldn't bet everything on one horse. Even if you believe strongly in it, you don't really know how things will pan out. So just invest in different things.
4:20:07I have the discipline to do that. And it's easier like to find other good investments. When you stop focusing on one, it's very easy to find other ones. Same with the woman. There are many great women. There are many great investments. And you can invest a little in each or let's say a quarter or a third in each and have multiple going on at the same time. I think that's a good way actually to get an interesting life, good returns on average.
4:20:45Vlad CosteaOkay, that's good advice. Any closing words or something that you want to tell people?
4:20:54Marc De MeselI would say when it comes to, I think the most important advice I can give now is to HODL. When it comes to cryptocurrency, we're really at the start of the bull market, not even in the middle and certainly not at the end. So it's very important to hold, but it depends on your exposure. If you have 10%, it's easy. You need to hold. But if you have 90% cryptocurrencies and it just went to 95% because it doubled, well, of course you can sell some. But if you only have 10% exposure, you should just hold because it's the start of the bull market.
4:21:33And the biggest mistakes are made in not buying enough. But yeah, I mean, that depends. Those mistakes are made already if you didn't buy enough. The second biggest mistake is selling too soon.
4:21:49Vlad CosteaOkay, how do you know it's the top of the market and you're supposed to sell? What's your indicator?
4:21:58Marc De MeselWell, there are different indicators. First of all, it has to have gone up a lot. Otherwise, it was not a bull market. Has it gone up a lot already? No, because we had 3 trillion five years or four years ago, it was also 3 trillion. Crypto has gone sideways for the most part. So it didn't go up a lot yet. How is sentiment? Are people bullish about crypto? And I don't mean the experts in the fields. I mean the people at the Christmas dinner table or your friends, your childhood friends.
4:22:35Are they asking you if they should invest in this or that coin? Is anybody boasting about the cryptocurrency returns? If it's not the case, it means it's not a mania. It's certainly not peaking out. It's typical to peaking out also news in the news. What are the type of articles that you see or the type of YouTube videos? Are people celebrating profits and predicting higher prices, ever increasing higher prices? That's an indicator of a top. But if people are hating on a rally or if people are skeptical that it will go up more, or if people are predicting that it will go down, that's not the top of a bull market.
4:23:30So these are different kind of indicators where you are. But the most important one I use is the Trolololo chart that I share from time to time on X. There you can clearly see the trend line and where we are compared to the trend line. But there are also other indicators you can use. But it's not a science in that I've been correct about calling the top and the bottom eight in ten times or four in five times, but one time I've been completely wrong. And I didn't I didn't I thought it would go higher, a lot higher.
4:24:09I was completely wrong. So I mean, but yeah, I'm very confident about this call that this is the start of the altcoin bull market and price will likely go a lot higher. And so it's most important is to not sell yet and wait until at least the masses are also investing in crypto and also happy about their returns.
4:24:40Vlad CosteaOK, last question before I let you go. How would you feel if ten years from now the market decides that Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin and the situation flips and Bitcoin Cash is number one and the one that everyone uses? And you know that you used to have a lot more and you sold it. How would you feel about it?
4:25:00Marc De MeselWell, actually, I thought about that scenario. That's why I boosted my Bitcoin Cash just a month ago with 50 percent. I had very few coins left. I said, OK, I mean, it's probably the start of this alt season here and Bitcoin Cash didn't go up a lot yet. So let me just add more coins. And I took out a DeFi loan to add 50 percent more coins. And so my exposure went up from four percent to six percent Bitcoin Cash exposure. So I'm hedged against that scenario. I will tell myself then like, oh, my God, I could have been a billionaire, but at least I did buy a couple more coins at the bottom.
4:25:42And I was not at my all time low of coins when the bull market took off.
4:25:50Vlad CosteaSo can you disclose how much Bitcoin Cash you had at the peak of your holdings?
4:25:57Marc De MeselI've never disclosed such information, but it was a lot. I was a real whale, you could say. But, yeah, I don't have it anymore. It's all gone, except maybe for 10 percent, 15 percent I still have. So actually, not even. Five percent, 10 percent. So, yeah, it's yeah, I can't share the actual numbers, but I can say that I was a real whale once upon a time.
4:26:32Vlad CosteaThank you very much, Marc. Follow Marc on Twitter. It's Marc De Mesel, the way that you can see it on the screen. That's M-A-R-C-D-E-M-E-S-E-L. Thank you very much for your time. This has been four hours and almost 30 minutes long, which is...
4:26:49Marc De MeselOh, my God. Crazy, that went so fast.
4:26:53Vlad CosteaI know.
4:26:54Marc De MeselIf I would have to estimate, I would say three hours. But no, four hours, and... crazy. Thank you, Vlad. It was a real honor. I had seen that you did such long interviews and I could not imagine to be able to do that. But we did it in one go. And wow, thank you for the interesting questions and for your interesting audience and allowing me to talk and give my opinion. I really appreciate it.
4:27:16Vlad CosteaWell, thank you for your time. And thanks to the sponsors. Once again, SideShift, Braiins Hashpower, OrangeRock, LayerTwo Labs and Cake Wallet. I'll see you in the next one. And thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe. Leave feedback, whatever, whatever people do when they like something. Bye.
