Full transcript: Brian Rose on The Wolf of Wall Street podcast
0:00 Jordan Belfort: That’s a big issue. What do you think about that?
0:03 Brian Rose: Well, there’s so much noise these days, like you said. There’s so much noise. And again, the internet loves attention first. It’s an attention economy. So again, if you don’t get their attention via the suit or a crazy movie about a career on Wall Street for you, then the message isn’t going to get there anyway. Now, in my academy, I went back to the lessons I learned on Wall Street with like daily P&Ls, you know, disciplined trades, stop-loss orders, long-term perspectives, things that nobody really talks about in the crypto world because it’s moons and it’s like the NFT play, but no one really sticks to those old-school fundamentals.
0:36 Jordan Belfort: Hey, Jordan Delphorte, the wolf of Wall Street in the Wolf’s Den for another particularly awesome podcast today because my guest is awesome. He’s a good friend of mine. So when I do things with outside of this, we are partners in certain things and we have a lot of plans for the future. So you will definitely know because he has his own amazing podcast called London Reels. Brian Rose, how are you, my friend?
1:04 Brian Rose: I’m doing great. Always good to be broadcasting with you. We’ve been doing this for a few years together. You were here, I think, in 19. I’ve been on your show. You’ve been on my show. So it’s always great talking to you.
1:15 Jordan Belfort: I got to start here because we had this reason I’m interrupting because it’s just dying to get this one out. Before we aired here, we just got into a friendly conversation. I’m like, dude, you are the best dressed guest I ever had on my pocket. It’s consistent. Now, you know, Dan Pena, right, who I know you know well, right? In some respects, it’s a mentor to you. In some respects, probably not, but whatever. He’s a great guy. I have nothing to respect from his fucking hysterical man. And I love that. This is my favorite part about Dan, right? But is this like a strategy in the sense that like I’m a big believer in dressing for success as you cannot see right now. But the point is, is my it’s where I am right now. I think it’s a bit I can sort of have that.
1:57 I’m at that level where, you know, I’m so well known, I can have my own look. And that becomes like Steve job at his thing. I have my thing. But is there a strategy behind this? An incredibly dapper look of yours that gives you credibility, positions you as an expert, a force to be reckoned with someone who basically has that shit together.
2:15 Brian Rose: You know, it’s kind of an evolution, Jordan. You know, one year ago today, exactly, I lost the race to be the next mayor of London. But when I was doing press for that, the Evening Standard called up and they said, we need to see Brian and we need also the suit as well. So they would like take pictures of me. And I was the American former banker in London who was now kind of better dressed than the Brits here. But you know, Jordan has been an evolution. If you look at my shows 10 years ago on London Real, I was wearing t-shirt, G star raw trousers. And when I interviewed Pena for the first time back in 14, I’m not even wearing shoes. I’m like barefoot. He’s in a Savile row suit. You know, six months later, I go to his castle in Scotland. And when I came back, something clicked in me and I started wearing suits on my shows as well. And someone’s like, oh, Pena told you he didn’t tell me. I think it just clicked that I was a grown up now and I started needing to dress. And then I just got a little better every month and I got his tailor and then I started working with him and I’m in Britain. I’m in London. So now I dress like
3:15 This every day. And it has become the brand kind of, you know, is it comfortable? Is it comfortable now? Weirdly, on my weekends, I’m in, you know, jeans and I’m in boots and stuff. But now when I come in, I’m telling you what it is, Jordan is this. It shows the world that I’m ready to rock and roll every day. It shows my team and it shows me even that I’m ready to rock and roll. So I put this suit on made by this amazing Savile row tailor in the morning. I put my pocket square on. I walk out into the world and everyone’s like, bam, it’s on, it’s on. So it’s trained my brain to kind of be high performance. And, you know, I was just recently at the Paris Blockchain Summit and I was hanging out with a bunch of the VIPs and these kids would come up with t-shirts and they’re asking me about the suit. And these young men are saying, you know what, you do look good. And I said, would you ever wear this? And they’re like, you know, maybe I would. So, you know, I know it seems like everyone’s going to baseball hats and t-shirts. But I think, you know, men, young men do aspire to look better because as Pena said, you’ve got two chances to make a first impression, what you wear and what comes out of your mouth. So that’s what I’d rather say. No, and that’s funny that Dan and I, we, you know, it’s like we were laughing because we agree on so many things about that. It’s like communication, positioning as an expert. You know, it
4:30 Jordan Belfort: Could be different past to the same ending, right? So because I think like, obviously, it depends on what you do for a living. You know, obviously, if you’re a plumber and you showed up like that, it’s not going to work very well. So there’s this law of congruency that, you know, the question you want to ask yourself in terms of what you should wear is what would an expert in my field look like? What would be the best version of the person I’m supposed to be be? Well, what are we wearing? How would he be, you know, talking? What would he be holding? In other words, so if you show up to someone’s house and you’re a plumber looking like they’ll say, I’m not fucking charged. This guy’s going to charge me an arm and a leg because fuck the guy like, you know, someone’s got to pay for those expensive suits versus if you’re a banker or a lawyer or somewhere, a businessman, they’ll say, man, that person, that’s the guy I want, you know, doing my taxes because he’s short. He must have a safe, but he’s diligent. He pays attention to detail. So it’s sort of like it’s a way of announcing to the world of really who you are, you know, what your sort of your belief systems are, because obviously, that took a lot of work. So let me ask you a few questions. And number one, what kind of knot is that in your tie? Double Windsor?
5:33 Brian Rose: It’s a full Windsor. Yeah, it took me a while to learn how to tie it. And again, like, I’ve been kind of
5:38 Collaborating with my tailor for years now. So we work on ideas, he suggests things, we put certain pockets here, my shirts, I go to Turnbull and Astor, I got these made, and now we play with colors. And like, this is something I’ve worked on over the years, just like the look here at London Real, I started off with webcams on IKEA table. And then I just try to get better every week at anything I do, whether it’s breakdancing, broadcasting, dressing, business, crypto. So yeah, it is an evolution. And it just we go backwards.
6:08 Jordan Belfort: Whoa, let’s go back a step here to the first thing. Do you say break dancing?
6:12 Brian Rose: Yeah, I’ve been an avid breakdancer now for six years, I think I just got done doing head spins in the gym. It’s on my Instagram.
6:20 Jordan Belfort: So yeah, so we’re gonna have to insert a little clip of that in this podcast for sure to watch you the sort of the yin and the yang of Brian Rose, you know, breakdancing and looking like this. So, okay, double wins or not, full wins or not, right? So same thing, double wins or full wins, all right. And what’s the strategy on the pocket square?
6:39 Brian Rose: So again, like I said, I went to Castle, I started wearing suits, and then I started doing business with Dan Pang as Taylor. And again, Dan is known for his three piece suits, although I think I’m better dressed than Dan at this point, although he does have the bouton. Oh, boy. I hope he doesn’t hear this. He does have the boutonniere, which is the flower on the lapel, which I’m
7:01 Brian Rose: Gonna probably gravitate. So I’m still working on this. But again, it’s it’s three piece.
7:05 Jordan Belfort: I hope he hasn’t trademarked that or like, you know, he’s gonna charge you a license fee for that fucking thing. You gotta be really careful, you know, and I know you’ve had Dan on the show, and I both love and hate Dan simultaneously. But he’s been a big part of my life. I just love him. Honestly, for me, I just think I think there’s listen, there’s something about Dan that like, when you get to a certain age, you can say whatever the fuck you want. And he’s like, and he’s not old, he’s just at that sort of age of like, where like, it’s like, it’s like, he’s earned the right to say whatever he wants.
7:35 And I think sometimes I always thought of myself as a very forward, outright and often crude speaker. After all, I do have the record for the most fucks ever in a movie at 529. Right? But I gotta tell you, like, he uses he uses the C word, like, like, it’s like water. And that’s the one word, like, you know, my mom, you know, that was the word that we couldn’t say, except in Australia. If you say that, okay, then when Australia, you could say the word cunt, and it means a kangaroo. Well, any everything is a cunt in kangaroo. But that’s a word in, in the United States. I don’t know if you say that to a woman, it’s like, it’s fucking like, the guns are coming out, the knives, forget about everything is off the table.
8:17 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s one of it’s one of Dan’s favorite words. It’s a little more palatable here in the UK. We use it in the city a lot when I worked in finance and banking. But yeah, Dan, right.
8:25 Jordan Belfort: It’s different here. Yeah, exactly. It’s his favorite word, I think, right? And Dan is super forward. He likes to really go hard.
8:31 Brian Rose: And yeah, he’s been a great guy to be around. And a lot of people really need that energy to kind of move forward.
8:36 Jordan Belfort: But just to finish with the wardrobe. Yeah, I just put all this together. I got the socks, the square, no, what’s the strategy for that? I want to know, because I’ve tried to make a pocket square, it never comes out right. So what’s the story?
8:47 Brian Rose: Yeah, so you know, you see kind of Americans try this look, and they always go under I go big, I mean, this thing comes out. I like to match it with my tie. I got the socks as well that are the color as well. I mean, I don’t know if you can see them, but they’re there. And, you know, it’s just something I’ve worked on over time. And every morning, I just kind of choose the color. Got the shirt going on.
9:06 Jordan Belfort: And she’s doing a shove strat.
9:08 Brian Rose: It’s a shove strat. Yeah, it’s basic shove, because it looks kind of a little, you know, real and it comes out a little if you’re walking around.
9:15 Jordan Belfort: And I’m still doing the fold over fold left, take this corner to that freaking corner. You’re done. You’re just like, and yours looks perfect.
9:21 Brian Rose: Yeah. And I just, you know, it’s Brit, it’s part of Britain, you know, London was built in the Industrial Revolution and new money and people dressing up. And so I feel like I’m walking around as like a part of history. Would I wear this in Miami with you, Jordan? Would I wear this in LA or New York? You know, it would be harder to pull off, although now it’s just who I am. So I wear it. I’m going to a crypto event tonight. Nobody is going to be wearing a three piece suit with a tie. But I am. I wore this to Paris Blockchain Summit. It’s just kind of who I am now. And I got it. And I own it. So everyone’s cool. It’s like I don’t feel like a corporate guy sneaking in on the crypto event.
9:54 This is just like who I am. And everyone’s cool with that.
9:57 Jordan Belfort: Let me ask you a question. So on the on the collar, right? So do you wear, is that a loose collar? It’s like, because I get I don’t like buttoning my top button because that makes my neck. You know, I got it. What’s the thought on that?
10:09 Brian Rose: Well, you have like a little room in there on the fashion today. So I get my my shirts made at a place called Turnbull Nasser, which is amazing place in London. I’ll take care when you’re here for our event. And it’s just made in the right size. So it doesn’t bother me strangely enough. So over the course of the day, I’m just okay with it.
10:27 Jordan Belfort: But you’re right. Typically, you used to buy shirts and back when I used to work on Wall Street. They all fit wrong. I was rolling up my sleeves. I was loosening my tie.
10:36 Brian Rose: But like if you’re an English gentleman, you don’t loosen your tie. You don’t roll up your sleeves. I’m just used to it now. Plus, it’s not hot here. So that helps.
10:44 Jordan Belfort: Right. Sure. And lastly, just one more thing. So the purpose of the the handkerchief was that supposed to be so if a woman is just emotionally raw, you can hand her your handkerchief because she’s crying and you’re gonna it’s a gentlemanly act. Is that what that was for originally?
10:58 Brian Rose: The history of the suit is pretty fascinating about all these details and why even three piece and why I like I have a ticket pocket here, which is under make my normal pocket, which used to hold the wadding for a musket. If you were fighting in war, this was yeah, a lot of people would have handkerchiefs to wipe things because the whole world used to be a lot dirtier. And this just became a style element of that, as well as the boutonniere where you’d have a fresh flower, you know, in this piece here.
11:24 So it’s just like an evolution of fashion that happened a lot of times in London and was centered around new money, old money. Remember, thinking back in the day, Jordan, if you could even dress cleanly, it meant that you had money, a whole nother person. Yeah, just have a clean shirt or have a pressure. It meant already that you were coming to the table and everyone was like, wow. So the history of dress is fascinating. A lot of it was born in this country, especially Industrial Revolution. And then we see it exported to the rest of the world. But a lot of people still care about it. And I’m always talking to young men and women about the dress. People ask me a lot of questions about it. People on the streets in London stopped me. When I was running to be mayor, it was like part of my brand. So, yeah, it’s just become a thing.
12:09 Jordan Belfort: I think we saw that in the movie Titanic, by the way, where Leo goes to that dinner and they have to dress him. And they by dressing him in this beautiful tuxedo, that horse, it was a woman, the unsinkable Molly Brown, his son had. And no one even notices him. They just he’s a different person. Right. He walks in and they don’t recognize him in his street clothes because he’s judged just so completely by what he’s wearing.
12:32 Brian Rose: Yeah, it would almost be like a secret society back in the day, almost like having a password because, you know, there was no Internet, no blogs. You couldn’t learn how to dress. Right. You’d have to have the right people, the right tailors. Sure. The money. So, yeah, let’s let’s get into secret societies, secret societies.
12:48 Jordan Belfort: But let’s talk about that. Is there a secret society out there that you and I are a member of that when it comes to making money in investments? I think it’s a very interesting question because I’m actually writing a book right now about how to invest in stocks and crypto and NFTs, right? So it’s really stocks, options, crypto and NFTs. Right.
13:10 My publisher, Simon and Schuster. I got a nice healthy advantage about a year ago. And then I sat down and didn’t write the book. I probably got to it. I’m like, all right, we go and nothing. And then I got like one paragraph in.
13:26 No, it sucks. And I literally was stuck on the first paragraph for about nine months and then just put it down and fuck it. Then I went and said, let me just get a ghostwriter. I’ve written all my books myself. All three, every word comes from me. Obviously, I have an editor at the publishers, but I write them all. Editors take away.
13:41 They don’t create, right? So I paid a ghostwriter like just, you know, $15,000 for a chapter. Let me see if they can write a sample. Shit. OK, sorry if you’re the ghostwriter. I don’t mean to offend you. Another one was actually a very smart guy and a friend of mine. It wasn’t really shit.
13:55 It just wasn’t up to the level. Like, it’s just, you know, I write a certain way. I don’t know if you’ve ever read what I write, but it’s it’s very it’s not normal style writing. It’s, you know, humor. It’s like, you know, it’s very layered, right?
14:09 Brian Rose: Yeah, a lot of details that you put.
14:11 Jordan Belfort: Yeah, like that. In other words, like your suit, like I would literally if I was going to write about you, I would spend like probably two paragraphs before I ever got into what you and I were doing together. Two paragraphs would be about what you’re wearing, what it means, how you carry some because it brings you to life and then people care about you.
14:30 Brian Rose: So I think one thing that we forget off the session when we write is that the devil’s in the details, the richness is in the details.
14:37 Jordan Belfort: So so I got writing back from one of my friends, this is Will Bill, very brilliant guy, but it just wasn’t quite right. Couldn’t use it. Right. The other one was terrible. Right. So I called my publisher. I said, you know what, I’m just going to give you back the money.
14:51 I feel bad. Like, you know, they gave me a lot of money. Right. They’re like, no, no, no, no. Just come on.
14:56 Give it a shot. You know, because you know you can do it because you’ve done it three times in the past. All right. So finally, three more months passed. I’m approaching my deadline again.
15:04 It was like next month. Right. And I sit down, I start writing and like, oh, I like that first sentence. And I wrote another sentence. It’s like, you know, the first sentence was basically, you know, you know, incredible.
15:15 I thought my brother-in-law, you know, Fernando has the Midas touch in reverse. Everything he touches turns to shit. Every investment he touches turns to shit. And so it was that started this whole boom and knocked out a chapter, which to me was one of the best chapters I’ve written, like, and I just like, that’s it. Now I have the whole book flowing, right?
15:34 But the thing is, I’m so into like describing this sort of details because I’m in that mode right now. And also the whole concept of the book is that there is an inside society here. It’s not, it’s decentralized for sure. But where there are people who know what’s really going on and those who don’t and the people that don’t know are the ones that are like cannon fodder for those who know and as bad as it is in the stock market, and you worked in the market, you know, it’s like, you know, the outsiders typically don’t do very well, but it’s magnified a thousand-fold in crypto because of all the landmines, the lack of regulations.
16:12 So while you’re destined to get destroyed, if you’re short-term trading in the stock market and you don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re going to get destroyed. If you don’t know what you’re doing in the crypto market and try to short-term, you’ll get obliterated, like not even destroyed, like it’s destroyed, stepped on, pissed on, lit on fire and thrown out as garbage, right? So that’s the thesis. Do you agree with that?
16:31 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s an interesting point you make.
16:33 And like when we started on Wall Street, which was like, you know, 90s, 80s, 90s, again, there weren’t there wasn’t much information out there, not much of an internet. And so it really was more of a detached society. Kids weren’t trading stocks. People didn’t know what was going on, but there was that inside track and there was those, you know, people that were wealthy that got access to private equity. They knew the game with taxes.
16:54 They knew how to invest in real estate. They knew all those things happening. And I was privy to some of that on Wall Street. But again, the wealthier you were, the more information you had. Now that I look at crypto and again, I bought my first Bitcoin back in 2013, I think it was.
17:08 But I spent it, I think, on the Silk Road. And it was only the last year we’ve gone really heavy into this space.
17:15 Jordan Belfort: What’d you buy?
17:16 Brian Rose: What did I buy? On the Silk Road.
17:18 Well, you know, we have a history here of talking about psychedelics on this show. So we’ve talked about mushrooms. We’ve talked about ayahuasca. We’ve talked about DMT. And so the Silk Road back in the day might or might not have been a great place to get those things.
17:30 And so having Bitcoin was good. Also, there weren’t many good wallets and storage systems back then, which is why we teach that now inside our academy. And so a lot of people don’t know how to use it. But when you look at crypto, like you said, the volatility is magnified. The futures position is there.
17:44 Jordan Belfort: Everyone’s just going to get taken out, you know, on a trolley and taken out in a body bag if you’re trying to day trade it. Let now go to the next level, which is the deal flow that you and I are privy to with early stage with the right people, there’s all these amazing opportunities that most of the world doesn’t see. And again, it is like a parallel to Wall Street, but it’s magnified in crypto like everything else. More than a factor of 10, maybe a factor of 50. Right.
18:09 And either. Probably. Yeah, or more. Yeah, or more. You’re either shocking.
18:13 Brian Rose: Yeah, you’re either in the know or you’re not. And we made our first early stage investments end of last year. And I was like to zoom calls and boom, I was like talking to the CEO of a next level metaverse protocol. And we were invested. And I was like, oh, wow, no one’s talking about this.
18:28 So now we’re kind of on the inside of that. When I was in Paris, I was meeting all of those people behind the scenes in the VIP rooms of the parties. And now that’s the first question I ask. We don’t talk about the price of Bitcoin because that’s not what matters to us. What matters to us is that early stage deal flow.
18:44 And I know that’s what a lot that you look at as well. I know we’ll be talking about that is at our mastermind on the 25th and 26. And that’s what is really interesting. But yeah, you’re right. It is almost like a society.
18:55 I don’t know if it’s going to change. Do you think that will become more public or it will always be that kind of privileged information?
19:04 Jordan Belfort: So here’s the interesting part, because you bring up a great point. You said back in the day when we were doing our thing, me, late 80s, early 90s, there was no internet, there was no access to information. There were some books, by the way.
19:19 Listen, anybody could have picked up the book, The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham, you know, which is Warren Buffet’s Bible, so to speak, the value investing book and many other really, really great books out there. But other than that, you just couldn’t, you know, go watch tutorials, you couldn’t get into the groups and chat with people and learn and grow, right? Didn’t exist. It does exist now. It exists in droves.
19:45 It’s this is literally unlimited amounts of information. And I would say that every single thing that a person would need to know to become an ultra savvy investor, whether it be in stocks, crypto, futures, whatever it might be, is all out there. The problem is twofold. Number one is that it’s crowded with charlatans that are barking nonsense at people like Dogecoin to the moon or whatever it might be, or this NFT project or this great new altcoin or buy Bitcoin since going to a million tomorrow and the dollar is going to disappear, or, you know, buy this meme stock or this option or his and they’re all nonsensical bullshit artists.
20:29 And then you have some amazing ones, amazing ones in there, diamonds in the rough, needles in the haystack. And then you have some diamonds that are in writing in books. But the problem is they’re so fucking boring and so tedious to read that no one will read them except a few select people who then, if they act on that advice, will get wealthy, get rich. And I think that’s the disconnect I see, which is why I’m writing this book. And the reason it’s taking so long is because I know that if I don’t write the book in a wolf-like way where I’m making people laugh out loud and I’m telling a story and the lessons are infused into the story, no one’s going to read it, right?
21:12 So I think that’s a big issue. What do you think about that?
21:15 Brian Rose: So much noise these days, like you said, there’s so much noise. And again, the internet loves attention first. It’s an attention economy.
21:23 So again, if you don’t get their attention via the suit or a crazy movie about a career on Wall Street for you, then the message isn’t going to get there anyway. So you have to get their attention first. And unfortunately, there’s just a lot of noise out there. There’s a lot of nonsense. There’s a lot of opinions.
21:38 There’s a lot of, you know, crypto shillers that create YouTube channels. And then it’s hard to really know what’s going on. And that’s why I’ve tried to dial it back now in my academy. I went back to the lessons I learned on Wall Street with like daily P&Ls, you know, discipline trades, stop loss orders, long term perspectives, things that nobody really talks about in the crypto world because it’s moons and it’s like the NFT play. But no one really sticks to those old school fundamentals.
22:05 And I used to sit next to proprietary traders that it made it through all the crises, right? The Asian crisis, the Russian crisis, the mortgage crisis, this crisis, they almost had like these scars on their face and they knew what to do. And they would look at me and say, put your stop in, Brian. The trend is your friend. You know, I’ve seen it all.
22:21 And those were the ones that taught me. So, yeah, I think we need to get this knowledge back to kind of I say the younger folks because most of crypto is a younger generation, but not so old school because we saw Buffett and Munger last week just slating all things crypto. And it was just sad to see. But these guys built their world in a fiat system. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
22:42 So why would they be interested in crypto? But I don’t like to see that. I wish you could take some of their investing lessons and apply it to what’s a very volatile but upcoming market. Maybe that’s why we’re here, Jordan, to bridge that gap.
22:56 Jordan Belfort: For sure. And I agree.
22:57 And I heard obviously what Buffett said. And and I wasn’t even the least bit put off by it. And I’ll tell you why. All right. Number one, your your assessment is correct.
23:08 You know, when you’re you’re everything, your hammer, everything is a nail. Right. But I think it’s deeper than that. And I’m not going to take credit for this because actually who said it was Brock Pierce. OK, well, like Brock is very smart.
23:20 And and he said, you know, the thing about Warren Buffett is he’s if you look back at Warren Buffett, he’s not qualified in this area. Like he’s not. In other words, Warren Buffett is the greatest value investor of all time. His expertise is looking at developed companies that are out there with balance sheets and this. He does not invest.
23:44 He’s never made his money in speculative new technology, and he’s missed all of them on purpose. That’s not what he does. He will go after the the whole look at a developed industry and find best of breed and use a very, very well thought out analysis that’s proven to work all the time and make long term fundamental bets. He’s not the guy who’s betting on the next evolution of the Internet or the next replacement for a payments. It’s not what he does.
24:11 So that, yeah, he hates it. But really, as brilliant as he is, I wouldn’t say he’s probably the most qualified person to do that. It’s not what he does. What are your thoughts on that? That was Brock Purse’s words, not mine.
24:23 But I agree with it really emphatically.
24:25 Brian Rose: Yeah, one comment he made when he was kind of slamming Bitcoin and so was Munger as he said, you know, when we buy something, we’re never going to sell it. You know, it’s like he buys these fundamental companies that are part of kind of the human, the human experience, and he’s betting on them for like 100 years. So you’re right. He’s missed all the tech plays.
24:44 He doesn’t want to be involved in tech plays, doesn’t need to.
24:47 Jordan Belfort: That’s fine. Yeah, exactly. And he’s got these fundamentals. And you know what?
24:51 All that knowledge will probably die with those two guys and bless them. And it’s always going to be a newer generation that I think is used to digital assets as well that will maybe embrace this new tech. But then again, right? You know, like so again, I heard Brock Pierce said that. I just thought it was really, really, a really solid argument that I personally hadn’t thought of, you know, when I was telling myself I didn’t think of that because I think it was pretty obvious in hindsight, right?
25:22 But I think there’s the other side too that maybe he’s right. You can’t just discount Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and say they’re fucking old fools because they’re certainly not that. So clearly it’s not their area of expertise and not the area of passion to find new technology, right? But there is the other side of the coin here, which is the side of the coin I was on a few years back. Now, I mean, that was very bearish on it.
25:47 I thought it was going to zero. It’s a scam, it’s this and that. Now, there were some really powerful reasons why I thought that. And I’ll tell you what that’s important that people know. Number one, the main one, which is basically evaporated with sovereign risk.
26:01 That was the main thing to me that was like, I’m just not touching this thing because I just couldn’t wrap my arms around them while the United States of America wouldn’t have done what China ended up doing. So I was almost, I was half right in the sense like China did what I thought the US would do. Like I could totally back then, why would the US just say no? We don’t want something competing against the dollar. Why would we want anything out there that can kind of spoil out a little fucking bogus party of where we’re the petrodollar is global reserve currency.
26:32 We can print as much as we want. We can debase as much as we want with impunity. So why, if you’re the United States, why on earth would you want anything that could even compete with you a little tiny bit? That was my thesis. So from a guy who was arrested for money laundering, when I got arrested, there wasn’t stocks.
26:49 There was money laundering. It was smuggling the money to fucking Switzerland. And I saw the zeal that they have for that money laundering aspect of everything is what really drives the government crazy. So yeah, you have some stocks, whatever, right? Money laundering 20 fucking years per each charge.
27:08 So why would they allow Bitcoin to exist? That was the basis of why I was so bearish. That and all the fucking charlatans who were yelling that it’s going to a million tomorrow. In two years, there’ll be no more dollar and blah, blah. So to me it was so obvious what was going on.
27:24 And I was right back then in the sense that I called it at 20,000 and it dropped down to three almost the next day the crash started after I publicly called it. What I was wrong about into my own discredit I’m disappointed that I got so emotional about it. I didn’t actually look closely enough at what Bitcoin was fundamentally. And that was a miss in my part. And as we always say, we live and we learn and I’m not the least bit embarrassed about that.
27:52 I should have looked and said, wow, because if you really look at it, it’s fucking brilliant. There’s so much about it that’s really, really smart. And you could see now in retrospect why even when it crashed, it had a flaw and it stopped at about, I think a 3 billion or so market. Now you and I know when things crash and they’re worthless, where do they go? Fucking zero.
28:11 They don’t stop at 3 billion and come back. So that was a big thing. What are your thoughts on that?
28:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s interesting. Cause when I talk about, you know, you and a lot of the crypto community says, oh, but Jordan doesn’t like crypto.
28:23 And I was like, actually back in the day he was suspicious of it. But one of the things that surprised you is that it didn’t go to zero. Whereas worthless penny stocks would go to zero. And when this didn’t, you said, well, wait a second. There’s clearly utility here.
28:36 There’s clearly people in the world that still want to exchange value peer to peer. And they’re using this regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. And so it’s like, wait a second. Maybe there is utility here. And so it’s interesting to see your whole cycle with that.
28:49 And again, people still kind of remember you not liking Bitcoin, but now they’re starting to see that, all right, now you’ve looked at this tech and now you’re quite involved, you know, behind the scenes with all sorts of things happening in the blockchain space. You have the crypto punk, you know, you see all those things happening. I think what also put you off is because you saw the world through a lens of, okay, I’m really used to getting the sharp end of regulation, and I’m also used to seeing a bunch of people pump things that aren’t of value.
29:17 And while that did exist out there, it didn’t mean that Bitcoin was worthless.
29:21 Jordan Belfort: Exactly, exactly, exactly. Like, yes, all those things could have been true. There was massive fraud. There still is massive fraud out there.
29:29 Those people won’t get what’s coming to them, I’m sure. At some point, hopefully some of them will, right? The ones that deserve it. But I should, what it did is it made it so emotionally charged to me. I couldn’t fathom that it was actually real.
29:44 And then, I think, you know, for me it was in stages, right? Where I really started to come around. The big one was when I started to see simply institutions, like it was starting to make its way into the banking system. And I know Wall Street as good as anyone out there, probably better than almost anyone, because I was so ingrained in it. And before, it was different when there was no computers.
30:06 Like, if you know what, I knew it in the hand-driven system, right? Back in the day, you had a very deep understanding of clearing and whatnot. There’s no way that it would become this entrenched and then the government would shut it down. They won’t. It’s not possible.
30:22 I don’t believe it’s possible anymore. They might not regulate it, which I think is good. They’ll tax it, which I think is good. But the point is that there’s no way I can imagine that the US will say, it’s illegal to own Bitcoin. I just don’t see that possible.
30:36 And that was my big fear back then. Really was my big fear that they would just come in and say, this is illegal. It’s all bullshit manipulation. And that was the overriding factor.
30:45 Brian Rose: And if they could turn back the clocks, Jordan, they probably would.
30:48 Jordan Belfort: They probably would. But the problem was is it was a piece of technology, which means they couldn’t understand it quick enough. And it’s peer-to-peer, so hard to kind of regulate or mess with back in the day, even if they could understand it.
31:00 Brian Rose: And like you said, now it’s too late. Now, even when Bitcoin bans it, the price goes up.
31:05 And so now they’re gonna have to figure out what we do with it. Obviously, SEC is leaving Bitcoin alone. They got their crosshairs on everything else. We’ll see what happens with the central bank digital currencies and stablecoins. But like you said, you can’t take away the dollar from the US and Federal Reserve because that is their main means of control.
31:23 So they’re watching this. Bitcoin, obviously, digital gold, a different asset play, but there will be more coming and probably welcome regulation with stablecoin and other pieces. I personally really hate the fact that there are bad coins out there because they give what I’m doing lately a bad name. We’ve gone all in on crypto and DeFi the last year. I’ve had some of the best names in the world on the show.
31:45 Graduated over 1,000 students in 50 countries. I see this as a technology or human paradigm shift. And I hate it when some altcoin gives it a bad name and I’m seeing this real stuff happening, you know? And even real amazing metaverse plays, amazing NFT communities being built with like board ape and the ape coin. And also just great layer ones.
32:06 I’ve had some of the top CEOs from Avax on here and it’s like, wow, they’re really creating great solutions. And then you hear somebody saying, oh yeah, I’m trying to flip a coin for 2,000X. And I’m just like, ah, you’re killing me here. But we’re just gonna stay the course here. I think the world tests you and fortune favors the brave and the market’s always gonna ask you if you really believe in this.
32:31 And it tests people every now and then. Most of the people I have on my show now, Jordan, first of all, they’re all pretty much billionaires. They have multi-billion dollar protocols and almost all of them built them in 18 when it was the worst bear market ever. And they were super smart so they could have been working at Google or at Goldman Sachs and they chose to work on a blockchain protocol when their friends and family said, oh, that’s the scam thing you’re working on.
32:55 So it wasn’t even that it was losing money. Their reputation was at risk. And yet, four years later, they put in the hard work and they have the value. So I don’t know, I feel like in a certain way, we’re going through one of those test periods this year to see who really wants to keep building the infrastructure and that’s what we’re trying to do behind the scenes is to just keep building, stay focused and not pay attention to the price of Bitcoin every day, every week, every month.
33:20 Jordan Belfort: I think, you know, another really important lesson for people who are listening right now is, so if you look, you know, when people say, oh, I can’t believe it, yeah, now he’s positive, like, you know, he was bearish. Well, let me just give everyone here like a little bit of a news flash here on like how you go through life in an empowered way. It is called, have you ever heard of changing your mind based on new information? Like the whole idea that because you were once bearish on something, for all of you, you have the right and the obligation if you want to be successful as an investor, as a human fucking being, like if you’re in a bad marriage that was once great, well, guess what?
34:03 Well, I once loved her eight years ago, so I’m just gonna live the rest of my miserable life with this woman who hates me, we hate each other and get the fuck out, okay? In other words, you change your mind based on changing circumstances. If you’re not constantly analyzing where you are and looking at what’s going on around you and kind of developing your thesis on an ongoing basis, you’re gonna really end up in a very, very disempowered spot living a very disempowered life.
34:26 That’s a really important point. Do you agree with that?
34:28 Brian Rose: It’s been the story of London Real, if you think about it, Jordan, because again, back in the day, I was wearing skater clothes. When Pena first came on the show, first of all, by the way, I wouldn’t allow him on the show for a couple months and it wasn’t until I was kind of desperate for a guest and I was like, who is this guy? Some James Bond villain.
34:43 Again, I left Wall Street in the city of finance. I thought he represented everything I didn’t like and yet he came on and I listened to him and then over time, I was like, okay, he has some points. Almost every one of my top guests on London Real, I disagreed with most of what they were saying when they were in the chair and yet I decided, you know what? Let’s just check our ego at the door. Let’s listen to that point of view and they taught me how to move, how to run Iron Man races, how to get sober, how to learn about all these fascinating aspects of the world and so, yeah, I think people have to keep an open mind but these days, it’s so hard, Jordan.
35:16 Everything’s polarized. You’re on red team or the blue team. You don’t even listen to people and that’s the big thing we got into in 2022, just freedom of speech. You gotta allow someone to speak and especially when it offends you and listen and then change your mind and that’s so crucial.
35:34 Jordan Belfort: So let’s talk about freedom of speech here and that’s the obvious topic of the day is Elon Musk buying Twitter.
35:41 What are your thoughts on that?
35:43 Brian Rose: You know, we were involved in a massive freedom of speech fight that the whole world got to watch in 2020. I was on your show. You were very supportive of us and we appreciate that but yeah, April 6th, 2020, second largest YouTube live stream in the world, 65,000 people watching us. It would have gone on to watch 20, 30 million times that episode and an hour later, YouTube deleted it and banned it and I found out that censorship is real in this world.
36:06 Most people don’t know censorship exists on our tech platforms but it does. So we spent six months. I almost got de-platformed. I had two million subscribers, 10,000 videos. We were a partner at YouTube sharing revenue and I got banned from every platform out there.
36:21 PayPal dropped us, Dropbox took us out, LinkedIn threw me off because I was saying things that were unpopular at the time according to a couple weird three-letter organizations that couldn’t even agree. So again, fast forward two years, it’s not as bad as it used to be but it’s nice to see that potentially one of our big technology platforms might get someone to own it that’s not all from the same place in the world. Let’s just say that. Not all from my home state of California with the same values, you know?
36:53 Jordan Belfort: Sure, sure. Why is that, you think? What is it that all these tech platforms are so left leaning? Why is that? I don’t get it.
37:01 I’m a bit confused about that. I mean, I’m from California, I’m from San Diego and I spent 18 years there and most of that VC and technology innovation and capital usually came from Northern California because it’s a whole long story. It can take us back to the man on the moon, the semiconductor industry, the VC pools. Let’s go back there, tell me your opinion. Why is it that it’s skewed so heavily to the left?
37:27 Brian Rose: Well, I had a guy named Tyler Spalding who runs Flexa Network, actually a big blockchain protocol and he used to work at NASA and he said, Brian, it’s something we don’t talk about but the space race, getting the man on the moon caused the government to dump billions and billions of dollars at the time which was a lot of money into semiconductor industry and tech which then morphed into Silicon Valley which then morphed into VC which then morphed into the big tech platforms we know today. Now that’s all being decentralized, Jordan. You and I see it with some of the investments we see.
37:56 It’s all now moving around the world with blockchain but it was all really coming out of the big tech moves. We’re coming out of Northern California for the last 20, 25 years and so it kind of slanted to those politics and then they basically projected those politics to the world and regardless of what the government says about freedom of speech, whether in the UK and I went deep on freedom of speech in 2020, really went down to the old school concepts on it and the old writings but you had a tech platform that was more powerful than governments that just decided to project their values that became super left wing, sometimes super woke, sometimes just weird echo chamber. Twitter kind of became that, so did YouTube, so did Facebook with Elon coming in there.
38:38 It looks like it might get a fresh perspective on hey, what should our platforms look like? Should they be something else? Maybe we should have this discussion as opposed to having it be dictated by powerful people in the Valley. So I think it’s a healthy move forward. I’m amazed to pull it off.
38:57 Jordan Belfort: They changed the course of an election. I mean, they actually changed an election. They basically were instrumental in getting Biden elected to office by suppressing information, by slanting the public discourse, it’s a fact and there was other things by those huge mistakes made by the Trump campaign, by this whole, I really believe a lot of it, even probably just as much as the Twitter suppression and that was huge with the New York Post article. A lot of it was just a very flawed strategy on the part of Trump where they’re telling everyone to go vote on election day and don’t just mail in ballots or just evil and bad and then they shouldn’t exist and it’s gonna be a situation where there’s fraud.
39:39 So what happened was is the Democrats, the left is saying everyone, they send ballots out to everyone’s living rooms, right? And as the ballots are sitting there, they’re running all these different commercials hitting every pain point and then people knock on, did you fill your ballot out? Having to harvest ballots, right? So 30 days worth of advertising with the ballot in front of you. So you have 30 days of voting and then the Republicans are like, no, no, no, no, don’t do that, just show up on election day.
40:08 So now the election day comes, the Democrats on a 98-yard line and a 100-yard dash basically and saying, go. And then everyone’s got to show up now. How many people probably intended to vote, they just got busy that they didn’t or whatever happened? Simply the strategy of having 30 days of voting versus one day of voting, I think skewed it is probably more so than Twitter. What do you think about that?
40:30 Brian Rose: You know, I was watching all this and again, at the time we were kind of locked down and we had one way of communication and that was controlled by a massive global tech company that was making up kind of their own rules. And so when I started pushing back, everyone said, well, it’s a private company, Brian, they can make their own rules just like you can as your business. And I was like, yeah, but it’s actually an exchange of public information in a time of crisis where no one’s talking to each other.
40:53 So actually, there is some precedent legally when you take something that’s actually a very public utility where it actually has to follow some.
40:59 Jordan Belfort: You took the words out of my mouth. They’re utilities, they’re not companies, they’re utilities.
41:04 Brian Rose: Exactly, it’s a utility. So it has to follow more of a rule of law and not just whatever they wanna do.
41:08 And so there was a lot of pushback on that. I think they have definitely censored less as they’ve seen the pushback and they’ve seen more people really saying, what are you doing? We’ve seen Rogan go on Spotify. We’ve seen people embrace the fact that there’s people with free speech platforms. And now with Elon doing this, I don’t know how he’s gonna pay for it.
41:28 I mean, we saw RJR Nabisco and big like kind of LBOs struggle to pay for that debt and cashflow. And I know it’s not all debt, what he’s doing. But I like the fact that he’s going for it. And again, this is the voice. This is how we exchange information.
41:42 We’re in right now, Jordan, an information war and a currency war really, whether that’s dollars or yuan or crypto. Those are how people control decisions and groupthink and actions in this world. And so if you can control information or money, you control everybody. And that’s what we saw happen in the crisis. We’re seeing that happen now with money.
42:03 So I guess I see why Elon’s doing it. It’s also super important that we have freedom of speech and expression in our info and in our money. And don’t get me started about the money system, what happened in Canada, what’s happening in the Ukraine conflict in Russia. And that’s why we’re in this crypto space. And that’s why we’re talking it to people because you should be able to have control over your money, which is the ultimate form of human expression.
42:28 And again, I was in banking, I saw it. You and I can see the fiat world and the Fed in a way maybe other people can’t, but now everybody can start to see it with the inflation numbers, the printing during COVID. So I don’t know, I hope that narrative is gonna keep moving forward, but we still only have what? 2% adoption of crypto in the world, maybe 3% of the global population. So yeah, that’s why we’re looking forward.
42:50 Jordan Belfort: Yeah, I think you bring up a very good point that adoption is still relatively small. That’s very, very, it’s tiny compared to what’s out there. And I think the big reason for that is the lack of regulation. I think that once regulation comes in, adoption will increase significantly. And there’s also these like moments in time where just like suddenly it just seems like, I remember the beginning when first cell phones came out, they were there and suddenly bam, like some little, some technology, something happens that makes it easily accessible to all.
43:23 And suddenly, I think what it was, honestly, it was Nokia coming up with a better battery that lasted for five days. It was like, it was like, we had to use it for 30 minutes to suddenly there was this huge breakthrough. I remember when it became a small phone, it wasn’t a brick, it had a huge long battery life and you weren’t getting cut off every second. It was like, boom, boom, and suddenly it made sense. And that was a huge turning point.
43:46 Brian Rose: Yeah, and then the camera came out. I still remember working in the city of London. I was a credit derivatives broker talking to all the J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs people. And one of my guys in the desk said, oh, you bought a camera, a phone with a camera on it.
43:57 That’s the stupidest thing. I’ll never ever do that. That’s just gonna be a fad. And then again, the iPhone came out and it changed everything. Look, it’s a network effect.
44:05 And according to the rates of growth here, Jordan, most people agree, there’ll be a billion people using the crypto space by 25. And then it’s just gonna be a network effect going forward. The dollar is a network effect. Mobile phone was, internet was. And crypto’s going that way as well.
44:20 And so yeah, regulation will help, but it’s going there. And people just don’t realize that it’s just going to be a big part of society. Dan Morehead from Pantera Capital, actually used to work with him at Banker Stress back in the day. And he’s been investing in Bitcoin since 2013. And he just says, look, this is happening.
44:36 Him and Mike Novogratz are like, this is happening. It’s a billion people by 2025. Then it’s three and a half billion people in another few years. And guess what? It’s happening.
44:46 So I believe it’s just a part of technology and paradigm shift, but regulation is gonna help. And that’s why we’re talking about it. We’re all in on this, Jordan. That’s all I talk about pretty much is the top CEOs and founders in crypto. We’ve had the best on.
45:01 I teach these to my students. We have our London Real Ventures on. We’re investing in early stage. And now we got you coming to London on June 25th and 26th for our mastermind. It’s gonna be amazing.
45:11 Jordan Belfort: It’s gonna be amazing. And by the way, we’ll talk about that in a second. I wanna issue one question though. So today, Bitcoin is down significantly, right? So I checked last, it was 35,000.
45:22 I don’t know if it’s still there. It’s like maybe an hour, right? And the question I have is that, you know, a thesis that I buy into for Bitcoin is that it’s digital gold. That it’s a store value called property, digital gold. But it does not act like digital gold.
45:43 It acts like a speculative growth stock. It’s highly correlated with the market, stock market. Meaning when the market goes down, Bitcoin goes down. Ball goes up, Bitcoin goes up. Except more severely so.
45:56 It’s a more volatile form of that. So what are your thoughts on that? Does it worry you at all that Bitcoin does not act the way it’s supposed to act? That it just simply is like another highly speculative way to bet on whether the market’s going up or down. What do you think about that?
46:15 Brian Rose: So yeah, I agree. First of all, Bitcoin is that classic digital asset play. It’s digital gold that does something no other coin does. It’s never had downtime since its creation. It’s massively decentralized.
46:27 It gets banned by China. It still gets used. And again, it’s that digital asset play that people want to put money in because they think this technology is not going anywhere and it’s a great place to have digital property like Michael said, I would say. Now look, I’ve had Bitcoin maximalist on my show. It’s not only the people I have.
46:43 I had Jimmy Song on two days ago who was down there at the Bitcoin conference and he was on the news desk there. And I said, Jimmy, I said, you know, we all believe that Bitcoin is this great asset play. So why is it, in a time where it should be massively being adopted right now, why is it struggling to appreciate in price this year? And he said, look, one thing you don’t realize, Brian, is that the price of this is not controlled by any entity, you know, whereas normally the Fed or when the stock market moves up and down or the closing hours, all this, it always is transparent with its value.
47:14 And he said, also, if you want an asset that’s going to change the game, by definition, it will be volatile, period. This is just part of that game and it’s not being synthetically controlled by any other outside entity, unlike a lot of other of those assets that we’ve invested in over the years. And so I think we’re looking at something right now that’s experiencing this period where a lot of people are questioning it. It’s now a real asset. So again, when the stocks come off and the rest of the market comes off, people look at it as an asset that they want to get out of or they want to get into dollars.
47:42 And we’re seeing this period right now where people have to really question and just ask themselves, is this something you want to be in for the long term? We look at other things that are not just asset plays, but the technology plays. And then you look at Ethereum and the stablecoins and all those other coins as well. And that is where we see all that technology, all the advancement, all the growth. But the Bitcoin maximalists are just saying this is all part of the process is what they’re saying right now.
48:08 And again, what the Fed just raised rates, 50 bips, which hasn’t happened in a very long time, a lot of panic in the world, a lot of questions around inflation. We haven’t seen this for a while. And so people are potentially dumping assets. I guess the Fed’s not going to come in and probably buy Bitcoin like it buys other things. I still think toward the end of this year, our Q1 next year, we will see that Bitcoin appreciation.
48:31 What do you think is going to happen to this asset?
48:35 Jordan Belfort: I think that this is a normal part of Bitcoin maturing. And I still think it’s in its infancy. And I think that it’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to act like it, I think it’s supposed to act like a speculative growth stock. And I think it will continue to act like that for a number of years more, although less so.
48:58 If you look at the fluctuations, I think they’ll fall less than they were in the past. I guess in a relatively tight trading range. And I think that’s a good sign. I think is what I really think. I think that you have to buy this with a far longer term horizon.
49:17 If you really want to be in this thing, I don’t think you can look at it as a 12 month play. I think it’s a two, three, four. I think over two years you start getting to that. Like I’d be really, really surprised if you didn’t make money if you bought it right now. There’s never guarantees in the market, but this I think is in terms of crypto is certainly as close as you can get.
49:37 It would be to buy Bitcoin, hold it for a few years and just allow the economics of it, increased adoption, limited supply, they continue the basic of the US currency. When they raise rates, it’s like not like they’ve stopped the basing the currency. It’s like, they’re just not the basing it quite as fast. It’s like, it’s still printing fucking money at a New York clip. The deficit rises every single day.
50:00 So I mean, okay, they took, they tried to like just have some little triage to slow the bleeding a little bit. So I don’t look at that as being like some monumental watershed moment. You know, frankly, I don’t know what the fuck they’re gonna do with a $30 trillion plus deficit, unless of course Satoshi Nakamoto is the Federal Reserve. Then we got a good fucking play going on here, right? You know, in my deepest, darkest thoughts, I’m like, hmm, maybe that’s what’s really going on here, you know?
50:25 But I think, listen, I’m a very bullish on Bitcoin. I’m very bullish on Ethereum, but I’m not nearly as bullish on everything else out there in the crypto space. I’m not, I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s, I have like in my mind, I bucketed into Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I’d really be surprised if they, over the long term, weren’t substantially higher.
50:51 And I’m not quite as sure about Ethereum as I am about Bitcoin. And the reason being is there are other protocols out there that are trying to compete with it. And there are inherent problems with Ethereum that we see excessive gas fees, congestion. We hear about a fix, but again, there’s many more moving parts to Ethereum. There’s a lot more that can go wrong.
51:14 It can take a lot of left turns as Albuquerque gets the phrase go. So I don’t know as much, but I will tell you this, I think it’s also has a chance to be a more substantial percentage gain than Bitcoin. So I think that a little bit of less certainty is balanced by a higher return. And I don’t see it ever being a loser. And again, just my opinion.
51:33 So like, I’m very comfortable investing in both. Once you move past that, I become very, very skeptical with a lot of this stuff. And then I have a very different strategy. So while I’m very comfortable buying Bitcoin and Ethereum in the open market right now, when I do, and I’m long a lot, I don’t go out and try to trade any of the all coins unless I’m fucking around. I do a lot of that too.
51:56 I’m just fucking around with money and having fun and knowing I’m probably gonna lose it. And I just, you know, whenever I get lucky, I get lucky if not, right? But here’s where I think our mastermind really has the most value of all, which is why I’m super excited. You and I are doing this, right? It’s gonna be in London, it’s coming up.
52:12 We’ll announce the exact date and it’s gonna be fucking epic, right? I mean, no, it’s gonna be epic because the last one I had was epic. Epic was coming up by the New York Times. It was incredible by the way. And the people there were, we were at some high level, biggest miner on the biggest miners in the world and a brand new newbie.
52:30 We had always like the whole gamut. It was so fucking cool, right? And so I’m super excited, but I think the biggest value in this is that the other way I believe you touched on it, how do you really make money in crypto? And that is by getting involved before things are listed on decentralized exchanges or on one of the big exchanges. You gotta get into these things when they’re still in the early rounds of funding, C round or series A.
52:59 Now, sometimes it’ll be very difficult for the average person to get into a C round. Sometimes you can, but with access to people like you and I, right? And this is what I did for all the people. I said, listen, anytime you guys want, I have access to all the best C, series A and C rounds, right? So when I can, if I can give them series A, I’ll do that.
53:19 A seed, not series A. So I think that’s how you really make money. And I mean series A, meaning the first real funding that these companies are getting, these protocols are getting when they go to outside investors. You’re buying at a steep, steep, steep, steep, steep discount and unlike traditional venture capital, where six out of 10 times, there’ll be no exit ramp because the company just doesn’t ever get to a point where a banker or broker is willing to get behind it and get it listed or never gets bought out.
53:49 Every single deal, unless it’s literally the biggest piece of shit in the world will ultimately make it onto a decentralized exchange. You will have a liquidity event here. So it dramatically reduces the downside risk. So what I think is that this whole idea of getting involved in the early stages creates asymmetrical risk. Huge upside potential, very little downside risk.
54:13 It’s, you know, and of course it’s always risk. So that’s what I do. Like for our mass one, I want to make sure all the people that attend have access, not only just learn about it, but have access to those early stage deals. And that’s the gift you can give someone that will last a lifetime.
54:27 Brian Rose: Yeah, and that’s exactly what we’re doing here, strangely enough on a whole nother content than that you are, but we’re putting all of our focus into the early stage deals because, and guess what?
54:36 The beautiful thing is, Jordan, as you can see them on the blockchain. So look at Solana. The investors got in on that at $0.04 a token. And again, okay, it is a great success story, but you can see it’s like these 2,000 extra turns that are just unheard of anywhere. If you wanted that on Wall Street back in the day, you had to get into Facebook Series A, which means you had to be Peter Thiel in San Francisco.
54:56 And even then you had to wait seven, eight years for a public sale. In this space, as you and I both know, you can get in at Penny’s and then there’s a liquidity event sometimes months later, which is unheard of.
55:09 Jordan Belfort: I’ll give you an example. I got offered to be invested in the Twitter round. So there’s a financing for Twitter.
55:16 I don’t know if you saw it, but I got a call, hey, you want to put some money to Twitter, right? And I was like, what’s the exit ramp? Like how, you know, is this just because, you know, he’s almost said like, I’m not interested in making money in this, which I think is I really respect and tremendous. I think Elon is doing something that could literally have such a huge impact on the world. So I’m so happy.
55:38 I’m grateful for that. But he’s saying like, I’m not really into that. You know, it’s not really a big money-making play to me here. So it’s when they approached me to put money in like, what’s the, is he gonna take it public again? How do you get out?
55:51 What are your thoughts on that?
55:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, that’s probably not something that has those kind of magnified asymmetric returns that we’re seeing in the blockchain space. And again, having that liquidity event so soon after like a seed deal is like unheard of on Wall Street. And yet the blockchain is now a normal thing.
56:08 And so we’re working with a few VC firms here in London and in Europe and then some access in Dubai. And we’re seeing deals like you’re seeing as well. And we have access because of our media footprints and we can give access to those people in our inner circle at our masterminds. And they can see what I think is the most exciting thing happening right now, especially as Bitcoin goes so horizontal for the rest of the year. Why not look at something that could really build great infrastructure and have these massive returns?
56:35 But you’ll never get the phone call and you’ll never know the deals are happening until years later, unless you’re in the flow. And it’s just, it’s literally like being inside the bathroom or outside the bathroom. It’s like, you know, or inside the party or outside the party. You just see what’s going on.
56:48 Jordan Belfort: That’s what I was talking about.
56:49 It’s secret society. Like I was really kind of leading into this the whole time that I think the real secret to this game here is, and I know for listening on Wall Street, I, you know, when I was, when I owned the Stratton, I had like, you’re the house, you’re the casino, you’re getting this stuff, you know, for pennies on the dollar and then everyone’s getting it later, right? Now, interestingly enough though, even with Stratton, even as the owner of the firm, I can’t tell you how many deal line investors that never sold the Y today.
57:17 They don’t, they don’t go public. There’s just a, something happens. And I think that the power of that cannot be understated. You can’t be overstated that, that it’s just, you know, you’re getting into something as you said, and sometimes in months, you have the potential to get out, at least get your money back, make a small profit. And I still think that you should not dump everything you should hold for the longterm because you’re betting on the longterm with these companies, right?
57:41 So let’s talk specifically about our mastermind event, right? And I would urge anybody who’s listening to this, whether you’re in crypto or not in crypto, as you said, it’s coming for you. It’s coming no matter what. And also I would say that it’s a risk. One of the big things that made me start investing in crypto was like, if the thesis plays out, there’s gonna be a massive transfer of wealth in this world.
58:10 And you need to be hedged against that, I believe. So to have no crypto, to have no knowledge of it, or to be the schmuck who’s going out there and buying the top 10 moves on Coinbase, I mean, there’s nothing that could be more toxic than that. Okay, so, you know, people need to get educated. So the goal of our mastermind is really twofold. Number one, it’s intensive, but fun and cool education.
58:34 Now we’re gonna have two days of really explaining the inner workings of this stuff in a cool way. Also, if you have a company or in this space and you have problems, it’s about opening up doors to you. Because my role of X is unlimited. I’m sure yours is as well. It’s opening up doors, solving problems, the collective wisdom of the group.
58:52 And then the next part of that is, which I think is the most valuable part of all, is it’s not like, okay, mastermind’s over, have a nice life, no. Then you’re in the inside circle. You’re in that so-called circle of trust at the Fokker family, right? You’re in the circle of trust. And now, listen, if you choose to and you wanna start investing in the market, don’t throw your money in Dogecoin at 38 cents or 72 cents.
59:13 Get involved early stage in these companies and pennies on what it will ultimately be listing at. And that’s, I believe, how you make massive money in this space.
59:21 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s why this event is gonna change your life. And again, we’re shutting down the studios for two days and we’re gonna bring people into this kind of, you know, it’s a bit of a hollowed ground where we’ve had some great conversations, great minds. We’ve also got workstations too, so we’re gonna be doing, we’re gonna be talking about these things and then people can actually go and get and do practical pieces as well.
59:43 And again, it’s about access to that deal flow, which we know is this massive asymmetric return. And so if you’re into crypto right now, great. If you’re into DeFi, but if you’re just looking at the liquid markets, then you’re actually doing yourself a big disfavor. And Jordan’s coming to London. It’s two full days here at the studios with a small group of people.
1:00:02 We’re going out on the town, I say Wolf of Wall Street style on Saturday night to one of the best venues here in London. And everything is total red carpet, gourmet catering to the max. But the real value is you get time with me and Jordan to brainstorm, talk about ideas, talk about raising capital, talk about new protocols. And then you’re in, like you said, the, what do they call it in the circle of trust? And you’re seeing everything we see for the next 12 months, which is intense.
1:00:29 It’s just intense, the kind of deal flow we’ve seen. We’ve already talked about deals and it’s just something you want to know about. And if you don’t, you’re just going to miss out on these massive potential. And I really think Jordan, the next 12 to 18 months is where a lot of big infrastructure plays are going to be made. And it’s all happening on these presale tokens.
1:00:46 And that’s-
1:00:47 Jordan Belfort: Especially the metaverse and the gaming space. There’s so much going on in play to earn gaming, the metaverse. And also, I think as Ethereum really starts to become what it’s, what it hopefully will be, which is, you know, a virtually gasless, you know, system that really serves as the so-called global railway for all these other protocols. I think the level of innovation is going to step up so dramatically. I think adoption will follow suit.
1:01:15 So I think now is the time. There’s really every technical and I believe every fundamental factor as well is pointing true north right now. And I think the best time to get in is when it’s not rising quickly. This is the, this is when money gets made at the most rapid clip on the way down. Or when the negative, that bearish sentiment is when all the opportunities lie.
1:01:39 When everyone’s streaming, it’s the best thing. When your Uber driver is taking his last dollars and putting it to Bitcoin, you know, it’s about to crash. So there you go.
1:01:47 Brian Rose: This is the perfect time for people to be involved. Again, I always say thank you right now for these sideways markets because we were chasing deals at the end of last year when Bitcoin was making its highs and I couldn’t get any of these founders to get back to me because so much money was being thrown at them.
1:02:02 Now they’ll return the calls and you can actually get invested. You still have to have a good profile and, you know, a value add to do it. But this is a way for people to see the deals. And I’m telling you, it’s the next 12 months where you want to make this happen. And guess what?
1:02:14 It’s the perfect time not to look at the price of Bitcoin every day and get depressed. Exactly. It’s two days here.
1:02:20 Jordan Belfort: Yeah, we just raised, yeah, I’m sorry. We just raised 16 million for a deal in the, a metaverse, a gaming company, Realms of a Thurney.
1:02:27 And it’s like, it’s interesting that even in the worst markets, you’re still raising money. There’s still money out there for the good deals. This is a really solid, it’s like a multiplayer game in the metaverse, play to earn. And I got to just tell you, like, these, like, I’m not saying it won’t be a great buying a year from now when it’s, whatever it’s going to be, hopefully it’ll be $5. But like, just imagine getting into these things and pennies, that’s, I think it’s just like, that’s where our event, I think, is going to really be the winner.
1:02:56 Because you leave there, not just with an understanding of, you know, how to really navigate the space, but having access. And to me, access is everything. That’s the bottom line.
1:03:05 Brian Rose: It is access to everything. And you can’t replicate the kind of the awareness footprints that you and I have.
1:03:10 You can’t do that on your own or it’s going to take you five years. So why not come to the event? It’s going to be two days in London. You get to hang out with us. We’re going big out in the town.
1:03:18 And again, it’s June 25th and 26th. I think it’s londonreal.tv forward slash wolf for info. We’re already selling these things out. There’ll be a few spaces left. Also, I’m taking five of the people and they get to sit in the leather chair on Monday.
1:03:30 So if people do want a little bit of a media presence that can help them maybe raise money or something, I’m adding in that as a little bit of a benefit too. So yeah, I can’t wait. It’s going to be a ton of fun. And then the deals we’re going to see. First of anybody.
1:03:42 And then we’ll talk about also your podcasting together.
1:03:45 Jordan Belfort: I want to start really doing the podcast. I’m getting myself ready to commit to a, because I just think this is really such a need for good information, you know? Really, really a need. So much so.
1:03:57 A lot happening, you know?
1:03:58 Brian Rose: Yeah, we got to be talking more in this space because I’m telling you, there’s a real craving, Jordan, for people like us with some real decades of experience in the financial industry that can look at this to another lens. And again, I get to have the CEOs, the top layer one protocols on here, the founders of Avax and Hedera Hashgraph and Phantom Networks. And I get to talk to them for 90 minutes and go deep. And I can start to see who knows what they’re talking about, who doesn’t.
1:04:25 I got the CEO of Sandbox on, the guys from Animoca Brands, the guys from Alluvium and Immutable X. And I’m telling you, we would have just an amazing time talking to these people. And you can quickly see what has really good game changing tech and what’s nonsense. And it’s just hard to ignore some of these big plays. Where they’re taking gas fees down to zero, these layer ones that are making things super affordable.
1:04:48 We’ll see what happens with Ethereum. I just had Kane Warrick with Synthetics. I said, Brian, E2.0 is happening and everything’s gonna drop. And I’m like, all right, let’s see. But I’m with you.
1:04:58 One thing I will say, Jordan, you mentioned Bitcoin and Ethereum earlier. If you look at my main guests on this show in the past year, 50 guests, a lot of them actually have public portfolios and about a quarter of their investments are in Bitcoin. About a quarter is in Ethereum. And then it goes down to a little bit of Metaverse here, a little layer ones here, an NFT play, early stage. So again, follow the money.
1:05:21 This is what smart, intelligent people are doing. They got some for digital gold. They got some because it’s hard to bet against Ethereum. Network effect, developers, it’s having some gas fees. But everything’s developed on it.
1:05:33 And then they put a little bit in the layer one solution. A little bit in that Metaverse play that’s got the traction. And of course, you wanna have a percentage in those early stage deals. But again, you know it’s high risk as well and high rewards. So you don’t put the whole portfolio in there, but it only takes one of those to change the game.
1:05:52 Jordan Belfort: A 2000X return is unheard of even in the Stratton days probably. That’s a big return, right? I know. Buddy, I love to speak to you all day because we could speak all day, but unfortunately the time has come. So everybody check out the website.
1:06:10 It’ll be listed here on the bottom here. Wanna repeat it again for the mastermind. What is it?
1:06:14 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s Londonreal.tv forward slash Wolf. Just put in your information there.
1:06:18 Tell us a little bit about you, your portfolio size, what’s going on. And again, it’s June 25th and 26th here in London. In London, if you look at that. We’re going out on the time, one of the best places in London. Total red carpet affair.
1:06:32 And we’re gonna be at the studios and literally where we do all the filming and we’re gonna have the masterminds and the workshops as well. So, you know, bring your laptop because we’re gonna jump on to some of these protocols and then yeah, it’s just gonna be amazing time. But the access is what the real winner is. Getting access to the things that you and I see are amazing.
1:06:52 Jordan Belfort: So sounds good, buddy.
1:06:53 All right, listen, we will see each other soon. Everyone share this with your friends, your family and subscribe. And hopefully we’ll see you in London. If not, take care. Have a great day.
1:07:02 Brian Rose: Take care, buddy. Care. Bye-bye.
