SLP333 Cory Klippsten – Building for Bitcoiners

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Cory Klippsten of Swan Bitcoin rejoins me on the show to talk about a range of things: 

  • “Crypto” advocacy as compared to Bitcoin advocacy
  • Being an investor in the space & Bitcoiner Ventures
  • Turkey inflation
  • Avoiding trading 
  • Bitcoiner Jobs
  • Swan Gifts 

Links:

Sponsors: 

Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Cory, welcome back to the show.

Cory Klippsten:

Thanks, Stephan. It’s great to be here.

Stephan Livera:

So, Cory lots going on. There’s been a lot of things we can chat about. Obviously, there’s the world of VC, and investment, and what’s going on in the bitcoin world as well as the world bitcoin is going to create. And, of course, we’ve got a chat about what’s going on at Swan.

Stephan Livera:

But I wanted to start with what’s going on in the regulatory legislative world and the holes of power as it were, because it seems to me like there’s this whole crypto lobbying group, and then there’s the bitcoin people. And you’ve also been commenting on this quite a bit. So, I know, you’ll have some interesting thoughts to share. So, what’s your take there?

Cory Klippsten:

Broadly, what I want to make sure of in as much as I can influence things at all, is that bitcoiners don’t take for granted that crypto people have bitcoin and bitcoiners best interests in mind at all times. Sometimes, their interests align, lots of times, they don’t.

Cory Klippsten:

And I think we saw that flare up a few times this year, just like obviously, we saw this with crypto people having different views from bitcoin people throughout the history of the bitcoin space. It’s going to be that way when it comes to regulatory and you’re going to see the regulatory version of, I love bitcoin by my shitcoin, and a lot of orange washing as they say, trying to wrap yourself in the bitcoin flag while promoting your altcoins or whatever.

Cory Klippsten:

So, you’ll say like, “Well, you should be fine with us, because we’re just like bitcoin in this way,” or something like that, right? And I think it’s just important that bitcoiners separate themselves, which obviously, some people have been doing a good job of that and saying, there’s bitcoin and there’s crypto. There’s bitcoin, and there’s shitcoin, or whatever.

Cory Klippsten:

That goes for dealing with legislators and regulatory agencies, et cetera in the United States as well, where it’s necessary to have a voice or where we choose that we should have a voice. And it gets important that there’s actually, bitcoiners that do that talking and that tease out the difference between lightning, for instance, or proof of work mining, and some other thing that crypto people are trying to co-opt and use for their own ends, to keep their giant Ponzi thing going.

Stephan Livera:

Of course, and as you rightly pointed out, this has been a thing in the space around, “I like bitcoin by my shitcoin.” Right? And so, I guess, you don’t necessarily have to name names, but I mean, what does that look like historically, in the space? What kind of actions do those people tend to take? And what kind of lines of argument do they tend to use?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to go too deep into the name calling and calling people out and things like that. Because the fact is, like in many cases, I actually, believe that they think they’re doing the right thing. And this is some of the people that are actually, working in D.C.

Cory Klippsten:

And they’ve actually, on occasion, done very much the right thing for bitcoin, but it’s when their interests have aligned with what was good for bitcoin and bitcoiners that they’ve done the right thing for bitcoin. And I think, we see with all of the ESG narratives going out there.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it may not be like the VC fund, or the specific lobbying organization that directly funds proof of work and promotes ESG friendly proof of stake, or proof of something else that doesn’t require energy. And, therefore, is basically, fiat. But they’re funded by those people, and they’re tied to those people. And they’re at their events.

Cory Klippsten:

And there’s people on the advisory boards of these lobbying organizations from those token projects, the non-bitcoin stuff. And it’s a bridge too far to think that there’s not going to be some influence. And we’ve already seen deliberate attempts to try to tie bitcoin in buckets, with crypto stuff for the purpose of legislation.

Cory Klippsten:

And I just think it’s really, important to get out in front of that. So, I refuse to party down with the crypto people on the infrastructure bill last year. And I wanted bitcoiners to take up their own fight, and it seems like a lot of people were spurred to action. There’s at least three or four new lobbying efforts that are bitcoin only, whether it’s SAT center.

Cory Klippsten:

There’s a couple other ones, for sure, that are out there and kind of getting going. The one in Nashville and SAT center is a little bit more West Coast, but it’s national, obviously, has a bunch of participants. And I don’t feel the need personally, to get super involved. It’s not my thing. I haven’t done any politics for 20 years. But I am really glad that there are bitcoiners leading the charge and making sure that the things that get written have the input of real bitcoiners.

Stephan Livera:

I see, yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

Not just people that claim to talk for bitcoiner.

Stephan Livera:

Of course, yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

Claim to speak for bitcoin.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, there’s definitely a few parts in that. So, it’s this idea that sometimes “crypto people” see bitcoin… I’ll say, bitcoin is you’re just part of our broader industry. And you little bitcoin people need to play nicely with the altcoins, because whatever, whatever reason. And to the point you were saying is that, people have conflict of interest in some instances where…

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah.

Stephan Livera:

… maybe, they’ve taken funds from a shitcoin BC, or shitcoin fund, or something. And now, they are a little conflicted. And then, the other aspect of it is that, some of the shitcoins will have marketing budgets, and they will market themselves by attacking bitcoin. They’ll say things like, “Oh, don’t use… We use less energy than bitcoin.”

Stephan Livera:

And so, obviously, that then takes a little bit of time to go and disentangle, wait a second, no, there’s a reason bitcoin uses energy. And in fact, that’s part of bitcoins strength, that’s part of bitcoins neutrality.

Cory Klippsten:

Yup.

Stephan Livera:

So, I think that’s perhaps part of the… That’s the challenge for bitcoin advocates and educators out there, right?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s one of many challenges out there. But I just think it’s important to… I think, we’ve beaten this one to death.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah. So, I think, there’s definitely that aspect of it. And I think it’s funny with like, even with all the venture capital stuff, in general. It seems to me like, it’s really going to change so much once we, as the world have a bitcoiners analysis.

Stephan Livera:

Now, of course, none of us have a crystal ball, we don’t know when it could be five years, 10 years, 15 years, and so on. And that’s really, going to change the world in so many different ways. And I think, it will really change the way we invest, we act, we save, we spend, all of this.

Stephan Livera:

And actually, you touched on this in your recent piece for CoinDesk, it was The World Bitcoin Will Build. So, for anyone who hasn’t listened or hasn’t read that one yet, can you just give a bit of a summary there for people?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, the conceit was, really, I wanted to present how I actually, think of the future for purposes of planning my own career, my company’s path, and my own family’s life and finances. So, just kind of, this is actually, what I think is going to happen, like the most likely outcome. That doesn’t mean that it’s 99%. It doesn’t even mean necessarily right, it’s over 50%. It just means, I think this is the most likely outcome of, if I were doing some kind of like Monte Carlo Analysis Decision Tree thing, I think this is how it’s probably going to go more than any other way.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, we just took moments in time, taking a look at where we thought we’d be in 2035. And then, again, kind of where we’d be in, in 2050. And a lot of it’s going to seem familiar. So, some of the fund is in the details, and digging into some of the language and some of the specific examples that I threw in there. So, I do recommend reading it.

Cory Klippsten:

But broadly, I say, we’re obviously, still early in the development of bitcoin, a store of value. But after you get a couple more cohorts, so people that came in, in 2017, or 2018, and they’ve been in bitcoin for eight or 10 years, and maybe, one more cohort.

Cory Klippsten:

So, at that point, let’s say people that come in 2023, ’24, ’25, once they’ve held for eight to 10 years, there’s a good chance that lots of those people will have over 90% of their net worth in bitcoin. And somewhere in there, somewhere in the… Two having cycles after the 2017 cohort, and that 2021ish cohort, I think there will be a lot of people around the world that want to spend bitcoin. And you’ll really start to see kind of medium of exchange reaching the level where we are now a store of value.

Cory Klippsten:

So, bitcoin will be really well-established as a store of value, and we’ll be looking at as a nascent medium of exchange. You’ll see a lot of people just demanding to pay for things in bitcoin. And so, an explosion of services from legacy companies that add bitcoin services, much easier to achieve venture scale revenue profiles for startups in the next… From five years from now into the next decade, for people working on medium of exchange.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, this results in something that I’ve been saying a lot, but never actually, put in an article, which is that I think, after MOE, then you’re going to have prices on price tags for goods and services on the internet and in stores or whatever. You’re going to have SATs on those price tags in most places around the world for most goods and services. And I think, that’ll be really exciting too.

Cory Klippsten:

So, basically, I sum it up by saying like, by the year 2035, you’ll be able to buy most goods and services around the world denominated in SATs. It doesn’t mean that will be the only price. There will probably still be $1 price and maybe, another local currency or something like that, but you’ll be able to pay for things in bitcoin, pretty much most places around the world by 2035.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And that’s obviously, a far cry from where we are today in 2021, where maybe you need to use some in between way, like, say Bitrefill, or you need to basically, sell some Sato, borrow against it, and et cetera.

Stephan Livera:

So, I guess, that aspect of it. And I really believe we’re going to see big, big shifts in just the way financial services operate, right? We will see potentially, community banking, and we might see, obviously, self-banking, right? Set up your own node and your own keys, all of that. And it might be more like each family sets up their own node and things like that.

Stephan Livera:

So, it’ll be interesting to see that whole gamut of options there that’s out there. So, that’s really interesting, as well. And I think the other part is just that broader shift. And I mentioned this all the time, it’s like that shift between debt and equity. And I think, I really do believe we’re going to be shifting a lot more into like an equity-based world. And so, what kind of ramifications do you think that has for, say, an investor?

Cory Klippsten:

I mean, it’s not going to change my world that much, because I’ve been an early-stage guy for so long. In fact, other than dabbling in some public equities here and there a long time ago, I’ve been focused exclusively on angel investing at the seed A, maybe B around stage for a decade now.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it’s not going to change what I do much. I do think that there’s just going to be this massive explosion of new things that we’ve never thought of before. And that’s what I’m really excited to see. I’m excited to see value for value media explode. I’m excited to see messaging over lightning, almost anything that relates. It’s just so early. It’s hard to conceive of, right? Because we just don’t know what’s going to be popping… What’s going to be practical and possible, as the infrastructure gets better.

Cory Klippsten:

And people just build on top of preexisting innovations. And everybody benefits from all the stuff that’s been going on for the last four or five years. It’s going to be really exciting. I’m super bullish on getting in as early on as many of these things as possible.

Cory Klippsten:

As you know, I mean, you’re my partner in Bitcoin Adventures. And I wish we had more time to cut more checks, but at least we’ve gotten five deals done. And I’m looking at other stuff, when I have the time, which is not often. But, yeah, super bullish. I mean, we’re obviously laser focused on onboarding people into bitcoin with Swan.

Cory Klippsten:

But I have a background in payments long ago, before getting into bitcoin in my consulting, private equity work. And I’m super bullish on this stuff. It’s just really, really early. These companies are really small. They have tiny revenue. I don’t think there’s maybe, any of them that are actually, making money other than the ones that are working in like, probably, a Bitrefill and impactful that are kind of have hit scale.

Cory Klippsten:

But there’s been so many good promising young entrepreneurs starting, let’s call it like MOE businesses in the last couple years, and some of them are going to take off. They’re going to hit and they’re going to be really big, and they’re going to be in a good position. And even when the legacy companies get around to it, they’re never going to understand the advantages to building on bitcoin and building on this monetary network, the way that the native bitcoin companies do.

Cory Klippsten:

And a startup already has massive advantages over any project’s team or product’s team at a big company, because those people just don’t care, not going to put in the hours. They’re not going to be thinking about the problems on the weekends or taking their kids for a stroll in the park. Only the people working on startups actually have that kind of creativity to do that sort of stuff. And so, yeah, I’m really bullish on bitcoin companies over the next decade.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And so, some of them, it may be that they take some time to fruition. Maybe, a few more years until the market size is big enough to actually, make that a workable company. And some of them might be more infrastructure related or security related, and things like that.

Stephan Livera:

So, those are different ones out there. So, any listeners out there, if you’re interested, you can check it out. It’s bitcoinadventures.com. And we’ve got a few Telegram. We’ve got a Telegram chat room as well, for people to share ideas and get access to some of the companies that we’ve got.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, just to put a little meat on the bone there. I mean, we started in 2020, the very first deal we did. It was probably, the best-known company that we’ve done a deal for, but because we only had like 50 to 70 LPs, we were like, I was basically, calling people and having to rope people into it, and it took five or six weeks to do a check for 200 grand or something versus I think, Galoy, we raised that entire round in like four hours.

Cory Klippsten:

We just did a deal for a great bitcoin startup. And it’s just, it’s getting easier and easier because we have, I think 450 or 460 LPs now around the world, on the AngelList syndicate and other syndicates know us. And we’ll send people our way. If they didn’t do the deal, they’ll just send our deal to their people, that kind of thing.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it’s getting easier and easier. And I think it’s really important to have… There’s so many benefits to having like 100 people around the world who are super fans of your product that now get to own a piece of it and tell their friends about it. And join your alpha test group and your beta test group. And all that kind of stuff is just a really nice add. It’s the same pitch that you would get for crowdfunding, but it’s better, because these are like, real bitcoiners that are actually, cutting a decent sized check, not just buying your album or something.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, yeah. Now, that’s a really cool way to think of it. I mean, it’s yeah, we’re seeing a popularization of that even with the likes of Kickstarter and things like that to fund a book project and things like this. But obviously, this is… You’re getting equity in a company here.

Stephan Livera:

So, it’s a different, obviously, a different ballgame here. And I’m also curious, your thoughts as well, because you came from that world as well. The question around getting access into some of these deals. Maybe, historically, bitcoin companies where it was crying out for capital, do you think it’ll reach a point where it’s actually, it might be difficult to get into the deal? Because you need to know someone or you need to have the right access?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, it already is. I mean, there already are hot deals that people can’t necessarily get into, if they’re not paying close attention, or don’t know somebody. I mean, that’s how it happened. Some of these are happening really, really fast, and are getting big chunks around taken down by one investor, or something like that. So, I think we’re already there.

Cory Klippsten:

Two years ago, there wasn’t a single bitcoin only fund. I think Fulgur has become bitcoin only. But they were looking at other stuff a couple of years ago. And I think, Elise, that still mark, maybe it wasn’t just super public, even if she was doing it already. I don’t think we were all aware of her efforts two years ago.

Cory Klippsten:

So, when we started Bitcoin Adventures, there wasn’t a committed capital fund focused exclusively on bitcoin. Now, there’s like 1031. There’s the Bitcoin Adventure fund with Chris Callicot and Dustin Trammell and that team. Obviously, Elise has made a huge splash in this, like the queen of ass kicking on stage, when she talks about Bitcoin.

Cory Klippsten:

And I think there will be more lightning ventures, which is cutting. I think, working on committed capital, but doing syndicates right now, at least, Plan B ventures with Han Hua, is a syndicate on AngelList, that’s been doing a bunch of deals. And basically, every good bitcoin startup that’s raised lately. So, that’s pretty cool.

Cory Klippsten:

So, yeah, I mean, the future is bright, the future is orange, and we’ll see more and more capital committed here. But the numbers are just staggeringly small, compared to crypto VC funding. There’s 21 billion deployed just this year for crypto stuff. And I think about 35 billion of LP capital, across all these, like Andreessen funds, and whatever else is out there, paradigm in all these guys. And that’s who’s working with these lobbyists and drafting legislation and doing all that stuff.

Cory Klippsten:

So, they got a lot going on. And it depresses me sometimes to see that, let’s say 700x multiple versus the bitcoin only funds, that probably have about $50 million of committed capital. But we have the better product by far, the one that matters.

Cory Klippsten:

We have way more diehard supporters and fans on team bitcoin, then all of the rest combined by at least an order of magnitude, if not two orders of magnitude. Nobody’s going to the mat and dying for salon or something, right? Nobody actually, cares unless they’re making money today, unlike Bitcoin.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it’s good. And the other thing that puts me at ease is that massive companies work with bitcoin. And so, you don’t necessarily need the VC funding if it’s really important to square and it’s really important to payment’s companies like Visa and MasterCard, and investment banks that have groups that see the light or whatever, like Morgan Stanley supplying capital than I do, that they can then use for bitcoin bank loans that unchained or something like that, right? That’s something that’s actually, happening and is a big deal. So…

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And speaking of 90, had a big one recently, I think it was 1 billion on a 7 billion valuation. So, that’s…

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, they just raised one on seven, which is amazing and huge. As exciting was this morning, Ledn’s announcement…

Stephan Livera:

Bitcoin mortgages.

Cory Klippsten:

… massive valuation, almost half a billion dollar valuation, I think, or maybe slightly more than that. It’s like, sleeping on Ledn, that’s huge. It’s amazing. Anyway, it was so funny. Mario gave me… Texted me this… Or DM to me this morning and he was like, “What do you think about having one of the Ledn co-founders on Swan Signal live?” And I was like, “Sounds great. Like just hit up Brady.”

Cory Klippsten:

So humble, so nice. He didn’t send the link. I didn’t find out about the fundraising for like four more hours. And then, I was like, “Brady, yeah, you just get those guys out of the way?

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I mean I started as well, and I was like, “Okay, I need to get them on, get one of the guys on to talk about bitcoin mortgages and stuff.” It’s really interesting as well to see the, yeah, the growth in the space. And I mean, your comments as well around the crypto world versus bitcoin world, and it’s… Yeah, it is, in some sense a bit, I guess, sad, or unfortunate, or weird that the world doesn’t see this, yet.

Stephan Livera:

But in fairness, it’s also, I think a lot of the crypto stuff is really, a lot of its leverage play and gambling related things. And you know what? Maybe, for now, that’s more popular than just saving with bitcoin. And of course, in the future medium of exchange, it’s directly spending things, et cetera. But I really do think it will bear out over the long-term, and people will look back and think, “Yeah, you know what? Bitcoin only physician was really essentially correct about a lot of these aspects of where the market was going to go.”

Stephan Livera:

And okay, look, maybe, fine. It depends, if you count stable coins and whatever, is that not bitcoin only or whatever. But I think, essentially, the future is going to be bitcoin only. And yeah, maybe, since stable coins, it’s like a bridging aspect of it. I guess, that’s high-level how I’m seeing it. What do you think?

Cory Klippsten:

I mean, it seems like nobody ever checks in a stable coin. It seems like once they’re minted… I’ve never seen the tether market cap go down. Does anybody ever cash in? No. What’s the other one? Circle’s coin, USDC coin. It’s massive. It’s like $40 billion now. I just did it myself, I added up. I only went down to like the top 50 just looking for the stable coins. And the actual asset backed ones, not die or something like that. And it was $156 billion in the top five or six, kind of actual asset back stable coins. Pretty funny, if the dollar flip and if the crypto dollar like flip indeed.

Stephan Livera:

That would be cool to say. And I think it’s just growing at a phenomenal pace, right? So, I obviously, would prefer the world just Hodl bitcoin, and we all just go straight to bitcoin.

Cory Klippsten:

Stephan, before you go further on this. I think, it’s actually, a bullshit crypto fund and crypto founder narrative that the dollar is this medium of the crypto dollars, some medium of exchange thing, that stable coins are going to be this big MOE thing. It’s not.

Cory Klippsten:

It’s just leveraged trading. That’s all it is. It’s crypto traders. It’s because they’re fiat minded, and their unit of account is dollars, and they’re going to use stable coins for all their trading activity. That’s it. And DeFi is all run on dollars. But this has nothing to do. It’s not like a bunch of people in Turkey are hoarding stable coins. They’re not.

Stephan Livera:

Right. Yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

They’re getting dollars when they can. And actually, US dollars, or they’re buying real estate.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

Or Bitcoin.

Stephan Livera:

Actually, let’s touch on that as well. I know you obviously, you go and spend some time in Turkey. Your wife is Turkish. You obviously, have Turkish friends and associates. And you were chatting a little bit about the inflation story there as well. Do you want to shed some light of give us a little bit of color on that?

Cory Klippsten:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I occasionally tweet about it, just because I sometimes have things that are relevant for a bitcoin, or audience on Twitter that I know about, or just hear stories from friends over there, whatever. But, so, yeah, when I first went there in 2010, I think it was 1.7 or 1.8 Lira per dollar. It was 14.83 today, Lira per dollar. And yesterday, it was like 13.8.

Cory Klippsten:

So, I think this is the first time it’s jumped like a full Lira, adding like 13.8 to 14.8 in a day. So, it’s pretty runaway. It was sub-10, 32 days ago, it was nine a month ago, a month in a couple of days ago, it was nine. And now, it’s 14.8 or something.

Cory Klippsten:

So, we’re watching it in front of our eyes, and it’s a really large economy. So, certainly, there’s never been anything like this since the birth of bitcoin. It’s the number 17 economy. It’s 80 million people. Istanbul is bigger than 115, just the city of Istanbul is bigger than 115 countries including like Portugal and Greece and Norway and like all these European countries like Istanbul is bigger than that, just the one city.

Cory Klippsten:

And they have every industry that you can imagine. It’s the second largest exporter of TV entertainment behind Hollywood globally, is Turkey, which is crazy, behind the US. So, it’s a lot of people. It’s a lot of diverse stuff. I mean, shit like half the food products and Trader Joe’s are from Turkey. I think there just has always been like a nice connection between Germany and Turkey for trade reasons.

Cory Klippsten:

And then, I think Trader Joe’s was started by the son of one of the Aldi founders, which is a big German chain, if I recall. So, maybe, that’s kind of the Genesis of that back through the years. But, I mean, so they’ve been through it before, but not this generation. They had multiple of these in the 80s and 90s. At least three, I think major devaluations.

Cory Klippsten:

When my wife used to go back to Turkey, she actually grew up outside of Turkey for the most part, but she would go back in the summers. And her mom would have to tell her whether to add like one zero versus last year, or like three zeros versus the year before. And she was really buying gum for like, millions of Lira in the 90s and stuff like that.

Cory Klippsten:

So, she’s seen it before, isn’t really that fazed by it. How they cope mostly is, if you have any excess assets, they do own a lot of gold in Turkey, but they’re also just like they stored in real estate, in Turkey and outside of Turkey. And so, I always make the joke, like, Turks are used to stacking flats. So, stacking SATs is not a far cry for a Turk. They’re used to stacking flats.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, yeah, right. It’s a really interesting perspective. And so, I mean, from what I’ve read and seen in high inflation scenarios, it becomes like hot potatoes, right? That’s like, towards the later stages, people just try to spend straightaway. But before that, people are looking at stock market, property, even art and gold, and they tend to just try to buy those things and hold those to save themselves.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, they do, they do. And it just had so many other disruptions too. So, I put a couple of these in a thread. And I want to add to it as I come up with more examples where people send me things and make it one of those threads. So, if you just search my handle and Turkey, there’s five or six things in there. I’ll keep adding to them as we watch this, because this train is not going to reverse. It’s going to be worse and worse.

Cory Klippsten:

And I think we’ll be at 50 Lira per dollar in a few years, if it’s still around, unless it hyperinflates. But one example was a friend of ours, worked for a Turkish company, and she was doing great, and it was like career track, blah, blah, blah, inflation goes nuts. They can’t give her a raise to keep up with it. A European company steps in, that’s a competitor to the Turkish company. And it doesn’t cost them anymore, because their balance sheet isn’t Euros. And they just offer her the same salary they would have last year, but it’s 50%, 60%, 70% pay bump for her.

Cory Klippsten:

So, she jumps. And the Turkish company is now disadvantaged and lose that skill, right? We’re actively poaching Turkish employees from spectacular companies, when they’re paid in Lira and paying them in dollars. We’ve got one engineer and hoping that another one here soon. It just, it makes sense. That’s just how the world works. So…

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, the brain drain factor. And I think there are lessons for all of us, anyway, as bitcoin is and looking at what happens in high inflation countries, because obviously, where bitcoin is, we’re very concerned about inflation. And so, I think there are lessons to be learned out of looking at what goes on.

Stephan Livera:

And so, that’s important to see. And you might maybe, eventually, you start to see importers having problems, right? Because now, they used to be able to buy something denominated in US dollars. But obviously, as the Lira just keeps tanking, and their revenue, their income is in Lira, or now they’re struggling to get their imports in, right? And so, then, people in the country now might be struggling to get the products and services that they normally are used to being able to get, right?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, yeah. And so, then you try to control the inflation with price controls, which is like, they’re all deterrent and you blame the bankers and you try to make sure that people can buy the Smith, which is like, the daily pretzel or whatever. And try to keep that at one way or whatever it is, so that people don’t notice.

Cory Klippsten:

But basically, what happens by trying to keep these prices low, it’s artificially low. And so, Bulgarians have been driving across the border with huge trucks and buying up everything, and now it’s causing food shortages.

Stephan Livera:

Oh, that yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

Right? And then, you’ve got basically, almost every rental is rent controlled to some degree. So, it might not be like, 1% or whatever it is, and certain pockets of New York where the millionaires live in two bedrooms and stuff. But there’s some degree of rent control on basically, everything.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, you have people that just can’t leave their apartment. They can’t go because you can’t afford the market rate because they can charge the market rate when there’s a new tenant. So, people are just stuck. They can’t change jobs like if they have a job offer on the European side and that commute is an hour and a half because they live on the Asian side, reverts split half and half basically, and people try to minimize the number of times they have to drive across the bridge or hop on a ferry. You’d rather, if you can live and work on the same side, but you can’t move.

Cory Klippsten:

So, now, your prospects are chopped in half, because you can’t move to the Asian side if there’s a new job offer over there, because you can’t leave your house, because you can’t afford a new one over in [inaudible 00:30:22] or whatever the nice neighborhood is on the Asian side.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it just starts causing all this friction, and it just slows everything down, and the capital allocation is all messed up, and your life gets all messed up, and you can’t travel and other countries start to mess with your passports, because you just start as good a trading partner anymore. And little by little, the places that you can go and do things just starts to reduce, and you just… Yeah, it’s just, and I’ve got a lot of Argentinian friends and have watched that country my whole life, for whatever reason.

Cory Klippsten:

I just always been aware of things that have happened there. But they haven’t had a big one since 20 years ago. It was a blip another one and after that, but not really since day ’01. And the Cyprus crisis was like such a tiny little country. So, we’re all aware of it, but nothing like this, nothing like a top 20 economy with 80 million people.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, it’s shocking to see and definitely, some lessons out there for bitcoin is out there. And I think, I like to think a lot of the savvy bitcoiners are those who are learning about this and using bitcoin, obviously, as an important tool to protect themselves and retain access to say, products and services and/or get freedom by getting out, let’s say.

Cory Klippsten:

I would say like, just in case, you are Turkish, or have friends in Turkey. Turkey is one of the places where a lot of the intelligent class actually, doesn’t speak English. There are a lot of people that because it’s such a big economy, they can choose to just speak like Turkish and German or Turkish and Arabic, or just straight Turkish, because you can have a really good career and not bother.

Cory Klippsten:

But you need some bitcoin, and you need to be able to speak English. It is the International Language of Business. And I think, it’s a good hedge. It’s a good hedge. I wish that I had encouraged some of the friends and spouses of some of our network to go harder at it, over the last 10 years, because I first saw that, and I’ve suggested it, but I never, like really beat the table for it.

Cory Klippsten:

And it would be so much easier for them to just like, grab a company, grab a job with a Western company, and work remotely, and be making like, dollars, pounds, or something if they spoke English. Anyway, I think that’s a really important thing if you’re in a country, or you’re a citizen of a country that inflation is one of the possibilities over the next 10, 20 years, like just start now.

Stephan Livera:

Yup, and just bringing you back to we’re talking a little bit about leverage and people who, and perhaps that’s what drove this recent drop. So, there was a high future open interest as an example. So, potentially, a lot of people were having hubris, so we’re starting to feel that sense of, “Oh, I can’t go wrong, I’m just going to leave her up on bitcoin or one of the cryptos,” so to speak.

Stephan Livera:

And so, that’s really a shift in the mindset, or at least being a stacking bitcoiner owner versus the crypto leverage type of person. And so, I think that also bears out in what we see in some of the bitcoin platforms, right? So, for example, Swan as a platform, what was going on a Swan platform at that time? There’s the by percentage.

Cory Klippsten:

Oh, I mean, we’re always like 99.99 or 100, because you have to call us or email us to be able to sell. So, yeah, I mean, I think we’re… I think, less than one in 10,000 trades all time have been sells. So, yeah, that’s a pretty easy metric. But yeah, I mean, people stack the dip crazy hard. It’s been really good business bitcoiners, know a good deal when they see it.

Cory Klippsten:

Obviously, most of our users have a DCA plan where they’re automatically stacking every day, week or month, but you can also smash by and it turns out a lot of these people aren’t all in. It turns out that they actually, do have some fee out of the sideline for buying dips.

Cory Klippsten:

So, yeah, it’s interesting. We do really well when the price is down. That falls off if the price goes sideways for a long time after going down. We prefer it to like go down, and then back up again for our volume. But yeah, I mean, I certainly, feel fortunate to have come into a little liquidity myself and being able to pick up some bitcoin, sub 50k. It’s crazy that that feels really cheap now, by the way. I’m like, it’s less than $50,000 a bitcoin is super cheap. Oh, my gosh, that’s a couple of years ago that would sound pretty ridiculous.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I am also… I think there are times where you see family and friends who get caught up into this idea of trading. And I think that’s such a 99.9% people will fail at this. So, maybe, 99%. But still, it’s just insane how many people. And I think it’s like, this human psychology thing where they just think, “Oh, I can trade this thing, I can make money out of it.”

Stephan Livera:

And it’s just like, for some people, they can lose a lot of money if they’re really not careful, because they come into it with this idea of a trading mindset that they’re going to try to dance in and out, rather than just humbly stacking. So, that’s something I’ve seen. I think it is something to make sure we’re also… We’re talking about that when we’re teaching people.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, one of the ways, I’ve had a lot of success with this framing this year, which is, like whoever you’re talking to, it’s like, let’s assume that you’ve gotten to the place where they like to have more bitcoin. And they’re thinking about using trading to get there. And it’s like, trading is a profession, right? It’s something that people can be really bad at, or they can be really, really good at.

Cory Klippsten:

And people are really good at it, work at it really, really hard for a long period of time. You get good at trading. There’s science to that. There’s a science and an art to being a really, really good trader. And traders that have been trading for 15 or 20 years are much, much better than people have been trading for 15 or 20 months, right?

Cory Klippsten:

And so, if this is going to be your vocation, your profession, fine, cool. But if all you want is more bitcoin, then you shouldn’t just pick the thing that’s right adjacent to bitcoin. You should look at the universe of ways that you could make money. And think about, what’s actually sustainable, and what are you likely to be good at. Because most people are not going to be good at trading, right? That’s, that’s just a fact.

Cory Klippsten:

And it’s not even necessarily that you… You don’t even have to say like, “Oh, you couldn’t be good at trading.” It’s like, you’re probably not going to stick with it for 10 or 20 years to get really good at trading. I’m friends with a lot of these guys that are good at trading, because it was like my professional and social circle in Chicago, the last time there was getting this good was like the options trading. Boom, when options went online, and we’re open to retail, and the people that really knew what they were doing, were just doing it with black boxes, and they would make fun of click traders.

Cory Klippsten:

A click trader is someone that actually, uses their hands to click a mouse. A good trader would never actually, be a click trader. They make fun of those people. And a lot of those people are now in crypto, and they’re running the desks that jump in Cumberland. Most of these firms are either in Chicago or have huge offices there. They’re in New York and as much as hedge fund guys.

Cory Klippsten:

And they’re people that know what they’re doing because they’ve been doing it for 20 years. And they have incredible machines and AI scientists and ML people, and they’re setting up algorithms, and they’re ripping your face off. And if you don’t know any of what I’m talking about right now, and you aren’t friends with those people, like you’re the mark.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

So, I just think people are just like incredibly, naive going into it and thinking that it’s going to work out for them. And it’s almost a curse if they went a little bit early on, because it could just ruin you for the next five years, in the next decade because you’re just looking for that hot streak again. There’s almost nobody gambling in Vegas that didn’t win a lot in their first year.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, right. That’s an interesting way to put it. Because sometimes…

Cory Klippsten:

Because if you lose a lot, you get turned off.

Stephan Livera:

You just leave, right away. You get a bad taste in the mouth, okay, I’m done with that. Never doing that again. But if you win a little bit, you think, “Oh, maybe I was just getting unlucky, those times I lost. And actually….”

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, this is fun.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

Right.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I think that…

Cory Klippsten:

I’ve got a system. I’ve got a system. I know, I can beat the crap. I can beat the crap, say, “Well, I’ve got a system.”

Stephan Livera:

And the thing is, so there’s this whole industry spawning around of people teaching you how to trade and the exchanges, you encourage all, “Hey, let me show you how to do a leverage trade. And, oh, look at this, you can do a stop loss here.” And people get it into their mind, even if they’re not a professional, right? That they’re not doing arbitrage across exchanges using some automated system.

Stephan Livera:

They’re not using some sophisticated approach or maybe they’re not being a market maker who charges a spread and that’s your professional trading reason that you’re doing trading. And there’s an actual business model around it. It’s just people who are just looking at random crayon drawings from some influencer on Twitter, and thinking, “Oh, look, see, it’s going to go up. I’m going to go along now, or whatever.” And then, people just get wrecked. But, hey, I guess some people just have to learn the hard way.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, it’s so funny, though. I don’t even come across this particular conversation that much anymore. I really don’t. I just I think that, maybe, it’s just because my own efforts and brand have just encircled myself with people that aren’t about trading. And I think, Swan through our… The megaphone that we’ve built is just catching enough people and getting enough people to come to us who really see it as… See bitcoin as a long-term savings technology.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, the conversation is just like, basically, about how much to buy. That’s really, the one. I mean, you’ve been on a lot of these calls, like, mostly people are just trying to figure out, how much of their portfolio to allocate to bitcoin. And they just looking for reinsurance that the government can’t ban it tomorrow. And some of these will flood busting stuff that you just got to go through.

Cory Klippsten:

But, yeah, I mean, I’m not really having this conversation much anymore. Unless I go on a crypto YouTube show and spread the word behind enemy lines, which I love to do. Shout out altcoin daily and crypto NBO. I went on both of those shows in the last couple of weeks. And it’s actually, quite fun. They’re nice people trying to make a living, whatever. And you can still come with your bitcoin message.

Cory Klippsten:

And then, the most fun is like, I mean, they get an insane number of views and comments on their YouTube, right? Because all these crypto kitties are just like on YouTube all day. And just going and showing up because I doubt the other interview subjects actually, show up in the comments. And I’ll go through and answer questions and do retorts, and tell them that, ADA is fake and stuff like that.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, no, that’s cool.

Cory Klippsten:

It’s fun.

Stephan Livera:

That’s great. And certainly, I agree with you. A lot of people who you spend time teaching, they don’t go into this whole or can I be a trader and stuff. But there may be people who are more on the periphery, or people who are just coming in, and they see this stuff, or you might have things like that.

Stephan Livera:

But I want to switch it now to chatting a little bit more like a macro stuff and what’s going on in the world with, obviously, the Fed. There’s been some talk about potentially, tapering off the asset purchases, and… But there’s always this argument of, are they just job hurting? Or they’re just trying to say they’re going to raise the rates? But then, really, they might not? Do you have any thoughts on what’s happening with the Fed there?

Cory Klippsten:

I mean, Jay told us today that the economy is fine. So, we’re good to go. And so, they can stop… The Fed can stop buying all the bonds, and they can raise rates three times next year. So, that’s good. I’m glad we solve the crisis. This is fantastic. All clear skies from here. They got it under control. So, yeah, all hail. It’s great.

Cory Klippsten:

But no, I mean, there… Yeah, this is… We’re recording on the 15th of December. And the meeting was today, and there were some comments and stuff like that. And that was the message that was relayed was going to try to raise rates three times next year.

Cory Klippsten:

I can’t imagine that it would go any better than last time really, like, it’s probably some massive choke up either before or right after the first one. That would be like kind of my base case, the plurality of outcomes and your possible scenarios would probably point towards something like that, and not being able to get through three hikes.

Cory Klippsten:

But who knows, man, I don’t know. I mean, it’s all short-term stuff anyway. In the long-term, dollars in the toilet already, and it’s about to go down the drain completely. And bitcoin is awesome. So…

Stephan Livera:

For sure. Yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

It’s easier, it’s much easier to be just sanguine about this stuff. I think about it a lot more in terms of like, roadmap for Swan and portfolio companies that I have, like in and outside of bitcoin. And just charting a path for like, when things will be hot, and making sure you load up on cash for your next couple years of operations, when markets are hot, and things like that.

Cory Klippsten:

So, I guess, this incredibly overheated equities market of 2021 has been incredible for all stock investors, basically, especially in tech. And then, it’s been great for bitcoin companies too. We’ve benefited for sure, from there being like lots of cash around the world. So, wash and liquidity.

Cory Klippsten:

I’m going to try to describe a visual meme here that I saw on Twitter yesterday or the day before, and it was one of those things where like, somebody is explaining something to somebody else was just to panel one, and it was like, “So, how does trickle down work? Well, first of all, you print all the money and you give it to the 1%.” And then, there’s like a blank panel and they’re like, “And?” And then, the first is like, “And that’s it.”

Stephan Livera:

The world today.

Cory Klippsten:

That’s it. Yeah, you just print the money and you go to the one and present it and they’re good to go. So, yeah, I mean, just inflating these asset prices, like freaking crazy.

Cory Klippsten:

So, I’ll give an example. So, I used to work with a lot of software as a service companies post Google before getting the bitcoin, and it was very typical to do deals, like somewhere between like a six, and maybe a 10x revenue multiple would be like where you’d anchor, and then you’d say, “Oh, but our growth rate is higher and our team is amazing,” or they hammer back at you and say, like, “Well, that’s a first time founder, and you guys only grew 2x over the last year, and keep you down towards six, something like that.” It’s very difficult right now to do a SaaS deal at 100 times revenue. Insane.

Cory Klippsten:

And it’s only six years later, where I’m getting this, like, six to 10x range, that was like 2015, 2016. And it’s very typical now that it’s like 100x. So, you can go be like a half a billion-dollar company listed on NASDAQ, hitting out through a spec or something with like, five to $10 million in revenue.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, it’s crazy when you really put it in those terms. And so, it just shows how far we’ve gone in terms of the system and where it’s going with the money. And to me, it just comes back to… The government is not going to be able to make its payments, if they let the interest rates go up. They’re just going to have to keep the rates low. And that’s probably the most important, most salient factor in this analysis.

Stephan Livera:

And so, they may bluff that they’re going to, or maybe they even do a rate rise that they won’t be able to sustain. And that’s, I guess that’s how I’m seeing it. And so, obviously, that’s obviously bullish for anyone who’s a bitcoiner, you’re huddling. And you’re looking for that long-term. So, I wanted to… Yeah, go on.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, even let’s say, they did do three hikes. And so, you added 75 basis points to the Fed funds rate, like it’s still damn near an all-time low from the last 5,000 years, right?

Cory Klippsten:

So, it’s one of those things where they’re like, it’s like a store increasing the price by 30 bucks, and then discounting it 15% the next day. And that’s what they’ve done. They dropped it below the historic low. And now, they’re going to bring it up to the historic low. It’s only higher than the last year, basically.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, even that, it’s just a crazy level. It’s just trying to fake a society having low time preference, when really it doesn’t. So, that’s obviously, going to cause problems for the world. But, so be it. Also, wanted to chat a little bit about what’s going on with Swan. I thought it was interesting as well with the recent launch Swan gifts and it really brought it back Full Circle for me. And that’s how we both started, right?

Cory Klippsten:

Full Circle, that’s how we met.

Stephan Livera:

And you started it… It all started as GiveBitcoin. So…

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was GiveBitcoin.io was the original product. And we were just trying to figure out how to do things at the intersection of bitcoin education and selling bitcoin or getting bitcoin in more people’s hands, but making sure they understood what they own.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, yeah, that first product was gifting. And we ran that for holidays of 19 all of 20 through the holidays of 20. And Swan, been taking off basically, all of 2020 and we made the decision to focus the whole team on just Swan for the whole year of 2021. But in the background, we still had the code and the know how to do gifting.

Cory Klippsten:

And then, we built like another little piece of technology for one of our integrations with a partner about three or four months ago and we realized that that actually enabled a really slick way to do gifting inside of Swan. So, yeah, the team just did a little sprint and we got live I think yesterday and relaunched it in time for some… If you got some last-minute shopping to do and you don’t want to go fight the crowds, you can just use gift bitcoin. It’s very easy.

Cory Klippsten:

It’s a good product for the US. I wouldn’t bother with the gifting product probably outside of the US. You can certainly, use Swan outside the US to buy bitcoin for yourself. I think the gifting is a better experience just in the US right now. We’ll see if we can do something better for free all international.

Stephan Livera:

That’s it. Yeah, it was just interesting for me as well because that was how… I think that was when you and I first met that was under this idea of GiveBitcoin. And so, it just came back.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah.

Stephan Livera:

And really, cool to say that.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it was day one of the Bitcoin Conference 2019 in San Francisco. And I met you, Yan and Parker at the exact same time with like within three minutes of each other, either right before or right after I presented the idea on the peer-to-peer stage. And I just, I can’t believe that I met all three of you guys right away and ended up working with two of you. And of course, being an investor and advisor to unchained and having an actual relationship with Parker instead of just admiring him from afar.

Stephan Livera:

That’s cool, I became Full Circle as well. And also, the Swan Advisor Services recently, launched as well. I think that’s an interesting one as well, because it’s like people in the adviser world sometimes might struggle to do the bitcoin thing, just because of the way the structures and the ways things are. So, it’s almost like you have to create a structure for them to be able to talk about bitcoin with their clients as well, right?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, there’s so many ways that you can just be an extended member of the team for an RIA, which is in the US, a Registered Investment Advisor, or NFA, which is financial advisor, very similar. And they have all kinds of dashboards and reporting requirements, and portfolio rotations. And so, you have to, like, listen to what they need, and get to know them.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, we were doing this for like, five months, maybe six months, building the product, interviewing people and doing it like a software company would, interviewing FAA is and figuring out like, what we need to build and stuff. And meanwhile, we were putting together our board of directors which Lyn Alden is on the board and along with Yan and I.

Cory Klippsten:

And the fourth member was supposed to be Andy Edstrom. And he’s former Goldman guy. He’s been running WESCAP Financial. He is a money manager out in LA. He wrote the book, Why Buy Bitcoin, which is probably the best book. It’s the only book by a financial advisor for that audience. And it is a really, good book.

Cory Klippsten:

Anyway, so we were like about to have our first board meeting. And Andy hit me up, and he was like, “So, I think I’d rather joined full time and just run Swan Advisory Services.” And I was like, “All right, when can you start?” So, yeah, I mean, now there’s no requirements gathering. He just tells our team exactly what to build. He knows it all cold. He knows all the vendors, all the partners, all the hooks that you need.

Cory Klippsten:

And so, that’s a much bigger bet for us. We have a bunch of partners and owners of RIAs on the Swan Cap Table, that have like, a few 100 billion dollars under management across them. So, it’s like, we’ve got a lot of good alpha and beta customers to test this with, and to get into it. But there’s $100 trillion of assets under management, just with RIAs in the United States.

Cory Klippsten:

So, it’s a huge pile of cash. If we can go out and tackle that and get half a percent of that or something like that, like, it’s big, big money. It’s a big deal for bitcoin. And there’s nobody else doing it, bitcoin only. There’s other platforms out there in crypto, they all sit on top of Gemini. And they all have a mixed message, just like the crypto exchanges. They’re there just to buy whatever the advisor wants.

Cory Klippsten:

And we want to be there for the advisors that are orange filled or that have orange filled clients. But still need to deal with their financial advisor. And we’re just going to get really, well-known in that community. And he has a big platform. And he writes in CoinDesk, twice a month, and goes on tons of people’s shows, and they’ll do a lot more of that.

Cory Klippsten:

I can speak this language pretty well. And I used to work in private client services for Morgan Stanley a long time ago. Terrence Yang, who a lot of people have gotten to know through Clubhouse and Spaces, that guy’s a former MD at Morgan Stanley & Merrill Lynch, and he’s a Harvard lawyer. This dude speaks to these people the way they want to be spoken to. So, I’m really bullish on that. I think, it’s important.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, it’s a whole other category. And we need to be out there trying to be involved in as many different areas that we can.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, can I just say, like, honestly, we’ve got plenty of bandwidth to talk to people. If you are a money manager, or you’re someone that works with a money manager, and you want to talk about this, you can straight up email me, like C-O-R-Y @swanbitcoin.com. Email me, we’ll have a chat.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, for sure.

Cory Klippsten:

I’ll introduce you to Andy, we’ll get it on, let’s do this. So…

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, and I think…

Cory Klippsten:

We don’t know all of you. You’re not all on Twitter, like, Jeff Ross and a few others are obviously active. And we know some of you guys, but a lot of you are probably, not tweeting all day, you’re probably busy.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, for sure.

Cory Klippsten:

But you probably, do listen to Stephan.

Stephan Livera:

But, I mean, look, and there might be listeners out there, maybe, if you’ve got friends and family who are RIAs and you want to get them on to the bitcoin only message because remember, with Swan and the bitcoin only message, they’re going to really learn about bitcoin, right? Instead of…

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah.

Stephan Livera:

… I think where if you go for the crypto platforms, you will get this message of… I’ll see, all the coins are just like equities and you just need to diversify across the coins, that’s kind of more like their view of it. Whereas, if you come to a bitcoin specialist platform, it’s… No, it’s bitcoin only. Bitcoin is the message, bitcoin is the answer.

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah.

Stephan Livera:

So, I think that’s an important distinguishing factor.

Cory Klippsten:

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you’ll never understand any of this stuff unless you actually, understand bitcoin deeply. So…

Stephan Livera:

Yeah.

Cory Klippsten:

I prefer that you stay with bitcoin forever, but a minimum get started with bitcoin.

Stephan Livera:

Of course, yeah. And yeah, I guess is there any other Swan stuff you wanted to touch on? Maybe, some of the other community projects and things? If you got anything else you wanted to mention?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it’s always good idea to plug bitcoin or jobs. I think that has been a resounding success, what, probably six months in or I don’t even… Maybe, it’s not even that long, might be four or five months in. But this was just on a whim, just fortuitous. I had just been getting so many people asking me for help finding jobs in bitcoin. And then, obviously, having a piece of a bunch of companies and they always have hiring needs.

Cory Klippsten:

And I started spending a lot of my time trying to match candidates with companies and helping people… I have a problem saying, no to things. Except for it yet, shitcoin, I’m good at that. I just, I like to help people when I can. And in a VC randomly introduced me to a founder at a company that made it like, a lot easier to stand up like a vertical focused job board than anything that I’ve seen before. And you can just pay a SaaS fee for it.

Cory Klippsten:

So, I did it and posted on Twitter, looking for somebody to help me with it. Found Nathan over in the UK, who was game and jumped right in, and he’s a beast, and he actually, comes. So, he can code a bit. He can write a bit. He can design a bit. And he comes from like, the HR people management world. So, it’s like, “Oh, my God.”

Cory Klippsten:

So, we started doing this, just like on the side just like asynchronously coordinating on Telegram and trying to get people to post their jobs there. And it just took off and he was just such a good dude. We couldn’t not hire him. So, I convinced him to come over and join Swan full-time, and it made sense to fold the effort into Swan.

Cory Klippsten:

But it’s free, unlike companies paying 700 bucks a month for pop shitcoin jobs or whatever. This is a bitcoiner community resource and anybody that you would think is a competitor Swan, that’s not how we think about it, team bitcoin for the win. I help all these companies. We feature, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care if it’s strike level River, Casa unchained, Galoy, all these companies are posting their… Big companies are posting there now, too, which is pretty sweet. And I think it’ll keep expanding. We have profiles on there now, too.

Cory Klippsten:

So, even if you’re like an ANON, and you want to post your profile, you can do that. And you can get contacted through the platform. So, it’s two-sided now. You can post a job seeker profile as well. So, really excited about that.

Cory Klippsten:

Everything else that’s coming, there’s a lot. There are a lot of things that we have coming out for bitcoiners. And next one is turning into a little bit of like, a bitcoiner focused company even more than a bitcoin company. It’s just our nature. And what we find interesting and what we like to do, like we like to hang out with bitcoiners. That’s why we hire all bitcoiners.

Cory Klippsten:

And all of our people around the world go to as many meetups and conferences as they can, and kick it on Twitter and Clubhouse and Spaces, and Discord and Telegram with bitcoiners all day, every day. And it just lets us be very close to the community and listen to what people want and what they need. And because we have a really good team of builders on the product and engineering and design side that can put things together.

Cory Klippsten:

And then, we have enough of a megaphone to spark something and enough of a network to get people to try things. I think that was what happened with jobs. And I think it’s going to happen with three or four more products that we’ll be rolling out over the next three or four months. So, stay tuned for lots more on that bitcoiner projects from Swan.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I think that’s really interesting for our listeners out there who are maybe, struggling in your field job. You’re feeling like it’s a bit soul sucking, well take a look, bitcoinerjobs.co. You might genuinely find a job that even if it’s like a slight pay cut, you might think, you know what, it’s worth it for me and my own mental state to be able to work and chat and really, just really feel that interaction in that connection of working in a bitcoin company, which is really good. And the companies there are very strongly bitcoin focused, bitcoin principle.

Stephan Livera:

So, you’ll find a lot of opportunities there. So, Cory, probably, time to wrap up there. So, if you’ve got anything else, any other thoughts for people as… And maybe, a good one would be… There might be listeners out there who are weathering the storm or feeling the drop, do you have any thoughts for them on stealing themselves for the longer term with bitcoin?

Cory Klippsten:

Yeah, I mean, it’s… Honestly, I find that when the price is going up, I feel like I have to stay current on everything. And so, when I was in my learning space, it’s like, 2017 through like 2020, and I was devouring podcasts, but what I would find myself doing when the price was like down or sideways, or whatever, is I would take more time to go to the back catalogue because I didn’t need to stay right on top of everything that was going on right now.

Cory Klippsten:

There’s something about a price pump, when Twitter is really noisy and everything’s super exciting on the podcast. And so, you always are trying to stay abreast of everything in the now. And when the price is down or sideways, I think it’s just, it’s fun to dive into the Nakamoto Institute, or…. I started a newsletter a couple of months ago, called the Daily Bitcoiner, where the whole point is resurfacing, really good oldies, but goodies.

Cory Klippsten:

So, we’ll find stuff from like, 2011, 2014, old YouTube videos and podcasts that have stood the test of time, and you resurface those. So, I think that one’s a pretty cool one, cory.substack.com, here come Cory was taken. But… Thanks, Greg, FU. But, yeah, so I think that’s probably, one of the things that was a little different. I would try to pick up books and stuff.

Cory Klippsten:

So, if you haven’t read Digital Gold from 2014, read that. It’s awesome. If you haven’t read… I’m trying to think of like, The Blocksize War, which a bit next research put out about 10 months ago, pick that up. Obviously, imagine, we were all tweeting all of Parker’s articles as they came out when he did 15 or 16 in a row in less than a year, but there’s probably, people that got into bitcoin in 2021 that don’t even know that exists.

Cory Klippsten:

So, look up gradually, then suddenly Parker’s series and read all 16 of them. There’s probably, people that only know about Vijay’s book and never read the original article. I think that’s interesting. Or, just go and search a podcast app for somebody that you enjoy, and then go back and listen to the things that they talked about because like a first album, a lot of times somebody’s first couple appearances is when you get their life story. And the insights that they’ve built up from their whole life.

Cory Klippsten:

And then, after that, most of the podcast hosts have had these people on, and they don’t want to retell the same story. And so, all you’re getting is this person’s comments on like, the new stuff, but what you really want is the first time that safety and went on Stephan’s show, something like that, or you want like the first time that Brandon Quittem ever went on McCormick or something like that.

Cory Klippsten:

So, try to go find the first one or two shows that your favorite bitcoiner was ever on, because that’s when you’re going to really like, get to know them as people a little better. Anyway, that’s some media consumption tips. And as much as they work for me.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, no, I think that’s really interesting. And it’s a great point that a lot of the new people coming in might not have seen the same material. And, of course, it’s just the way it has to be, but that’s certainly, an important point for them. So, yeah, so listeners, make sure you follow Cory. Cory, where can they find you online?

Cory Klippsten:

I like Twitter more than I should. It’s awesome. I love Twitter. And so, Cory Klippsten on Twitter. You can also find me in any of about 48 bitcoin related Telegram groups. I think I already gave my email address, so that’s out there. But yeah, you actually, can email me for anything that you think is relevant for Swan. Its cory@swanbitcoin.com, C-O-R-Y.

Cory Klippsten:

So, that’s probably enough to get you started. Oh, I’m also like, much more active on LinkedIn, lately. So, find me there. I’m trying to post every day about bitcoin. So, if you’re like me, and you’re like a Gen X, or… And you want to hang out on the Gen X network with me on LinkedIn, come say hi.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Thanks again for joining me, Cory.

Cory Klippsten:

Thank you, Stephan. It’s great.

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