Wall Street Unplugged | 973

Why Gen Z is captivated by crypto

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

How’s it going out there? It’s November 17th. I’m Frank Curzio. This is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast. [inaudible 00:00:21] the headlines, and…Tell you what’s really moving in these markets. So I have a great interview set up today. I’m bringing back my nephew, Joe Davide, works for me at Curzio Research. You guys know he writes articles, a lot of work in crypto helping people. Always answers questions, shares screenshots, shares so much. And I interview him several times in this podcast and I got unbelievable responses, in a 22 year old, younger generation. First time I had him on was in March, 2021. Remember, the market was booming. His portfolio was doing great. Then [inaudible 00:01:10]. Just typical investing and this big meme thing and everything was on fire. Portnoy, everybody was an expert.

Then I interviewed again in September ’21, which a lot of people forget now. They think the market started crashing in November. That’s for the most part, but not memes, not specs, and not those crazy IPOs. They started crashing months before, really tanking into November, when Powell decided to say, “Wait a minute. I think I’m wrong on this. Inflation is not going to be transitory, unless rates raise by the fastest rate we ever did in history, of the Fed.” That was great timing.

So, when I interviewed him in September when a lot of this stuff started crashing, he saw his portfolio go down. He was humbled, and I just got a lot of responses, and I wanted to show that and I was very proud of him to come on and explain that. Well, look what happened to the market since then, and I wanted to bring it back on because what I’m hearing out there, especially since FTX is the younger generation, they’re discouraged, they’re starting to hate. They don’t want to invest anymore. And I’ve seen this over my 30 year career, where you just give up. I’ve seen it during the dot com era. I’ve been around that long, Jesus. I saw it in 2006, ’07, when I was working at Cramer.

So many young kids just buying stocks, things are great, things are awesome. And then the credit crisis happens and then you wonder why those kids are the ones holding up signs on Wall Street saying, “This is bullshit,” and the bailouts and everything when they lost all their money. Imagine being in crypto right now. You’re in crypto and everything is great and you’re making money. It wasn’t on the table at all, ever, that you would have money in reputable, supposedly reputable places that you can’t get out right now. BlockFi? FTX? Seeing this go down is pretty crazy.

So I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish in this interview. I guess I just want to encourage to try to put myself in their shoes, and it’s important because a lot of you have kids, young people listen to this podcast. I don’t know if it’s going to come out good. I don’t know if it does or doesn’t. But I think my point is not to discourage them, because sometimes when things are the shittiest, are the times that you should be investing here, especially if you’re young. I’m telling you, the next couple of years are going to be tough, but who cares? If you’re young enough, you have working power and you’re buying good names and you can hold them for a really, really long time, for 10, 20, 30 years and you’re compounding.

Again, compounding is like the worst thing in the world to young investors. There’s no way you’ll convince a young investor to put money in a 401K and put $200 a month in there and hold it for 30 fricking years. There’s no way. Nobody, not me when I was that age, not you when you were that age, you know it, and me. Everybody. Him, it’s just a younger generation. That’s what we think. We want to get rich tomorrow. That’s it. We want to buy the nice car, we want to pick up the hot chicks, or the hot guys, or whatever, if you’re a girl. It’s very hard.

And the one thing… And I understand that that may not happen, but what I’m hoping is that you don’t walk away here and maybe that interview will change things. So, here is Joe Davide. Appreciate him coming on. Let’s get to that interview right now. Joe Davide, what’s going on man?

Hey, how are you doing? It’s a pleasure to be on.

Well, the last couple of times I had you on was March 21st, that was the first time. Stocks were on fire, and you were a genius, I was a genius, the whole world was a genius. And then I had you on in September, and when I look at that date, it’s September, 2021, it’s not when the Fed pivoted, which is March. But it was when SPACs started getting nailed, meme stocks started getting hit hard. A lot of these aggressive companies, crazy IPOs, evaluations, those got hit before November, and the market really started coming down when power versus course.

And I noticed that you were taking losses and we covered it. I wanted to follow up on this, because over my 30 year career I’ve seen this happen a lot, where there’s so much enthusiasm that comes into the market and it’s very easy to make money at certain times, whether it’s a dot com bubble, whether it’s pre-credit crisis, and now you went through this, and even in crypto, and then you have everybody gets destroyed period.

And that period, I always wanted to help young investors because it’s the period where you should be looking to invest, look to invest in stocks. We don’t see markets like this. You have to be careful. It’s going to get a lot worse going forward here, at least next couple of years with the Fed raising interest rates. But I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your portfolios, see where you’re at, see how sentiment is not just through you but through all those sites, it was YouTubers that you were following, Portnoy. And I want to get more into the sentiment part of it to see hopefully that people aren’t getting discouraged, where they are right now, what you’d learn. I think it’s very important because we have a lot of young listeners.

And hopefully this comes out okay, it might come out terrible. But for me I think it’s very important. I think it’s important for listeners. Let’s start out with your portfolio. I know that you had taken some losses, and this is September and you were going over it. I got so many emails saying, “Listen,” they were so positive. Like hey, it was humbled, it was great. What have you learned from September to now? Because the market has really taken a [inaudible 00:06:35] since then and a lot has changed, right?

Right. The market has taken a beating. As of date, I sold out of all those positions, every stock. I took losses, took that money, took other cash, and I put pretty much everything… I allocated everything into crypto. And with my luck, of course half of that was in Voyager app, which went bankrupt, with FTX. Everyone knows the news, we’ll get into that in a second. But FTX won the bid to buy Voyager. After they went bankrupt, now I’m sitting in Voyager and I can’t withdraw any money, I can’t send it anywhere. I can’t really do much with it. I also use Gemini, which is where also I had my other crypto froze.

It just got frozen. It’s frozen now.

Exactly. I just saw a thing where they just froze a couple of hours ago, which it makes the case of regulation. We have to have some type of oversight. But really, with inflation, the inflation numbers came out. It was a good sign. They’re softer, there’s a lid. I think that it’s great for the market, obviously for stocks and crypto. But obviously the recent events, I am not prepared to invest in anything else right now, especially with all [inaudible 00:07:43].

No. So why did you invest in crypto after going, say to some meme stocks and after going into… And granted, listen, people made a fortune on some of those meme stocks. So you don’t want to sit there and say, “Well, you’re an idiot for doing this,” because people say you’re an idiot with AMC and… Not you personally. These things went up, Game Stop went up tremendously. Bed Bath & Beyond. A lot of these names went up tremendously, and some of these people made huge profits.

But what made the decision to go into crypto? Is it because I’m looking for very quick profits right away or is it… Because again, it’s a risky industry. We have crypto portfolios, you… We’ll get to this in a minute. Joe has helped out tremendously in terms of answering questions. He’s very knowledgeable on crypto when people have trouble, MetaMask accounts and stuff like that, I forward them to Joe and Joe sends them screenshots and everyone is like, “Thank you so much. This is so easy.” So it’s really cool how many people that you’re helping. And probably a lot of people listen to this right now, but what was the reasoning to get into crypto and maybe not buy Hershey, Clorox, whatever, Coca-Cola?

Right. Really, for me, it was getting in at the ground floor. Stocks, it’s hard to do that [inaudible 00:08:46]. And crypto, the blockchain technology, everything behind these companies, these projects, it’s really revolutionary. So I really was captivated by that. I got into it, did my research. Yeah, I’ve been burned, but really I’ve done pretty well, besides the holdings right now. Everybody has been getting crushed in this crypto market. No one has been up. If they say they’re up and they’re making money, they’re lying, literally, because everyone is getting killed.

But that’s why I really liked it, it was the ground floor. I love the technology, I love learning about new cryptos. There’s new projects coming out every day. You have to make sure they’re not scam coins because there’s a lot of bullshit in the market. you really have to be careful. It’s risky, just as we see in recent events. Anything can happen, tenfold. It’s very hard to be an investor in this market, but it’s 100% [inaudible 00:09:32] if you hit the nail on the head.

Now, what’s hitting the nail on the head for you as a young investor? I’m curious.

So really, for me it’s finding projects that I find that are cheap. For example, it’s hard saying this now, but I own Solana, that’s my biggest holding. I own $4,000, which I’m all for crypto transparency. I’m fine with saying my holdings and saying losses, whatever. I think we need more of that in this industry. A lot of people are saying, oh, they’re making money on this, on that. Hell with that. So my biggest, largest holding is Solana. I own $4,000 worth at an average price of a hundred bucks. It’s at $15 right now, which is terrible.

But I love Solana, I love the blockchain. The blockchain use different technology. They use proof of history, which is different than Ethereum’s proof of stake, which is why they have transactions. They can hit tens of thousands of transactions faster than Ethereum. Less gas fees, the whole shebang. But I loved it. I loved the project, the story of it, the implications for the future. So I invested in it. At the time in the market, no one knew what was happening with Ukraine, Russia, inflation, all of that. That was a while ago. But I’ve been burned on it. But that’s really what I’m kind of looking at is a lot, is more macro conditions, plus the actual tokens of the coin, what makes sense, why it’s great, and so forth.

So going to the token economics for me and even going with Solana, you mentioned some of the things that you like, but what about the token economics, where what are some of the things you look at fundamentally? Because I think what a lot of people are learning is that these are not… They’re not securities. They are securities, we all know that, but they’re not deemed securities. People think they’re going to make money on them.

But when you look at Solana and the other thing, they’re only worth as much as their utility feature. It’s the utility, it’s what’s their use, it’s the user system. You can use that token. You have to have some kind of demand for the token. Like, Binance always had a great structure. Today, they burn their tokens, which is like buying back the tokens. They have massive uses for trading fees and stuff like that, just like FTT had, just like FTX.

But what were some of the things that you would look at in terms of… Do you look at the supply, how much is there? Do you know what the… Because you can’t really find out how many tokens each person owns and the insiders on it or anything like that. I’m just curious to see, what are the token economics that you would focus on?

Right. I’m happy that you mentioned the burning of tokens. That’s a huge thing. Obviously, that with dilution. You don’t want to buy a token that’s constantly increasing shares, like Dogecoin, where it’s unlimited. You’ll never make money on it. Yeah, it’ll go from 10 cents to 20 cents to 50 cents but that’s it. There’s no utility, nothing is going to happen. Although the other argument is Elon Musk is now the CEO of Twitter, maybe he’ll make Dogecoin a payment system. Who knows? A bit risky.

It’s a game changer if he does, because that uses that utility and it’s massive. That’s a massive… Now you take Dogecoin a lot more seriously. I would agree with that. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So you really want to look at other tokens. That’s what I’ve been doing, is really the burning of it. You don’t want a huge amount of tokens that are constantly being recirculated. And you want to see a lot tokens either owned or locked up, and either owned by the owners of the project owners, something like that. You want to see a community strong of buyers and sellers, really liquid, a liquid token.

That’s why I look at something that’s active, and obviously a cryptocurrency that’s within the top hundred up-win market cap. That site is a great tool. They have charting, everything. Just even with the FTX, the total global cryptocurrency market just from the past seven days or 30 days has plunged 25%. It went from over… It was just over a trillion dollars and now it’s sitting at maybe over 800 billion. It’s insane.

It’s even less than that now. But it was three trillion, right? I think we still haven’t felt the effects of FTX, and it’s a black eye, because we talk a lot about crypto. I’m very involved in crypto. I feel like it gives a big voice to all the bears to tell you that Bitcoin is zero and it’s horrible and all this shit is garbage when there’s a lot of great projects out there. But a lot of people and the exposure this company had where the Miami Heat sponsoring the stadium, Tom Brady Shaquille O’Neal, those, it’s very, very far. Not only that, some of the top hedge funds, politics and being a large Democratic donor, money going to the Ukraine. Those tentacles go very, very far. And I think it’s going to be weeks if not months before we see it, with how many people are actually going to get crushed on this and how sad this is.

Does something like this result… And this is why I wanted to have you on, I wanted to hear from you. And again, you’re just speaking for yourself about… I’m assuming that maybe a lot of people, a lot of people you follow and through YouTube and your channels on Instagram, does this discourage you from ever going into the markets again? Are you looking at it or are you just like the hell with this, this is all bullshit, I hate Wall Street, I hate crypto, it’s all fake? What’s your sentiment here in terms of investing in it again and does this pull you out of the market for a very long time, because now you realize that you can’t trust a lot of people and greed is…

Even when you’re worth 32 billion, believe me, I’ve interviewed billionaires on this podcast. I happen to speak to wealthy individuals. Some of them have helped me tremendously. Others, there’s no limit. These people are very successful and very rich. There’s no limit. There’s no satisfaction of saying, “Okay, I’m worth 30 billion, let me stop.” You want to be worth a hundred billion. It’s like if you shoot a 60 in golf, you’re going to try to shoot a 59. It’s just the way it is. But how are your feelings on it?

Right. Sam Bankman-Fried, he was pretty cocky with his money. He was trying to donate to the Democratic party. He was a savior of crypto. He’s getting into all these different lanes of buying. Bailing out Voyager, BlockFi, Robinhood, he was all over the place. He should have just done it and kept to himself, live on The Bahamas where he was. And now he fled to Argentina because he is not trying to get expedited.

But for me, as well as the community, I’m on social media all the time, reading all comments, tons of YouTube pages, Instagram pages. A lot of people, they really want to wait for regulation. This is-

Isn’t it weird? Because if you would have said that a year ago, two years, even a year ago, people would have said, “You’re crazy. This is what Bitcoin is about.” And I always said in order for institutions to come in, you need regulation. This is centralized, not decentralized anyway. But just to see how all of this happened, and a lot has to do with… Listen, I know companies that operate out of Bermuda, because it’s a good a tax structure, and in Europe it’s very, very difficult where some of these tax structures are ridiculous. But it doesn’t mean everything in Bermuda is bad. I’ve seen companies that are great, but this company is based in Bermuda. So, if everyone wants to invest in a Bermuda based company, they’re going to do more due diligence on it.

But just being outside the US, this is why when people are on Coinbase and I saw some idiot destroying Coinbase two days after shit hit the fan with FTX and he’s like, “They have exposure,” and I went through this whole company, like, they don’t have exposure. They actually have five and a half billion in cash on its balance sheet, net cash. And this is a company that doesn’t have to worry about people slowing down their trading because it’s most of their revenue is trading already from institution now. And they are going to make a fortune, not staking each token, but they make a fortune on interest on their stable coin, and it’s going to result in over a billion dollars.

So I’m looking at this going, wow, and here’s a company which BlackRock has chosen, Google Cloud has chosen it. The reason why they’re choosing it is because they’re regulated. They’re regulated. You talk about a company, it used to be whatever billion dollar market cap, 30, 40, 50 billion, whatever it was, I think. I know with the five and a half billion dollar in cash it went below 10 billion. Half of that market cap in cash, and being in cash is a good thing than cutting costs but now allows you to buy a lot of these assets. Voyager app is going to be selling for nothing right now. And I still believe people who are in Voyage Wrap are going to get their money back just for the fact that I have a little bit of money there and the communication was great through that process. I think in BlockFi you’re dead, I think Gemini you’re dead.

But there was three or four companies that bid for Voyager app because they were a little bit regulated. They were a publicly traded company. It wasn’t just a crypto. They made a bad loan in three hours and shit blew up in their face. But those assets there are valuable, and I think that… See, and it had three or four bidders for it, which was CZ by the way. So I think that might take place, but it’s just interesting to see how all this unfolded. We’ve done it with Celsius and stuff.

But what about the people on the social media that you listen to? Hey, what are you hearing from… Because it was YouTubers that were great. Portnoy was the greatest investor ever, right? He’s like, “This is so easy, Wall Street. I can’t believe it.” Again, it’s fun. I’m a Portnoy fan. I like him. I like him a lot actually. I think he’s himself. If you like him, you like him. If you don’t, you don’t. But now you see numbers matter and how crazy it is. Did some of these YouTube channels shut down? Are you still listening to some of these people? Are they bullshitting? Are they just angry and have tirades? Everybody handles it differently.

I’m just curious to see that you had this massive amount of people becoming great, amazing superstar analysts in a bull market, and they still have these channels?

Right. So the creators of these channels, because you can’t really go after the creators, because they’re always, always going to be super bullish. They have excuses, they’re going out, you know what I mean? They’re like, “Oh, we’re going to see a price increase of this, this, and this.” They’re just doing that to make money for their content and get in the algorithm. You can’t listen to shit. That doesn’t work. You have to read comments, go through people, read forums, that’s where everybody is bearish. This FTX, it was a total sucker punch to the gut. It sucks. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have any exposure. I was not in [inaudible 00:19:01] token, thank God. Other than-

Gemini.

Yeah, I’m involved in Gemini, which stinks. I’m going to take a look at that after. But I’ve seen investors where they were holders of the FTT token and their average price is like 35 bucks, 40 bucks and now it’s sitting at $1.50. You can’t do shit. That’s it. You’re done. You know what I mean? A lot of people lost a ton of money and we need regulation. You’re right. If I said this a year ago, people would be like, “What are you talking about? You can’t say that, that defeats the crypto.” Now, everyone is on the same page. It’s like you don’t know what they’re doing behind closed doors. Look at it, it’s disappointing.

They’re worth all this tons of money, yet they don’t have the… They hire a thousand analysts and no one said like, “Oh, this is probably a bad idea. You shouldn’t do this,” you know what I mean?

Yeah.

[inaudible 00:19:55] like that, and it’s kind of annoying. It’s like people real… To them, investors’ money is a huge thing. People probably took their lives. It’s serious, and it’s not right how it’s just something in one day it can collapse and now this guy is traveling across the world. Who knows the punishment now?

And if there is punishment. What’s the rules on a punishment? He’s not regulated by the us. There’s no regulations. He’s the only board member. You can’t do anything about it, right? As you get bigger and bigger, I don’t know why even the companies that have invested alongside of him, very smart hedge funds, some of the best in the world, how do they not have people on the board? That’s usually a requirement when you’re giving money or giving assets. They want as much control as possible, to see that everything’s going on.

I did that with TCG where they announced me as president, but I get to see everything. Because this is our biggest investment, I need to be there. I need to see this in order to do that. I owe that to my shareholders. I owe that to people that invested in Curzio Research. And these are the projects that I look at. But I feel like you look at it as I look at it, where it’s very easy, even for old generators that’ll tell you, “This is shit. Crypto is garbage.” It’s much more than… You’ve got to be careful using the word crypto because you have Web3, you have NFTs, which is revolutionary and it’s going to be monstrous.

If you want to… Google… I get a whole bunch of research reports all over the place from all of the major firms and everything. And I recently saw one when it comes to searches of different sectors and they had materials. They had… Yeah, just go down the line, discretionary, retail, whatever, and all these thing, and gold and stuff like that. And by far NFTs was massive, now. This is as of last week, because this isn’t just about JPEGs. This is about ownership on the blockchain. This is like my patent right here. This is what I did. I could buy it, I could sell it. When I look into the metaverse and even see things like that, which are incredible and people are like, “Well, Meta has really messed up and they lost money,” think of Grand Theft Auto, except you have that experience, except you could build whatever you want, do whatever you want, you own it, you could sell the content where it’s not just everything you buy goes to Grand Theft Auto and goes to Take Two.

Same with Modern Warfare, with Activation Blizzard, or Fortnite, with Epic. You own your content and you could build whatever you want. That to me is very, very exciting, and that’s the direction where we’re going. But I hate the fact that now with the FTX situation and a lot of this other stuff and people’s money being locked up, it takes a big step back from the people who are on the sidelines thinking about coming in. But yet this is the opportunity because it’s the chance to get access where deals I was going to invest in, I could dictate the terms and I could say, “Okay, no, this is what I want now. No, I don’t want 5% of your company, I want 15% of your company and this is what I want. I want to make sure that I’m getting a percentage of set.” You could dictate whatever you want for these good companies.

And you weren’t in that position a couple years ago because some of these things did well, everyone is throwing money at them. It didn’t matter, you didn’t even get to see anything. But it’s kind of amazing to see it and it’s frustrating. But for you and just seeing that transition, Joe, of going from how this market works, what’s the next step for you? Are you looking to invest? You say you’re waiting on the sidelines, but how do you approach it going forward? Because there are going to be great ideas, especially as prices come down, and that’s what you want to do, buy low and sell high. But everybody does the opposite. They want to buy high when the story is exciting. And that’s how our brains are built. I’ve done it. I’ve done it in the past. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, it’s very hard to do.

But how do we get that younger generation to say, “Hey, wait a minute. Don’t give up, man,” because you need to get the shit kicked out of you. And by the way, Joe, don’t ever put your head down because everybody who listens to this has been exactly where you have been. And you’re going to look down in a couple years from now, five years from now, and you’re going to be like, “This is the experience,” because now you’re going to look at people when they pitch you your companies and the first thing you’re going to be like, “Okay, you’re full of shit unless you convince me otherwise,” instead of just being like, “Wow, this is a great idea, this is awesome.” And you are going to be like, “Okay, well, I lost 6,000, I lost 9,000.” In the scheme of things that’s a lot of my DNL.

Think about a retiree who has a million dollars in his account, which may sound like a lot of money, but it’s not. Especially if you have your 401K for 30 years, and then you see a housing crisis, like during a credit crisis, and you see your portfolio go down, and now you have no working power. You’re like, “Holy shit. Am I going to have to work someplace at this age? What am I going to do,” where these experiences are part of life. For me, I’m trying to have this interview, and again, it might come off shitty, it might come off terrible. I don’t know if it does, but I want it to be encouraging, like hey, this is the time where if you have a little bit of money, start looking around. It’s going to be a difficult market. But there’s definitely great stocks in the industry right now that are probably going to go a lot higher, especially how young you are. How old are you, Joe?

22.

I know how old you are, but I just want to let everybody know. You’re my nephew. Yeah, at 22, but at 27, should you be worried about a 20% decline maybe in a stock or two when a Warm Water or a Coca-Cola or Hershey’s or something like that? Not really, but I think hopefully you don’t get discouraged from this and hopefully you’re able to jump back in. But I don’t know if you’re there yet. Are you?

I’m glad you touched up on that, because I think as younger investors you can’t exit the market. There’s no exiting this market. I think you have to stay dabbling into it. I’m going to be dabbling into it. Right now, I’m just pissed that I can’t really do anything with my funds, because I’d love to dollar cost average. Bringing it back up, that’s a lot of position. It’s $15. Even if it’s not another thousand dollars of putting in, it’s like 250 a week, whatever, spreading it out, it’s like I can bring that down to maybe 75 bucks. It does make it long term, because I think Solana is going to be a $300 crypto in probably two or three years from now. I really do. That’s one of my largest holdings. That’s why I invested in it.

But to touch on your point, you have to stay into it. I have tons of ideas I want to share with you. Really, I focused in on three cryptos. I wrote about one of them in their crypto newsletter, all right weekly. It’s free. You can sub to it, put your email in. It’s called NEAR Protocol. I love it. It’s Ethereum’s rival. I view it as an Ethereum killer, which Ethereum is going to be around forever. Touching on your point before, NFTs, Ethereum is the currency of NFTs. Another cryptocurrency is not going to take that over. That’s established. The price of Ethereum controls everything with NFTs. Even though NFTs, the sales have been down for the past couple months because the market has been in the toilet, NFTs are here to stay. Ethereum is here to stay.

I like NEAR Protocol. Google just recently partnered with them. That gives insights of where NEAR Protocol could be in the future, if Google really wants to level the game up for the blockchain. NEAR Protocol has… The fees are less than Solana, and Solana is already a quarter. It’s a quarter of a quarter for NEAR Protocol. And they have a different blockchain technology, which is called Sharding, which is breaking up the blockchain, making it easier where they have a hundred thousand transactions in less than a second, which Ethereum can’t do that. It’s scalable. For projects like that, the greater point is that that captivates me. I’m going to obviously invest and stay in this market because of those opportunities that come up.

So, I could tell you, through this whole journey, I feel like every time I have you on it’s to explain how you made a mistake or lost money. Listen, I’ve made mistakes in this market as well. I thought that there’s just different stocks that I would invest in that you just make mistakes on. But I think one of the best qualities is being humble, and always willing to learn. And you need to get slapped in the face. You really need to get slapped in the face sometimes, because you have this arrogance. And I liked to see Portnoy go through that, where it was easy. It’s very easy. And my thesis going forward is it’s easy when you have zero interest rates, which we had historical interest rates for the past 12 years, guys.

If you’ve been in this market for 12 years and you’ve been in this market just for a few years, you’ve enjoyed very positive accommodations where every single downturn was met with, hey, just keep buying more, just buy more. Average down, average down, it’s okay, the Fed is going to be there if anything happens. Well, now you have inflation. The Fed is not going to be there. They’re raising rates. Yeah. That Fed is gone. Rates are going to be much, much higher. It’s a different environment that people haven’t seen in a very, very long time, for decades.

In the meantime, there are some really good ideas out there. But it is a tough market no matter what level you’re at, just to make you feel good here, where I’ve made mistakes. I think you have to admit to your mistakes. You have to be right more than you’re wrong or people wouldn’t be watching this podcast, or listening to it, or whatever, or subscribing to my products at Curzio Research. But you’ve seen Dan Loeb, I’ve seen Einhorn, I’ve seen Carl Icon, Warren Buffet, IBM, you can go down the list of the greatest investors of the world who have been doing this a long time and sometimes you get burned.

I think the biggest thing is risk management. And even when I hire new people, that’s one of the things I say, Joe, is what’s the risk management. And sometimes it’s like, oh, well I’m a growth investor, so when these things come down I just buy more. Holy shit. That’s why stop losses are good, or smaller position and position sizing and saying, “Okay, if this thing goes to zero, and this is my aggressive capital, yo, here’s 10% of my portfolio that I’m putting into crypto,” because we’ve seen some of the gains you can make. 30, 40, 50X gains. Some of our positions were up in that portfolio, getting in at the right time. But just understanding that that’s the risky part of the portfolio, or maybe you’re limited to 5% positions or whatever it is. But there has to be some kind of risk management strategy in case you’re wrong.

What I realize is the things that you have the most conviction on are the things you’re probably going to be wrong on, which is crazy, because that’s the ones that you’re shouting at the top of the roof. So whenever I have high conviction, saying that the market is going to be bad next year, I’m talking to everyone saying, “How am I wrong? Explain to me how am I going to be wrong? How am I going to be wrong, with interest rates at four and a half percent? How’s the housing market?”

And people will give me little bits and stuff and someone told me like, “It’s seasonally this money comes into this market.” But for me that’s the biggest thing where it’s always humble in realizing that there’s other people you can learn from and a lot of smart people, and hopefully you realize that, because I could tell you one thing which is really cool, Joe, and I think we spoke about this offline, but your stories are getting the most hits on our site. Do you know that?

Yes. I was actually just told that yesterday. Prior to that I had no idea that they were doing well.

And I think just staying true and being honest and being like, “Hey, this is…” It’s going to make you a better investor. You’ve got to get the shit kicked out of you. I don’t care, when I played basketball I got to the point where, yes, I was really, really good at one time and it was my life, but I played against people that crushed me, that killed me, that just scored on me, that talked trash to me. And you go through that process and you just keep going, “I’m shooting a thousand shots a day. I’m going to smoke you,” and you pass that and you’re like, “Wow, I’m here,” it’s very hard to achieve success without achieving failure first.

And in this industry, why I love it, because I’m more competitive than I think anyone in the freaking world, is that whenever you think you’ve got it, it beats you down, and it’s something that you can’t really win at, but you could be really good at it and it’s hard. But that whole process is really tough. And I hope for your sake and everybody else’s sake that you’re not looking at this like, oh, Wall Street is a bunch of assholes, which a lot of them are. That’s why I separated from that and I do this to try to help individual investors, and I hope it’s not discouraging a lot of young people from investing into the market and realizing, look, you can’t make a fortune tomorrow. It takes time. A lot of these things could play out over time. I hope that. I hope even with your friends, I don’t know what you’re hearing from your friends as well, if they’re just like, “This is bullshit. I’m out of here.”

Yeah. A lot of my friends, I was actually hanging out with them Saturday night, which I’m not into UFC, they were like, “Oh let’s try it. Let’s watch it for [inaudible 00:31:37]-“

It’s good fights. That was good. Yeah. It’s good fights though. Yeah.

It was fun. I was like, “This is kind of cool to watch.” There, and we started talking about that, and they’re completely against investing at all, period. Right now, period, just in stocks, Wall Street, crypto, everything. And I was trying to talk them out of it. I’m like, “You can’t be totally black and white. You know what I mean? You can’t go be that drastic in your decision making. That’s not rational. That’s not cool. You’ve got to try. You’ve got to try new things,” because I was explaining why, how I was getting hurt, how much money I did make when the market was well, everything was going good.

But it’s tough right now. From the outside looking in, if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, “You know what, to hell with crypto, I’m not touching this shit,” I can make an argument right now why you’re wrong, but I’m not going to waste up too much time on that. You can’t just be polarizing. You have to step in, you have to dabble your feet in. Or, if you’re with us right now and your normal crypto investors, this is it. We just have to weather the storm. There’s always going to be storms that come. We just have to wait it out, or just exactly like you said, you can’t bring your average down, your average price down, just buying more, buying more, buying more. You have to have a stop loss. You have to preserve cash. You have to be smart position sizing.

It’s not something that you just blindly go into and say, “All right, I’m buying $3,000 worth of Ethereum.” You’ve got to go in, and then you’ll do well. It just takes time, especially right now. It’s hard during this time period.

And the willing to learn, even from the younger generation when it comes to crypto, where I think some people who… This is based on who I talk to and where I am, in my company, where a lot of people are like, “Ah, I just don’t want to deal with it. It’s hard. It’s a learning curve.” You’ve been a savior to a lot of people here, even with the crypto portfolios and buying land and TCG and stuff and being able to swap your token from one to the other, going into the right stable coin. It’s a learning curve. I’m not going to tell you it’s not a learning curve, and you have to be careful. But every single time people have trouble, the first thing I do is I send… Just, “Hey Joe, take care of it.” And then just the fact that you’re screenshotting things and saying, “Here, this is what you have to do,” I’m telling you, every single time they just come back and you see, “Hey, thank you so much. I got it. This is awesome.”

You have to go through that learning process. And there are a lot of good ideas and hopefully it doesn’t discourage everyone from going out of crypto. I’m going to try to find great ideas. We’re in one great idea, again, which I’m present of, it’s TCG. I’m very excited. Anyone could purchase land. If you do, you’ve got to have access to the Apple version. A lot of our investors came in to help fund one of the largest metaverse purchases in history, $5 million. But now I’m going to have special videos and hopefully you’re going to join us as well, where you can link up your real estate and it gives you access, and also it’s going to give you access, and again, great stuff from TCG where it’s a whole educational thing. You go into the world. Only you’re going to be able to go into the world if you own land, it cost you one BNB, $250, whatever it is now to buy a small piece.

But now you’re learning. Now you’re also learning about why NFTs are important. Now you’re going to have access to everything on their site because it’s just that alpha version, where they have all the cars available. I’ve been through it already, and everything. And then they teach you how to build and stuff. So, if you have any questions, they have a special chat in social media, where you could just go in there and ask any questions you want and they’ll educate you. And again, you talk to all the owners of the small plots and stuff like that, which is really cool. But just don’t get discouraged from this, because there are a lot of good ideas.

It’s just really unfortunate because this was a company that a lot of people trusted. It was one of the bigger players. It was a name that people were familiar with because they had Super Bowl commercials and stuff. And for this to happen to them, for me, I was very, very pissed off and frustrated. And I feel bad for a lot of people because a lot of people are losing money right now and they can’t get their money out of some places. And unfortunately, I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But it’s going to open up the idea, open this up to regulation like you said, and new ideas, and hopefully that regulation comes. Right?

Right. And it’s funny, I just read a headline before, FTX, a lot of people forgot they owned, what was it? American Airlines Arena, they had their FTX arena, they renamed it?

That’s the Miami arena.

Yeah. So now they had to change their name, and I saw the mayor come out and Miami mayor was like, “All right, we’ve got to get rid of the FTX name now.” You know what I mean? It kind of sucks. It’s just how it is. we’re going to weather the storm. This is how it is. I’m kind of happy to be a part of it. The change, the technology, everything. Also, to hop on your point with TCG, I love the concept of it. It’s an open metaverse. Buying land plots, there’s different land plots you can buy. There’s different tiers. Obviously you want to get the higher tier ones, is going to be worth more when the game actually… Contains a ton of users, tons of users. Right now it’s not as many obviously because it’s still relatively new.

That’s my goal actually. I really want to buy more TCG land, get into that, a lot of farming features.

I don’t get paid if anyone bought… I bought $5 million worth, so I don’t get paid if you buy it or not. So if you want to do it, you do it. If you don’t… It’ll give you a better perspective of what the metaverse actually is. And again, you gave me the alpha version so you get to participate and say, “Hey, you know what,” and working out the bugs and stuff like that and seeing everything and say, “Wow, I wish this was cool.” Again, you get to participate in them growing it. After people are building, every two weeks they reset it to launch it and add more and more, because it continues building. They have so many developers on it, but it gives you a better perspective. I feel like sometimes even talking about this now with FTX, people are like, “Frank, you’re full of shit with all this, and garbage,” whatever.

Again, I don’t get paid if you want to do it or not. I’m just saying I’ve been through this with so many metaverse companies and these guys are so much further along, and it’s exciting and it’s fun and it’s cool. So, with that said, what are some of the articles, real quick, just some of the things that you wrote about? Because you are getting lots and lots of hits on them, which is great that you’re writing for us, and the fact that you help so many investors. But what are some of the articles that people want to read and they go to currency research? Again, it’s absolutely for free. If you want to go, don’t. But those articles are getting a lot of hits and crypto related.

But what are some of the ones that you recently wrote? Because I know that… Yeah. Again, I hear through the grape vine the numbers. That’s what happens when your name is on the door. You hear some numbers and stuff. So I was very happy for you man saying, “Oh wow. Holy shit.” Really that’s great. So to see how many people are coming means that we do have a younger audience. And again, I don’t want them to get discouraged because now is the time that you could start picking away and buying some good stuff and hopefully they are able to do that. But what are some of the articles?

Right. So we obviously just published the FTX drama, everything that happened, the regulations that we really need. Another one was Kraken. They actually are releasing, it’s in beta mode right now, they’re releasing an NFT marketplace that’s gasless, which is revolutionary. Ethereum, if you want to buy an NFT, you have to pay a gas fee.

It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money. It could be a lot of money for gas fees based on the network traffic and stuff. But it could be 10% of an NFT, 20% of… Yeah. It matters. It definitely matters. Go ahead.

Yeah. I have seen subscriber emails where they’re even transferring gas, they’re swapping Ethereum to another currency and they’re like, “What’s this gas fee? Why is this 5% of my total cost?” And I’m like, “That’s how it is. It sucks, I know.” But Kraken, they’re making a gassless marketplace. It’s in beta mode. All the details about all their fees and everything, they’re hid. They’re probably going to either price it into the NFT price, which the collections that they’re going to have are probably going to be Bored Ape Yacht Club. A lot of huge names.

Another one, really, I love writing about crypto projects. I’m seeing… Like I wrote it before, NEAR Protocol, and the cryptocurrencies that I’m researching that catch my eye, and this is probably something I’m going to invest in, I’ll write about it, I’ll share it. And then also the NFT market, I wrote about a while ago, so the news of data has changed. The state of the NFT market, what’s going on, prices of NFTs are declining, what NFT projects are catching my eyes, which I wrote about, I believe it’s other side by other deed or other deed by other side. I confuse the name. That’s from Bored Ape Yacht Club. They’re doing lands in their metaverse. They’re getting into those stages.

As captivating, they’re big names, big communities. It’s not a shitty project where people are pumping and dumping NFTs. [inaudible 00:39:25] big money, it sucks. I want to try to teach you guys not to be a victim of that. Really, I’m not an NFT trader. I own like one NFT, but every single time for me, an NFT, it’s like I’m putting more concentration on buying that one NFT than buying a crypto. For me, I’m more afraid of the risk of NFTs. They’re risky. I’ve really got to make sure it’s the right thing.

But I really cover everything over the market. Broadly, crypto, NFTs, the metaverse too, any metaverse funding rounds I’m seeing. It’s quite interesting, and you can grab a lot of news and information just from receiving this email and reading it for a couple of minutes everyday.

Yeah. You get the right sauces and stuff and then you build your network and stuff, which is cool, which is awesome. That’s what you have to do. That’s why writing is so important, because you get your message out. So many analysts that I hire or that I’m with, they’re like, “Writing? I hate writing, I can just say it.” I’m like, “Then what happens when you leave the company? Who’s going to know about you?” Seriously. You have the power. It’s the most powerful thing in the world. And I hated writing my whole entire life, and just in the past 10 years, 12 years, and that’s why I think with going through Stansberry in the system and teaching you how to write and making things simple, through that Agora system, which is cool.

But just being able to express yourself and teach people and dial it down as easy as possible, you’re just going to increase your readership and people are going to know about you, and it’s important. So learn how to write guys. Seriously. It’s important. I’m not talking about big words. Make it simple, short sentences, no passive sentences. You have a lot of readability statistics on Microsoft, Word and stuff. These are things that we focus on. Like this, if you’re not getting your message out and people don’t understand, that’s the big problem with crypto, no one is going to buy your stuff. No one is going to pay attention if they can’t understand what you’re writing.

And, Joe, you’ve done a great job at helping people with crypto and everyone in our newsletters and stuff like that, and we have our token questions, especially subscribers come to me. I throw it a lot to Joe. So really, thank you for that. And hopefully everything is cool. Now, the most important question is who’s going to win the Super Bowl?

We talk about this a lot.

You better say Eagles, or I’m hanging up on you.

It’s funny, those Eagles didn’t look too good on Monday night football.

No. It was a good beating. Washington played a great game. I hate saying that. They played a really… They controlled the tempo. They look really good. So it’s kind of open this year. I think Brady is not out of it, but Kansas City is iffy. Buffalo, if they’re healthy. But, yeah, I don’t know. Maybe the Titans, somebody might come out of just nowhere here. I think that could actually happen. It might even be the Cowboys, if… They have a good receiver.

So it’s a crazy prediction, and I’ve been hearing it from a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot. This team obviously, I don’t think… Realistically, it’s tough. It’s a tough prediction, for them to make it. I obviously… The obvious pick, I love the Bills. I’m from New York, but I’m a Cowboys fan, which kind of sucks, especially since they lost. But really, I think under the radar, I think the Giants could win the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve got to see them play. They’ve got a good defense, but not with that quarterback.

Really watch the… I’m watching every game and they’re shocking me every game.

The defense is amazing.

Defense is great. Kickers are great. Daniel Jones is on the move, he’s running. He’s pretty accurate. They’re missing… They had Saquon Barkley, they’re missing that X, that wow factor. They could lose to any… To me, I’m like they’re doing pretty good. Especially a new head coach and everything. New ideas, that locker room is… They’re hungry.

Yeah, they’re hungry.

I’ve seen hunger. That’s a huge thing in football, is they’re hungry. Look at the Packers, Aaron Rogers, they’re struggling. There’s no leadership. They’re like hanging in there. Eagles, they’re fricking hungry. They’re out here to win. That’s just a dead loss. Shit happens. We’ll see, but my obvious pick is the Bills and I’ll stretch it out there and I’ll say the Giants.

All right, cool. That’s good. Well, Joe, thanks so much for showing up and doing this interview. I know, again, I want to have you on when things are really, really good. But I also know that the amount of hits that you’re getting, we do have a young audience, and I don’t want them to be discouraged. When you lose money, it’s part of the process. But make sure you’re learning from your mistakes, right? It’s hard. Now you have to look in the mirror and be like, “Shit. I messed up.”

And again, just come from experience. It’s so powerful going through the whole process and learning, and hopefully our young investors don’t get discouraged, because I saw and I lived through these markets, the dot com bubble, early 2006, ’07, ’08, ’06 and ’07, five, six, seven people geniuses, and then they get wrecked. And then you get this whole younger audience that just is like, “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.” I see it time and time again. Just hoping you’re not done here. Just, again, take your lumps, learn from it, and move on and see how you can get better. So I really appreciate you coming on, man.

Of course. It’s a pleasure. I also want to shout out our editing team at Curzio Research, Steph, Larson, Emily. They do a great job with these documents every week. Sometimes it takes a while. We always try to get them out for our readers. I really appreciate them.

Joe, stop kissing ass. Our editorial process is tough. To get stuff through really quick, guys, if you know, everything that you read, you don’t realize, yeah, we’ll write, we’ll do videos, but there is a whole editing process behind it and they’ll bust your chops, and my chops, stuff like that. Things are not good, and tell you to rewrite stuff.

Yeah, it’s a lot of work behind the scenes. It gets tough, but it’s great shouting people out, especially when they’re doing a lot of hard work.

Nah, it’s awesome. Nice to see success with that many people reading your stuff. Great, great stuff. All right, thanks for coming on, and yeah, we’ll definitely follow up on this. I like this. And guys, let me know what you thought at Frank@curzioresearch.com. Again, I wanted to put this together. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not or whatever. I think it’s very important. We do have a nice, young audience, but if you could listen to this, just don’t get discouraged and hopefully this, it’s a good message and not a bad one. So thanks Joe for coming on. I appreciate it.

Of course. It was a pleasure.

Great stuff from Joe. He’s a great kid.

I don’t even know what to say because I… Again, for that interview, I thought it was really important. I just don’t want the younger generation to be discouraged from investing because a few assholes who sold you on a great story. It was a great story. These guys are great. This is awesome. You’ve got to buy into it, without looking at the numbers. Investing takes time. It’s about research, it’s about the numbers, it’s about looking at the management teams. It’s about listening to conference calls, seeing if the CEOs and the management teams followed through what they said in the past. It’s about growth. It’s about doing the homework before you buy anything.

A lot of people don’t do that. They just go to YouTube channels. This guy says to buy this. It’s definitely going up. It’s going crazy. Listen on CBC, some guy gets on there, you don’t even know who he is and you’re like, “Wow, that’s great. I want to do it. I’m going to go in there, I’m going to buy it.” But you’ve got to do your homework, just like you do, everyone does before you buy a car or your house. You’ve got to do the homework. And even when you do the homework and you think you have it right and you’re like, “Wow, I got this,” you’re going to be wrong sometimes. Believe me. Unfortunately, I hate it. I hate when I’m freaking wrong because I know that there’s a lot of people out there listening to me that I lost money for. And I take that… Yeah. It’s a big responsibility.

That’s why I hate sometimes the newsletter industry and I shit on the newsletter industry because there’s people out there, you don’t understand, that people are listening to you, they are listening to you, every word, hanging on every word and you don’t even give a shit. You just like saying something to generate money, to sell a book, to sell a promotion, sell a couple of newsletters, and then you’re on a beach doing nothing and having someone else write your newsletter, that frustrates the shit out of me. This is a big responsibility here.

I use the financial newsletter industry because regulations are relaxed. You don’t have to worry as much. You’re being regulated by the SEC. In terms of what you write and what you say, you can put disclaimers on everything. This could be accurate, but don’t believe anything. You ever see a disclaimer on a short report or any of these reports? Could be reliable, but everything I said could be 100% bullshit. It’s based on things I think are okay, basically covering myself in case I’m wrong. In the meantime, I’m sure of this position, I’m making a fortune on it. I’m telling you, I’m allowed to build up this massive position and then go out there and tell you how shitty this company is. I could sell it immediately because everyone’s going to listen to me without looking, make money, go onto the next play, and everyone could be still short that name and the stock pops tremendously and they get wrecked.

The Wall Street is a crazy place. I always describe it that they’ll take everything from you, and if you are on the street laying there naked with one sock on, they will take your sock. That’s Wall Street. It’s cutthroat. Money supersedes everything. Everything. That’s what it is. That’s why I say if you could take money out of the equation when you’re talking, it’s very clear to see someone’s objective. What are they trying to accomplish? What are they trying to do? It’s very hard to do, but that’s the one thing where everybody gets emotional about and acts crazy about and does stupid shit about.

If you take that component out and just look at the idea and say, “What? What is this idea? How is it going to change your world? Why is it great,” it helps you out a lot. I just hate to see, because nobody was there when I got my ass kicked to tell me. Yeah, my dad was there. I didn’t really listen too much. But fortunate for me, the lesson was in the ’87 crash, he was one of the only people that called that crash. There was nobody really that called that crash. Everybody took credit for it. The few people that took credit for it after were like Elaine Garzarelli and stuff like that. He had it in writing, in the newsletter three weeks before. I have the newsletter, if anyone wants to see it, I’ll post it on the website. It’s the greatest newsletter I’ve ever read in my life. And I’m not being biased. Well, maybe a little biased, but seriously.

This crash will be bigger than the prior three combined. So when the market crashed, that was his claim to fame. That’s how he got on TV. That’s why he was on… He became like the Jim Cramer of that day, on TV, all the time, where there’s only like 10 guys you listen to in the eighties, early nineties, and stuff. Not like today, where thousands of people, you listen to 500 tell you the market is going to crash, tomorrow the other 500 will tell you it’s going to go through the roof. You can’t say it’s going to be okay, although they won’t put you on TV. It’s not exciting enough now.

And just to see that, where somebody walked into my office with $3 million portfolio, this lady with a $3 million portfolio and said, “Mr. Curzio, I need you to manage this because I hate who it’s being managed by.” And this was about three months before the crash and my dad was saying, “You know what,” and $3 million was a lot of money. I think we had probably 60 million under management back then. Three million was a lot. And he said, “Sorry, I can’t help you right now. Your portfolio is good, you’re good. You’re in good stocks and stuff. Don’t worry about it. I can’t help you.”

And so having those lessons and that foundation is cool. A lot of people don’t have it, but it’s tough, because even when I did get my ass kicked, I’m like, “Goddam, this sucks,” or whatever. And your job as a kid is to always go against your parents no matter what. No matter… Your parents are trying to teach you and trying to help you, but you always go against them no matter what, especially when you’re younger. My kids, I’m trying to teach them basketball. “No, dad. I could dribble all day and I’m going to be fine. I don’t have to look up when I’m dribbling. It’s okay.” That’s your job as a kid.

Then you get to your teenage years and even in your twenties, in your twenties it’s important. It’s really important to get your ass kicked in your twenties. It’s very, very good because that’s the age where you think and you’re supposed to think you are great. You know everything, you’re the smartest person in the room. And then when you get humbled, it’s a good thing because now you have your guard up, and you need your guard up at all times. Even if you listen to this podcast, have your guard up, double check everything. I say triple check. You have to find people that you trust out there, but have your guard up. You need it, because it’s going to make you a better investor. You don’t realize until later in life that, hey, you know what? You’re not so smart, because you start meeting a lot of brilliant people in different industries. People are smart in different ways.

You could listen to me because of stocks, but I still have to hire a plumber, an electrician. I don’t know anything about that stuff. I think those people are geniuses, and they are. Everybody is smart in a certain way. But being humble is not a bad thing. And hopefully people don’t just forget about this market and say, “Crypto is dead,” and this, and it’s a lot of good companies within crypto. Web3 is for real. It’s just very, very frustrating when you see something like this. This is a big black eye. And hopefully if finally, like Joe said, leads to regulation.

You want to know your money is safe. If you don’t know your money is safe at any place, you’re never going to invest in this industry. And that sucks, because there’s a lot of ideas out there that are looking for funding that are not going to get it because of FTX, or at least they’re not going to get it for a while. And hopefully you don’t get discouraged, because the best times to invest is when shit hits the fan, not when everything is at its all time high. That’s how they get everybody in and suck you in, and these SPACs, and Chamath, and Richard Branson, and Cross Street with the thumbs up from the New York Stock Exchange. Yeah.

[inaudible 00:51:56] space, we’re all going to space, everything is great. They cashed out. I think Chamath paid what, $27,000 for his stock and cashed out for 250 million. That’s what happens when you buy it at 0.0001. They don’t tell you that, when you’re buying the SPAC at 10, it goes to 20, 25, 30, and they’re selling it out like crazy. And they’re even going to make money if the SPAC goes from 10 to five, they make a fortune. They don’t tell you that. You have to learn those lessons. But when you do, you become a better investor. Every mistake you make, you become a better investor, as long as you learn from it.

So hopefully that interview came out well. If not, don’t worry about it. I tried. I tried to make things interesting and put things in front of you. But hopefully the younger generations listen. Don’t get discouraged. Find people that you trust. Continue to invest. Be smart. Don’t go all in. Don’t go on margin. You’re not going to get rich tomorrow. It doesn’t happen. People don’t get rich that fast. They usually go poorer even faster, because they want to get richer and richer and richer. That’s what happened with FTX situation. But stay grounded. Find people that you can trust and you’ll be okay. So guys, that’s it for me. Questions, comments, email FrankCurziaResearch.com. Thanks for all the support. I’ll see you guys next week. Take care.

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.