Wealth, freedom and privacy.

Image by Matthew Henry

When talking about wealth, freedom and privacy, a good place to start is with this quote:

“You will never be free without privacy. Privacy is not secrecy, it is the ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. It is a prerequisite for freedom because private information may be used to control you.

You will never be wealthy without freedom. It is a prerequisite for wealth because otherwise it is not your wealth.” Matt Odell

There are countless examples of why it is important to protect your privacy. Now I know many are going to say, give me some examples. Well why not stop and have a little think yourself. Think about every single military conflict in human history. How many strategists do you think would have set out to plan the offence or defence in the open?

Another really great argument for privacy is the I have nothing to hide. Sure, that may be the case, but I always enjoy asking the following question back: “why does your post come in an envelope and why do your file away or shred your bank statements, why don’t you leave them at your front door” or “awesome, I’ll pop around later today to install a camera in you and your wife’s bedroom”. Now, let’s take this a little further, think mobile phone camera, your children and bathing.

Privacy ensures our freedom and ultimately protects all our future wealth. So the question is how do we get there? The answer is not overnight. It’s a process that takes years and new smarter ways are constantly being found to harvest your data, so you are going to have to be on your toes to turn the tide. Remember the saying:

“If its free, you are the product”

If it is free, ensure the software is open source and a not for profit organisation. Also don’t be afraid to pay for services that protect your privacy, if anything does go wrong, you will have recourse to damages if your privacy rights are infringed. Think about all the free services you are currently using at the moment.

Like everything, the best place is to start. Find a couple of reliable people and sources who specialise in privacy / cryptography and see what they are doing. What messaging / calling apps and social media platforms are they using (Signal) and which ones are they not using?

For email, start by migrating your financial and legal accounts to services that have encryption build-in (ProtonMail) and if you have other accounts like gmail, use PGP. This is a great article I found and had PGP on gmail setup in an afternoon - How to use PGP encryption with Gmail. Use the PGP keys you generated with desktop and mobile apps like Canarymail.

Start using VPN (ProtonMail have a service for paid subscribers); Tor (See Brave browser options), 2FA and password managers.

Also remember, owning Bitcoin on an exchange is like owning gold in a vault you have no access to or having fiat in a bank account that you can be removed from (recent examples in Canada and Russian reserves should be something you are taking note of). Start your journey with hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor and ColdCard), self hosted multisig: (Sparrow Wallet, Electrum) and maybe even build your own dedicated node: (Umbrel)

In the end, try not to over complicate things and take it slow. There will be ups and downs along the way, but remember you have to start somewhere. There are some incredible resources here: https://citadeldispatch.com/

No sponsored content, no affiliate links, no ads - The content above provides education as to general privacy and security practices. Should you choose to apply the practices described in linked content in anyway now or in the future, you do so at your own risk. Nothing shall be construed as providing consulting, financial advice or general advice.

Why are populations in dictatorships building crypto positions?

image by Ali Tawfiq

Would you be surprised if I told you that in the last 30 days we have seen significant growth in the visitor analytics to our site from the following 2 countries:

1. Australia

2. Canada

Now, I wonder why?

Could it be anything to do with: Locking away and preventing the movement of citizens, pushing policies to deliberately divide society, forcing people to take medication to work (or play sport), tracking their movements, threatening to kill their animals, using extraordinary measures against protestors and then freezing assets and bank accounts.

So big shout out to the fringe leaders in these great nations - who clearly missed their history lessons at school. Our "Black Face" Mr T was obviously even naughtier, he must have missed economics 101 (consequences and outcomes of communism) after he so eloquently spoke of his admiration of China’s Communist Party. I’d include you in on this one JA of New Zealand and all the companies like gofundme (your business model is dead).

Please keep up the great work, you are doing your citizens a wonderful service. You are opening up eyes like never before. They are spending the time:

• to read and understand the bill of human rights (google them yourself and have a read),

• to see how the current economy doesn’t actually work for them, how they work for currency that is a confidence game and inflation is actually a big deal.

• to question what freedom of speech really means (thanks Joe R for highlighting this one, and thanks too to MSM for showing us exactly who you play for)

• migrate away from social media platforms that don’t respect privacy and drive cancel culture

• to understand the importance of the right to protest (whether you agree with the protest or not, is not important - defending the right to protest is whats important)

• To understand Bitcoin and Crypto

“These nations do not have sleeping sheep, one by one the lions are being awoken”

Now for those of you are looking to build a position in crypto and don’t know where to start, here is a thread I wrote last week which will help. The story talks about “a guy”, but rest assured it does not matter if you are young or old, male or female, they, them, you are all included:

1/

There are 3 key ways to build a crypto position:

1. Take crypto as payment

2. Use defi yield tools

3. Follow the money

There are stories everywhere about #1 & #2 Nobody likes to hear about #3 To bad, today in this thread 👇, you will see how our guy made a start with #3

2/

Our guy was in his late 50s and had been looking for a way to get into crypto. He had a 5% portion of his speculative cash available to earn a little extra yield - ie the money he was prepared to allocate to highly speculative assets.

3/

The though of opening an exchange account, depositing money, deciding which crypto to buy and then moving all his crypto onto a hardware wallet or diversify risk by using multiple exchanges, was a step too far for him. But he didn't give up ...

4/

Being able to tell his grandchildren, even his son, that he owned some crypto sounded just awesome. What was more, he found a way to leverage the skills of seasoned crypto veterans, by copying their strategy. He could even add to his account monthly (or whenever he wanted).

5/

The product he went with in the end, didn't require him to have to pick an exchange - he didn't even know what that was, until someone explained, it was just a term for "where you buy crypto". - The exchange was registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in UK ✅

6/

So he followed the simple instructions from the PDF he received to open an account and then followed the process to verify his account. Initially he did not worry about depositing money: - He used a simple gift code to fund his account ✅

7/

Our guy had previously been very concerned that he knew nothing about crypto. There were so many of them, which one would he choose. Was there a way to copy the allocations of some industry veterans (like an index)? - There was, he could copy "Rational Active Allocation" ✅

8/

It was at this point, that our guy began smiling (I can see you smiling). There was one last question about diversifying risk that needed addressing. - The platform uses multiple exchanges (requiring multiple signatures from different people/orgs) to protect assets ✅

9/

So with all his concerns dealt with - he decided to purchase the Crypto Starter Kit (*) he had seen advertised. He did this straight from his phone (he could even use apple pay and his finger to checkout). After paying he received an email confirming his purchase with a PDF.

10/

The PDF included in the Crypto Starter Kit (*) had everything he needed to get started on his journey to owning his first crypto. The gift card (2 amounts available) was then generated and emailed to him to load onto his account to copy the "Rational Active Allocation" strategy.

11/

If you want to start a position just like our guy in the story, check out RAAINDEX here.

(*) We no longer offer this product, find out more here

Lastly, I dedicate this blog to all the dictators out there, the cover image of this blog has a bicycle - I suggest you get on it!

DISCLAIMER

This publication is general in nature and is not intended to constitute any professional advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial or investment products. You should seek separate professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please also note our disclosure here

The Bitcoin lottery or hedge (Part 2)

image by Elena Mozhvilo

This is a follow on article, I’d highly recommend that you first read - How do the top 1% stay in the top 1%?

In that article, to summarise, we cover:

• highlevel Credit Suisse global wealth report numbers

• pyramid of 4 global wealth categories

• how the top top category, 1.1% of the population controls 45.8% of the global wealth and top 2 combined - 12.2% of the population controls a staggering 84.9% of all the global wealth

• how the top 1% stay in the top 1% - they hedge for all outcomes

• how many oz of gold are required to remain in the top 1% should we go back to a gold like or sound money standard when our fiat systems fail (why - because they always do fail in the end)

If you missed it - the magic number is 14oz of gold (per adult) to stay in the top 1%.

This got me thinking about Bitcoin, which is often compared to gold as a store of value type asset and I’m sure you will see from previous blogs, post and tweets - both are equally important as a hedge against:

• money printing (or what ever you want to call it - same outcome)

• inflation targeting (policies designed to destroy your wealth over a short period of time)

• negative yielding bonds (more theft and logically it’s nonsensical - no sane person would ever lend money to others and pay them interest too).

So the question I’m going to try and answer here is how many bitcoin (BTC) would you need to stay in (or join) the top 1%?

Obviously the assumption is that neither fiat money or a gold standard survive and we move to a pure bitcoin standard where all the world’s wealth is backed by BTC.

This article is not about getting the exact mix of fiat, gold and bitcoin - its more about what the 100% BTC hedge would look like. At some point in the future, I will do a part 3 to this series with some calculations based on different probabilities i.e. 50/50 mix of gold and BTC or a 33% mix of Fiat, Gold and BTC.

When it comes to gold this is a moving target as more gold is mined each year, however the amounts we are talking about would not be material and when performing the same calculations for BTC, there are important points to factor in:

• not all 21 million coins are available at present (i.e. not all have been mined)

• and some are lost forever (approx 3.7 million) - more of this here if you are interested

So with this in mind we have done the calculations based on 17.3m Bitcoin in total. If you take all the adults in the world (5.23 billion), that comes to only 0.0033 BTC available per adult. If you divide the total world’s wealth ($418 trillion) by 17.3m BTC - that a staggering $24.16million per coin.

To either stay or join the top 1% you will need to own 0.0414 Bitcoin (per adult)

At todays price (~$33.4k) thats about $1383 (1164 Euro or £995) worth of BTC per adult to hedge yourself against FIAT. Put differently, you could see it as a lottery ticket to join the world’s elite. The question for you is if you think its worth taking the hedge or ticket for 0.0414 BTC - I know what I’d do.

DISCLAIMER:

This publication is general in nature and is not intended to constitute any professional advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial or investment products. You should seek separate professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please also note our disclosure here

How do the top 1% stay in the top 1%?

image by Geoff Brooks

I recently came across a very good video on YouTube put together by “belangp” titled “How Much Gold do you Need to Protect Your Wealth?”. I have included a link to the video below this article if you are interested.

The video basically explains how the world’s wealth is distributed among the world’s population. The analysis is based on the Credit Suisse global wealth report numbers published in June 2021. Global wealth is split into a pyramid of 4 categories:

• Greater $1m

• Between $100k and $1m

• Between $10k and $100k

• Less $10k

What is amazing is how much wealth is in the top category (45.8% - $191 trillion) and how few people there are in that category (1.1% of population or about 56m adults).

The top 2 categories combined, 12.2% of the global adult population (639m of 5.24b) control a staggering 84.9% of all the global wealth.

Here is a view of the pyramid:

So back to the title of our blog - How do the top 1% stay in the top 1%? The answer is -

“They manage risk better and they cover their bases. In other words they hedge themselves for different outcomes”

The second part of the video explains how the wealthiest people in the world calculate how much gold they would need to stay in the top 1% should fiat currency fail.

I’ll let you watch the video on your own, but based on the total global gold (approx 6 billion oz) it would require ~14oz to stay in the top 1%. At today’s prices (~1800/oz) that’s about $25200 which will be revalued to $1million should we go back to a gold like or sound money standard. The secret is, the top 1% have taken this hedge for themselves and their partners to ensure that should things change, they are perfectly positioned.

DISCLAIMER:

This publication is general in nature and is not intended to constitute any professional advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial or investment products. You should seek separate professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please also note our disclosure here

How Much Gold do you Need to Protect Your Wealth?