1 Confirmation with Jeff and David Episode 10 – August 3, 2020 – Special Guest: Kiana Danial of InvestDiva.com

Bitcoin surpasses $11,000 – where is it going next? The dollar is falling as the economy contracts – what does this mean for Bitcoin and Ethereum? All this and more with our special guest Kiana Danial of InvestDiva.com. Join us!

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Jeff: Live from BTC Manager world headquarters, this is one confirmation with Jeff and Dave. And I’m Jeff.

Dave: Hey, I’m Dave.

Jeff: And we’ve got another amazing show Bitcoin lately has been skyrocketing to $11,000. And with that Ethereum has risen to three over 300. And I think it’s because of a lot of the action that’s been going on in the market, and with the wider community jumping in realizing that there is an alternative to the usual fad. So with that, there’s some incredible news today. There’s more than 100 members of the Plus Token Scam that were arrested today in China. And I worry further longevity, because China’s not known to keep people alive for very long in that case. That was a $3 billion scheme that has now been put to an end. And that is to say, China has taken $3 billion off the market, if you will, of cryptocurrency tokens. And on top of that those 100 team members are now out of action. So what the people were doing were scamming people out of their token, their cryptocurrencies and dumping it on various exchanges. The community at large had taken a lot of action to try to prevent that dumping action. But as with anything else, there’s always a way around that kind of thing. So these people have been taking out of action.

What do you think about that day about this kind of a scam finally coming to an end?

Dave: Well, I think this is good that we make people come to know the scam and definitely that will give us better prices to the people to invest that, because of this scam is coming out. And I talk about myself, it’s giving me a bit of confidence that yes, people are on it, the security people are watching it. And my money is secure.

Jeff: Yes, I’ve always said not your keys, not your tokens. So it’s much better to keep your keys and token on your own device like a keep key or something or a treasure or a ledger. That way, you know, it’s safe and secure. If you put it up on this like plush token or whatever, you’re likely to get scammed out of it. Along with that, if there Ethereum is now five years old, so happy birthday Ethereum. And with that Ethereum 2.0, it’s very soon to be released. They’re promising a lot more of a liability security. All the existing token can be upgraded to the new platform without any challenge. There’s a variety of side chain tokens that have been doing testing on the Ethereum 2.0 platform like Midas and other, proving that it could be an extremely scalable platform, able to handle millions of transactions per second. So I think that’s just incredible news that all of these very talented engineers have been working day and night to make this a reality. So what do you think, David about this amazing news coming out of the Ethereum space?

Dave: That’s right. And it is a great news and I’m watching this aquarium because I had made some investment and from last out say that one month it’s approximately 25% hike is gone. And that’s really great. Because all my investment, I’m saying that I’m good, making good money. So I’m thinking it’s like it’s a birthday gift of petroleum to me. It’s really good. I think this new one is really going to have as you mentioned, it’s more secure. So this is really going to be prayed and probably going to give a good competition to Bitcoin.

Jeff: I agree Bitcoin is not as programmatic is the Ethereum is. And so as a result, there are just thousands of application going on to the Ethereum space. Along with that some of the largest applications are one that involve what used to be only accessible to large financial institution, something called wades. Very interesting that some of these clients like maker dow and others have been increasing dramatically, and I think soon will be larger than any of the largest hedge funds in the world. I think that’s something to watch. So you can hold an Ethereum or you could even hold and one of those quantitative funds, which is a part of Ethereum, and I think those would be actually very sound investments over the long term, especially at Ethereum 2.0 head. And the last piece of news that the American GDP numbers for Q2 have been released and we’re out at -32.9% deceleration of the market, that is to say that one third of the market has basically banished, that is the largest decrease of all time. I don’t think even the great depression had numbers such as this, which is a -32.9% decrease. That is rather is the answer. So what do you think, David, when it comes to this market news, what do you think it’s going to be happening in America?

Dave: I think this is not good. And like 32% is a big number. Markets goes up 1%, to 5% ups and down, but it’s more worse than I’m thinking of recession of 2008. Definitely, I think the government should work really hard to make it up and I’m not a big financial kind of guy, but I only can say that like, governments would walk around and look around it and find out because this is maybe because of COVID, maybe because of the tension is going on with the China and USA. So that could be but definitely Mr. Trump needs to find out a way to improve it.

Jeff: Yes, it’s pretty scary news. And on top of that, there’s a bit of a gridlock going on and the US Congress, over 80 kind of a bailout. The bailout money, that $3 trillion that they printed, over the first half of the year is already gone. And a large part of that did not benefit the lower 90% pile of the US population. I would argue that about 80% of that money went towards the top 10% of the population in America with actually a large majority of that going to the top 1%. So the long and short of that is, with a lot of the subsidies, such as unemployment benefits coming to an end. And a lot of the laws restricting people being kicked out of their homes and apartments coming to an end. Unless something comes soon. I think we’ll see the impacts, basically no money in the economy to 40 million Americans, there’s going to have a pretty stiff stance of impact to those people. On top of that, if they do print more money, anywhere from $1 to $3 trillion, is currently being debated, that will only further weaken the dollar’s position, such that the people, whatever dollars that they have, will have less of a value. It’s almost like a Kobayashi Maru situation. And so with that, I’d like to lead off into a broader discussion. We have a special guest today joining us from a company called Invest Diva. We have Kiana Danial, I hope I said that right. Welcome to the show.

Kiana: Thanks for having me.

Jeff: So what do you think of all the news of the day is pretty incredible, right?

Kiana: Right, absolutely.

I think everything that you just said basically just move to, “hey, if you’re not into cryptocurrency, you got to get into it right now because the future of the market is pretty shaky at the moment.” And what the last piece of news that you mentioned is the one that I’m the most interested in because the other ones are absolutely amazing and true. And we have these news coming out of the cryptocurrency market a lot. But the last piece of it really showcases the reason why we need a decentralized monetary system that doesn’t depend on how the government manages our economy. And I think that is the reason why we have one of the key reasons why there we’ve been seeing the cryptocurrency as a whole, especially Bitcoin surging, although we know that because of the bubble that we had back in 2017, a lot of people are not dumping on the hype as much as before, they’re scared, and we have all these scamming issues. And not many people are aware of the progress that the community as a whole is making in terms of getting the scams under control. But to me, the fact that the GDP is down by so much, in fact, the government is just going to print more and more money, meaning devaluing the US dollar. That means that if you’re not putting your money somewhere that it can grow and beat inflation, then your future is going to be expensive.

Jeff: And I think that’s one of the key points that you mentioned, is being in a position where your money will grow, which is one of the points but they call quants, right. Hedge funds can invest in quants, which is one of the areas that when money is printed, it flows towards that exact area. So in that case, the money that they have the US dollar in this case, can actually grow faster than the rate of inflation because they absorb the money that’s printed as compared to holding $1 under your mattress, that dollar will instantly devalued by the amount that had been printed. So if you’re going into cryptocurrency, how do you make sure that you’re in a position that you can stay ahead of all this money printing? How do you talk to the average person in this case, to let them know how cryptocurrency works, what’s your method?

Kiana: So I wrote a book [laughs]

Jeff: Awesome.

Kiana: So the book helps, so I wrote the cryptocurrency investing for dummies book, but here’s the thing, the average person that is not in the community as scared of cryptocurrencies so what I’m doing right now is actually getting into them from the stocks point of view. So I’ve been introducing more and more people who wouldn’t otherwise be investing in the stock market into stocks because that is something that they’ve heard of they know that it makes money it has been proven that during recessions if you invest in stocks and buy the stocks at a cheaper price, eventually is going to go up and you’re going to make money and you’ve got to beat inflation. So that has been my conversation opener for those of you who are incredibly skeptical of cryptocurrency but are interested in beating inflation and making their money work for them and making their money grow. And from there, then I introduce them to other assets, cryptocurrency I market high risk for them, and I help them understand their risk tolerance and if they really, really, really hate the idea of getting into cryptocurrency, that’s fine. I don’t want to force anybody, but I have started with the education portion of it. And when it comes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, I basically explain this, that Bitcoin there is only a number of Bitcoins ever in the universe, there is never going to be more Bitcoins. In fact, a lot of it is actually going to get stolen, a lot of is just going to get wiped out. So we’re going to have less Bitcoins, because any asset only gains value because of supply and demand. And the fact that we know that the supply of Bitcoin can never go higher than the number that I always forget is 52 million. It’s better than gold. So right now, what people are doing is they’re rushing to gold, because they’ve heard of the US dollar devaluing. Alright, what’s the next best thing to put my money in gold.

But here’s the problem with gold. First of all, we don’t know how much gold exists in the universe. And as our science progresses, and we can get people into other planets, we might find even more gold, we might find gold under the sea, there are rumors like we can find gold to make everybody a millionaire on the earth, which is actually counterproductive because if you have that much gold, then again there is more supply of that. So that devalues gold right there in there. So there is no win-win situation. But again, with Bitcoin we know exactly how much it’s going to be. Nobody’s going to print more Bitcoin or create more Bitcoin out of thin air like they do with the US dollar. And that’s the reason why the value of it can only go up from here.

Jeff: It’s funny that you mentioned that exact idea, which is gold as a potential safe haven. There’s an asteroid called 16 site, which is worth $700000000000000000000 trillion. So that is seven followed by 20 zeros. And productive use keeping score at home. That’s more than the entire value of everything on the planet Earth. So, oddly enough, where you go, well, that’s not here on Earth, that’s somewhere out there in the solar system, right. Well, first of all, we’ve already sent the probe there. And second of all, SpaceX is already working on going there and bringing that asteroid here and parking it next to say Los Angeles or something. So if that happens, I wonder what’s going to happen to the gold prices on the planet Earth, right?

Kiana: Right, absolutely.

And that’s where all the people who are hiding all the gold on their mattresses aren’t be like, “oh my god, I should have bought Bitcoin.”

Jeff: Exactly.

Well, what about the other side of the house all the people that have been working extraordinarily hard to actually do something with crypto, it’s one thing to buy and huddle as people say. But what about the other half of the equation and that is doing things with it? Have you been following all the different distributed applications, decentralized applications, all of that, have you been following that?

Kiana: I have so much respect for people who have been in the community and have continued to keep their faith throughout the roller coaster ride that has been the cryptocurrency market. From 2016 to 2019 I was heavily following the community. I was interviewing everyone from Charles Hoskinson to John McAfee to all these people who are well contributing or pushing or doing or keeping an agenda. And that was for my personal reason I really wanted to get down to what these people are really doing. So that I can create my portfolio because I have not been really active personally, in terms of contributing to the community in terms of developing an app or something else in my business is focusing on the investing side only. But I really wanted to learn about what these people doing and who these people are, do I actually trust them, what are they doing. And after all of that I basically made my decision, I created my portfolio. And then I decided to focus on educating the other half which is now my main business based on everything that I had learned about it. So, to answer your question, I actually haven’t been following everybody and all the developments on a day to day basis I obviously follow the majority of these people on Twitter’s something comes up, I know that it is happening, but it’s not something that I base my investment decisions on. I have made my decision for longer term, not for day trading. And just keeping my faith that these people are going to carry on to their promise and are going to make all the things that they’ve been working on happen and we’ve been seeing it we’ve been seeing with all the developments. Cardano is one of my favorites. We have Ethereum making all these breakthroughs, and it’s been amazing to watch.

Jeff: Yes, it has been and I really think that the future then now even, it’s going to be based in these decentralized applications that are going to be built on the Ethereum 2.0 platform, to the point that I don’t think we’re necessarily going to have to rely on institution that have been traditionally packaged. For example, there is a salt care token that I’ve been following for the longest time. But I’ve interviewed on a couple of occasions, just CEO over there. And he is an amazing brilliant person. He’s been through the healthcare industry. He’s been through the wringer with it. And coming out the other end of it. He wanted to create an entire ecosystem that will enable doctors and patients to get together and they’re literally cut out all that middleware system that ends up mucking up and gumming up all the works of everything.

And we’re talking about the entire spectrum of the equation. There’s a lot of shenanigans like go on within the healthcare sector, especially if we look at all the problems with bad prescription drugs and all that, where they’ve literally have killed people for money. And so he wants to eliminate all that, and get the patient back to having good quality care.

And I think that’s one example of taking the technology that we had today, and doing something with it to benefit society at live. And I think we’re going to see a lot more of that. And I really would say the next trillion-dollar company is going to be one that is going to be a social good, as opposed to one that’s going to be potentially a part of the CIA called Facebook, right.

So just shift gears a little bit. David, what do you think about all of this, I mean, you’re relatively new to crypto, I’d like your take on everything that we’ve talked about so far?

Dave: Well, it’s always like based on the conversation, I see future is of Ethereum and specially the Ethereum 2.0. And of centralized application is getting down a lot. The example that you have mentioned or fault care. That is the one of the good example. And I have seen that application that’s really good. So for me is like, I will be on technical side, not much on financial side, but I can see that the future is on crypto, it’s more secure, your value is not getting diluted, right, your investment is always going up.

Jeff: Well, what questions do you have about buying it using it doing something with it, you’re not potentially making an application out of it? I mean, you’re a businessman, what do you see next?

Dave: As a businessman I see is like making application and using crypto because it’s easy for people to do a transaction because many times we make application that is global application. Every country has different currencies. And we face a really big problem to convert them. There’s a lot of things that goes to the banks and everything, right. So this is the big game changer. It’s cut out, cut down the all the barriers throughout the globe. For me, as a businessman, and as an IT person for making or developing application using this, this is going to have a [unintelligible 00:20:28] of people. And this will be the next generation application.

Jeff: Fascinating.

So shifting gears a little bit more along the business front. As an advisor, how would you advise a business such as what David had. He has a IT consulting technology firm. How would you advise him to architect his business to fully take advantage of crypto?

Kiana: Can you explain a little more about David’s business?

Jeff: David, can you talk a little bit about what you got going?

Dave: So my business is like I’m having IT company and we are developing applications in different technologies like it’s an iOS, Android, mobile, web and all domains. It’s like sometimes healthcare, sometimes financial, sometimes business automation, right, sometimes e commerce. So we’re developing all kinds of applications based on the needs of our customers.

Jeff: Kiana, how would you advise David and his business to fully take advantage of crypto?

Kiana: That’s a very interesting question because I personally, I’m not fully taking advantage of crypto in my business but what I have been finding valuable for my business which is very different than yours, mine is more business to customer and customer meaning mainstream retail investors and what I have been doing is learning a lot about marketing and learning about how to really get my message across to my customers and create value. And I think in any business at the end of the day, it comes down to creating value and showing them where the value is. And it comes down to really actually even educating your customers on what will be the most value for them. Because if they find you valuable, then they’re going to say good things about you and you’re going to get more customers. Again, because your business is very different than mine, I wouldn’t be able to give you specific advice and how to get a take advantage of cryptocurrency, besides just telling you to probably find more customers in that realm. Although that would come with a caveat because I feel like we’re cryptocurrency community is amazing, but we have a lot of people still figuring out which direction they want to go. We have a lot of people who are constantly arguing with each other, which is one of the reasons why I haven’t been following the community as much, because it gets a little bit tiring as people really want to push their own opinion and we don’t have a set society and set standards for everybody to follow.

So for that reason, I don’t know something that you could do is bringing some sort of standard valuation for the whole community, like getting everybody on the same page. So it’s not like within the cryptocurrency community, we don’t have people from all over the place just arguing with each other. But getting everybody on the same page agreeing with each other and going after the other side, which is the government and the centralized organizations and things like that. But again, this is very general. And I’m hoping that this is making sense for you. But at the end of the day, as I said, bringing value for your customers and educating them might be the best way to really accelerate your business.

Jeff: Yes, I think it’s interesting that you mentioned a couple of those talks that there and one of the areas that I was actually pondering, you know, a lot of people, employees are offering something like a the equivalent in every country of about 401K or an IRA. I know in other countries, they had their version of that where they’re always told, well put your money in the stock market. And that’s how you can have enough money to retire on supposedly, after 20 years or 30 years of working, which we’re finding out is not going to be the case.

So how could David for example, potentially set up some kind of a crypto fund that his employee could voluntarily contribute money to, in order to invest or put money towards crypto, Is there anything like that that exists right now?

Kiana: I’ve seen a bunch of these funds cryptocurrency funds when you go to the crypto shows here in New York, and I haven’t personally tested any of them. So here’s my problem with managed funds, any kind of fun, even the 401K that a lot of people are like, okay, I’m invested in the market, I have a 401k. So I have a massive problem with 401k. So here’s a couple of them.

First of all, managed funds underperform the market average by 86%, which is huge because the market average is 10% and they underperform it. So I’m like, why am I putting my money in 401k. Now, I understand that when your company or employer matches your 401k, this is different story. So and you don’t have to really actively manage it, but still underperforming by 86% is a huge number.

And moreover, with a 401k or any other managed fund, your money is going to be locked up. So Americans lose $5.7 billion per year in 401k and IRA early withdrawal fees, because you don’t know when shit is going to hit the fan like COVID happens people lost their jobs and they want have their money out of their 401k.

Do you know how many people have paid so much money to the 401k this year alone, just to get that money out so that they can cover their basic expenses. Whereas if you had your money in a portfolio of your own, that you were managing and potentially outperforming that 401k account of yours, just with a little bit of an education, it’s not rocket science. And you wouldn’t have had to pay the withdrawal fees would have been better off. So I would say to any cryptocurrency enthusiast, who wants to put their money in a managed funds, I would tell them what I tell to people who want to put their money in an IRA or 401k, do it yourself, do it yourself, just educate yourself. If you put in an eight-week education in this of your life, this is going to pay back over and over and over and over and over again throughout your life because as long as you know your risk tolerance as long as you have basic understanding of how the markets move, you’re going to be better off.

Even if there was a legitimate cryptocurrency fund out there. Personally, I would not put my money there, I would just manage it on my own because I have enough understanding of it of the markets right now. And it’s not rocket science. As I said before, I’m a full time Mom, I don’t even spend that much time on it. So if I can do it, you can probably do it too.

Jeff: Anybody can do it, yes.

And one other thing I saw and I read about some time ago was, an employer sponsoring the requirement of financial education for all of its employees. What do you think about that kind of a thing where there are the mandatory, we’re not one or two hour, here’s how to manage your money and how to save money, invest money, that sort of thing?

Kiana: Show me who that company is. And I would invest in that company because this stuff should be taught in high school. Like I don’t understand why people think Investing is such a myth, or mystery or intimidating. Well, I know why it’s because people are not educated about it, they are dropped into the world with absolutely no knowledge about how the markets work. And then they see people on CNBC in a suit and they are sounding very intimidating. And they’re like, “oh my God what they’re saying, I’d already set” and then they just zone out. And they think they have to be some sort of a superhero in order to bus. So that’s the reason why I’m really focused on educating people about this because they can do it on their own, I had the opportunity to actually become a fund manager and become and going into the hedge fund. But because I had already been burned previously, before I even get into finance, by a money manager, I decided, you know what, I don’t want to do that. I prefer to just educate people to do that on their own. And I’m making enough money on my own that I don’t need to become a fund manager. So you guys just read a couple of books. [laughs]

You’re going to be fine.

Jeff: Yes, that makes sense. I mean, one of the things I’ve always noticed about the American education system is I don’t understand why you get people all the way up to calculus, but they can’t even manage their own money. It doesn’t make any sense.

Kiana: Yes, and the thing is like investing actually, if you graduated 4^th grade with a D, you’re going to be qualified enough to get into investing and understanding how the markets work. So it’s not about math, really, it’s more about shopping, but I invest in anything whether it’s crypto or stocks. It’s about understanding who was behind that you know what the company is doing, what the community is doing. And then setting a strategy that is unique to your risk tolerance and your financial goals and your age and financial situation. And then passively I dedicate one hour per week to just go through my accounts look at the price action. The rest of it comes down to price action and knowing when to get in and out and I don’t try to time the market but depending on the asset I’m in depending on my risk tolerance. You want to just monitor where the markets are where the economy, and bad tastes really just one hour per week.

Jeff: What do you think about the strategy just, every week putting away a certain amount of money, say 5%. And just during the average pie over a period of, say 20 years, but do you think about that kind of a strategy?

Kiana: So what I do personally, is on a monthly basis, I just contribute to my investment portfolios, but I don’t invest at the market price. So it’s not like my money has my portfolio, let’s say on the 4^th of the month, and that’s the day that I invest. I do analyze the price action, the technical analysis, I do conduct that and I set buy limit orders based on where I see the markets dropping to. So for example, in the past few weeks, the majority of the stocks that I’m interested in were actually overvalued, even though I had funds sitting in my portfolio wasn’t really buying because, to me was obvious that we’re going to get ahead hits another head. And then today the news came out in the GDP took ahead. So we’re going to probably see the markets drop, potentially sometime until November. It’s an election year. So it’s going to be a little bit weird. But I set buy limit orders and then I go about my day so I don’t invest just automatically, but I do contribute automatically. It’s like tax I don’t see the I bat money of my income as just dedicated for investments.

Jeff: Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

Well, David, what do you think about everything that we’ve discussed so far?

Dave: It was really interesting to just spend an hour go through your books and see that how your money is doing, right. And it’s not rocket science. But as a business owner, I was more focusing on like just making money and putting into the market. And then end of the year, we see that oh we made this much money but now we have only this much left because the market is crashed. It’s not gone up or down to something. So I think this is a good strategy. Do spend some time just one hour long books and keep your money growing rather than focusing on volume making money, and that’s why people lose, like people like me also, like I also do the same thing. Just keep focusing on making money. But if you don’t see that where my money is going, is this going up, it’s going stagnate, or like it’s going down. I think this is a good strategy. And I thank you Kiana for that.

This is really interesting. And everyone should do this thing.

Jeff: Yes, absolutely.

One way is to go to the investdiva.com website. I believe there is a master class that’s available to sign up and find out how to take control of your financial future. If stay at home mom can do this, I would argue anybody can do this. On top of that, there’s a book available at amazon.com do you want to talk more about your book?

Kiana: Sure.

So well, I’ve written four books, but the one that would be more suitable for your audience would be, Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies Book. I don’t know if your audience is super new to cryptocurrency but it is about investing side of crypto. And I talked about my strategy that you can apply to any other asset as well. I love that book because it says, cryptocurrency investing, but it’s really about financial management. And I talk in detail about cryptocurrencies. But I also talk in detail about risk management and figuring out your risk tolerance, creating your financial goals and creating a portfolio including cryptocurrency and stocks and anything else that matches restaurant tolerance, and then move forward with the strategy that I’ve just mentioned. Because what David just said, it is absolutely true. I know so many entrepreneurs who make millions of dollars per year but are broke, because it’s not about how much you make. It’s about if you’re educated enough to keep that money and make it grow. So that is the only path to wealth. Making more money is great, but keeping a grow will make you wealthy

Jeff: This is amazing.

David, do you have any final thoughts?

Dave: Well, I think for me is like to go and read those four books and learn what are words Kiana has written and start growing my money. That would be really good for me at this moment. And I think she has Spanish really good. And everyone should go and read those books. It’s really great.

Jeff: Yes, I think that’s the key is we need more people to take control of their financial future, rather than relying on others to decide what’s going to happen with their money. And I think as we’ve seen, between all the different 401Ks and IRAs and just about every single managed fund, as always imploded, even some hedge funds, you know, look at Bernie Madoff, right, made off with a lot of money.

So, if Kiana can do this, and she’s written four books about the topic, I would argue that anybody can do this then I think it’s fantastic considering where the industry is going. And this phase, cryptocurrency is only going to be going up as more people start to adopt it. We’re in the early days of the internet. So, alright, well, those are some of the final thoughts I had.

Kiana, any final thoughts?

Dave: Yes, well, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me and you guys, as you mentioned, the masterclass that is on my website, investdiva.com it’s free and I basically will lay out everything that I just said in three simple steps that you can cover so and if you take that masterclass, you’re also going to get my risk management toolkit for free. So definitely go ahead to investdiva.com and take the masterclass and get started with making your money work for you and taking control of your financial future.

Jeff: And you can get started for as little as $10 really, just because Bitcoin is at $11,000 doesn’t mean you need $11,000 to buy it. You can buy even $10 worth of Bitcoin or $10 worth of Ethereum.

So definitely there is no minimum amount. And I know some people they only live on less than $1,000 a month. But if you got even $10 or $15 to spare, there are people now at the point where they’re getting 1,000 to 2,000 a month fund cryptocurrency and living on that. So definitely something to think about.

Well, this has been a fantastic show. I really thank you Kiana for coming on the show. So this has been fun conversation with Jeff and Dave. And I’m Jeff.

Dave: And I’m Dave.

Jeff: Thanks for having us.

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