Fin Creighton: Welcome back to the show. Today we are joined with Joe Consorti, a Bitcoin macro analyst entrepreneur working in the Bitcoin space focusing on bridging traditional finance capital into Bitcoin. Joe, welcome to the show. How you doing, man? Joe Consorti: I'm doing great, Finn. Thank you so much for having me on. Excited to chat. Fin Creighton: Yeah, super excited to chat after a recommendation from Terrence the other week. forward to getting into everything, our generation, ⁓ and ⁓ you're building with Horizon. So to start us off, do you want to perhaps ⁓ it right back and what was it initially that brought you into Bitcoin and what was your journey to where you are today? Joe Consorti: Absolutely. So the journey begins, I suppose, all the way back in college. I initially wanted to go to school for medicine. decided to go instead for business while I was there. I made the switch and started going to the business school. And a couple of my friends from the business school started talking about Bitcoin. Right. This was in 2019. So I was a freshman in college in 2019 ⁓ my peers were talking about Bitcoin, Tesla, all these other sorts of investments. Right around the time that COVID was about to hit, Tesla sort of became an extremely popular equity for people to invest in. Early 2020, it started to go on a very insane run. And Bitcoin was also part of the conversation at that point. They shut everything down for COVID. So they sent me home from school. They sent all my friends home from school. ⁓ And... ⁓ When they sent us home, a couple of my buddies had the gall, they had the balls to drop out fully and pursue careers in Bitcoin. I did not, I remained at school. so that summer, I ended up running a company doing over six figures in profit. And I was looking for assets to park this capital in. Because obviously when you're 18, 19, you have $100,000 plus. it's not something you should just keep in your savings account. And so I was looking around at different things that I could potentially purchase. And one of my friends who had dropped out had brought back up the idea of Bitcoin. And I basically plowed all of the money that I had ⁓ into BTC in about October of 2020. And then it went on this generational run. And so really for me, Bitcoin, the ⁓ journey with looking for number go up technology. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: being absolutely amazed by number go up technology and then ultimately staying for the freedom tech itself. So actually working in Bitcoin came about a year and a half later, I started my own research, writing about it on Twitter and then I eventually ⁓ brought on board by Nick Bautia to help build the Bitcoin layer into a global macro research publication across different platforms, both written and video. ⁓ And that's what made me leave school early, eventually. So I left school after my junior year, began building TBL full time. really it was just through writing about this thing online that I eventually got picked up to work in the space. yeah, ⁓ that's sort of my Bitcoin journey getting into it. As far as Horizon is concerned, ⁓ building TBL for a little while, I met the founding team behind Theia, which is a Bitcoin multi-sig. ⁓ custody platform for individuals, families and businesses. ⁓ the time they were looking for an advisor, somebody to come on and just write content for them. And so I figured I would take that job. After a couple of months, I decided to come on full time ⁓ the head of growth to build out their GTM strategy, their marketing strategy and actually bring more eyeballs and users onto the platform. ⁓ so I did that. And somewhere along the line, a lot of folks were using the FAYA platform or requesting Bitcoin backed loans. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: given the fact that we were a self-custodial product, it would be very difficult to actually integrate that into the FAYA platform itself. The easiest way to do it would be to have in the app to certain partners and off ramps for Bitcoin backbones on other platforms ⁓ or figure a way to actually put Bitcoin back lending in peer-to-peer fashion in the application. But we decided to not go that route, right? Because ⁓ in particularly multi-sig, it's kind of antithetical to this idea of getting a peer to peer self-custodial Bitcoin backed loan. So we decided to go in the other direction. What sort of asset backed frameworks can we apply order to help people buy more Bitcoin? Because ultimately, ⁓ unless you're living off your Bitcoin, one of the chief goals for everyone who's involved in owning this asset is how do I own more of it? Right. Particularly maximalists like myself. Our chief directive is I want to own more Bitcoin, not using your existing Bitcoin holdings to acquire US dollars, but the other way around. Fin Creighton: . . Joe Consorti: Right, using US dollars and other US dollar denominated assets to acquire Bitcoin. And so once you realize that that market is at least right now, 10 times to 100 times larger than the Bitcoin backed loan market, that's where this real unlock took place for us. And so we started exploring what markets have a really large ⁓ market capitalization that we could tap into. And we discovered that globally, Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: The global real estate market is $370 trillion, but specifically in the United States, residential real estate is $55.1 trillion. And there's about $36 trillion worth of home equity that's sitting idle doing nothing. And so that is the single largest asset market in the United States. If we strip away all leverage and all derivatives. And not only that, but if you consider it relative to the typical homeowners portfolio, it's about 55%, close to 60%. the typical Americans portfolio, yet it's only rising 2 to 3 percent per year. And so really this is a of a slam dunk opportunity for us to be able to bridge these two worlds. Homeowners are sitting on a lot of home equity. It's not doing much for them. You factor in inflation. They're losing value in real terms. And so ultimately we allow homeowners to convert their home's equity into Bitcoin without monthly payments, interest charges or term limits. So essentially you can take a chunk of your house, swap it into Bitcoin and then forget about it until you decide to move. Right. So it's ⁓ that's solution we devised. That's kind of my my entire story. The cliff notes of my story front to back how I wound up in the space and then how we how Horizon came to be. Fin Creighton: . It's an amazing journey so far, I'm just getting started too. So I want to park your journey towards the end of the episode to dig more bit into that, but I want to keep pulling on the thread of horizon because it's really interesting and I've not looked. too much into it beyond the surface level. sent it to a guy actually, after I got told to reach out to you that I thought it might be of interest to in the US. in layman's terms, from everything that you've just described, because I'm aware that maybe a lot of what you just said might have gone straight over my audience's heads. So in layman's terms, what would that process actually look like in practicality for someone that perhaps has equity just sitting in a house? Joe Consorti: For sure. So to explain what a horizon is, I sort of have to always explain what horizon is. When we think about unlocking a home's equity, we're usually talking about debt. We're usually talking about something like a home equity line of credit where you can get approved for up to 60, 70, 80 % loan to value against your existing equity. can borrow against it. ⁓ essentially it's like a really, really high limit credit card collateralized by your house. But a debt obligation. And every dollar you take out, there's an interest rate that gets applied to that, right? And right now, I think the national average is six and a half to seven and a half percent. it's debt, it's not ideal, it adds an additional monthly payment. And there are other fees, yearly maintenance fees, ⁓ and like that. The other thing you could do is you could get a second mortgage or a home equity loan. ⁓ So this has a lot of the pitfalls ⁓ that HELOC does. You still have those monthly payments, you still have interest charges. And so you're creating an additional monthly obligation in addition to your mortgage. so using those two vehicles to purchase Bitcoin isn't necessarily ideal because ultimately what you're doing when it comes to Bitcoin and this is why strategy has created stretch and its other perpetual preferred stock instruments. Ultimately you have an asset that has theoretically infinite duration. This is something you want to hold forever. Your liability ideally should match up with it. Fin Creighton: you Joe Consorti: And the moment there's a mismatch, that's when friction gets created in your personal finances. And so, for example, if you take a quarter million dollar HELOC to go and purchase BTC, you throw all of it into Bitcoin, suddenly you have a $250,000 debt that's rising 7.5 % every single year in interest. And so you're gonna be looking down the barrel of several hundred dollars every single month in order to just cover the interest. If you wanna cover principal and interest, Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: you're going to be looking at a four figure monthly payment just to finance that Bitcoin purchase. And ultimately for most homeowners, if we're talking about single people, that's somewhat manageable. If we're talking about dual income, husband and wife, that is a little bit manageable, but ultimately it prevents them from doing a lot of those other lifestyle things like having children. If we're talking about the typical American family, forget about it, right? The reality is most people cannot afford to do something as exotic as taking on debt in order to purchase Bitcoin. However, So now that we've sort of talked about what horizon is it what horizon actually is is structured as a forward sale. So you're selling us a share of your home's future value at an indeterminate date in the future whether it's six months from now six years from now or 60 years from now. There's no predefined term in the contracts you're selling us a future share of your home's value in exchange you're receiving tax free funds to purchase and hold Bitcoin wherever you'd like. And it. So. What we're doing here is we are guaranteeing payment down the line whenever the homeowner decides to sell or just buy us out of the contract. And in exchange, the homeowner is receiving funds to purchase BTC. We're not expecting payment over the life of the Horizon deal, whether they settle up voluntarily at any point or whether they wait until they sell their property. And we also have no claim on the Bitcoin itself. effectively, through our financing partners, we've been able to make it so we can provide capital in exchange for a share of the home's future value. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: So the homeowner can use that capital to purchase BTC, park it in their cold storage wallet, wherever that may be, and let it sit there, right? this is ideal for anybody who is in their home ⁓ at least the next couple of years. It's extremely ideal for folks who are in a home they're living in for 10 years plus, and it's a fantastic option for those who are in their forever home and are looking to swap of that equity that's only doing two or 3 % annually for them into Bitcoin. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: And it's done in such a way where you're not adding monthly payments, you're not adding interest charges. And so in a very real sense, we have created one of the most efficient financing options for purchasing Bitcoin and reallocating some of that trapped capital from your largest but worst performing asset into one of the highest growth assets over the last decade. So that's the brass tacks of the way that Horizon works and the way that we've structured it to make it different from some of these other debt offerings and ideal for the long term Bitcoiner who happens to own a home in the United States. Fin Creighton: This is super interesting man and I want to keep digging into it a bit more because my view on all of the debt lending solutions in this space are at all for individuals. But I think there needs to be more education in the space around the risks because there's very good marketing around a lot of these lending products where people just don't then actually think if they're taking a responsible loan against their Bitcoin, for example. So with Horizon in particular, and the way that you've structured everything, what would a individual need to be considering as risk factors or things they need to consider when looking this? Joe Consorti: really good question. And it's one that I fundamentally agree with. With Bitcoin backed lending, is inherent risk involved. That was on what Bitcoin did with Danny a couple of weeks ago. ⁓ we were talking about Bitcoin backed loans. And I said, like, look, ultimately, if the consumer is educated, I think they're more than welcome to take on Bitcoin backed loans. But one of the big drawbacks is that the rates are just so obscenely high. ⁓ if other asset backed lending is available, like ⁓ home equity line of credit, it's much more ideal. Right. Home equity lines of credit in the United States, you can get them for seven and a half percent Bitcoin backed loans. You're not going to get much lower than 10 percent if that before you factor in any upfront fees, which raises the APR. So ultimately, like I think Bitcoin backed loans have a long way to go. But speaking of risks, one of the key risks with Bitcoin backed loans, particularly now in a bear market, is liquidation risk. If your LTV isn't managed well enough, then ultimately you're putting yourself at risk of being liquidated if Bitcoin's price turns against you. quickly, which it's known to do. 6, just one month ago to the day, Bitcoin fell, ⁓ think 15 % in a single day. It fell from ⁓ high 70s all the way down ⁓ $60,000 in day. And so, know, I think of moments like that as really key risks when it comes to taking on a Bitcoin backed loan. Because obviously your Bitcoin stack is at risk in the event that you can post more collateral. ⁓ your Bitcoin is gone, right? You get margin called, you get liquidated. so one of the things we made a point of doing with Horizon is making it so that Bitcoin volatility would not put your stack at risk ⁓ home price fluctuations would not put your stack at risk. ⁓ ultimately, the that we've achieved this is number one, the lien the agreement itself is secured by a lien on the property ⁓ rather than Bitcoin. The Bitcoin is not held as collateral whatsoever. Where things could start to get hairy is if the Bitcoin was held as collateral. But we've deliberately not done that and left the Bitcoin entirely in the homeowners hands so that ⁓ no risk of a margin call whatsoever. So we've eliminated that risk. Bitcoin could go to zero and your Horizon deal would remain intact. It wouldn't be ideal, but ⁓ home would not be at risk. Similarly, in event that Horizon ⁓ goes of business or something like that. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: your contract terms would remain valid as well. In the same way that mortgages can jump from provider to provider the life of them, whether it's a 15 year loan or a 30 year loan, so can the Horizon Agreement. If something happens to us or if something happens to our existing financing partners, the terms remain totally valid. So the through the Horizon Deal maintains sole ownership over the property. They maintain sole ownership over the BTC. ⁓ and settlement can only occur at the homeowner's discretion. a of risks associated with Horizon. I've talked about the differences between us and a Bitcoin back loan, the fact that we don't have any risk whatsoever because of market fluctuations or market volatility. ⁓ So is the key risk? Well, the key risk and basically the only risk with Horizon is that the Bitcoin goes to zero, right? Either Bitcoin goes to zero or it substantially underperforms your home's growth over the time that you're in the contract. So for instance, let's say you plan on owning your home for five years. Now, Horizon's initial stake in the property is going to grow marginally over that five year period and then stop after seven years. So let's say you've got a million dollar home. You decide I want to swap one hundred thousand dollars into BTC to buy about one point four BTC at today's prices. OK, fantastic. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: You do that you make that trade or actually 1.6 BTC at today's prices You do that you make that trade five years from now you decide I'm gonna sell my home time to settle up with horizon Our share in the property is increased marginally from about 10 % to around 15 16 % at year five If the Bitcoin has stayed flat or substantially underperformed Then you may be at or below breakeven with the horizon agreement. So for example Bitcoin's historical compound annual growth rate is about 30%. So you can bet over multi-year time horizons, five years plus, that Bitcoin is gonna rise on average 30 % every single year. And we can be even more conservative with it. Let's say 20%. In the event that Bitcoin only did 10 % a year over five years, chances are the homeowner would be underwater. Now for reference, that would mean a Bitcoin price of less than $100,000 five years from. ⁓ So extreme Bitcoin underperformance or Bitcoin going to zero are the key risks associated with Horizon. Now, I want to be clear. Those are financial risks. Those aren't risks to the home itself. So that's practically it. We've structured it in such a way where there's no forced liquidations of any kind, no forced sale. Horizon can't foreclose on you. The key risk with Horizon is that Bitcoin underperforms dramatically over the term that you're in the agreement. And by the time you decide to settle up or Bitcoin goes to zero. Fin Creighton: . And then the last bit that makes so much sense everything you're saying the last bit I'm trying to piece together is in terms of Horizon and your financing partners Joe Consorti: Yes. Fin Creighton: Where's the profit for them? Joe Consorti: That's a really great question. So two things. We have an origination fee up front. So on every single agreement that gets financed, part of the financing goes to us. A very small prudent portion of it, less than 2%. So that's number one way that we make money. And a lot of folks will ask us this because if the agreement contains no monthly payments, the immediate thing you think of when you think of home financing is a mortgage, right? mortgage is the backbone of the US economy. banks rake in money with mortgages. One of the reasons they could do it is because of the monthly payments, right? monthly payments, how on earth is this a reasonable agreement for any type of lender nationwide? It's in that origination fee, but it's also in the fact that even though there's no term limit with Horizon whatsoever, there is assumption that a lot of homeowners are going to move within five years, six years, seven years. It's just the nature of owning a home. ⁓ Most folks, even though the typical mortgage length is 30 years, most folks wind up moving in the United States within seven years. So even though in theory the bulk of our payment won't come until the homeowner passes away and passes the home down to their kids, the reality in terms of human behavior is different. So that is to say we get paid upfront with a smaller origination fee and then the majority of our payment comes at the very end when the homeowner decides to settle up. And they can settle up in a couple of different ways. They could buy out the contract voluntarily at any time. There's no prepayment penalty because there's no term in the Horizon deal itself. So whether they close up after six days, six months, six years, 60 years, that's when we get paid. Now, they could also wait until they sell the property. ⁓ So the event that they wait until they sell the property, then that's when we get paid. The other event that we could get paid in is if the home falls into foreclosure for any reason. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: So let's say they fall behind on their mortgage payments, the home goes into foreclosure. They fall behind in their property taxes, the home goes into foreclosure. In those events, we would also be entitled to payment. But I want to make it very clear, we can initiate foreclosure ourselves. So that's how Horizon and our capital partners make money on these arrangements. yeah, that's, ⁓ ultimately theory, right, if every homeowner decided, you know what, I'm going to stay in the Horizon contract for 50 years. It wouldn't necessarily be very ideal business for us. However, there is a going assumption that homeowners will be moving relatively frequently and for every individual that decides to wait 50, 60, 70 years before selling their property or passing it on to a child, there are going to be probably three or four ⁓ that it in less than 10 years. ⁓ Fin Creighton: Yeah, 100%. And this is leading nicely into the next part where I want to take it back into more Bitcoin focused. But from you've just said there, essentially then someone wins if Bitcoin outperforms their house ⁓ appreciation. That's basically what someone's looking to achieve here. So ⁓ regards to Bitcoin, what's going on at the moment? What are you seeing? Joe Consorti: That's the trade. ⁓ Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So a couple of things. Number one, I'm seeing a lot of systemic leverage threatening the private credit market. Right now, BlackRock has paused distributions from one of its major private credit funds, which is not good. And so that's indicating the system is at a big tipping point right now, where potentially there could be a systemic unwind of leverage throughout the financial system. And so as a result, risk assets are pulling back. Bitcoin chief among them. We've seen this time and again. Bitcoin tends to move out in front of equities because it's much smaller than the stock market writ large than the NASDAQ and the S &P 500 in their own right. But also it's much more sensitive. It's correlated to high beta single stock names. And so as a result, Bitcoin tends to move out ahead of broader moves. We're talking about risk on to risk off and vice versa. Now, the upshot of this is that when we rotate back into a risk on environment, Bitcoin is gonna move fast and it's gonna move ⁓ extremely loudly, right? And we'll know with certainty that we're moving back into a risk on regime. by the flip side, while assets have spent the last several months outperforming, Bitcoin is always the first one to dump, right? It's always first one to top, it's always the first one to bottom by a pretty substantial margin. We're talking weeks to potentially even months. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: And so the reason Bitcoin is underperforming now is a broader shift to risk off after a multi-year bull market with very few pullbacks. Right. We have been in a bull market, not just for Bitcoin, but for the equity market since 2022. You know, a bull market late 2022, a bull market that has lasted three and a half years. And so it's sort of high time for a correction. Right. Not just in Bitcoin, but in basically everything else. And so what you're seeing right now is just a standard risk off move. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: And I tend to think that we may have seen the lows for Bitcoin. I'm 80 % sure we've seen the lows for Bitcoin. But as I discussed on what Bitcoin did a couple of weeks ago, there is a very small risk that we go much lower with like an absolute floor being put in around $40,000. The reason I say that is because there are a bunch of different key levels from an on chain and a technical perspective down there. But I do believe with near certainty as the days go by that $60,000, roughly speaking, is the floor. Given historical patterns, I tend to believe that Bitcoin is going to range around within this 60 to $70,000 zone until people get so demoralized and then it will move in the opposite direction. It's solely a function of global liquidity when the tide will shift back into conditions being risk on. And I tend to think that that's going to occur between the May to October window. October at the latest, May because we have Kevin Warsh coming in, a fresh Fed chair, which should ideally imbue the markets with a little bit of optimism as we move throughout the rest of the year. So that's why Bitcoin's doing what it's doing now. It's not quantum risk or anything like that. If that was the case, then quantum stocks would be soaring while Bitcoin is dumping. They're both dumping, right? So it's not quantum risk. It's not Bitcoin native risk. Like it's not Bitcoin dumping in a vacuum. you look at software stocks, if you look at other really high beta equities, ⁓ are all dumping as well. And so it's purely a risk off move and you're beginning to see it in the S &P 500 as well. That's turning the NASDAQ has been turning over just like Bitcoin laid out in early October. So it's a standard risk off move, but ultimately the more Bitcoin obituaries that come, the higher the eventual rally becomes. So I'm here for it. Fin Creighton: Yeah, and with regards to say ⁓ a 40k Bitcoin price that you just mentioned there, what would we have to see for something like that to play out? Joe Consorti: For sure. And you would have to see some sort of exogenous catalyst like a collapse of a major Bitcoin exchange. So the only reason Bitcoin moved lower from $30,000 back in 2022 was because of the collapse of Celsius, BlockFi, 3R's capital and FTX that book ended the 2022 bear market. Had those events not happened, chances are Bitcoin would have bottomed around $30,000. Instead, it took a dip of an additional 45 % down to 16K. because of the collapse of all of those exchanges and bucket shops, frankly. So you would have to see something like that occur this time for Bitcoin to go as low as $40,000 in my mind, right? And so ultimately, that's not something you can really predict. And so because it's not something you can actually predict with any sort of accuracy, ⁓ shouldn't be a price target that anybody places on Bitcoin's head. What people should instead do is recognize that Sixty thousand dollars is deep value territory for Bitcoin. It is a 55 percent decline from the all time high of hundred twenty six thousand dollars. And as such, people should be accumulating down there, even if there is one to two, maybe five percent chance that we dip lower. Right. Because ultimately, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, the difference between buying at fifty thousand dollars and fifty five thousand dollars is going to be completely, completely. not noticeable whatsoever, right? If you are waiting for a price that may not come, you may wind up owning a lot less Bitcoin than if you just begin allocating once Bitcoin starts to become heavily discounted. So that's why I can't ascribe any major probability to ⁓ Bitcoin going toward those 40K levels, because it would require an exogenous factor of black swan event and you just cannot predict black swan events. And also the market structure is a lot more evolved since 2022. ⁓ Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: The behaviors that led to the massive domino effect of leverage unwinding in the crypto industry year, a lot of that has gone with the wind per se, particularly as we're trying to ⁓ push this legislation forward in Washington, the industry is much more mature. ⁓ And so likelihood of a really ⁓ deep systemic unwind like what happened back then ⁓ is much lower. Fin Creighton: Yeah, it's super interesting that you kind of just answered my next question where I was going to take it because I speak to a lot of people that are looking at all of these price predictions and scenarios that could play out maybe we do see 40k, but then they're hedging their bets that direction, just like when we're at all times highs, they're FOMOing in because it's going to go up way more. In my opinion, it's obviously not financial advice, but for the average man, you just want more Bitcoin this week than you did last week, especially at these prices. you said, if you've got a long time horizon, anything around where we're at right now, you're going to be laughing in five, 10, 15, 20 years ⁓ there was a chance to buy at these prices. So I'm glad you mentioned that because ⁓ I think that there's a lot of people that are potentially, their max pain is actually Bitcoin's not going to go any lower. And like you said, there's a good chance that we've seen a bottom and therefore is the max pain actually buying now and then the price going down or is max pain not buying now and the price running away from them? important things in my opinion to be considering. ⁓ Joe Consorti: Mm-hmm. Fin Creighton: I want to move the back end of the podcast again back to your journey and kind of our generation because fundamentally that's why I started the podcast to help our generation understand what money is, what Bitcoin is and why having a look at least into what Bitcoin is might be a good idea. If we first start, leave Bitcoin to the side, but just in terms of doing things to get ahead for Gen Z, what you're seeing and what you've been through, what would you be saying to someone that's our generation, our age, that perhaps feels stuck, feels hopeless and aren't really sure what they should be doing? Where would you be pointing ⁓ in the direction of getting started? Joe Consorti: Yeah, so I would say number one, like invest in yourself above all, whether that's a college degree or whether that's putting yourself through online courses or whether that's directing your own learning using a large language model like Claude or OpenAI, strategy BT. First and foremost, invest in yourself so you can actually raise the value of your skills. You can develop new marketable skills ⁓ you could then turn into ⁓ cash, right? Whether that's US dollars, whether that's euros, whether that's Australian dollars, whatever it may be. ⁓ So number one, invest in yourself. I suppose even before that, like get rid of any sort of victim mentality. Ultimately, the reality is central bankers hate you. They do not want you to prosper. They to steal your time and your energy by printing the very thing that you put in hours every single day to earn. So recognize that, but then also recognize that you're not a victim ⁓ because know, the more that you just dwell on that fact that central bankers hate you and they won't stop printing money, it... Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: it can consume you and it can be your entire identity. And if it's your entire identity, then you're not going to be working hard. Right. And so if you're not working hard, you don't earn any money. If you don't earn any money, you can't buy any Bitcoin. So can't allow yourself to be so caught up in the problem that you never actually seek a solution at the individual level. You got to realize you an extremely capable person. If you don't believe that, do some soul searching, prove it to yourself incrementally over time. And then the second thing is invest in yourself. The third thing is upon investing in yourself, which is a it's a lifelong process. You get fruits of your labor. You continue investing in yourself, but take some of those fruits of your labor and invest it into Bitcoin, invest it into money that they can't debase. Ultimately, this is a problem that's going to be accelerating. The is widening every single year. Currently, we like a one point nine trillion dollar deficit or something like that ⁓ in United States. And they're spending money that they don't have. ⁓ And they're the difference. The ultimate benefactor of that are the people who are close to the banks. They're close to the money faucet those who hold assets. And so ultimately what you want to do in this regime is hold the one asset that they can print and hold a lot of it. What I would not advise young people to do. Don't take all of the that you're earning and plow it into Bitcoin. Don't spend, ⁓ you half of waking hours single day listening to Bitcoin podcasts. ⁓ and just pontificating on this thing and ruminating on it and allowing it to be your whole life. The idea of ⁓ in a money they can't debase is so you could spend less of your time staring at the screen and more of your time doing things that you really like to do. And for young people, myself included, you too, ⁓ is that need to make a huge point of investing in ourselves, using the fruits of our labor to in storing that Bitcoin. ⁓ But then ultimately, recognizing that there's more to life than just buying and hoarding assets, right? Purchasing Bitcoin, holding Bitcoin, it's simply a store of value as a means to an end. It's an alternative to keeping your money in a savings account where they can debase it, right? And allows for the pursuit of meaningful work. If you are stressing less about price inflation and getting ahead ⁓ and and saving, if you're stressing less about that, then it leaves you more mental capacity in daily time to work on things that you're passionate about. Fin Creighton: Yeah. Joe Consorti: ⁓ So that's what I would say, right? Invest in yourself, store the fruits of your labor in Bitcoin and then build, right? With the extra time that you were afforded, with the extra capital that you were afforded, use it to build something that's worthwhile, whether it's a business, whether it's a family, whether it's some other kind of venture or all three of those things. So what I would say to young people. But yeah, I think the ⁓ most anchor is getting off zero as soon as you can because they can't stop printing in this system. Fin Creighton: . Joe Consorti: There's no situation in which they allow themselves to default. So the only option outside of default, which again they can't allow themselves to do, is to print the difference. And the only absolutely certain hedge against that is Bitcoin. Fin Creighton: So one of my favorite answers that I've heard to that question from all the guests that I've spoken to so far, I think it's so true. And I think on the flip side of that do-merry outlook that I think a lot of our generation are just clinging to is, in my opinion, we're actually in one of the best times to get ahead with everything that's at our fingertips in terms of Bitcoin to store our value and leveraging AI to build value and generate value to the world. to your point as well, obviously there's going to be a handful of people that find Bitcoin and then want to work in Bitcoin and contribute to Bitcoin ⁓ like like you, but what Bitcoin actually does, like you've said, is allow people to know that their money is not getting debased, but go on with their day, how they actually want to and follow their dreams in whatever aspect that is. But I do think, and I'm guilty, that I was definitely stuck in that phase for about six months where it's, you're clinging on, you get stuck in that do-mery kind of mindset, and then it distracts you from actually adding value to the world and utilizing the positives that are there for you. So I think an interesting balance of doing the works. You've got to understand what Bitcoin is, but not getting... ⁓ so deep down certain rabbit holes that it distracts you from actually generating value because fundamentally that's how the world works is you're generating value or something that someone perceives a value and then it's just a medium of exchange whether you get paid in Bitcoin or you get paid in fiat and then park the fiat into Bitcoin it comes from generating value not by just sitting sorry for yourself ⁓ Joe Consorti: Yeah. If you ⁓ fastest way to ⁓ state of depression and self sabotage is to consume more than you produce. Right. So just produce, ⁓ Produce ⁓ day long if you can. Don't be a net consumer. Right. Being a net consumer, it weighs heavily on your conscience. Always be seeking to provide value across every single endeavor that you take part in. Fin Creighton: Yeah, 100%. Couldn't agree more. And with those two aspects then go down to round us out, ⁓ if you're speaking to someone that's our age that is looking into Bitcoin but hasn't fully grasped them, where are you pointing them to get level of conviction and understanding that they need really to be holding Bitcoin? Joe Consorti: Excellent. That's really good question. So I point them to what I read that that orange build me number one, the Masters and slaves of money by Robert Breedlove and number two, the bullish case for Bitcoin by Vijay Boyapati. Those were both of the materials that my buddy Tyler, who works at BDC, pointed me to that got me orange build and sent me down the rabbit hole. ⁓ read those two materials. ⁓ you're looking for additional reading materials, ⁓ out ⁓ Age and layered money by Nick Batia. ⁓ Also, the big print by Lawrence Lepard. All five of those pieces of material will give you enough context as to the problem and why Bitcoin is the solution. And of course, the Bitcoin standard, right? It's sort of a prerequisite for owning Bitcoin at this point, I suppose. But just read more, right? Ultimately, if you don't have conviction in the asset that you're holding, you're not going to be able to weather all of the volatility, all of the extreme storms that come your way. So develop your conviction first and then invest in the asset, right? Don't touch this thing until you understand what it is and what it's all for. Fin Creighton: Yeah, 100%. And I'll put all of those in the description below for anyone listening. And then the other direction terms of generating value. a lot of people that pay perhaps are clinging onto a more pessimistic view or whatever that, but there there's a level of pain where they want to start getting ahead and things like this. ⁓ recommend people just go hard, go ham on AI and just speak to it and get some ideas. ⁓ don't know if you've been playing with open claw yet, but the last four weeks open clause, like in my opinion, changed the game along with Claude code. where we're now in a situation where you can go from idea to execution and generating value in pretty much anything, like within a day of a lot of work for the average person. What would your view on this be for people listening that want to go and do something perhaps a bit entrepreneurial rather than just following the beaten path of getting a job that they hate? for them to start looking into and playing with to start getting some traction somewhere. Joe Consorti: fantastic. So a couple of different things. Number one, build a voice, build an audience because in an era where as you mentioned, you could take something from idea to reality almost instantaneously. That's no longer a barrier to entry. The only barrier to entry is distribution. If you can't distribute what you've got, then ultimately what you're building doesn't mean much of anything. And so there are a couple of different ways to distribute. Number one, going viral, right? But that's very difficult. It's difficult to do and it's difficult to scale. You can't scale viral. You can engineer virality, but it's hit or miss. The second thing you could do is do paid ads. But when you're just starting, you can't do paid media. You could also do, you can do organic media, right? But that's not going to be very valuable unless you have an audience. And so all of this boils down to, you can create absolutely anything, the ability to actually put it in front of people is what matters more than anything. The ability for people to actually see it matters more than anything. ⁓ get on x.com, make an account, start talking about what you're doing, start building it in public. You'll naturally cultivate an audience as a result of that. Be authentic, be yourself. And ultimately, it's a skill that you have to hone in, right? able to build an audience, speaking in public, ⁓ X as your living, breathing resume so that you can achieve distribution for the idea that you're seeking to bring to life. That's what I would recommend. And then of course, fire up Claude. If you don't know how to code, doesn't matter. Download the desktop for Mac or Windows. I don't know if they have one for Linux. If you're using Linux, get a Windows computer or a Mac. What are you doing? Fin Creighton: Shh. Joe Consorti: and then fire up cloud download the desktop app, switch between chat and cowork and code and use it as a supplement for what you're doing use it as a compliment to what you're doing. Not as a supplement, right? You shouldn't be using this and then saying, okay, great, because cloud cowork is now doing X, Y, or Z for me. I can go kick my feet up and play video games. Now it is an enhancer. Think of this as a performance enhancing drug, ⁓ it's not one that they drug test for, right? Think of it that way. So that's what I would say. incorporate this into your daily life, do it in such a way where it doesn't allow you to operate at a deficit. And at the same time that you're doing that and building your idea, leveraging these AI tools, an audience, right? Because ultimately distribution in today's world matters more than anything. I would say actually taste, taste and distribution are the two things that matter ⁓ in world where anybody can create basically anything using one of these AI ⁓ tools. Fin Creighton: . Yeah, couldn't agree more man and me and another Bitcoin podcasters here in Australia where we're running a mastermind ⁓ starting next month actually that Bitcoin making sure that people are holding it correctly and safely they're being secure ⁓ integrating it into their businesses that is of interest plus focusing on leveraging AI and stacking the skills. the point you just made there, think it's bang on is that someone that's got skills already and a good understanding of sales, copy marketing, sales skills, business that AI on top of that is still going to outperform someone that's just got a Claude code or open claw because they've got the skills to apply something to put fuel on the fire as opposed to just the AI slot that you also see out there. So yes, AI is an amazing tool to get ahead, but you've got to have those skills to apply to the AI to really get the most out of it. Joe, thank you so much for jumping on. Where can people find you? And then I just want to give the mic over to you if you've got any closing messages for the audience. Joe Consorti: For sure, well, Finn, first and foremost, thank you for doing this podcast and hosting that mastermind. And that'll be an exciting one. no, if anybody wants to find more about me and follow my work, you can just go to at joeconsorty on X, or if you're watching this on YouTube, just search up the name joeconsorty, you'll find my stuff. ⁓ And if you're in the US, check out Horizon. You can just go to joinhorizon.com and play around with the tool. You can see how much your home would qualify for. ⁓ And yeah, that's what I would say. As far as parting thoughts, I mean, look, like we are living in an era of abundance, anything you could possibly want right at your fingertips. And so you can in this environment choose to be a consumer or a producer. If you are a consumer, you can make the conscious choice to turn yourself into a net producer incrementally over time. The tools have never been more widely available. The only in that environment, the only real thing preventing people from doing exactly what they know they should be doing is excuses. It's not a gap in the skills anymore. Right, the moat of having skills is largely gone. You can now create skills and upskill yourself through AI or at least supercharge the path to getting there. ⁓ just get after it, right? Like ⁓ ⁓ electric, life is fantastic. You just have to work your hardest every single day and ⁓ to bed exhausted. That's what I would say, parting thoughts. Fin Creighton: Great way to finish, create more than you consume. Joe, thanks so much for jumping on man and guys we'll see you on the next one.