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It takes some effort for me to lightly edit the auto-generated transcript from whisper. Do you read the transcripts from my podcasts? Should I keep trying to lightly edit them? Is dumping the transcript in its raw form like this post enough? Do I not even need to bother with transcripts because nobody reads them? IS @GRAYRUBY STUPID STUPID MAN? I am your shameless uptail woof woof🐕

In ~BooksAndArticles later I’m gonna take time to make a table comparing us, but that’s different from this ~podcasts territory.

Fountain link: https://fountain.fm/episode/TVy1HE1YHwkHUrgTDt5M

Raw transcript:

It’s So Early! - @grayruby Bitcoin Story Comparison to @realBitcoinDog.m4a

It's so early! I'm your host, Will Shelcoff, author of The Bitcoin Dog, Following the Scent of the Bitcoin C++ Source Code, and the novel Bitcoin Girl Saved the World. I'm on a walk right now actually with the Bitcoin Dog, Sheila, just the two of us, and I thought, of course, this is the perfect time for me to record my next episode. I just read Gray Ruby's Bitcoin story for the first time, and I was motivated to read it because I'll be recording my first ever Stacker Sports podcast episode with him, and in Gray Ruby and Undisciplined's famous style of just rambling on for 90 minutes, I figure, why not have the perfect place to talk to them about what other than Bitcoin. So I really enjoyed Gray Ruby's Bitcoin story. It was very detailed, which I really appreciate because my own personal Bitcoin story, which I wrote down, was also very detailed, and it gives an opportunity for me to compare each of our derbies down the rabbit hole. I think it's important that all listeners of this podcast and anyone else on Stacker News, and yes, I'm directly talking to you Undisciplined, really think critically of each actionable step down the Bitcoin rabbit hole because as hyper-Bitcoinization looms, as we choose how to spend our most precious resource, our time, and as friends and family approach us about Bitcoin, it's important that we reflect on our personal experiences of what actually made a difference for us in finally getting Bitcoin so that we can both give them advice or stay hands-off as appropriately because as we all know, including in Gray Ruby's case, seeing the price run up, run down, it's not about...each price level affects each person differently in terms of what makes them finally pull the trigger, but there's other things beyond the number that go up that finally make the difference. So looking at Gray Ruby's staring down the rabbit hole, for him, it really took an influential figure, someone he already respected, an expert to really make the difference for him to get into Bitcoin. That quote-unquote influencer was Preston Pysh. For me, I've only heard of Preston since my Bitcoin journey, but of course for Gray Ruby and others, they had first heard of Preston through his famous Investors podcast. And this is something that I think is very important to recognize is humility, being humble, being able to admit when you were wrong. This is a critical thing to not miss because of course Gray Ruby by 2016 had already heard of Bitcoin and already made a judgmental choice about it as just a scam. And this is someone who already invested hard money in physical gold like Gray Ruby, but then to think digital gold, what a terrible idea. But that was the big difference for Gray Ruby was knowing that because Preston was in it, that was enough of a reason for Gray Ruby to take a second look. Now he was hardly convinced, hardly at all, but Gray Ruby did an important step that I think few do and I didn't do at all, which was he got off of zero. He went ahead and bought a little bit. And when I say a little bit, I mean a whole 10th of a Bitcoin, something that's worth 10,000 US dollars as of this recording. And for him, only cost him $100 because this was back when Bitcoin was $1,000. And of course he says he kicks himself that he of course should have bought more way back in 2016, but he didn't know what he was buying. And it was impressive to me that he bought any at all because for me and my personality, I'm not buying unless I'm going all in. So even though I heard of Bitcoin in 2013, I didn't buy anything. Let's see. So then of course, he was very focused on his business. This story just talks about how there were so many things going on in his life that, you know, just buying a little Bitcoin was an afterthought for him. But it was important to me because that meant he had skin in the game. So it was at least on his mind. 2017, that's his first big run up, his first big bull run. This is where the story gets less interesting for me, but it's good for me to realize because this is so many, so many of my peers' Bitcoin journeys where he gets completely caught up in the altcoin craze and the FOMO and dabbling in all the altcoins. In my Bitcoin story, I am Bitcoin only, Bitcoin maxi from the beginning. Of course, I have the benefit of hindsight that I didn't get into Bitcoin until 2021. So maybe it was easier for me to avoid the altcoins. But I, of course, give GrayRuby a pass. Very generous, very generous to give you a pass, GrayRuby, and say it was okay that you got into altcoins in 2017. And you said, the quote is, but I couldn't get help getting caught up in the FOMO. I bought more Bitcoin. It was almost $15,000 at this point, and bought a bunch of other coins too. Bitcoin was great. But what if all these others were going to be the next Bitcoin? I'll be rich. Definitely a classic statement. So he goes more into his story. I think this is the key moment, key difference, is he's in his head mentally prepared and ready to call it a crash and a scam. He's ready for Biotech 2.0. And I distinctly remember in 2017, thinking the same thing, because I had a friend in 2017 who had a bunch of Bitcoin. And I was telling him at the peak that he should definitely sell. And of course, he said, but real Bitcoin dog, I'm not selling. And then it crashed in 2018, like I thought it would. It crashed all the way down even to $3,500. And I felt so vindicated. But in the back of my head, I thought, yeah, but why isn't it zero? So for GrayRuby, he's buying, knowing it's going down. Anyway, he's DCAing down. In 2018, he knew it would fall to $10,000. He said he had a price target that it would fall all the way to $2,000. It never actually fell to $2,000. But he was buying all the way down, learning more and more, gaining that conviction. For me, that is a huge parallel to my Bitcoin story, where I bought in at the peak in 2021 in April. I bought my first sliver at $62,000. And I bought all the way down in 2022, buying all the way down. They say, everybody wants to buy the dip, but nobody wants to catch a falling knife. And to them, I asked, look at my hands, look at them. Do you see all this blood on my hands? You know why I've got blood on my hands? Because I've been busy catching so many falling knives all the way down. 75% drop. $62,000 all the way to $16,000. I was DCAing. I was buying just like GrayRuby in the bear market of 2018, buying all the way down. And he wasn't even a Bitcoin maxi at that point. But he had done all that research after seeing the FOMO 2017, to see how valuable of an asset he had and that it was worth buying. But this is another key difference between him and I, because of course, I had to have full conviction before going in. He said, although I had owned Bitcoin for 15 months at this point, I still didn't really know what I owned. So again, at this point, he first was brought in because of an influencer expert he knew, Preston Pish. That was the one who convinced him. It wasn't a friend or anyone else. He actually even had, he said, not a cab driver, but you know, someone telling him about Bitcoin, which was how he knew it was a total bubble, like a biotech 2.0. But that just didn't scare him, because he was doing more research. And then the next part where him and I, our stories align is, he's really focused on financial news. So he's talking about the fault lines beginning to tremble 18 months later, with the September 2019 repo crisis. I think it's important that GrayRuby really emphasized the timeline of all the months passing by. In my Bitcoin story, it happens pretty quickly, from the beginning of 2021, to me making my first purchase, you know, from January to April. But for GrayRuby, he has this much longer story, which I want to emphasize, because when you have your friends or family come to you, recognize that time matters. 15 months to go to February 2018. Then another 18 months for the September 2019 repo crisis. And here again, where his and I's stories align is he's reading financial news, hard financial news. Notice it's not Twitter, which later in his story, Twitter is going to be a big part of GrayRuby's story. And Stacker News isn't even invented yet. But he hasn't mentioned anything so far about being active on social media. And I'm not even sure if GrayRuby is even on Twitter anymore. But the hard financial news of the repo crisis makes him more Bitcoin podcasts. Yeah, he said his go-to's of information, and I think it's important to really think about his go-to's of information, Bitcoin podcasts, books, and Twitter. So books also, for me, made a difference. Actually reading the Bitcoin Standard, of course, the classic, and Andreas Antonopoulos' Mastering Bitcoin, these hard sources, but it is unique that he said for him, for him, Twitter was a source, social media was a source. For me, Twitter was not a source. And I'd be interested to ask GrayRuby if today he would still recommend Twitter as a source for his friends or family. I'm guessing no. But he learned about self-custody. And then March 2020, another world news event. Oh, sorry, I skipped over the volatility in the VIX or the shorting the VIX. That's it. The short, the February 2018 short VIX trade. That was the other big financial news event, where he's putting these pieces together. So that's another thing to say, because you can't just tell, my experience is you can't just tell your friends and family, buy Bitcoin. Like, are they someone, and everybody's different, right? Everybody buys at the price they deserve. But are they someone who follows that hard financial news? The short VIX trade, the repo trade, I missed those things. For me in 2018, those are not things I was following. The financial news I followed was that Elon Musk was buying Bitcoin, that Tesla was buying Bitcoin, maybe SpaceX was buying Bitcoin Square. And of course, the grayscale investor studies. You know, my realizations that like it was so early, there wasn't even an ETF yet. And I was getting an appreciation for that time how Tesla stock wasn't even in the S&P 500 yet. So these various financial things. He talks about the fiat pathogen, which is absolutely fascinating to me, because Saylor had this too, where COVID was the big landmark to finally go all in for Saylor. And I think that's where GrayRuby aligns too. And it's not because of COVID. And it's not because of government vaccine mandates or something, or because of closing businesses. It was just about truly that flood of liquidity in the M1, M2 money supply and assets running up in wild value, even though his cash income had completely ceased, and just seeing a total flight to hard money. And the big difference here is for GrayRuby, traditionally, he would go to physical gold or silver. And now he's going all in on studying actual Bitcoin, the digital gold, and how that's so far superior than physical gold. So for me, my Bitcoin story, that wasn't part of it at all. For me, COVID was just something that came and came and went, I was still focused just on my, you know, solid principles of 401k retirement investing of an index funds, you know, don't try to time the market time in the market beats timing the market. At least there was no panic selling for me. And so I was able to buy the dip and I was able to reap the rewards when they ran up. So in short, to spare from rambling a long time, I'll quickly look up my own Bitcoin story really fast. Let's see here. This is the part where if I had the time or patience to do editing, I would edit. Thank you to my greatest listeners, Undisciplined and GrayRuby. My sources were hard financial news. That's the same with Preston Fish. That's the same with GrayRuby. Investment studies, I didn't hear GrayRuby specifically read any studies. I didn't hear GrayRuby ever read the Bitcoin white paper. I'd be curious to know if he has or not. Bitcoin news podcast. I will say that was similar to him and that podcast, the books, he said he read books. I also read the Bitcoin standard. I didn't hear GrayRuby do any courses to learn about Bitcoin. I did the Ledger Academy, the Ledger Live Academy. My hardware wallet had Academy. Now I would also say since I recommend the River Bitcoin exchange that people would read the courses offered by River, you know, as opposed to courses offered by Coinbase. But I don't, I don't know if those existed at the time he went all in in the rabbit hole. Of course, technical books and videos for me. And then for me, finally was Bitcoin culture articles. I don't know if culture articles were part of that for GrayRuby or not. But yeah, I so I really enjoyed reading his story and comparing. I think that's the important thing to emphasize. Number one, number one, number one. There wasn't a person that convinced GrayRuby. There wasn't like a person saying, oh, hey, you really ought to buy Bitcoin. And maybe that's because GrayRuby was so early. But for him, it took his own podcast he already listens to and trusts, his own financial news sources he already listens to and trusts like CNBC, which he says he had on the TV all the time. Him connecting the dots for himself, him putting it together that things aren't right or aren't looking right. And starting with a little bit, and then going more, more and more in himself, buying more, getting into self custody. And then of course, a big change in his own life, his business or moving or like him personally having his business shut down by the government that made him go all in the rabbit hole. So let me know your thoughts. Let me know. I got GrayRuby's Bitcoin story all wrong. I just really had a treat seeing how much his story and mine were similar. Think about it. Think about how there's so many more, so much more to go. Think about how few people you know in real life who even bought Bitcoin in the first place. And for the most of them, how few of them are even Bitcoin only. How few of them have really got it or are down the rabbit hole and maxis. When you think about that, all you can think really is just that it's so early.