How can financial advisors help bitcoiners? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

How can financial advisors help bitcoiners?

3052 sats \ 27 comments \ @MattGolliher 3 Mar 2023 bitcoin freebie

I'm an orange-pilled financial advisor working to focus my practice on bitcoin.

How can I provide the most value to bitcoiners? Bitcoin will obsolete many areas of traditional wealth management, so I want to shift my offering over time to the areas where I can still provide significant value.

If you're a bitcoiner, what advisory/planning services would you get the most value from?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

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3350 sats \ 3 replies \ @nout 3 Mar 2023

Stay humble. If you just started learning there are likely many things you haven't yet discovered/understood. Bitcoin is a long term journey and there is a lot of noise that takes many years to comprehend and filter out.
Onboard as many people into self custody as possible
Give them and educate them on correct usage of the tools, specifically securing keys, etc.
For people that are filing capital gains (their choice, I know DarthCoin will explain otherwise), show them non-custodial and local tools for how to generate LIFO/FIFO from their transactions (i.e. please don't push them into using some monstr privacy destroying online service that asks you to upload all transactions)
Get solid lists of opportunities where to actually use and spend bitcoin
Have a well tailored list of materials for each person (e.g. someone may like to read interesting book that you would suggest like Mandibles, Blocksize Wars...)
By yourself actually learn how to act online fully privately and anonymously. I would suggest you try getting yourself familiar with darknet markets and go through the tutorials about how to use those. I'd expect my financial advisor to have solid set up in terms of privacy and anonymity (e.g. I'd expect you communicate with clients over Signal, use non-Gmail like proton, etc)

I think one time fee for initial set up and then hourly fee for support would be reasonable. There may be some power in in person support. With Bitcoin the trust building is even more important, so you need to give a great deal of verifiable visibility into what you are doing.

1598 sats \ 2 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

Great stuff, thank you. The good news is I've been researching bitcoin for 3 years. The bad news is it took me about that long to work through all the compliance issues necessary to make bitcoin part of my offering (and there's still more work to do).

To give you an example of the compliance tightrope I'm walking, it would be a violation of SEC rules for me to communicate with clients through a channel that's not monitored by my firm. Several big banks were recently fined $1.8 billion because some of their employees used private apps to communicate with clients.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 3 Mar 2023

The reality of laws and especially policies is that they are conflicting on the margins. No one can follow every policy there is, because the only option to do that would be to literally die (and depending on the type of death that likely also breaks multiple policies).

And so even with SEC type of policies this is about balancing the cost of implementing such policy vs the cost of repercussions when ignoring the policy. This is what all the big players learn - so for the banks the fine was most likely still worth it. E.g. here are all the fines that banks got for money laundering and cheating users one way or another and yet they continue doing that, because by doing it they earn way more than what they spend on fines.

Now specifically about using privacy tools. The whole point is that if you use those right, then a government won't be able to pin you down.

101 sats \ 0 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

I'm going to print this reply and frame it.

(Although, of course, I do not condone it, and I always adhere to every applicable compliance standard, no matter how stupid and contradictory it might be.)

1608 sats \ 1 reply \ @Wumbo 3 Mar 2023

Welcome, couple thoughts:

Helping educate and on boarding individuals to self custody their BTC. Hardware wallet setup, recovering to new device, etc...
Point them to non - KYC sources to acquire BTC.
Help them understand MemPool and fees.

A question I don't have a good answer for is: What is your fee structure based off of?

Maybe a hourly rate for the teaching service.

I don't think you will have a "long" term client in BTC vs in the traditional fiat financial advisor world where you "Manage" their assets for years to come and can skim some off for your services.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

Thanks for those suggestions. If you needed help in those areas, how do you think you would want to pay for it? (Hourly fee, subscription type billing, one-time payment for each service as needed, etc.)

1356 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 3 Mar 2023

I've had a couple of non-bitcoiners ask me if/how you can buy bitcoin in an IRA.
How to handle selling/spending bitcoin (best way to do your cost basis?)
I agree with the @Wumbo about hardware wallet setup, recovering to new device and general bitcoin knowledge

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

Definitely, I think helping clients balance tax efficiency with KYC and other tradeoffs will be a big part of it.

Also agree on the hardware wallet setup. The beauty of bitcoin is clients don't need me (or anyone) to custody it for them.

My goal for most clients is for them to not need me anymore. Thinking about incorporating a "graduation" type celebration when that happens.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @BBitcoinUSA 3 Mar 2023

There are a lot of people who don’t ever want to sell their BTC, they just want to hold, accumulate, and then pass it onto their kids and grand kids. There are also a lot of people who want to transact with Bitcoin exclusively not only because it helps fuel widespread adoption and increase the velocity of money, but also because it would help accelerate the conditions needed for a full replacement of the USD, at which point a bid/ask would no longer exist and everyday purchases would all be priced in BTC terms. Your ideal client at first is probably in the first bucket I described. You could basically manage their money and monthly cash inflows/outflows like you do now, but instead of picking stocks or funds and allocating across different industries and asset classes, you could focus on things like estate planning, budgeting their lives throughout retirement, figuring out how they can live off of their BTC holdings most efficiently without having to regularly liquidate their BTC, perhaps by sourcing USD financing on their behalf from lenders or other capital providers who accept BTC collateral (you could take a fee % there for arranging the deal), daily monitoring and management of their risk exposure, margin balances, etc. (maybe a fixed fee opportunity for providing an ongoing service), working with them and their heirs to design and implement protocols that will take effect once they’ve passed (maybe this is an hourly fee or a referral fee opportunity once you find an estate attorney who knows Bitcoin and is someone you trust enough to introduce to your clients). I am probably missing some things but it seems like there are a lot of ways you could build a nice business for yourself that wouldn’t cannibalize your customers once they are onboarded and fully educated on Bitcoin

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

You gave a perfect description of my ideal client 5-10 years from now.

Today, the client I'm best able to help is a bitcoiner that still has the majority of their net worth in traditional (fiat) investments.

Usually that means they are still transitioning to the bitcoin standard, they want help managing their fiat investments and taxes along the way, and they value having a trusted guide to lead them further into the bitcoin economy.

My goal for the next 5-10 years is to become a trusted advisor for bitcoiners to recommend their parents/grandparents to. Big mountain, but worth the climb.

200 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinosphere 4 Mar 2023

You're asking the wrong crowd here. We're passionate bitcoiners who are looking forward to a world where FAs aren't needed anymore because we'll all be living on a bitcoin savings standard.

On a bitcoin standard, savings automatically & reliably grows due to scarcity; no stock-picking skills needed. What kind of future can your profession expect to have once all the people with savings have moved over to bitcoin as their primary/only savings vehicle?

So what you're really asking here is how to be a good converter of the fiat-rich over to bitcoin using traditional tools like bank custody accounts and bitcoin-friendly IRA funds. We have no interest in those here at all. Many of us think of custodial bitcoin as an evil aberration.

Honestly it sounds like a fruitless & thankless task; in the long run your clients become self-managing and in the short run you have a lot to learn about bitcoin regulations & custody options yet little to earn while doing so.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @SouthParkHodl 4 Mar 2023

Lots of good thoughts here. I also think that some/many people won’t entirely transition to 100% bitcoin in the near term and so he can probably show value to his clients and pay his bills even if he advises clients to self custody their btc. He isn’t earning fees on their real estate assets either. So the pool of assets he manages may shrink for a particular client but he improves client retention. I just stress that he teach the benefit of buying BTC peer to peer and to self custody.

14 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 3 Mar 2023

I think most of bitcoiners will give YOU financial advice. And is very simple: buy, spend and hodl BTC. That's all.

FUCK THE BANKS AND GOVS. All the rest is just noise.

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

I appreciate the sentiment, but that's not very helpful for someone who owns $1 million in fiat retirement accounts and some rental properties.

That's my typical client.

If someone's already on a bitcoin standard, they don't need me. And that's good! We want that population to increase.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 3 Mar 2023

someone who owns $1 million in fiat retirement

That means nothing. That is totally fiat mentality. I really don't give a shit about "somebody that owns $x millions in fiat".

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MattGolliher OP 3 Mar 2023

I care about them. They're my clients.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 3 Mar 2023

They're my clients.

You mean, the bloodsucker... yes

31 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 4 Mar 2023

You really aren't a Stacker News member until you have been verbally thrashed by @DarthCoin. Congratulations

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 4 Mar 2023

This is the way!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 4 Mar 2023

😂😂😂😂😂😂👍 The truth is that I can smell others bullshit very quickly and I will always call out them.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 4 Mar 2023

If you're doing to a FA, I think you're already pretty much not concerned with privacy or you're open to doxing that stack and letting governments know you own it so I guess how to use it most tax efficiently would be important.

I think a big one is also inheritance planning, and what to do in case of divorce or moving overseas with your wealth.

I also think that in the future there will be more bitcoin equities/bonds and other financial instruments that might be attractive to these people and that should be a talk/product on its own. Might not be important now with bitcoins upside but as vol comes down, it might be interesting to some to have an allocation of more risk

I do think FAs should let people know about non-kyc/private bitcoin and the importance of getting a stack that is not tied to your identity and how to acquire it and store it safely and not mixing it with your public stack

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @TNStacker 4 Mar 2023

They can become bitcoiners!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 4 Mar 2023

That's definitely the first step. I'm working to orange-pill my colleagues, but it's not easy.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @cryptofolyo 4 Mar 2023

Bitcoin is 400 billion dollar market cap While it is best to have most of the crypto portoflio parked in bitcoin there can be other upcoming opportunities in crypto space that are higher risk and higher return Examples : AMPLEFORTH - Read the article i wrote about $AMPL - Reading through satoshi mind one week after posting the whitepaper click here

10% of the portfolio can be parked in AMPL current market cap at 50 million - lots of room for upward growth. There are other opportunities similar to AMPL as well.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MattGolliher OP 4 Mar 2023

I actively advise clients against holding any crypto token that isn't bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptofolyo 4 Mar 2023

80% bitcoin 20% future potential ( Why to miss opportunity to invest into some other revolutionary ideas like bitcoin early on )

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MattGolliher OP 4 Mar 2023

By "bitcoiner" I mean:

Understands bitcoin vs "crypto'
Has (or wants to have) a significant % of their net worth in bitcoin...
But still owns a significant amount of "traditional" assets